National: Tracking the DOJ’s effort to get U.S. voter registration data | Gary Grumbach/NBC

The Justice Department is asking states to agree to what they call a “confidential memorandum of understanding,” which would require states to include voter names, dates of birth, residential addresses, state driver’s licenses and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. The DOJ says that after the states hand over the data, they’ll alert the officials to any “voter list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns, the Justice Department found when testing, assessing and analyzing” the state’s voter registration lists. Notably, six Republican-leaning states have refused to turn over their data: Idaho, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia. And not every state that has handed over their data has agreed to sign the agreements; Iowa, Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee did not. Across the country, seven federal judges in seven states have dismissed the DOJ’s litigation, with one judge in Rhode Island calling it a “fishing expedition.” The DOJ has appealed three of those rulings. The rest of the lawsuits are ongoing in courtrooms from coast to coast. Read Article

Wisconsin: FBI questions election official about 2020 presidential vote | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent interviewed a high-ranking state election official in recent days about the 2020 presidential election, according to sources with knowledge of the conversation. The agent sat down with Wisconsin Elections Commission deputy administrator Robert Kehoe earlier this week and discussed with Kehoe how elections are carried out in Wisconsin and various election theories. Kehoe debunked false claims and clarified how elections work, according to the sources. One of the sources called the conversation "a professional interview by a career FBI agent." The interview comes at a time when Wisconsin and Milwaukee election officials are bracing for potential action from federal authorities over their administration of the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump falsely claims he won. Read Article

Why California Wants Faster Election Results | Guy Marzorati/KQED

Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter to election officials in California’s 58 counties this week with a simple request: count votes faster. Newsom and state lawmakers have spent years building a vote-by-mail system that maximizes convenience and accessibility for California voters. The tradeoff: a longer vote count that President Donald Trump and Republicans have seized on to spread false claims of voter fraud. “We must acknowledge that the longer the voting count takes, the more mis- and disinformation spreads,” Newsom wrote. “That means we must do all that we can to tabulate votes quickly and accurately. Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold.” More than 80% of California voters cast ballots by mail in the November 2024 election. Unlike in-person voting, where verification happens upfront, mail-in ballots often arrive in bulk just before or after Election Day. This surge creates a backlog of ballots that must be inspected and have their signatures verified before they can be counted. Why California Wants Faster Election Results | KQED

Alaska Governor introduces new elections bill days after vetoing last version | Mari Kanagy/Anchorage Daily News

After vetoing the Legislature’s election reform bill last week, Gov. Mike Dunleavy requested a do-over with a largely similar elections bill Thursday. It includes a new signature verification process and delays implementation past the November general election. But lawmakers said they don’t have the time or political will to pass the governor’s new version, with less than two weeks left in the regular session. “There’s simply not time left in the session to entertain another bill that the governor’s office has put forward, which, to me, is almost a gratuitous effort to try to salvage what I clearly would describe as a very questionable decision to veto the bill in the first place,” said House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent. The vetoed Senate Bill 64 would have made broad reforms to the state’s election system, representing years of negotiations and priorities from both sides of the aisle in the Legislature. Read Article

Utah: ‘Fear sells. Facts are boring,’ Lt. Gov. Henderson defends election security | Lori Prichard/KSL

Utah’s top elections official, Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, said maintaining trust in voting has become one of the more difficult parts of her job, as misinformation, new laws and legal challenges collide. Henderson, who is responsible for overseeing elections in the state, said public confidence is increasingly being tested despite what she describes as a secure and well-managed system. “Fear sells. Facts are boring,” Henderson said. “And that has been the biggest challenge of my office.” Henderson pointed to the rapid spread of misinformation as a major factor. In reality, she said, “rigging” an election is incredibly difficult. “It’s very hard to manipulate that kind of system to affect a change in an election outcome,” she said. “But it’s easy to take little pieces of information here or there and create false narratives out of it.” Read Article

Virginia rejoins voter-registration data-sharing group after controversial exit | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Nearly three years after leaving the Electronic Registration Information Center, Virginia has renewed its membership with the nonprofit that allows states to share voter registration data to ensure only those allowed to vote may do so. Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s governor, announced Thursday that the state has rejoined ERIC, as its 27th member, after the state pulled out in 2023 under the direction of former Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In an executive order in March, Spanberger said not participating in ERIC had made it “more difficult for Virginia’s election administrators to obtain information to help maintain Virginia’s voter rolls and otherwise engage in routine voter list maintenance,” such as identifying voters who’d moved to other states. In a press release on Thursday, Steven Koski, Virginia’s elections commissioner, claimed that rejoining ERIC will provide “a key source of information that will bolster our comprehensive voter list maintenance processes.” Read Article

North Carolina elections board hired a lawyer who was also suing it | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

State elections director Sam Hayes hired one of North Carolina Republicans’ go-to lawyers to defend the state Board of Elections in a lawsuit this year, even though that lawyer was representing clients with active lawsuits against the board in four other cases in state and federal court. Phil Strach represents Republican legislators, the Republican National Committee and the state Republican party in redistricting and election cases. As Hayes sought to hire Strach, Strach asked Hayes to sign a waiver acknowledging that his firm was representing board adversaries in other cases. “Your consent signifies a waiver of any and all conflicts on behalf of other Firm clients which may exist in present unrelated matters or could arise in future unrelated matters due to this representation,” Strach’s January 30 letter said. “You agree to not use our representation in the New Engagement as a ground for seeking our disqualification in such matters,” Strach’s letter said. Read Article

Arizona: Judge strikes down rule requiring counties to aid voters who go to wrong polling place | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes can’t force election officials to provide a way for voters who show up at the wrong polling place to cast a valid ballot, according to a new court decision striking down a key provision of the state’s election rulebook. In 2023, Fontes wrote a policy into the state’s election procedures manual directing counties that assign voters to polling places to allow out-of-precinct voters to cast their ballots on accessible voting devices, which state and federal law requires must be available at every polling place for voters with disabilities. Before that, voters had no way to cast a valid ballot if they showed up at the wrong polling location. Weeks before the 2024 election, Fontes, a Democrat, sued Pinal County, a bright-red jurisdiction sandwiched between Phoenix and Tucson, for failing to comply with the new policy. A Pinal County Superior Court judge ruled that the county was violating state law by not following the rule, but declined to force it to comply in that election. Later, the Arizona Supreme Court similarly ruled that it was far too close to the election to compel the county to change course. Since then, the two sides have continued to fight the issue in court. Read Article

Michigan: Judge dismisses felony charges in Michigan election tampering case | Bridge Michigan

A Hillsdale County judge on Thursday dismissed felony charges against a former election clerk and attorney accused of allowing unauthorized access to voting equipment following the 2020 presidential election. A lower court made an “error of law” and “abused its discretion” when it ordered Stephanie Scott and Stefanie Lambert stand trial on related felony charges, Circuit Court Judge Sara Lisznyai wrote in an eight-page ruling. Scott was serving as Adams Township Clerk in 2021 when she refused to turn over a missing tabulator amid a quest to prove the prior year’s presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump. Lambert, of metro Detroit, served as her attorney at the time. Read Article

National: Why red states are pushing back on Trump administration’s request for voter data | Cy Neff/The Guardian

The Department of Justice’s quest to secure sensitive voter data is finding opposition in typically friendly territory – several staunchly conservative states. As of 1 April, the Department of Justice has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for failing to turn over full copies of their voter registration lists. The push has hit repeated roadblocks, including legal defeats in California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Arizona and Michigan. But the justice department is also running into obstacles in some of America’s reddest states, with Trump strongholds Utah, West Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky and Idaho all refusing to hand over the requested data. In their objections, the Republican-controlled states cite their constitutionally guaranteed authority over election administration, as well as concerns over data security, privacy laws and the questionable legal grounds of the department’s request. Read Article

National: US cyber team hasn’t been activated yet to protect midterm elections from foreign meddling | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

For the first election cycle in years, US military and intelligence officials have not yet activated a specialized team dedicated to detecting and thwarting foreign threats to elections, according to comments from those agencies to Congress and CNN, alarming some lawmakers and former officials who have served on the team. A failure to activate the team would be a “major national security mistake and I hope that they will correct it in the weeks to come,” Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who sits on the armed services committee, told CNN. For every general and midterm election since the 2020 election, the Election Security Group (ESG) has been a hub for officials from the National Security Agency, the code-breaking and signals intelligence agency, and US Cyber Command, the military’s hackers, to share intelligence and launch counter attacks against trolls from Russia, Iran and elsewhere who were trying to undermine US elections. Read Article

South Dakota: New requirement for combined state, local elections brings dizzying array of ballot variations | Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight

A new South Dakota law intended to make voting easier is doing the opposite for some of the people running elections. The new law requires cities and schools to hold their elections with the statewide primary in June or the general election in November, rather than on separate dates. Lawmakers hope the change will increase turnout, but it has some county auditors producing a staggering number of ballot variations in the interest of voter convenience. Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson told South Dakota Searchlight her office is printing 324 different types of ballots, known as ballot styles, ahead of the June election. Other county auditors reported a range from a dozen to more than 100. Read Article

National: Trump keeps saying the quiet part out loud on changes to the 2026 election | Aaron Blake/CNN

President Donald Trump doesn’t need any invitation — or any evidence, really — to claim that an election is “rigged,” as he’s done many times over the last 11 years. But just imagine for a second that, when his foes did something that Trump claimed amounted to rigging an election, they announced it by saying, “This is going to help us win elections!” Because that’s what the president has now done, over and over again. As he’s pushed a number of executive and legislative actions in recent months — from nixing the Senate filibuster, to requiring voter ID and proof of citizenship, to eliminating mail ballots — he’s repeatedly pitched them as ideas that will help Republicans win the 2026 midterm elections. Read Article

Georgia: Trump Administration Demands Names of 2020 Election Workers | Nick Corasanti, Richard Fausset and Alan Feuer/The New York Times

The Justice Department has demanded the identities of every worker who staffed the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga., according to court records, escalating an ongoing federal investigation of the 2020 vote in Georgia’s most populous county that relies on false and debunked claims. The demand targets employees of Fulton County elections as well as volunteer poll workers, who likely numbered in the thousands during the 2020 election, according to court records. The demand, which came via a federal grand jury subpoena, appears to be the latest effort by President Trump and his administration to use the investigative power of the federal government to pursue false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. With midterm voting underway in many states, including Georgia, the effort risks further undermining public confidence and sowing chaos among voters. nytimes.com