National: Trump regrets not calling up troops after the 2020 election. What stops him in 2026? | Nathaniel Rakich/Votebeat

Regrets — we’ve all had a few. One of President Donald Trump’s, apparently, is not directing the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election in search of evidence of fraud. That revelation, part of a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Jan. 7, commands particular attention in a world where Trump has already sought to push the boundaries of his power, deploying the National Guard to multiple U.S. cities to crack down on protests and crime. The November midterms will be the first federal general election with Trump as president since that 2020 contest, and even before his comments to the Times, plenty of people were already worried that Trump would attempt to deploy the National Guard around the 2026 election. The National Guard isn’t necessarily the problem here; the Guard actually has a history of helping with election administration, such as when troops in civilian clothing helped fill in for absent poll workers during the pandemic in 2020. But many Democrats and election officials are worried that Trump could, say, send them to polling places to interfere with voting on Election Day. If troops were to take possession of voting machines or other equipment, it could break the chain of custody and invalidate scads of ballots. And if troops just show up outside polling places, even if they don’t try to impede the administration of the election, their presence could still intimidate voters. Read Article

Georgia: Activists continue push for paper ballots ahead of midterms | Caleb Groves/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Dozens of activists packed into the state Capitol on Tuesday, touting their latest report alleging errors in Georgia elections and calling for a switch to hand-marked paper ballots rather than Georgia’s touchscreen voting system. Among a group of activists on Tuesday holding signs that read “PAPER PLEASE” and “UN-PLUG GA,” was Field Searcy, cofounder of the conservative group Georgians for Truth, which advocates for paper ballots. He claimed state law already on the books would allow the state to ditch Georgia’s touchscreen system. Tuesday’s news conference by the paper-ballot activists comes four months before the May 19 primaries for the 2026. Read Article

National: How Trump intends to hijack the midterms | Chauncey DeVega/Salon

Donald Trump’s authoritarian chaos machine is running amok. Pro-democracy Americans — and those simply hoping for a return to normalcy — are pinning their hopes on a Democratic victory in November’s midterm elections. But that salvation will not be easy or cheap. Their hopes will face a coordinated effort by Trump and the anti-democracy right-wing to secure victory before a single ballot has even been counted. As the Washington Post reported on Monday, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, were a trial run. Then, he “pressured Republican county election officials, state lawmakers, and members of Congress to find him votes after he lost his reelection bid. Now, he’s seeking to change the rules before ballots are cast.” These strategies include “challenging long-established democratic norms” and making “unprecedented demands that Republican state lawmakers redraw congressional districts before the constitutionally required 10-year schedule, the prosecution of political opponents, a push to toughen voter registration rules and attempts to end the use of voting machines and mail ballots.” Read Article

National: Jack Smith Says He Expects to Be Prosecuted Under Trump | Sadie Gurman/The Wall Street Journal

Former special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers Thursday that he thought Trump-era Justice Department officials would “do everything in their power” to prosecute him “because they have been ordered to by the president.” Shortly after the congressional hearing wrapped up, Trump said he wanted just that. During the daylong hearing, Smith’s first public appearance on Capitol Hill, the former prosecutor issued his strongest defense yet of the two criminal cases he brought against Trump in the lead-up to the November 2024 election. One alleged Trump unlawfully retained classified documents after his first term, and another focused on Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Both were brought in 2023, ahead of the 2024 election. Neither went to trial, as Smith dropped both after Trump was re-elected, citing longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president. Read Article

National: Alarm as Trump DoJ pushes for voter information on millions of Americans | US voting rights | Sam Levine/The Guardian

The justice department is undertaking an unprecedented effort to collect sensitive voter information about tens of millions of Americans, a push that relies on thin legal reasoning and which could be aimed at sowing doubt about the midterm election results this year. The department has asked at least 43 states for their comprehensive information on voters, including the last four digits of their social security numbers, full dates of birth and addresses, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Eight states have voluntarily turned over the information, according to the Brennan Center, and the department has sued 23 states and the District of Columbia for the information. Many of the states have faced lawsuits after refusing to turn over the information, citing state privacy laws. Some of the states have provided the justice department with voter lists that have sensitive personal information redacted, only to find themselves sued by the department. Nearly every state the justice department has sued is led by Democratic election officials. Read Article

National: Trump administration concedes DOGE team may have misused Social Security data | Kyle Cheney/Politico

Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers. Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes. Shapiro’s previously unreported disclosure, dated Friday, came as part of a list of “corrections” to testimony by top SSA officials during last year’s legal battles over DOGE’s access to Social Security data. They revealed that DOGE team members shared data on unapproved “third-party” servers and may have accessed private information that had been ruled off-limits by a court at the time. Read Article

National: DHS’s Data Grab Is Getting Citizens Kicked Off Voter Rolls, New Complaint Says | Vittoria Elliott/WIRED

Even before winning reelection, President Donald Trump and his supporters put immigration at the center of their messaging. In addition to other conspiracy theories, the right-wing went all in on the false claim that immigrants were voting illegally in large numbers. The Trump administration has since poured billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, and in March, Trump issued an executive order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that states have “access to appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.” In May, DHS began encouraging states to check their voter rolls against immigration data with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, run by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). SAVE now has access to data from across the federal government, not just on immigrants but on citizens as well. Experts have warned that using disparate sources of data—all collected for different purposes–could lead to errors, including identifying US citizens as noncitizens. According to the plaintiffs in a new legal complaint, it appears that it’s already happening. Read Article

National: Congressional appropriators move to extend information-sharing law, fund CISA | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

Congressional appropriators announced funding legislation this week that extends an expiring cyber threat information-sharing law and provides $2.6 billion for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), including money for election security and directives on staffing levels. The latest so-called “minibus” package of several spending bills to keep the government funded past a Jan. 30 deadline would extend the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act of 2015 through the end of the current fiscal year, Sept. 30. Industry and the Trump administration have been seeking a 10-year extension of a law that provides legal protections for sharing cyber threat data between companies and the government, but a deal on Capitol Hill has proven elusive. The package, announced Tuesday, also would extend the expiring State and Local Cybersecurity Grants Program through the end of fiscal 2026. Both laws temporarily expired during the government shutdown before being included in broader government funding legislation that extended them through Jan. 30. The House Homeland Security Committee has approved legislation on a long-term extension of the grants program, but the Senate hasn’t taken any action on it. Read ‘Article

National: How ‘chain of custody’ helps make elections secure | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

In any given election, a whole lot of people handle the ballots and voting equipment. So how does a ballot stay secure and countable after it’s left the voter’s hands? That’s possible thanks to a critical safeguard in election administration called the chain of custody. The chain of custody is a huge part of why voters can trust that their ballots are counted exactly as they intended. Voters may not give much thought to this process, but if you’re concerned about the security of your ballot and the integrity of your vote, here’s a full explanation of how the chain of custody works. Read Article

Arizona: In ‘uncertain times,’ lawmakers introduce bill to improve voting access, cybersecurity | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes on Wednesday announced new legislation that would seek to improve voting access and provide funding to improve the cybersecurity of state and county election systems. During a press conference, Fontes called the legislation, called the Voters First Act, a “research-based, common-sense proposal to modernize, standardize and prioritize the voting process across all 15 counties in Arizona.” The act, which was introduced by Democratic party leaders in both houses Wednesday, includes statewide restoration of Arizona’s permanent early vote list, which allows voters to receive ballots by mail for early voting, and applies the state’s 75-foot “voter protection zone” to ballot drop boxes and voting locations. It would extend the early voting period, allow the state to accept private grant funding to educate the public about the basic facts of statewide elections and allow ballots to be collected and processed continually on election day, for faster results. Read Article

California: This Supreme Court case could strike a major blow to state’s vote-counting system | Bob Egelko/San Francisco Chronicle

The future of mail-in voting — in particular, the power of states like California to count votes that are mailed by Election Day but received afterward — will soon be in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s the same court that overturned a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013 that required states and cities with histories of racial discrimination in voting to obtain federal government approval before changing their election laws. It’s also the court that ruled in 2019 that federal judges cannot interfere with partisan “gerrymandering,” the redrawing of election districts for political purposes. Another ruling in 2021 allowed Arizona to reject ballots that were delivered by someone other than the voter. Read Article

Georgia: Fate of ballot QR codes unclear as deadline for their removal looms | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

Election season in Georgia is here, with statewide primary elections less than four months away and the campaigning for those contests well underway. But as Georgians prepare to cast their ballots, a key question remains unclear: Will the state be able to eliminate QR codes from ballots to comply with a 2024 state election law? During the second day of budget hearings at the state Capitol, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger appeared before lawmakers to discuss Gov. Brian Kemp’s proposed budget for his office. The hearings will continue into Thursday, with Attorney General Chris Carr and other law enforcement and public safety-related agency heads scheduled to present. Kemp’s budget proposal for the secretary of state’s office includes $1.8 million for optical character recognition technology that can be used to scan the human-readable text on ballots and $5 million toward a hand count verifying the outcomes of two statewide races during the 2026 cycle, Raffensperger told lawmakers Wednesday. Read Article

Michigan voters say signature gatherers lie about what proposals will do. Lawmakers haven’t fixed it. | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

College students across the state say they have been lied to by petition circulators, who have descended on their campuses to gather signatures in support of requiring Michigan voters to prove their citizenship. In August, Michigan State University freshman Abby Lindley was told the petition would make it easier for immigrants and transgender people to vote, she said. University of Michigan junior Aidan Rozema reported being told in September that it would make voting easier. In October, circulators told MSU freshman Hunter Moore it would expand absentee voting, he said. No law in Michigan requires circulators — often paid per signature — to tell the truth about what’s on a petition, or to show prospective signers the full text. While some states try to ensure accountability by banning per-signature pay or requiring circulators to live in-state, rules across the country are a patchwork. Read Article

North Carolina: ‘Fat-finger mistake’: State, county elections officials tussle over Wilson County sheriff’s race | Will Doran/WRAL

State elections officials voted to allow Bobby Knight to run for Wilson sheriff after his candidacy was challenged by competitors in the upcoming GOP primary. Party affiliation was at the center of the case. Knight has been a registered Republican for years — except for about five hours on the morning of Dec. 1, 2025, when he was a Democrat. An errant tap on his phone while updating his voter registration address accidentally changed his affiliation, he said. State law says someone must be a member of a political party for at least 90 days to run for election as a member of that party. And due to the flub, he didn’t meet that requirement, county officials determined. But the state elections board overruled the county in a 3-2 party-line vote, with the state election board’s Republican majority in favor and the Democratic minority opposed. The decision means Knight will be allowed to run in the Republican Party primary. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Chester County poll book problems on Election Day were due to human error, insufficient oversight, report finds | by Katie Bernard

Independent and unaffiliated voters were left off Chester County’s poll books in November’s election due to human error exacerbated by insufficient training, poor oversight and staffing challenges in the county office, an independent firm has concluded. In November, more than 12,000 Chester County voters were forced to vote by provisional ballot after the county included just registered Democrats and Republicans in the poll books for the general election. Every voter who wanted to was able to cast a ballot, county officials said, but it resulted in a chaotic scene and the county had to issue an unusually high number of provisional ballots — which require more steps to cast and count. Read Article

South Carolina: Governor appoints new head of SC Election Commission after board chairman resigns his lengthy term | Anna Wilder/Post and Courier

The head of the S.C. Election Commission resigned from his seat by saying he’d stayed longer than intended. Dennis Shedd told reporters he wanted his “retirement time back.” The former federal judge’s window of service was supposed to end in June 2025. “As I told you, I just anticipated being in this job for about six or eight months. It just dawned on me that I’m really ready to move on to something else,” Shedd told reporters at the commission’s Jan. 21 meeting. Some of the reasons he decided to stay included issues surrounding top staffers that led to criminal charges and the U.S. Department of Justice’s request for voter information data. Read Article

Texas lawsuit claiming that numbering system threatens ballot secrecy dismissed | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative activists who challenged the use of electronic voting equipment to randomly number ballots in Texas on the grounds that the practice compromised ballot secrecy. Judge David Alan Ezra of U.S. District Court in Austin ruled that the case, filed in 2024 by longtime Texas election activist Laura Pressley and voters from three counties, was moot because the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has since prohibited counties from using electronic pollbooks to generate and print numbers on ballot paper. He also wrote that two of the counties named in the suit, Williamson and Bell, had taken steps to eliminate the use of pollbooks to number ballot paper, and that the third, Llano County, doesn’t use them for that purpose. Read Article

Virginia: Judge rules state violated Reconstruction Era law by disenfranchising certain felons | Courthouse News Service

A federal judge ruled in favor of two disenfranchised Virginia voters Thursday, concluding the state’s broad felon disenfranchisement policy violates a 150-year-old federal statute. “For well over a century, the Commonwealth of Virginia has disobeyed a federal law designed to protect the right of former enslaved people to vote,” U.S. District Judge John Gibney wrote. “Nearly one hundred and twenty-five years after Senator Glass pleaded to ’emancipate Virginia’ from Black voters, a class of would-be voters appears before this court asking for true emancipation at the commonwealth’s ballot boxes.” Gibney, a Barack Obama appointee, granted an injunction barring Virginia from disenfranchising anyone whose convictions stem from felonies created after 1870, when Congress passed the Virginia Readmission Act. Not long after passing the Reconstruction Era law, Virginia lawmakers widened the net of felons they could disenfranchise. Gibney ruled that the act trumps any subsequent constitutions the commonwealth adopted. Read Article

Wisconsin Governor pushes back against Madison argument in absentee ballot lawsuit | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Gov. Tony Evers is pushing back against arguments Madison city officials made in a recent lawsuit contending they can’t be sued for failing to count nearly 200 mail-in ballots in 2024 because absentee voting is not a right but a privilege. A group of Madison voters represented by the liberal law firm Law Forward sued city and county election officials in March over the city’s failure to count 193 absentee ballots cast during the 2024 presidential election. The voters are accusing the former Madison clerk of disenfranchising their right to vote in a class-action lawsuit. The clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, and city election officials named in the lawsuit argue the voters’ constitutional rights were not violated when city officials failed to count their ballots because of a state law that says: “The legislature finds that voting is a constitutional right, the vigorous exercise of which should be strongly encouraged. In contrast, voting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place.” Read Article