Maryland: Vendor error causes mass redo of mail-in ballots | Racquel Bazos/The Baltimore Sun

The Maryland State Board of Elections is sending new mail-in ballots to every voter who requested one after a vendor error mixed up some voters’ party affiliations, elections officials said Friday. Though it’s possible that not every mail-in ballot was incorrect, according to the State Board, election integrity and security demands resending all the ballots. Only voters who got their mail-in ballots before May 14 might be impacted, the board wrote. “We are diligently working to address this error and provide clear instructions to those affected as quickly as possible,” Jared DeMarinis, state administrator of elections, said in the Friday announcement. “The State and Local Boards of Elections remain committed to running an election that is verified, secure and accurate. Mail-in voting is an integral facet of the electoral process. With over 500,000 voters requesting mail-in ballots, we want to eliminate any doubt in its integrity or accuracy that is why I have arranged the sending of replacement ballots,” he said.. Read Article

National: OpenAI heralds cybersecurity, election interference safeguard plans for 2026 midterms | Tim Sparks/CyberScoop

OpenAI on Wednesday hailed its plans to safeguard information and aid cybersecurity defenders in the 2026 midterm elections, including work to combat deepfakes and other forms of artificial intelligence misuse. The announcement builds on commitments from major tech companies in 2024, including OpenAI, to protect elections from AI-infused election interference — efforts that some thought weren’t enough. Government agencies, non-governmental institutes and others have increasingly warned about AI’s ability to have a negative impact on elections even as they advertise its potential for good. OpenAI’s plan has five planks: spreading reliable information about voting and election results, helping with cybersecurity, watermarking deepfakes, enforcing policies that ban users from deploying its tools for election interference, and weeding out political bias in its models. Read Article

California tries to block Trump involvement in election procedures | Laurel Rosenhall/The New York Times

Six days before the California primary, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Wednesday intended to safeguard elections after federal officials and local sheriffs took unusual steps in the last year to seize ballots from election offices.The new law, which takes effect immediately, would not stop officials who have a warrant. But Newsom described it as a way “to address the legitimate anxiety” over election security amid attempts by the Trump administration and the president’s allies to tamper with results and sow doubt in the mechanics of democracy.The governor, a Democrat whose popularity has soared as he’s taken a more combative stance against President Donald Trump, listed various actions taken by Trump to explain the need for the bill. Read Article

National: Ballots Have Been Seized Across the US. No One Knows What Will Happen Next | Kim Zetter/WIRED

As US voters look to the November midterms, the Trump administration is obsessed with looking back to past elections, seizing ballots cast years ago in several states in search, it claims, of fraud or other malfeasance. But experts believe the goal may be more varied. The seizures began in January when FBI agents armed with a warrant raided an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, and grabbed 600 boxes of ballots from 2020. This was followed in March by the Department of Justice obtaining ballot images from 2020 in Maricopa County, Arizona, and—citing claims about supposed fraud in 2020—demanding ballots from the 2024 election in Wayne County, Michigan. Read Article