Arizona: Thousands of voters received letters asking if they’d moved. Here’s why. | Sasha Hupka and Jerod McDonald-Evoy/ Votebeat

Thousands of Arizonans have received similar notices in recent days, even though many have not moved. The confusing mailing appears to have stemmed from flaws in state and some county officials’ implementation of a new state law. Here’s what to know. The law requires Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, to compare the state’s voter registration database to the state’s driver’s license database each month. His staffers are then required to inform county recorders if they find discrepancies in a voter’s residential address or citizenship status. Supporters of the law, which passed as House Bill 2243 in 2022, said its purpose is to improve maintenance of the voter rolls and catch ineligible voters, including people who had moved to a new address. In a May 2022 letter to then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a coalition of conservative groups wrote that the law would ensure it was “easy to vote, and hard to cheat” in Arizona. But opponents worried it could disenfranchise some voters and noted that the state already had voter list maintenance measures in place. Read Article

California: Convicted MAGA election denier declines job in Shasta County amid pressure from Newsom | Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times

Tina Peters, who served prison time for tampering with voting machines on behalf of the MAGA movement, has declined a job offer helping to oversee elections in a conservative Northern California county. “She declined the offer because she’s running around the country right now trying to secure the elections,” Clint Curtis, the Shasta County registrar of voters, said in an interview Tuesday. “Shasta County lost out.” Last month, Curtis set off alarm bells across California by telling reporters he planned to hire Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was released early from prison this summer amid a pressure campaign by President Trump. Curtis, himself a longtime election denier, told The Times he had planned to hire Peters as a consultant “to assist with supervision of the November election.” Peters’ attorney, Peter Ticktin, said in an interview Tuesday that she had given serious consideration to the job offer but that he had not discussed it with her in recent days. It would “not have been a full-time position,” because she is so busy, he said. Read Article

Georgia lawmakers consider how to protect voting access for people with disabilities, non-English speakers | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

Accessibility advocates are urging state leaders to prioritize access for voters with disabilities and those who require language assistance as lawmakers prepare to overhaul Georgia’s election equipment ahead of 2028. Thanks to a bill passed during the June special session, state leaders appear likely to select hand-marked paper ballots as the state’s primary voting method ahead of 2028. The shift away from the state’s current, machine-marked ballot system will likely come as a relief to some critics of the current voting equipment, who have repeatedly cited fears over machine tampering and called for ballots to be counted based on text that can be deciphered by humans. But Georgia residents likely won’t see voting machines vanish completely. Under federal accessibility laws, every polling place is required to have at least one voting machine on hand for voters with disabilities, even in jurisdictions where most voters mark ballots by hand. Read Article

Michigan: US Supreme Court refuses to put proof-of-citizenship amendment on ballot | Kelsey Reichmann/Courthouse News Service

The Supreme Court refused to take emergency action Thursday to put a proof-of-citizenship amendment on Michigan ballots for the midterm elections. Americans for Citizen Voting asked the justices to intervene after the Michigan Board of State Canvassers invalidated its proposal despite surpassing the signature threshold. The group also asked the Supreme Court to act before the state’s highest court weighed in, to meet the quickly approaching deadline to make ballot changes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump appointee, denied the application without referring the appeal to the full court. He did not explain his decision. “If respondents’ decision to keep ACVM’s petition off the ballot stands, then Michigan voters will never have a chance to vote on the petition, regardless of whether it should or should not have been placed on the ballot,” Americans for Citizen Voting wrote. “On the other hand, if ACVM’s petition is placed on the ballot and ACVM’s arguments ultimately fail, there will be no harm. The choice is thus between irreparable harm and no harm at all.” Read Article

Minnesota’s top court rejects Mike Lindell’s bid for primary recount | Kyeland Jackson/The Minnesota Star Tribune

Minnesota Supreme Court justices denied requests for a primary election recount by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, effectively confirming his loss to Lisa Demuth as the Republican nominee for Minnesota governor. Chief Justice Natalie Hudson on Saturday signed the order denying Lindell’s request. Hudson wrote that Lindell had declined to cover the $825,000 needed to fund a recount, and he missed an Aug. 24 deadline to file assurances that he could cover those costs. “Lindell instead sent documentation to the Secretary of State to reflect wire transfer readiness, and he filed this section 204B.44 petition,” Hudson’s order read. Read Article

The North Carolina elections rules that aren’t quite rules yet | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Absentee voting begins this week, and early voting isn’t far off. But North Carolina voters won’t have to worry about recently proposed changes to absentee voting, photo ID exception forms or voting site conduct rules until next year because of a quirk in the law. The State Board of Elections spent the summer drafting, reviewing and approving 15 sets of rules that would impact which absentee ballots are counted, how election officials deal with photo ID exception forms and what level of noise is allowed outside voting sites, among other issues. Last week, the Rules Review Commission approved those rules, but in each case, more than 10 people formally requested legislative review. When that happens, there’s a delay in implementation to give state lawmakers time to review and potentially reject the rule changes. Read Article

Pennsylvania: The invisible volunteers who help keep democracy running | Daniel Pearson/The Philadelphia Inquirer

They’ve been called the “most important people in running an election” by Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, yet even as interest in election security has skyrocketed after Donald Trump’s persistent false claims of voter fraud, their jobs seem to be hidden in plain sight. Unlike the grifters and sycophants who help feed the president’s Big Lie and earn millions of social media followers, make frequent TV appearances, and are showered with adulation by the White House, the roughly 45,000 volunteers across Pennsylvania who are essential to ensuring elections happen fairly, smoothly, and efficiently are rarely recognized for the work they do. No wonder poll workers are in short supply — in the commonwealth and across the nation. A Brookings Institution report said that about half of all election officials found it either very or somewhat difficult to find enough workers. Read Article

Texas: Tarrant County removes 92 polling sites ahead of November election | Cecilia Lenzen/The Texas Tribune

Tarrant County commissioners voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve a list of polling sites for the November elections that included 92 fewer sites than the 2022 midterms. The approval came after commissioners heard testimony from more than 100 speakers, the majority of whom were opposed to the site cuts, during a meeting that lasted over eight hours. Voting rights advocates and representatives of 30 civic groups rallied outside the county courthouse Tuesday morning, demanding that commissioners approve a list with the same number of sites as the 2022 midterms. The adopted list includes 224 sites for Election Day and 47 for early voting. The 2022 list included 316 Election Day sites and 50 for early voting. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission says new mail-in voting rule won’t apply to Wisconsin clerks | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin election clerks are not required to comply with the requirements of a new rule governing mail-in ballots that has been blocked by a federal judge under new guidance from the state's top election officials. Members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously during a meeting Monday to issue new guidance surrounding the legal battle over rules issued by the U.S. Postal Service that aim to restrict mail-in voting. President Trump's effort to place new restrictions on voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections has been caught in a legal back-and-forth since he signed an executive order in March that would put mail-in voting under the Postal Service's oversight. Read Article

Wyoming Clerk Warns Other Red States Of “Aggressive” DOJ Action At Elections | Clair McFarland/Cowboy State Daily

After Wyoming’s Republican governor called for the state attorney general to investigate legal issues around what he called “aggressive” federal agents monitoring the primary election, Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee praised the governor’s strong response. Lee also warned other county clerks, and officials in other “red” states, that what happened in her county could happen in theirs. “I share Governor (Mark) Gordon’s concerns about the ‘surprise’ visit of the Department of Justice (DOJ) election monitors during Wyoming’s Primary Election and support his inquiry into the matter,” said Lee in a Friday statement. “His inquiry is grounded in the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of constitutional authority over our own elections.” Lee called the DOJ’s monitoring mission “far from transparent” and said the federal agents didn’t coordinate with her, as the county’s chief election official. Read Article