National: Court blocks Trump ban on voter registration help for new citizens, finding likely intentional discrimination | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

A federal judge Monday blocked the Trump administration’s ban on nonpartisan groups helping newly naturalized U.S. citizens register to vote — finding the ban was likely driven by intentional discrimination against new citizens. U.S. District Judge Adam B. Abelson temporarily paused an August 2025 policy from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that allowed only state and local election officials to offer voter registration services at naturalization ceremonies. Pro-voting groups such as the League of Women Voters and National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) were banned from providing voter assistance under the policy. Read Article

National: AI is getting better at election facts, but voters shouldn’t rely on it | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Like seemingly everything else these days, artificial intelligence will re-shape the way voters gather information on candidates running in the 2026 midterm elections. In some ways, this is already the reality. Voters are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for information instead of Google. Political campaigns are deploying deepfakes of their opponents. And AI systems have been developed to carry out increasingly complex hacks. Since the last major U.S. election in 2024, major tech companies have embedded AI into their products while hundreds of millions of people have adopted the tools, either by purchasing subscriptions to commercial models or using open-source models. Yet both research and experts state that while AI systems have gotten better at handling basic facts, they’re nowhere near reliable enough to be a main source of accurate or complete information. While chatbots are becoming a primary way that voters gather information on local races, candidates, issues, and voting information, they are not substitutes for more authoritative sources, like a voter’s state or local election office. Read Article

National: For Trump, the Year Is Always 2020 | Katie Rogers/The New York Times

What year is it again? Over the past few days, President Trump has been living in the year 2020, claiming that he defied his advisers to reopen the country during the coronavirus pandemic, saying that one of them, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, was the one with all the “crazy ideas.” He has revisited his near-daily falsehood that he won the 2020 election and that it was rigged, a belief held by a large swath of his political base. And, on Friday, he said that his supporters who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were simply on an “innocent journey.” Four people died that day. Mr. Trump is not so much a student of history as a rewriter of it. In his second term, he is so set on avenging his election loss and pursuing retribution against his political enemies that he has Americans looking backward when many have signaled they would rather he explain why the country is at war with Iran, or help them afford groceries now, in the year 2026. Neither his falling poll numbers nor the concerns among Republicans about the midterms seem to be modulating his insistence on revisiting much of what happened six years ago. “I don’t think his ego allows him to accept the fact that someone he perceives as so weak as Joe Biden was able to beat him,” said Sarah Matthews, who was a deputy press secretary in the first Trump administration and resigned amid the Jan. 6 attacks. Read Article

Opinion: How Americans can defend their right to vote | Pam Fessler/Los Angeles Times

The numbers are alarming. More than half a million mail ballots cast in the 2024 elections were rejected and never counted. Not because they were illegitimate, but because voters often made easily avoidable mistakes. They forgot to sign and date the envelope or get a witness to sign. Or their signature was out of date. Or they simply used the wrong envelope. That’s not to mention the thousands of other eligible voters who showed up at the polls that year and were unable to vote. They might have forgotten to bring the right ID, or their name wasn’t on the rolls, or they went to the wrong precinct. That happened in Dallas County, Texas, this spring when confusion over new polling sites led to the disqualification of almost 2,000 ballots that were cast too late. There was plenty of blame to go around, but voters might have avoided losing their vote by checking in advance where they needed to go. Read Article

Alaska Division of Elections erroneously removed more than 600 citizens from voter list | James Brooks/Alaska Beacon

More than 600 U.S. citizens were mistakenly flagged as possible noncitizens and removed from Alaska’s list of active voters earlier this year, the director of the Alaska Division of Elections said Thursday in a letter responding to questions from state lawmakers. Those citizens were among 3,058 people removed from the list after the division compared its citizenship data to a separate set of records kept by the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles. Someone removed from the voter list may still cast a vote this year, but they will not appear on the register of their local precinct and will have to provide additional identity information in order to cast a “questioned ballot.” Removal from the active voter list also puts a citizen on the path to being purged altogether from the voter list, an act that would make them ineligible to vote. Alaska Division of Elections erroneously removed more than 600 citizens from voter list | Alaska Beacon

Arizona: Maricopa County’s new ballot option sped up election results | Stephanie Murray/The Arizona Republic

Maricopa County counted ballots faster thanks to a new state law, leaders said at a review of the July 21 primary results. In fact, the county said it posted more than 99% of election results just 24 hours after Primary Day. “That’s the fastest we've ever done,” Maricopa County Supervisor Debbie Lesko, a Republican, said at an Aug. 3 meeting to approve the canvass of the primary election results. Maricopa County is one of the biggest swing counties in the nation, home to 2.6 million registered voters around metro Phoenix. The county has been at the center of the election denialism movement, in part because slow election results allowed critics to cast doubt on the system. Read Article

Georgia State Election Board tests limits ahead of midterms | Caleb Groves and Tamar Hallerman/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The State Election Board drew national attention ahead of the 2024 presidential election for passing a slate of sweeping rules that read like a wish list of election skeptics. Once a lawyerly panel, a takeover by a trio of conservatives deeply mistrustful of the state’s voting system has turned the board’s once mundane meetings into boisterous events packed with crowds of cheering and jeering activists. Now, with high-stakes midterms on the horizon and President Donald Trump struggling to gain traction on many aspects of his election security agenda, all eyes are on the state board. The board is considering efforts that dovetail with Trump’s priorities, including reviewing voter rolls for suspected ineligible voters and approving voting system security upgrades, and it could revive efforts that would move toward hand-marked ballots for the midterms. Read Article

Michigan: Antrim County clerk and her husband cleared of ‘criminal wrongdoing’ in computer case | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Embattled Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop and her husband, a conservative talk radio host best known as Trucker Randy, won’t face charges after she left him alone with her government computer. In February, a county maintenance worker reported that Randy Bishop was sitting in the clerk’s office unsupervised watching a public video stream of a county commission meeting on the office computer. This led to concerns that he could have used the computer to access sensitive information, including the Qualified Voter File, the central database that contains Michigan’s voter roll and can only be accessed by election officials. Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a news release Thursday that her office found “no evidence of criminal wrongdoing” or that anyone had tried to access the QVF from that computer at that time. The investigation found that the clerk likely did allow her husband to use her computer — which matches what they later told the Michigan State Police — but that no sensitive county files were touched, either. Read Article

Michigan voter file glitch slows absentee ballot processing | Dana Afana/Detroit Free Press

The Michigan Department of State reported a "tech issue" affecting the Qualified Voter File across multiple cities, though it did not affect voters casting their ballots for Michigan's August primary election, according to department spokeswoman Angela Benander. Benander said the department was made aware of the outage at about 5:30 p.m. However, as of about 6:30 p.m., the issue had been resolved. It is unclear which jurisdictions were affected. The outage affected the counting of absentee ballots, Benander said, adding that the system was processing the ballots and voter registrations at a slower pace. She said she does not expect the outage to significantly delay results. Outage slows processing of Michigan absentee ballots

New Hampshire: Election officials unfazed by Trump administration monitoring primaries in Manchester and Nashua | William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin

New Hampshire election officials say they’re unconcerned after the Trump administration announced it will send election monitors to watch September’s primaries in Manchester and Nashua — a longstanding practice that has drawn partisan suspicion amid the president’s recent actions on elections. The U.S. Department of Justice announced earlier this month it’s sending monitors to 15 jurisdictions in six states. In addition to Manchester and Nashua, the DOJ plans to send monitors to Boston and New Bedford in neighboring Massachusetts. Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia are the others. “We’re sending the monitors into cities and counties where there may have been some problems in recent elections,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a video posted to social media. “So this is something that DOJ does routinely.” Dhillon said the goal is to ensure people with disabilities and language barriers are able to vote, but also to “make sure that our voting is accurate so that every citizen who votes has their vote counted equally without being canceled out by somebody who shouldn’t be voting.” Read Article

North Carolina: lawmakers send two big election bills to governor | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

After a year of work, North Carolina lawmakers agreed on a pair of wide-ranging election bills Tuesday evening that would shorten the primary early voting period, allow challenges of early voted ballots after Election Day and extend some ballot counting and curing deadlines, among other policy changes. Now, the power is in Gov. Josh Stein’s hands. He can sign the election bills into law, veto them or allow them to become law without his signature. Stein indicated late Tuesday that he would indeed veto the more controversial of the bills.. Read Article

Tennessee: Shelby County election officials investigate incomplete ballots reported at early voting site | The Tennessee Tribune

Shelby County election officials are investigating reports that some voters may have encountered an incomplete ballot on a voting machine during early voting at the Christian Life Church location. Officials said the issue appears to have been limited to a single voting machine and was likely caused by human error. Officials estimate that approximately 300 voters may have been affected by the issue. Election officials said they are reviewing the situation and expect to have confirmation regarding the impact of the problem. They emphasized that the issue was isolated to one voting machine and that election procedures are in place to identify and address concerns when they arise. The reported issue comes as Shelby County voters have turned out in large numbers for early voting. As of Thursday, nearly 70,000 voters had already cast ballots ahead of Election Day, reflecting strong participation in one of Tennessee’s largest and most politically significant counties. Read Article

Texas: Fracas over Tarrant County poll sites highlights public distrust | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Tuesday’s chaotic public meeting over the number of voting sites in Tarrant County for the upcoming November election highlighted public distrust in election administration decisions and the people making them in the state’s most populous purple county, experts and voting rights advocates said. Hundreds of people showed up at the Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting to oppose a proposal to significantly reduce the number of polling sites on Election Day, from 316 used in the 2022 midterm elections to 176. At least one person, a former Democratic state representative, was arrested after Tim O’Hare, the county’s executive and a Republican, kicked everyone out of the chambers, saying that people clapping and speaking loudly were disruptive. O’Hare also called multiple recesses during the meeting, prolonging it as people waited to speak. Speaker after speaker described the effort to reduce the number of locations as the latest in a series of efforts by O’Hare and the majority-Republican commissioners’ court to make it harder for residents to vote, something commissioners said wasn’t true. O’Hare and Commissioner Manny Ramirez, also a Republican, are both on the ballot in November. Read Article

Wisconsin judge rules that paper absentee ballots violates rights of disabled people | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

Absentee voting in Wisconsin discriminates against disabled voters, a judge ruled Tuesday, siding with groups that are seeking to force election officials to allow for electronic casting of ballots. But Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell stopped short of ordering electronic voting, setting up a trial on that issue later. It almost certainly will not be resolved before the November election. Disability Rights Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters and four disabled voters brought the lawsuit in 2024. They argued that the lack of an electronic absentee voting option violated their right to independence and privacy and the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Republican-controlled Legislature is fighting the lawsuit. Read Article

National: Democrats Prepare for Possible Election Clashes With Federal Government | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Democratic state officials are ramping up their preparations to protect against what they view as a new threat to election security: the federal government. At a meeting in Milwaukee in May, staff members from the offices of every Democratic attorney general and about a dozen Democratic secretaries of state held tabletop exercises to prepare for hypothetical scenarios in the November midterm elections. In those “war rooms,” said Nick Brown, the Democratic attorney general of the state of Washington, state officials discussed how they would handle a variety of scenarios. What might happen if the F.B.I. showed up, demanding election materials or equipment? What if federal troops or agents were deployed in the country in ways that could intimidate voters or disrupt the election? What if President Trump tried to declare an election-related national emergency? Read Article

National: Trump’s claims of election interference in doubt after release of declassified intelligence | Isaac Arnsdorf and Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

State officials said federal authorities never notified them of a Chinese hack affecting their voter registration systems, casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s claims of vulnerabilities in U.S. elections. Officials in 12 of the 15 states named in intelligence reports released by the White House as having voter rolls “compromised” by China said officials never notified them of a data breach, a standard step for federal law enforcement when hacks are discovered. The other three states and Washington, D.C., did not respond. Trump alleged in a July 16 prime-time speech that the data had been “bought, stolen or hacked.” The states’ responses and newly declassified intelligence reports suggest China obtained voter data from other sources, such as political parties or companies that compile and combine it with other information to target voters or consumers. Experts said the effort appeared aimed at collecting data on Americans for intelligence purposes, not interfering with voting. Read Article

National: Appeals court upholds halt to Trump’s executive order to create voter list | Russ Bynum/Associated Press

A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that in nearly half of U.S. states halted President Donald Trump’s executive order to create a federal list of eligible voters and limit delivery of mail ballots only to people on that list. The ruling Saturday by judges of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s effort to move forward with the mail-in voting restrictions in 23 U.S. states that sued ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump issued an executive order in March for the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters. It also ordered the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on that list. While Trump touted the proposed changes as safeguards to keep non-U.S. citizens from voting, state election officials argued they were ripe for abuse and could cause chaos. Read Article

National: Trump’s attacks on mail balloting and concerns over delays turn midterms spotlight on Postal Service | John Hanna/Associated Press

Roughly six weeks before the first midterm ballots are mailed out, the U.S. Postal Service is emerging as a pivotal player in an election season that will determine control of Congress. President Donald Trump is seeking greater control over mail balloting through an executive order while a change to how the agency processes mail is leading to criticism that it’s failing to deliver ballots on time. Democratic officials have raised concerns over the past week about how quickly the Postal Service will process ballots after tens of thousands of them in California and hundreds in Wisconsin arrived at local election offices too late to be counted in elections earlier this year. The top election offices in Kansas and Michigan are urging voters who want to cast their ballots early to avoid the mail and instead drop them off in person. Read Article

National: Thune says no to filibuster changes even after Trump’s threats about SAVE America Act | Allison Pecorin/ABC News

Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Monday reiterated that there would not be changes to Senate rules in order to pass a Republican-led election reform bill that President Donald Trump has demanded be sent to his desk. "Yeah, that's not going to happen," Thune said when asked by ABC News about whether Senate rules requiring 60 votes to advance most legislative matters could be altered in light of Trump's new pressure campaign to pass the SAVE America Act, which would change voter ID requirements ahead of November's midterm elections. Read Article

National: Trump’s document ‘cherry-pick’ doesn’t show a cover-up of Chinese election intelligence, ex-officials say | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

President Donald Trump and his allies touted spy reports and emails that he declassified this month as showing a “cover-up” of intelligence about China’s efforts to harm Trump’s re-election prospects in 2020, part of the president’s push to undermine confidence in the integrity of US elections. But there was no cover-up, according to a CNN review of the documents and interviews with former senior intelligence officials familiar with election security efforts in 2020. Instead, the documents show a messy disagreement over intelligence among officials, the kind of discussion that isn’t unusual as experts weigh the value of both raw information and finished intelligence they receive, the former officials said. The declassified material — and the context behind it — also show a stubbornness by some China-focused analysts to fully consider alternative theories about China’s intentions toward the 2020 election, the sources added. “This was an analytic disagreement, not a cover-up,” said one of the former officials who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The disclosures don’t change what the majority of the intelligence community concluded after an exhaustive review of intelligence: China considered trying to influence the outcome of the 2020 election but chose not to out of fear of upsetting US-China relations. Read Article

National: Trump’s EAC firings threaten access for voters with disabilities, experts warn | Natalie Hausmann/Democracy Docket

Diane Golden helped secure accessible voting equipment when the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed in 2002, ensuring the right for people with disabilities to vote privately and independently. Today, she’s concerned that right is at risk. HAVA led to the widespread use of voting machines, which can include anything from ballot-marking devices to barcodes. It provided ways for people who cannot use a hand-marked paper ballot to vote. But President Donald Trump has long questioned the security of the voting systems that provide access to one-sixth of all voters. He called them “terrible machines,” “dishonest, almost all,” “vulnerable” and “easily compromised” in a recent address to the nation. Read Article

National: How Trump could undermine the midterms | US midterm elections 2026 | George Chidi/The Guardian

When Donald Trump commandeered primetime US television last Thursday, he delivered a familiar, but still extraordinary, message. The president argued once again that the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, were illegitimate. US elections are “vulnerable to being rigged and stolen”, Trump alleged, claiming that “the trust of the American people was lost” when he was defeated. Historically, incumbent parties underperform in midterm elections and with the president’s popularity sagging – he has an approval rating of just 37% – Republicans appear on course to lose seats in the US Senate and House of Representatives, as well as in state and local elections, in November. Trump’s latest intervention, in which he accused China of interfering with the 2020 election, is viewed by US voting rights activists as just the latest escalation of an effort by the White House to influence, and potentially alter, the results of the 2026 midterm elections. “The number one threat facing American elections is the continued lies coming out of the White House,” said the Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, the official responsible for overseeing the state’s elections. Read Article

Alaska: Questions about state’s handling of election grow as 3,500 registered voters asked to verify citizenship | Mark Sabbatini/Juneau Independent

A legislative hearing scrutinizing unprecedented actions by state elections officials against U.S. Senate candidate Dan J. Sullivan escalated into a new controversy Wednesday with the revelation that 3,500 people have been removed from active voter rolls and asked to verify they are U.S. citizens. Letters sent to those people from the Alaska Division of Elections state it has "received information from the Alaska Department of Motor Vehicles that you may not be a citizen." Carol Beecher, the division’s director, told legislators the people notified have been placed on an inactive list and told they need to confirm their citizenship. The notifications are part of a quarterly voter maintenance process in collaboration with DMV that typically results in about 200 notifications, Beecher said. However, DMV, in a memo issued Thursday, stated the elections division made a "a non-routine request" in March specifically for citizenship information involving 15,200 driver’s license and identification applicants. Read Article

Arizona’s new ballot drop-off option proves popular in primary, potentially leading to faster election results | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

When Arizonans went to the polls last week for the state primary election, they made their preferences clear about more than just the candidates: They also really liked the option to get their mail ballots counted faster by showing identification.More than 6,000 voters used the new, optional procedure in Pima County — about half of the voters who dropped off their ballots at the polls on Election Day, per county records. In Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, officials said about 23,000 voters, or 30% of those who dropped off ballots on Election Day, opted to show ID to verify their mail ballots. Those numbers represent a successful debut for the procedure, which Republicans have pushed as a way to speed up election results. Indeed, Maricopa County finished counting mail ballots significantly faster than usual, which officials credited in part to the change. Read Article

California: Voter ID backers sue attorney general over ballot description | Dakota Smith/Los Angeles Times

Backers of a November ballot measure that would require Californians to verify their identity when voting sued state officials on Monday, alleging bias in how the ballot’s summary is written. A group led by California Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) allege in a 10-page lawsuit filed in Sacramento Superior Court that Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta violated election laws that require the “impartial” labeling of a measure’s purpose. The summary language now states that the measure: “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification. Invalidates mail ballots that do not have last four digits of designated government-issued identification number written on envelope. Prohibits in-person voting without presenting government-issued identification.” Read Article

Georgia: GOP-heavy panel to shape next voting system | Greg Bluestein/The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Georgia’s next statewide voting system will be shaped by a nine-member committee with a decidedly Republican tilt. The panel is set to meet next Friday after lawmakers created it during a June special session. That same law pushed back a prohibition on using QR codes printed by Georgia’s current touchscreen system to tally votes until 2028. Now, the awkwardly named Election Equipment Specifications and Standards Committee must recommend a new system based on hand-marked paper ballots printed on demand. Its report is due by Jan. 31, 2027 — presumably to give whoever is elected secretary of state in November time to prepare for a rollout during the 2028 election cycle. The panel includes Republican state Rep. Tim Fleming, the GOP nominee for secretary of state. If he wins in November, Fleming could end up certifying a system he helped shape. Read Article

Maryland to pay $85 millions for voting system yet to be upgraded | Tinashe Chingarande/The Baltimore Sun

Maryland taxpayers will pay nearly $85 million for a new voting system that state officials acknowledge currently meets only 20-year-old federal standards — and whose planned security upgrades have not yet received federal approval. The Election Systems & Software (ES&S) machines will be used beginning with the 2028 elections and are scheduled for a software upgrade by 2030, Maryland Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis told The Baltimore Sun. The State Board of Elections said it could impose contractual penalties if the company fails to deliver the promised upgrades. When The Sun asked DeMarinis why the state is waiting four years to use the latest technology, he said the software had been developed but wasn’t yet functional when the election board invited vendors to bid for a contract to provide voting machines. Read Article

North Carolina Senate splits massive elections bill into 2, sends them back to House with changes | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

State senators divided the wide-ranging bill into two separate election bills. While most of the provisions are the same, senators made one major addition: one of the Senate bills would cut the early voting period from 17 to 10 days for primary, runoff and special elections. A few provisions in the House election bill also were missing from the Senate’s bills. They include a proposed second try at a signature verification pilot program, restrictions on foreign nationals’ financial involvement in elections and an explicit ban on so-called Never Residents’ ability to vote in federal elections in North Carolina. Never Residents are U.S. citizens who inherited citizenship from their parents or guardians who last lived in North Carolina, despite never having lived in the state themselves. Recent state court rulings prohibit them from voting in state and local contests. Read Article

Pennsylvania asks Trump administration how exactly it identified potential noncitizen voters | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania state officials are pushing back on the Trump administration’s claim that there may be more than 14,000 potential noncitizens registered to vote in the state. In a letter sent Wednesday to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said the federal government has not disclosed the methodology or data source it used to identify the noncitizens. Schmidt also pointed out gaps in a program that the Department of Homeland Security uses to identify noncitizens. “As you know, past analyses of voter lists have relied on faulty methodologies that can lead to inaccurate results and false claims about the citizenship status of eligible voters,” Schmidt wrote. “In fact, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official who oversees [the program] has ‘acknowledged that the system can’t always find the most current citizenship information for people not born in the U.S.’” Pennsylvania responds to Trump administration claim about noncitizen voters - Votebeat

Texas officials confirm that some registered voters flagged as potential noncitizens by SAVE had already provided proof of citizenship | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Election officials across the state should immediately reinstate some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens through a federal program, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told county officials Wednesday. Christina Adkins, the state elections director, told county officials the state had reviewed Texas Department of Public Safety records confirming the citizenship of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential noncitizens, according to an audio recording of her comments obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, as well as election officials who heard them. The voters were flagged after the state checked its voter roll through a federal program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify the citizenship of people registered to vote. Read Article