Wisconsin: US Appeals Court rules against town that removed voting machines last year | Rich Kremer/WPR

A northern Wisconsin town sued by the U.S. Department of Justice last year for not providing electronic voting machines to people with disabilities has lost its federal appeal. Thornapple’s town board passed a resolution to stop the use of electronic voting machines in June 2023. Court documents show the town’s former clerk Suzanne Pinnow cited “the controversial nature of electronic voting machines” as part of its justification. The DOJ sued Thornapple and the Rusk County Town of Lawrence for removing access to voting machines designed for people with disabilities. They said the decisions violated the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA. Officials in Lawrence negotiated a settlement and agreed to make at least one accessible machine available in future elections. Read Article

National: Amid cuts to federal cyber services, local election officials expect greater state support | Colin Wood/StateScoop

A majority of local election officials are worried about the federal government’s recent moves to pull back support for election security services, according to a report published Thursday by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit public policy institute. The report, which arrives amid numerous cuts to services and staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, found that 61% of local election officials polled said they were specifically concerned about election security services cut by CISA. And of the 858 local election officials who responded, 87% said they believe it’s important that state and local governments fill the gaps in support created by the federal government’s cuts under the second Donald Trump administration. Lawrence Norden, a vice president of elections and government at the Brennan Center who helped conduct the survey, said the government landscape is already shifting to ensure election offices can protect their systems and share timely threat information. Read Article

National: CIA declassifies review of intelligence report on 2016 Russia election interference | Dan De Luce and Ken Dilanian/NBC

CIA officials failed in some cases to follow standard procedures in an intelligence analysis of Russian interference efforts in the 2016 election, according to an internal review declassified Wednesday. Intelligence officers were given an unusually short timeline for the analysis, there was “excessive involvement” by senior leaders, and staff members were given uneven access to crucial intelligence about Russia, the “lessons-learned” review said. But the review did not refute the findings of the 2017 intelligence assessment that Russia waged an information warfare campaign designed to undermine Americans’ confidence in the electoral process, damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald Trump’s prospects in the 2016 election. Read Article

National: Justice Department Explores Using Criminal Charges Against Election Officials | Devlin Barrett and Nick Corasaniti

Senior Justice Department officials are exploring whether they can bring criminal charges against state or local election officials if the Trump administration determines they have not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems, according to people familiar with the discussions. The department’s effort, which is still in its early stages, is not based on new evidence, data or legal authority, according to the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. Instead, it is driven by the unsubstantiated argument made by many in the Trump administration that American elections are easy prey to voter fraud and foreign manipulation, these people said. Such a path could significantly raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, thrusting the Justice Department and the threat of criminalization into the election system in a way that has never been done before. Read Article

National: Lawmakers demand CISA explain how it’s supporting election offices | Colin Wood/ StateScoop

In a letter Monday addressed to leaders of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Democratic lawmakers demanded to know why the agency hasn’t responded to their recent inquiries about the level of support it’s providing to state and local election offices. Ranking members Rep. Joseph D. Morelle and Sen. Alex Padilla wrote that they’re seeking “urgent updates” to the status of numerous election security policies and programs offered by CISA under previous administrations. The letter, which is addressed to CISA acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala and Mona Harrington, assistant director of CISA’s National Risk Management Center, demands a “comprehensive briefing” on CISA’s operations and personnel before July 21. “CISA’s repeated failure to respond to our requests for information while undertaking a significant reshaping of the agency’s personnel and mission is unacceptable,” the letter reads. “We remain deeply troubled by the lack of information CISA has provided to congressional oversight committees and the lack of substantive responses to our questions.” Read Article

National: Department of Justice Jumps on SCOTUS Nationwide Injunctions Ruling to Boost Trump’s Anti-Voting Order | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

Citing the Supreme Court’s recent ruling curtailing nationwide injunctions, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal judge to weaken part of a previous court order against President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting decree. Beyond its potential impact in the battle over the voting order, the filing is also a stark example of how SCOTUS’ ruling in the nationwide injunctions case, Trump v. CASA, could give the administration a boost in other cases challenging Trump’s authoritarian power grab. The DOJ asked District Judge Denise Casper July 3 to amend the portion of her previous court order that barred the government from enforcing Section 2d of Trump’s executive order. Read Article

National: Nearly half of election officials concerned about politically motivated investigations | Aaron Pellish/Politico

Nearly half of local election officials are concerned about politically motivated investigations targeting election workers, according to a new survey from the Brennan Center for Justice. Forty-six percent of local election officials said they were at least somewhat concerned about politically motivated investigations of their work or the work of other election officials. Of that, 18 percent of respondents said they were “very concerned” about potential investigations. Election officials have increasingly become targets of scrutiny in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when President Donald Trump and his allies touted conspiracy theories about ballot processing to claim the results of the election — which he lost — were rigged. Read Article

National: Trump and GOP target ballots arriving after Election Day that delay counts | Chistina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

President Donald Trump and other Republicans have long criticized states that take weeks to count their ballots after Election Day. This year has seen a flurry of activity to address it. Part of Trump’s executive order on elections, signed in March but held up by lawsuits, takes aim at one of the main reasons for late vote counts: Many states allow mailed ballots to be counted even if they arrive after Election Day. The U.S. Supreme Court last month said it would consider whether a challenge in Illinois can proceed in a case that is among several Republican-backed lawsuits seeking to impose an Election Day deadline for mail ballots. At least three states — Kansas, North Dakota and Utah — passed legislation this year that eliminated a grace period for receiving mailed ballots, saying they now need to be in by Election Day. Read Article

National: The States Decide How Elections Are Run | Grace Olson/NCSL

After every major election, we see headlines fly about election policies. Recent hot topics include mail-in ballots, proof of citizenship for voter registration and the type of identification needed to vote. Although several pieces of federal legislation and U.S. Supreme Court decisions have established rules governing voting, the primary responsibility for facilitating federal elections lies with the states. Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor, told a recent NCSL webinar on federalism and U.S. election law that when the Founding Fathers authored the U.S. Constitution, they did so with a heavy focus on the states, allowing each state to handle elections as it saw fit. Despite the states having considerable power in federal elections, Persily says that voting is the most amended topic in the Constitution. The most notable revisions, he says, are the 14th and 15th Amendments, which protect U.S. citizens from discrimination based on race. The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, and the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18. Read Article

Arizona’s Democracy Shield, Secretary of State’s Office Fights Off | Taylor Johnson/Hoodline

Arizona’s Secretary of State’s office recently managed a cybersecurity skirmish, fending off what it described as a “malicious adversary” that had eyes on the state’s election-related systems. According to an official statement released by the office and obtained by AZ SOS, the attempted incursion focused on the website, specifically the Candidate Portal, which required temporary offline measures to beef up security protocols. The attack hit home the message that threats to election integrity are not just hypothetical but pressing and immediate. The state’s top election official, Secretary Adrian Fontes, laid out a stark picture of the digital battlefield where Arizona’s voter registration database remained unscathed during the cyber assault, noting, “Since day one, I’ve warned that foreign adversaries, particularly Iran, are actively targeting our election infrastructure and political systems.” Read Article

Colorado Supreme Court committee advances election-related change, goes back to work on magistrate rules | Michael Karlik/Colorado Politics

The Colorado Supreme Court’s civil rules committee approved a procedural change for court challenges to presidential electors, a move that complies with legislation passed this year. The committee also heard from the Supreme Court that it must perform further work on proposed changes to the rules governing magistrates, after the justices heard criticism from some judges and attorneys this week. State lawmakers enacted Senate Bill 210 during the 2024 legislative session, addressing a wide range of elections topics. One provision added new language for legal challenges to presidential electors, requiring filings in the Supreme Court within 24 days of Election Day and obligating the court to prioritize such challenges “over all regular business.” Read Article

Connecticut’s voter rights law, the strongest in the nation, finally got funded | Colin Wood/ StateScoop

Upon announcing this week that he’d signed into law a “balanced, sensible budget” for next two years, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont was also signaling that he’d authorized funding for the most comprehensive voting rights act in the nation. The Connecticut Voting Rights Act, which became law in 2023 after the NAACP Legal Defense Fund introduced the legislation and accompanied it to enactment, had sat without funding until Monday. Now the act, which the civil rights group says needs roughly $1 million each year it operates, has the dollars it needs to implement its numerous protections, like legal tools to fight discriminatory voting rules in court, expanded language assistance for voters who struggle with English and a data portal to host all of the state’s election results and demographic information. Read Article

Georgia election results must be certified, Court of Appeals rules | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Election board members are required to certify election results, even if they distrust the outcome, according to a Georgia Court of Appeals decision. The decision resolves a dispute that overshadowed the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, when the State Election Board passed rules calling for an “inquiry” and more documents before signing off on results. The Georgia Supreme Court recently rejected the board’s rules. The unanimous order, issued last week by a three-judge panel, says Georgia law demands that election boards make results official. Any doubts about fraud or irregularities can then be reported to prosecutors, the appeals court ruled. The decision confirms a Fulton County judge’s ruling last October that election boards have a duty to approve the votes of the people. Read Article

Illinois: Cook County trying a ‘smart’ ballot drop box for primary election | Sophie Levenson/Chicago Tribune

Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon unveiled a new “smart” ballot drop box on Tuesday, stating she intends to use it for the March 2026 primary election and see if it can be implemented on a larger scale for future elections. The $15,000 tamper-proof drop box features a surveillance camera to record who drops off ballots, an electronic screen to confirm successful deposits and a scanner to record the outside envelopes of the ballots. Clerk officials described it as the first of its kind nationally. During the primary election, the new ballot box is expected to be located at the county’s primary election site at 69 W. Washington St., according to a report from the clerk. The box’s scanning feature is expected to save clerk employees from having to manually scan envelopes when they are received, while automatically updating the online status of ballots for voters. The envelopes are still transported and processed — taken out of the envelope where votes are scanned and counted — by clerk employees. Read Article

Michigan clerks speak up in support of bill to preserve local authority over voting machine testing | Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance

Election clerks from across the state spoke up before the House Election Integrity Committee last week, offering their support for a piece of legislation aimed at preserving their say in pre-election testing of voting machines. Committee Chair Rachelle Smit (R-Martin), a former election clerk, told her colleagues that for years, local clerks have successfully conducted logic and accuracy testing of their machines by working with vendors of their choosing. However, Smit raised concerns that a recent contract acquired by the Michigan Secretary of State could require clerks to use only their contracted vendor to generate test decks. “This represents a fundamental shift from our local control to state mandated centralization, a shift that raises concerns about the integrity, transparency and fiscal responsibility. The bill before us today provides very clear, common sense protections that preserve local autonomy while ensuring proper standards. Specifically it protects local choice,” Smit said. Read Article

New Jersey: How a voter’s mistake threw an entire election into months of legal chaos | Colleen Murphy | NJ.com

A single write-in vote has prompted a New Jersey appeals court to order a runoff election in a Toms River fire district. The election, which originally took place in February 2025, ended in a tie, followed by a vote reversal, and a legal battle over ballot counting. In a ruling issued Monday, the Appellate Division ordered a new election between Michael Hopson and Anthony Cirz, who are competing for one of two open seats on the Toms River Fire District No. 1 Board of Commissioners. The original results showed a tie between Hopson and Cirz, which was certified and publicly posted, but days later, election officials revised the results. They discovered that one voter had used the voting machine’s write-in option to vote for Cirz and another candidate, James Golden, even though both names were already printed on the ballot. Those write-in votes were then added to the candidates’ official totals, giving Cirz a one-vote lead over Hopson. Read Article

North Dakota: Appeals court rules against tribes in voting rights case that could go to Supreme Court | Jack Dura and Steve Karnowski/Associated Press

A federal appeals court won’t reconsider its decision in a redistricting case that went against two Native American tribes that challenged North Dakota’s legislative redistricting map, and the dispute could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court. The case has drawn national interest because of a 2-1 ruling issued in May by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that erased a path through the federal Voting Rights Act for people in seven states to sue under a key provision of the landmark federal civil rights law. The tribes argued that the 2021 map violated the act by diluting their voting strength and ability to elect their own candidates. The panel said only the U.S. Department of Justice can bring such lawsuits. That followed a 2023 ruling out of Arkansas in the same circuit that also said private individuals can’t sue under Section 2 of the law. Read Article

Ohio: Electronic poll pads will be back for November election | Mary Ann Grier/ Morning Journal

The Columbiana County Board of Elections will be back to using the electronic poll pads to check voter signatures against IDs during the Nov. 4 general election. County Board of Elections Director Kim Fusco reported during the election board meeting on Tuesday that during the recent elections conference in Columbus, which board members also attended, they learned the reason why they couldn’t use the electronic poll pads for the May 2025 primary. She said state officials explained that it was due to some possible security breach in another county, Perry County, saying it sounded to her like they were saying it could have been a hacker, an electrical short in the poll pads or a ghost. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Department of Justice presses for answers on how it manages voter rolls | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

The U.S. Department of Justice is asking Pennsylvania for a wide range of information on how it manages voter registration and voter rolls, as part of what it calls “nationwide efforts” to monitor compliance with a key federal voting statute. In a June 23 letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, the department asked for 14 categories of information on the state’s voter registration activities, including how voters are added to and removed from the voter rolls, and how the state prevents unauthorized access to its system. The letter is the latest in a series of requests the Civil Rights Division has sent to states involving their compliance with federal voting statutes. This one specifically cites the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, a 2002 law that overhauled voter registration and election administration. Read Article

Wisconsin election officials to consider expanding e-pollbook options | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

When Madison residents went to vote in a special election this month, they didn’t have to stand in line according to their last name or wait for poll workers to flip through paper lists to find their names. For the first time, election officials there used electronic pollbooks to check voters in, allowing them to search for voters’ names and collect signatures on digital pads. They could also use the e-pollbooks to process absentee ballots, register new voters, and issue voter numbers, just as they did with paper poll books, but with less chance of error. The pilot program in the state capital offered a glimpse of both the technology’s potential — and its current limitations. Poll workers praised the state’s in-house e-pollbook system, known as Badger Book, for its speed and accuracy. But its high costs, limited vendor options, and a lack of state funding for support staff have stalled broader adoption, especially in large cities. Read Article

A.I. Is Starting to Wear Down Democracy | Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson/The New York Times

Artificial intelligence has long threatened to transform elections around the world. Now there is evidence from at least 50 countries that it already has. Since the explosion of generative artificial intelligence over the last two years, the technology has demeaned or defamed opponents and, for the first time, officials and experts said, begun to have an impact on election results. As the technology improves, officials and experts warn, it is undermining faith in electoral integrity and eroding the political consensus necessary for democratic societies to function. Read Article

National: Red States Struggle to Build New Systems to Share Voter Data | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

Back in 2023, a host of Republican-led states left a successful inter-state compact for sharing voter registration data and keeping their rolls up to date. Falsely portraying the pact as a progressive plot, several states vowed to create better systems of their own. Two years later, those efforts appear largely to have failed. The most prominent new initiative, built by Alabama, lacks anything close to the sophistication of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the system the red states rejected, experts said. In fact, it isn’t even designed to allow multiple states to share data with each other — the core purpose that ERIC serves. Read Article

National: Trump calls for special prosecutor to investigate 2020 election Biden won | Eric Tucker/Associated Press

President Donald Trump on Friday called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, repeating his baseless claim that the contest was marred by widespread fraud. Trump’s post is part of an amped-up effort by him to undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency. Earlier this month, Trump directed his administration to investigate Biden’s actions as president, alleging aides masked his predecessor’s “cognitive decline.” Biden has dismissed the investigation as “a mere distraction.” Read Article

National: More cities try extending voting rights to younger teens | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

Amid all the worries about the perennially elusive youth vote, there’s a promising trend to talk about: In a growing number of towns and cities across the U.S., 16- and 17-year-olds are gaining the right to vote. The numbers are still small, but the momentum is real. Advocates say it’s about nurturing lifelong voters. Take Newark, New Jersey, which allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in its school board election in April. Teen turnout was only about 3%. But that was better than the adults managed. Besides, as Sam Novey from the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement puts it, the city “started from nothing.” Indeed, adding younger teens to the voter rolls involves building a lot of things from scratch. After Newark passed its ordinance last year allowing youth voting, officials had to rewire voter registration systems and launch a full-scale education campaign. It was about 14 months before 16- and 17-year-olds could cast their first ballots. Read Article

National: The SAVE database was already a headache for states. Now it’s fueling Trump’s voter fraud allegations. | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Just under three weeks after being elected to his first term as president of the United States, Donald Trump took to Twitter to claim he’d been cheated. While he had won the office through his strength in the electoral college, Trump wanted to make something clear: he also believed he’d won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” This rhetoric — that dark forces were conspiring to rig democratic outcomes against him — has endured through Trump’s two subsequent presidential campaigns, bolstered by persistent belief among Republicans that election fraud is rampant. Trump’s attacks eventually sharpened into the more specific charge that illegal immigrants were casting millions of fraudulent ballots for his Democratic opponents across the country. But over the past decade, these political attacks have always crashed headlong into an uncomfortable reality: the facts are not in his favor. All the data we have tells us that non-citizen voting is rare. Read Article

National: The Importance of Letting Voters Defend Their Rights in Court  | Kendall Verhovek/Brennan Center for Justice

Since the dawn of the Voting Rights Act, federal courts heard Section 2 claims brought by voters. Without this ability to sue, many, if not most, of the claims against racially discriminatory voting policies would have gone unheard, leaving in place a far more unjust and imperfect electoral process. This right was tacitly affirmed in Brown v. Post and accepted again and again in every one of the hundreds of Section 2 cases brought by individuals and organizations and heard by federal courts. Until 2021. In a concurring opinion in a major Voting Rights Act ruling, Justice Neil Gorsuch called Section 2’s private right of action “an open question” — undercutting decades of judicial consensus. This invitation was accepted in 2022, when a district court, followed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2023, fully embraced this radical theory. The courts concluded that impacted voters and organizations can’t bring lawsuits under Section 2. Last month, a second ruling by a panel of the Eighth Circuit narrowed enforcement power further, preventing voters from suing for Section 2 offenses under another federal law that broadly protects against government violation of civil rights. Read Article

Alabama to add invisible security emblems to ballots | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen on Tuesday announced his latest effort to improve the security of his state’s elections — new security emblems that will be attached to all ballots starting next year. In a press release, Allen said the emblems are invisible to the human eye and can only be detected by specialized equipment provided to election administrators in each of Alabama’s 67 counties. According to his office, it will be the first in the nation to use the technology. Read Article

Proposed Arizona settlement recommends more warnings for voters coming off early-voting list | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona election officials would be instructed to provide more notice to voters who are at risk of being removed from the state’s early-voting list, under a conditional legal settlement with voting rights groups. The settlement, which was filed in court Monday and is still subject to final approval, would resolve a longstanding challenge to a 2021 law that eliminated the state’s Permanent Early Voting List. The agreement says voters who face removal should be notified two additional times before they are taken off the list, and once afterward. The agreement does not appear to impose any new notification requirements on county recorders, who manage county voter rolls. What it would do is provide suggested best practices for how the recorders should implement the law, including the schedule of notices. Because the additional notices wouldn’t be required, voters across the state could face unequal treatment as recorders begin implementing the law for the first time in 2027. Read Article

California: Justice Department sues O.C. registrar for noncitizen voting records | Salvador Hernandez and Laura J. Nelson/Los Angeles Times

Federal authorities sued Orange County’s top elections official Wednesday, alleging the county registrar violated federal law by refusing to disclose detailed information about people who were removed from the voter rolls because they were not citizens. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges that Orange County Registrar Bob Page is “concealing the unlawful registration of ineligible, non-citizen voters” by withholding sensitive personal information such as Social Security and driver’s license numbers. The 10-page lawsuit does not allege that any noncitizens voted in Orange County. Read Article

Georgia: Running a low-turnout runoff election could cost $100 per vote | Jeff Amy/Associated Press

Miller County Election Supervisor Jerry Calhoun says he’s not sure anyone will vote in an upcoming Democratic primary runoff. After all, the southwest Georgia county only recorded one vote in the June 17 Democratic primary for the state Public Service Commission among candidates Keisha Waites, Peter Hubbard and Robert Jones. Statewide turnout for the primary on June 17 reached just 2.8% of Georgia’s 7.4 million active registered voters. That includes more than 15,000 people who likely voted for Blackman and didn’t have their votes counted. But the Democratic runoff might struggle to reach 1% turnout statewide. And counties could spend $10 million statewide to hold the election, based on a sampling of some county spending. That could be more than $100 per vote. Read Article