Maryland: Election apparitions: These Maryland ‘ghost’ precincts have no polling places or voters | Baltimore Sun

You may or may not believe in ghosts, but if you live in Maryland, chances are you’ve encountered a few without realizing it. At a Baltimore Orioles game, for example. Or while walking in the city’s Wyman Park Dell, or observing the wildlife at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel. Maybe you’ve driven to the “Jones Thicket Ghost,” named for a road in Dorchester County where it can be found. Maryland has 54 “ghosts” — 51 scattered across ten counties, plus three in Baltimore. Ghost precincts, that is — voting precincts that, on Tuesday, will have no polling places, no election judges and will report no results. This is because these are areas where no voters live. Most of Maryland’s ghost precincts were created as a result of the last redistricting, when political boundaries for legislative, congressional and councilmanic districts were redrawn based on population data from the 2010 U.S. Census. After redistricting, voting precinct boundaries were also re-assessed and, if necessary, redrawn.

Massachusetts: ‘This is life or death’: trans people threatened by Massachusetts vote | The Guardian

Amid continued attempts by the Trump administration to roll back transgender rights in the United States, Massachusetts voters are set to decide whether or not to eliminate a 2016 state law protecting transgender individuals from discrimination in public spaces like restaurants and shops. The 6 November ballot question will mark the first statewide referendum in the country that threatens to revoke previously guaranteed transgender rights. If the law is successfully repealed, transgender rights activists worry that it could trigger similar campaigns elsewhere in the country. “Question 3 poses significant consequences for transgender people across Massachusetts, but it also would have significant consequences for transgender people across the country,” said Sarah McBride, the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT rights group.

Mississippi: Not all ex-felons are barred from voting in Mississippi, but no one is telling them that | Mississippi Today

Jed Blackerby always understood, following his 2003 felony conviction, he had lost his right to vote. Mississippi’s constitution permanently strips the voting rights from people convicted of a number of specific felonies — 22 in total, according to the attorney general’s office. But Blackerby’s crime of aggravated assault does not appear on that list. “No one gave any guidance,” Blackerby said after learning he may still have his voting rights. “A long time ago when convicted felons, point blank, were not allowed to vote, (government officials) never made it public until afterwards that (people with) certain types of convictions were allowed to vote. It had never been publicized.” Blackerby has never visited the polls on Election Day, even though he considers himself engaged in politics and he has strong opinions about the country’s direction.

New Jersey: State to begin using newer, more secure voting machine – experts say the state is making a new mistake in the process | News12

New Jersey election officials are taking steps to replace the state’s outdated voting machines, which are vulnerable to hacking. But some experts say the state is making a new mistake in the process. Voters in New Jersey use some of the oldest, least secure voting machines in America. Ten years ago, Princeton professor Andrew Appel demonstrated the machines could be hacked. They also produce no paper backup, so Appel says, “You can’t really recount or audit. Whatever the computer says, whether it’s hacked or not, is what you have to rely on.”  That may soon change. New Jersey election director Robert Giles says all 21 county election boards are on board with transitioning to new machines that produce voter-verified paper trails. Enter the ExpressVote XL, being used for the first time next week in Westfield, before being rolled out Union County-wide. County election officials let Kane In Your Corner test the equipment, which features a 32-inch touch screen.

Texas: Straight-ticket voting problems could be due to old machines | The Texas Tribune

A national spotlight fell on Texas’ voting equipment last week after some voters complained that their votes on electronic voting machines had changed. State election officials chalked it up to user error. Critics alleged malfeasance or a software bug. The Austin-based company behind the machines says an important piece of context is missing from this debate: these machines are 16 years old. “It’s very much like someone calling Apple and asking for support on their iPhone 1,” said Steven Sockwell, vice president of marketing at Hart InterCivic. Most Texas counties last upgraded their electronic voting machines well over a decade ago, tapping billions in funds Congress approved to upgrade voting equipment around the country following election irregularities during the 2000 presidential election. Dozens of Texas counties purchased Hart’s eSlate machines. It’s those same machines that a number of voters attempted to cast straight-ticket ballots on last week only to hit a snag: when they reviewed their list of candidates on the summary screen, their choices were deselected or a candidate from an opposing party was selected.

Texas: Fighting for the Right to Vote in a Tiny Texas County | The Atlantic

In Waller County, Texas, a 40,000-strong exurb to the northwest of Houston, early voting is simple. Texas law mandates that the county maintain a main voting site, located in the county seat of Hempstead, that is open for at least five hours every day from Monday, October 22, to Friday, November 2. During those two weeks, satellite centers provide voting hours farther out in the county. Residents in the towns of Brookshire and Waller, two of the larger places in Waller County, have multiple days to cast a ballot in both the first and second week of early voting. As guided by state law, the early-voting plans in Waller County are intended to both maximize a finite pool of resources and ensure that most of the voters in the county have at least some convenient entry points for early voting that can fit into their schedule. All of that applies so long as you aren’t a black college student, according to a lawsuit filed last week in a U.S. district court by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The suit, brought on behalf of several students at Prairie View A&M University, alleges that the county shortchanges students with a local early-voting plan that uniquely constrains their choices, offering only three days of on-campus early voting in the second week.*

Utah: Navajos could tip balance after voting-rights battle | Associated Press

Tammie Nakai lives under a vista of red-rock spires and purple sunrise sky that offers arguably some of the United States’ most breathtaking views. But her home lacks what most of the country considers basic necessities: electric lines and running water. “It’s been that way my whole life, almost 31 years,” she said at the jewelry stand she and her husband run with pride in Monument Valley, a rural community near the Utah-Arizona border where tourists stand in the highway to re-create a famous running scene from “Forest Gump.” As she decides how she’ll cast her ballot, Navajo voters like Nakai could tip the balance of power in their county on Nov. 6. It’s the first general election since a federal judge decided racially gerrymandered districts illegally minimized the voices of Navajo voters who make a slim majority of San Juan County’s population. The county overlaps with the Navajo Nation, where people face huge disparities in health, education and economics. About 40 percent lack running water in their homes.

West Virginia: Large-Scale Purge Raises Concerns Among Voters | Truthout

West Virginia’s secretary of state reported last month that more than 100,000 voters — about one in 12 registered voters — had been purged from the rolls prior to the upcoming election. As we documented in a major July report, West Virginia is one of several states that have purged their rolls more aggressively in recent years, raising concerns that eligible voters could be disenfranchised. In order to keep voter rolls accurate, election officials need to periodically remove the names of voters who have died or moved. But purges conducted without sufficient care can lead to the removal of eligible voters. West Virginia’s removals deserve close scrutiny. Some voters in the state have reported problems including being unable to access their records online, and counties reported differing remedies for restoring the registrations of those removed by mistake.

Armenia: Lawmakers in Armenia trigger early parliamentary election | Reuters

Lawmakers in Armenia triggered an early parliamentary election on Thursday after failing to elect a prime minister, a move sought by acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan who quit as premier last month in order to force a new vote. Pashinyan, a former opposition leader who took power in May after a popular uprising, has long sought a new vote for parliament, which is still made up of members elected before demonstrators pushed the former ruling party out of power. By quitting and leaving parliament unable to find a successor, he forced parliament to dissolve and hold a new vote.

Congo: Thousands rally against voting machines ahead of election | East Africa Monitor

Thousands of opposition supporters in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday rallied against the use of voting machines in the country’s upcoming election. In a rare move, President Joseph Kabila’s government authorised the protest although security forces were deployed throughout the capital Kinshasa and various other cities. However, unlike previous protests, which have ended in deadly violence, Friday’s demonstration passed without incident. Tension ahead of the DRC’s long-awaited presidential election is high, following the electoral commission’s decision to bar former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba and regional baron Moise Katumbi from running. Bemba is among the opposition politicians calling upon supporters to rally against what he described as “the greatest electoral fraud ever with electronic machines that have not been tested anywhere in the world.”

Malaysia: Proposal to lower voting age, automatic voter registration agreed to in principal by political parties | New Straits Times

The proposal to lower voting age from 21 years to 18 and automatic voter registration were principally agreed by political parties from both divides today. The Election Commission (EC) chairman, Azhar Azizan Harun said 32 parties out 52 registered political parties in the country, had unanimously agreed to both proposals. The EC had earlier called the 32 political parties today for a closed-door meeting to discuss issues pertaining to voter registration. “There was no objection to the voting age limit from the political parties. “However there were several suggestions for the need for more data such as address and telephone numbers for the automatic registration,” he told reporters after the meeting at the EC headquarters here today.

Nigeria: ‘How Virtual Polling Units May Mar 2019 Elections’ | allAfrica.com

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was warned yesterday that the credibility of its elections in 2019 may be threatened by electronic manipulation. It was further told that the manipulation was being planned by some persons within its ranks. The alarm was raised by the convener of Concerned Nigerians, Deji Adeyanju, at a press briefing in Abuja. Reliable sources in INEC revealed that the commission’s e-collation portal has been tampered with, Adeyanju said, warning that this could lead to the creation of virtual polling units. According to him, while e-collation remains the most potent way to end vote rigging, a faulty system means anyone could enter results from any location at anytime or date because the portal allegedly no longer shows location, time and date of collation.

Texas: Hart eSlate Voting Machines Have Been ‘a Known Problem’ for a Decade | Motherboard

Texas voters experiencing issues with voting machines used in that state have been told by election officials that they are the problem, not the machines. The state says voters are inadvertently touching the machines in ways they shouldn’t, causing the machines to alter or delete their vote in the hotly contested senate race between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke. But Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice University in Houston who has examined the systems extensively in the past, told Motherboard in a phone interview that the problem is a common type of software bug that the maker of the equipment could have fixed a decade ago and didn’t, despite previous voter complaints. What’s more, he says the same systems have much more serious security problems that the manufacturer has failed to fix that make them susceptible to hacking. The problem involves eSlate voting machines made by Hart InterCivic—direct-recording electronic machines that use a dial and button for voters to make their selections. Voters turn the dial in the lower right corner of the machine to scroll through each race and page of a digital ballot, and press the “enter” button, located just left of the dial, to make their selections.

National: Electronic voting was going to be the future. Now paper’s making a comeback | CNET

You could call it buyer’s remorse. Five US states went all in on electronic voting machines, and four of those states are poised to get out. Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina are the only states relying solely on voting machines that produce no paper record of an individual voter’s ballot. All but Georgia are on the cusp of swapping those out for new machines that print out a paper record of each completed ballot — and Georgia is under pressure to do the same. None, though, will be ready for next week’s midterm elections. It’s the next step in voting systems since Florida’s infamous hanging chads and butterfly ballots determined the 2000 presidential election. … Hackers could also infiltrate the computers that tabulate results, as security experts found when they examined voting-related software at the annual Defcon hacking conference this year, and they could attack or alter the websites that announce winners. The Defcon experts also found half of US states are using voting machines that have known software vulnerabilities.

National: How Electronic-Voting-Machine Errors Reflect a Wider Crisis for American Democracy | The New Yorker

When reports began circulating last week that voting machines in Texas were flipping ballots cast for Beto O’Rourke over to Ted Cruz, and machines in Georgia were changing votes for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to those for her Republican opponent, Brian Kemp, it would not have been unreasonable to suppose that those machines had been hacked. After all, their vulnerabilities have been known for nearly two decades. In September, J. Alex Halderman, a computer-science professor at the University of Michigan, demonstrated to members of Congress precisely how easy it is to surreptitiously manipulate the AccuVote TS, a variant of the direct-recording electronic (D.R.E.) voting machines used in Georgia. In addition, Halderman noted, it is impossible to verify that the votes cast were not the votes intended, since the AccuVote does not provide a physical record of the transaction.

National: Fewer than half of US states have undergone federal election security reviews ahead of midterms | ABC

With only a week left before the 2018 midterm elections, fewer than half of U.S. states have submitted to a Department of Homeland Security assessment of their vulnerabilities to vote hacking. Under the department’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, the agency branch that coordinates cyber protection of U.S. infrastructure, a team of DHS officials are prepared to examine statewide election systems. They can check for cybersecurity vulnerabilities and run in-person exercises like phishing tests to ensure election officials are prepared to guard against attempts to hack their email accounts. The Department of Homeland Security has already provided or is scheduled to provide the service, which is free for states that request it, to only 21 states, a department spokesman told ABC News, concerning election experts who fear some states may not be aware of potential vulnerabilities.

National: 14 States Forgo Paper Ballots, Despite Security Warnings | Government Technology

Just days before a pivotal midterm congressional election, dozens of jurisdictions around the country go to polls without a paper backup for electronic voting systems. The shortfall comes despite nearly two years of warnings from cybersecurity experts that in the absence of a paper backup system, voters’ intentions cannot be verified in case of a cyberattack that alters election databases. Fourteen states will conduct the midterm elections where voters will register their choices in an electronic form but will not leave behind any paper trail that could be used to audit and verify the outcome. Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina have no paper backup systems anywhere in the state. Nine other states have several jurisdictions without a physical alternative to electronic records — Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. Experts have urged states to have backup systems after officials from U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security said that Russian entities scanned election systems in at least 21 states before the 2016 election in an attempt to breach. Seven states had their computer systems breached to various degrees, officials have said. Illinois has said its voter registration system was breached. But officials have said no votes were altered.

National: Rejection of mail-in ballots raises alarm ahead of election | Associated Press

Drawing on her years of military experience, Maureen Heard was careful to follow all the rules when she filled out an absentee ballot in 2016. She read the instructions thoroughly, signed where she was supposed to, put the ballot in its envelope and dropped it off at the clerk’s office in her New Hampshire town. She then left so she could return to a temporary federal work assignment in Washington, D.C. “I have learned over the years, many years in the military of filling out forms, how to fill out forms — and I was very intimidated by the process,” said Heard, who served in the Air Force and was a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to make sure I get it absolutely right.’ And then it didn’t count.” Heard, 57, discovered last year that she was among roughly 319,000 voters across the country whose absentee ballots were rejected during the last presidential election. The reasons varied, ranging from missed deadlines to failure to sign the return envelope. Heard’s ballot was tossed out because her signature did not match the one on file at her local election office.

National: A threat to democracy: Republicans’ war on minority voters | The Guardian

It was a mystery worthy of crime novelist Raymond Chandler. On 8 November 2016, African Americans did not show up. It was like a day of absence. African Americans had virtually boycotted the election because they “simply saw no affirmative reason to vote for Hillary”, as one reporter explained, before adding, with a hint of an old refrain, that “some saw her as corrupt”. As proof of blacks’ coolness toward her, journalists pointed to the much greater turnout for Obama in 2008 and 2012. It is true that, nationwide, black voter turnout had dropped by 7% overall. Moreover, less than half of Hispanic and Asian American voters came to the polls. This was, without question, a sea change. The tide of African American, Hispanic and Asian voters that had previously carried Barack Obama into the White House and kept him there had now visibly ebbed. Journalist Ari Berman called it the most underreported story of the 2016 campaign. But it’s more than that. The disappearing minority voter is the campaign’s most misunderstood story. Minority voters did not just refuse to show up; Republican legislatures and governors systematically blocked African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans from the polls.

National: Are elections any more secure than in 2016? | GCN

To help shore up the nation’s election infrastructure, Congress repurposed $380 million of leftover funding from the 2002 Help America Vote Act into grant funding for states to improve election security. States collectively invested an additional $19 million in matching funds for the same purpose. States could use the grants to replace old voting machines, upgrade election-related computer systems to address vulnerabilities identified by the Department of Homeland Security, implement post-election audits, provide cybersecurity training for state and local election officials or other activities that are specifically tailored to addressing cybersecurity needs.According to the Election Assistance Commission, 41 states used 36.3 percent of those funds to directly improve election cybersecurity. An additional 27.8 percent of the funding went to purchase new voting equipment while another 13.7 percent went to upgrade voter registration systems. Only 5.6 percent of the funds were used to implement post-election audits. However, it’s important to understand that these upgrades and expenditures are expected to take place over the course of the next two to three years; relatively little of the work is being completed before the midterm elections.

National: Center for Internet Security looks to expand threat sharing program to political campaigns | CyberScoop

While hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money have been allocated for securing state election infrastructure this year, political campaigns are often cash-strapped operations short on cybersecurity expertise. “Especially in the early phases of the campaign, it is not staffed by professional IT and certainly not cybersecurity people,” said John Gilligan, the executive chairman of the nonprofit Center for Internet Security (CIS). When a candidate decides to run, the campaign might acquire a few computers and start building databases without prioritizing cybersecurity, Gilligan said Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. CIS, which runs a center for sharing threat data with state and local officials, is looking to extend its information-sharing initiative to campaigns. The goal is to chip away at the security-resource deficit facing candidates, as numerous tech companies are trying to do by offering free security services to campaigns.

National: The Amazing Disappearing Voter: Voter purges have become the right’s new voter suppression tool of choice | TPM

Houston photographer Lynn Lane has voted in every general election and primary over the last five years. He hasn’t changed his address, so he was stunned this year to receive an official letter warning him that he might soon be erased from the rolls. Lane was one of 4,000 voters whose registrations were personally challenged by a single Republican, Alan Vera, who chairs the Harris County GOP’s “Ballot Security Committee.” This sort of individual challenge is illegal in some states, but Texas law permits it. Republicans blamed the county’s election registrar, a Democrat, for automatically suspending the registrations of 1,700 of those voters — but not before Vera boasted on his Facebook page about what he was up to: Voters whose registrations were suspended for failure to return a confirmation postcard would have to cast provisional ballots, which are “reviewed by the Ballot board,” he wrote, “and I appoint all Republican members of that board.” His “project,” he added, “could make a big difference in the November election results.” Stories like Lane’s are becoming all too familiar to a growing number of American voters, who are being dropped from the rolls at a rapid clip, particularly in states with histories of voter discrimination. Such purges are the new face of voter suppression, civil rights advocates say. Unlike the Jim Crow laws of yore, which blocked access to the rolls with tests and taxes, voter purges take registered voters — often, voters of color — and make them disappear. And unlike voter ID laws, which at least give voters advanced warning, purges can be sudden, silent, untraceable, and irremediable.

National: Native Americans Voting In 2018 Are Confronting Barriers — And It’s Not Just Voter ID | Bustle

Voting rights organizations are making a final push to get out the vote with just a week to go until the midterm elections. In North Dakota, those efforts have taken on greater urgency because a new voter ID law will be in effect come Nov. 6. Tribes and advocacy groups are on a mission to overcome longstanding obstacles that have hindered Native Americans’ right to vote and ensure their communities have access to the ballot box. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court decided that it would allow North Dakota’s voter ID law to stand. That means voters will be required to present identification showing their street addresses when they vote at their polling place. There’s one glaring problem with that requirement: Native Americans who live on reservations in North Dakota don’t necessarily have street addresses. They typically use P.O. boxes instead, which are listed on their IDs.

National: EAC Commissioner Pushes for Standards, Reveals Spending on Election Security | MeriTalk

Thomas Hicks, commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, said today that EAC has developed a set of voluntary voting system guidelines to aid local election authorities, but the commission currently lacks a quorum to vote on the standards and distribute the guidance to localities. EAC currently has two active commissioners of a possible four, but requires a quorum of three in order to vote. President Trump has nominated two people to serve on EAC, but there has been no movement in Congress to confirm the nominees. “I’m hoping the Senate Rules Committee and the Senate come together and vote those two folks up or down relatively soon,” Hicks said today at the Symantec Government Symposium.

National: 81.5M Voter Records For Sale On Dark Web Ahead Of Midterm Elections | Forbes

The quarterly incident response (IR) threat report from Carbon Black isn’t usually such an exciting read, aggregating as it does data from across a number of partners in order to provide actionable intelligence for business leaders. The latest report, published today, is a politically charged exception. Not only does it reveal that nation-state politically motivated cyberattacks are on the up, with China and Russia responsible for 41.4% of all the reported attacks, but that voter databases from Alabama to Washington (and 18 others) are for sale on the dark web. These databases cover 21 states in all, with records for 81,534,624 voters that include voter IDs, names and addresses, phone numbers and citizenship status. Tom Kellerman, Carbon Black’s chief cybersecurity officer, describes the nation-state attackers as not “just committing simple burglary or even home invasion, they’re arsonists.” Nobody relishes their house burning down, even figuratively speaking. Which is why, according to another newly published report, this time from Unisys, suggests one in five voters may stay at home during the midterms as they fear their votes won’t count if systems suffer a cyberattack.

Editorials: How to protect against voting glitches and security breaches in the midterms and in 2020. | Lawrence Norden/Slate

In the past week, reports of foreign interference in American elections have reached what appears to be a crescendo, with multiple reports about foreign influence operations and targeting of our election infrastructure as well as federal and state efforts to push back. Amid these reports, it’s important for the American public to understand that in the nearly two years since November 2016, election officials (in coordination with state and federal agencies) have done much to secure our voting infrastructure. Perhaps most importantly, federal and state agencies as well as security experts have worked with election officials to provide cybersecurity trainings, risk assessments, and new tools for preventing and detecting attacks. But no election is perfect. Whether or not there are additional attacks against our election system, there will inevitably be some failures. For both glitches and cyberattacks, there are critical, immediate steps that officials can take (and in most cases, are already taking) to ensure that all citizens can vote and that their votes will be accurately counted. The infrastructure we use to administer and vote in elections in the United States is vast and includes election websites that provide voters information on their polling places, voting machines, and systems that report unofficial results on election night. Past attacks on election systems, both here and abroad, show that we should assume any part of them could be a target, and act with measures to prevent, detect, and recover against such attacks. Here are the kinds of election-security issues and voting-system glitches that we need to be most aware of—as well as the steps we can take to ensure they don’t interfere with our ability to cast and count ballots—as we approach both the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential race.

Editorials: How to Punish Voters: The prosecution of individual voters for fraud is a trend that seems intended to intimidate | Josie Duffy Rice/The New York Times

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the chief elections official in the state, is a pioneer of present-day voter suppression. Mr. Kemp has a record of making it harder for people to register to vote, and more difficult for those voters to remain on the rolls. Since 2012, his office has canceled more than 1.4 million voter registrations. In July 2017, over half a million people — 8 percent of the state’s registered voters — were purged in a single day. As of earlier this month, over 50,000 people’s registrations, filed before the deadline to vote in the coming midterm election, were listed as on hold. Seventy percent had been filed by black applicants. Even as Mr. Kemp claims his draconian voting policies are intended to prevent fraud, it’s clear that his real aim is to weaken black voting power in a state where political affiliation is largely dictated by race. He has warned his fellow Republicans about Democrats “registering all these minority voters.” Mr. Kemp’s attempts to prevent people from voting exemplify the familiar ways in which access to the ballot has been restricted for people of color across the United States. But voter suppression also happens in ways that aren’t as well-known, and are even more insidious. In particular, local prosecutors have increasingly brought criminal charges against black voters and community activists for small technical infractions. They’re sending the frightening message that casting a ballot is risky — a message that resonates even when the charges turn out to be baseless and the people charged are acquitted.

Florida: Young voters’ ballots more likely to have glitches | Gainesville Sun

Around the state, counties have seen an increased amount of ballots cast through early voting and mail-ins that are far exceeding those tallied during the 2014 midterm election. Election Day is still a week away but voters have already been making their voices heard by casting their ballots early. Since tragedies like the high school shooting in Parkland that left 17 people dead, some young voters have eagerly awaited the midterms to vote on issues that matter to them: gun control, health care and education. Around the state, counties have seen an increased number of ballots cast through early voting and mail-ins that are far exceeding those tallied during the 2014 midterm election. As of Tuesday, more than 3 million people had already voted, according to the Florida Division of Elections, an uptick of nearly a million ballots compared with this time in 2014. About 1.8 million of those ballots were mail-in ballots.

Georgia: Federal judge rules against Kemp in absentee ballot request | The Hill

A federal district judge in Georgia denied Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s request to pause an injunction the judge ordered last week that prevents election officials from tossing out certain absentee ballots. Judge Leigh Martin May said in an order filed late Tuesday that delaying the injunction “would only cause confusion, as Secretary Kemp has already issued guidance in accordance with the injunction to county elections officials,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Kemp is also the GOP nominee for governor in next week’s election. May said last week that she was blocking election officials in the state from throwing out absentee ballots when a resident’s signature doesn’t exactly match the signature on their voter registration card. Kemp had requested that May delay the injunction while he appeals the decision to a higher court, the Journal-Constitution reported.

Georgia: Rejection of mail-in ballots raises alarm ahead of election | Associated Press

Drawing on her years of military experience, Maureen Heard was careful to follow all the rules when she filled out an absentee ballot in 2016. She read the instructions thoroughly, signed where she was supposed to, put the ballot in its envelope and dropped it off at her county elections office in New Hampshire. She then left town so she could return to a temporary federal work assignment in Washington, D.C. “I have learned over the years, many years in the military of filling out forms, how to fill out forms — and I was very intimidated by the process,” said Heard, who served in the Air Force and was a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to make sure I get it absolutely right.’ And then it didn’t count.” Heard, 57, discovered last year that she was among roughly 319,000 voters across the country whose absentee ballots were rejected during the last presidential election. The reasons varied, ranging from missed deadlines to failure to sign the return envelope.