National: Election officials across the country prepare to fight any Trump administration interference in the 2026 midterms | Carter Walker and Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

Each year, election officials prepare for the worst: A bomb threat at a polling place, power outages, natural disasters. But this year, they are wrestling a potential threat they have never before considered: the possibility that the federal government might disrupt the administration of November’s elections. It’s not clear what action, if any, the Trump administration may take to interfere with the 2026 midterms, but election officials from jurisdictions large and small are preparing for everything from immigration officers at the polls to federal attempts to seize ballots. They’re also acknowledging that most standoffs with the federal government would likely end in court, and they’re talking to lawyers and preparing legal filings in case they prove necessary. Read Article

National: Russia Aims to Inject Chaos Into Elections, U.S. Intelligence Finds | Dustin Volz, Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

The Russian government has been targeting Americans with covert online disinformation operations seeking to undermine public confidence in November’s midterm elections, using a familiar playbook in an attempt to inject chaos into the voting season, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Classified U.S. intelligence assessments from recent months have determined that the Kremlin has again authorized a digital influence campaign to peddle content across social media in hopes of seeding or amplifying domestic divisions around the election season, the officials said. The assessments did not find evidence of attempts to take aim at voting machinery in a way that could compromise the actual voting process, the officials added. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss classified information, did not specify the efforts to influence attitudes online. But experts in Russian disinformation have spotted some social media campaigns in recent weeks that use artificial intelligence to create fake videos of Hollywood celebrities talking about key battleground Senate races. Read Article

National: Civil Rights Groups Sue to Keep Armed Agents Away From Voting Sites | Amy Qin/The New York Times

Civil rights groups and labor unions sued the Trump administration on Friday, asserting that its aggressive immigration enforcement and suggestions that it could send armed agents to polling sites amounted to voter intimidation and violated the Voting Rights Act. Brought by a coalition of Black, Asian and Latino civil rights groups and unions, including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Service Employees International Union, the lawsuit seeks to block any effort by the Trump administration to deploy federal agents at voting locations, which the groups contend can deter citizens trying to legally vote. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that President Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and other members of the administration had created a climate in which “voters, especially voters of color, are intimidated and fearful of engaging in the democratic process.” The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent on Friday morning. But in the past, Mr. Mullin has said that opponents were fear-mongering and that ICE was not patrolling polling places. “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place,” he said, “or we’re serving a warrant.” Read Article

National: 40 days to midterms, election officials say new US cyber plan comes too late | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

The nation’s cybersecurity agency on Thursday released an election infrastructure security plan 40 days before November’s midterms, laying out potential threats to election systems and listing services it would offer to election officials to protect the vote. Election officials said the plan is both inadequate and belated after the administration gutted the agency’s election security work last year, prompting the officials to pay for private services to ensure they were prepared for the upcoming elections. “For them to come in five weeks before the election, yeah, nice effort,” said Nevada’s Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who added that he would have liked to see the federal government provide more funding for cybersecurity, rather than Nevada taxpayers having to pay for it. Read Article

National: CISA pledges election security support after cuts weakened ties with states | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is pledging to strengthen threat sharing and coordination with election officials ahead of the midterms, following administration cuts that state officials say weakened those relationships and their access to federal cybersecurity expertise. The 2026 Election Infrastructure Security Plan, released Thursday, identifies CISA’s 10 regional directors as election security advisers and describes a free information-sharing platform connecting election officials, state intelligence hubs and federal partners. The document offers one of the clearest public accounts to date of how the second Trump administration intends to support election security. But its emphasis on sustained cooperation comes after staffing and program reductions disrupted the federal support network, and as the administration has proposed eliminating dedicated election security funding and adviser positions. Read Article

National: A new DHS email raises questions about Trump election plans | Miles Parks, Jude Joffe-Block and Ximena Bustillo/NPR

An internal Department of Homeland Security email raises new questions about the agency's efforts to hunt for non-U.S. citizens who may be on state voter rolls or have cast ballots in the past. In the email — which was sent last year, but is newly acquired by NPR — DHS personnel shared a 78-page document listing counties and states that offer election materials and ballots in non-English languages. The list of jurisdictions was attached alongside a Department of Justice criminal checklist outlining requirements for prosecution of voter-related charges. The email was released as part of a tranche of materials after the Democratic National Committee filed suit over a public records request, and was then shared with NPR. Democrats fear that the Trump administration's efforts to root out noncitizen voters will entangle or intimidate eligible voters and dampen turnout in this year's midterms. DHS has surged resources to investigate noncitizen voting, even as prior audits have found such fraud to be extremely rare. Read Article

National: Voting groups sound alarm on funding shortfalls that they say could affect midterm turnout | Matt Brown/Associated Press

Several of the nation’s largest left-leaning voter engagement and racial justice organizations are facing steep funding shortfalls and staffing cutbacks just as voting is getting underway in an election that will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term. The shortfalls are setting off alarms among Democratic strategists, who are betting on high turnout and robust voter protection efforts to boost the party’s chances this fall. They are worried that many grassroots groups will not be able to mount effective registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, much less protect against the possibility of election interference from the Republican administration. America Votes, a coordinating hub for more than 400 progressive groups, has fallen “well below” the level of funding it had during the 2022 midterms, Daria Dawson, America Votes’ executive director, said in a statement to The Associated Press. America Votes has acted as a nerve center for the voter mobilization efforts of groups such as the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, the League of Conservation Voters, the AFL-CIO and SEIU labor unions, as well as local groups focused on racial justice, climate and civil liberties. Read Article

National: Trump Quietly Dumps Longtime Election Observer Group | Edith Olmsted/The New Republic

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, which has sent observers to monitor every U.S. federal election for the past two decades, has yet to receive an invitation from the Trump administration, the group told Democracy Docket Thursday. The group typically plans a “needs assessment mission” in order to evaluate the environment, preparations, and electoral processes ahead of an upcoming federal election in the United States. With less than a month before early voting begins in some states, the organization says it’s still waiting for a call. “The Office sends a needs assessment mission upon receiving an invitation from the OSCE participating State where the elections are occurring,” a spokesperson for the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights said in a statement. “We are currently waiting on that invitation from the United States.” Read Article

National: The Supporters Urging Trump to Declare Martial Law for the Midterms | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michelle Sherer/The Atlantic

Of all the outside advisers urging President Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Ticktin can claim the deepest ties; the two men went to military school together as teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment. Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said. Read Article

Arizona: Maricopa County one-page ballot raises disability access questions | Noah Flug/Cronkite News

Maricopa County will reduce its general election ballot from two sheets to one in November, potentially improving efficiency for Maricopa County elections officials but not necessarily making the ballot easier for voters with disabilities. Sey In, an attorney with Disability Rights Arizona who works on voting rights, said in a statement the effect depends on each voter’s individual needs, the ballot design and how the person votes. “Generally, we can’t say whether a one-page ballot is more or less accessible than a two-page ballot,” In wrote in response to email questions. Fewer statewide measures made the reduction to one page possible, though the average Maricopa County voter will still see more than 80 contests on the ballot, 57 of which are judges seeking to remain in office, the Maricopa County Elections office said. Read Article

California Supreme Court rules sheriff must return seized ballots | Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

The California Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a sheriff to return more than 650,000 ballots he seized from election officials, finding that he lacked the authority to review them based on a thin allegation of fraud. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco (R) impounded the ballots after voters weighed in last year on a measure to redraw the state’s congressional map and give Democrats an opportunity to capture five more House seats. The measure passed by 56 percent in Riverside County and 64 percent statewide. Bianco was reacting to a review of public records by the citizens group Riverside Election Integrity Team, which claimed the county had counted 46,000 more ballots than it had received. The county’s registrar of voters, Art Tinoco, has said the group misinterpreted county data. His office’s review found the county counted 657,322 ballots. That is 103 votes more than the number of people recorded as having voted, a much smaller discrepancy that is in line with typical election errors. Read Article

​Colorado: ID number would have to appear on mail ballots if amendment passes | Lindsey Toomer/Colorado Newsline

Coloradans who vote with a mail ballot must sign the ballot envelope. If voters approve a proposed constitutional amendment in November, they would also need to include an ID number on the envelope. Amendment 84 would require voters to write the last four digits of their Social Security number, their Colorado driver’s license number or their REAL ID number on their mail ballot envelope to ensure it is counted. Suzanne Taheri, a conservative attorney and former deputy secretary of state, is backing the initiative alongside Chuck Broerman, a conservative former El Paso County clerk, through the Colorado Voter Trust Initiative. The initiative is funded by the Coalition for American Prosperity and Growth, a “dark money” group. ​Read Article

Georgia: Three counties flagged by Trump administration for using non-English election materials | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

At least three Georgia counties were listed on an internal memo of jurisdictions across the country that offer election materials in languages other than English, according to internal records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.Gwinnett, Cobb and DeKalb counties were all listed in the report, which was emailed to a number of top officials at the department in December, though the memo noted there could be other jurisdictions in the state that translate election materials. The email said the list was “outlining requirements for prosecution of voter related charges,” and was signed by the department’s acting director of border policy, though the official’s name is redacted. Only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in American elections, but advocates for immigrant communities in Georgia say some naturalized citizens may struggle to understand ballots written in English. Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act requires local jurisdictions to offer ballot access in languages besides English whenever there are either 10,000 residents or more than 5% of the population who speak a given language and lack English proficiency. Read Article

Nevada: From 16,000 to 185 to Zero – Trump’s Claims of Illegal Voting Fizzle | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work. On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen. “As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens,” Greg D. Ott, a deputy attorney general in Nevada, wrote, according to a copy of a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security officials obtained through open records requests. “You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.” Mr. Ott also stated that D.H.S. officials had still not provided enough data for election officials to investigate their claims. Nor have they turned over the list of nearly 16,000 individuals they claim may be noncitizens. “Our records do not support DHS’s claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that,” Francisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state in Nevada, said in a statement. “Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true. Read Article

North Carolina: A federal lawsuit challenges new requirements for absentee ballot returns | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

Three North Carolina nonprofit organizations and two voters are suing over new absentee ballot requirements that put votes in jeopardy of being discarded. The North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, North Carolina Asian Americans Together, Down Home North Carolina, and two voters filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against the state Board of Elections and elections boards in Guilford and Durham over the directives the state board adopted earlier this month. The lawsuit asks the court to block the requirements for the November 2026 election and future elections. The state board adopted the new requirements in a 3-2 vote along party lines, with Democrats opposed, on the same day that the first absentee ballots of the 2026 general election were mailed out to voters. According to the new requirements, voters who don’t seal their ballots in an inner envelope inside the mailing envelope will have their ballots discarded. Those voters will be sent another ballot. But voters won’t have time to receive new ballots if problems are discovered on the Saturday before Election Day through Election Day, the lawsuit says. Read Article

Ohio: Court reinstates law requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration | Ashley Ahn/Politico

An appeals court on Wednesday reinstated an Ohio law requiring people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote at motor vehicles offices, a win for Republicans seeking to tighten voter requirements nationwide. A panel of three judges on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to block a lower court ruling that had granted a preliminary injunction against the voter ID law in August. The majority argued that the advocacy groups that brought the suit failed to demonstrate that the law would likely prevent people from registering to vote. Red Wine & Blue and Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans sought to block the Ohio law. They argued that it conflicted with the National Voter Registration Act, which requires “the minimum amount of information necessary” required by the law to complete a voter registration. Read Aerticle

Texas GOP lawmaker says state should have caught error that delayed at least 178,000 voter registrations | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A key Texas Republican lawmaker says state officials must be held accountable for an error that led to a backlog of at least 178,000 voter registration applications from the Texas Department of Public Safety. Votebeat reported earlier this week that DPS failed to send counties thousands of voter registration applications and updates submitted through its online driver’s license portal. Some of those date back at least a year, and counties are now being hit with a deluge of applications to process in the weeks leading up to November’s midterm election. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston who has championed election administration legislation for years, told Votebeat on Thursday that although a DPS failure is at the heart of the problem, the Texas Secretary of State’s office should have caught the issue because it oversees the system the counties use to receive the files from DPS. “If the files were received, pulled, or not, that should have been noticeable,” Bettencourt said. “They should have caught it.” Read Article

Wisconsin: Plans in place if servers falter on election night | Wisconsin Law Journal

Milwaukee wasn’t the only place in Wisconsin with election-night issues during the Aug. 11 primary that prolonged the reporting of unofficial results in an extremely close Democratic race for governor. Green and Winnebago counties experienced server issues that delayed the time the two county clerks were able to upload results to their websites, though the problems didn’t affect the accuracy of the results. A new report from the Wisconsin Elections Commission shows the bipartisan agency’s staff met after the election with officials in those two counties and Liberty Vote, the counties’ voting equipment vendor, about a “small number of equipment-related concerns” on Election Day. In a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a spokesperson for Liberty Vote, formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems, said “no votes were lost, altered, or miscounted. The review identified a configuration setting governing the format in which unofficial results are transmitted from municipal locations to the county reporting system. The setting has been corrected in both counties. In Winnebago County, Liberty Vote separately identified a hardware fault in the county’s server and replaced the unit within two weeks of the primary,” the spokesperson said. . Read Article

National: Supreme Court rejects Trump’s mail ballot limits before elections | Lindsay Whitehurst/Associated Press

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway. The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they’ve used for years and have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast. It represented a stark defeat for Trump on an issue he consistently has emphasized as vital to ensuring election integrity even though there is virtually no evidence of fraud with mail ballots. The Supreme Court majority wrote that the administration’s push to implement the restrictions this year is likely to lose in court, though the brief emergency order didn’t detail its reasoning. Two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented. Read Article

National: Hundreds of Election Deniers Will Be on the Ballot This November | David Gilbert/WIRED

On November 3, when voters across the US go to the polls, almost 200 election deniers will be on the ballot. Many of them have repeatedly undermined the very process they are participating in, and they will be looking to win some of the most powerful elected positions in the country—positions that would help determine how voting goes in future elections. These numbers include a sitting US congressman who voted against certifying the 2020 election results; a former state representative who integrated QAnon conspiracy theories into election denialism; and local election officials who have actively sought to undermine election results by pushing baseless conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting. But for election experts and officials, one of the biggest concerns ahead of the midterms is the possibility that these election deniers could obtain oversight of the 2028 presidential election process. The data shows there are already 27 election deniers in 20 states who hold a statewide office with election oversight, like secretary of state or attorney general—positions that allow the holder to set voting rules or prosecute those they believe are cheating at the ballots. In November, 33 election deniers will seek to secure similar positions in states across the country. Read Article

National: Whistle-Blower: Federal Agents May Have Broken State Laws in Search for Voter Fraud | Nick Corasaniti and Hamed Aleaziz/The New York Times

Investigators may have broken state laws under the direction of top Homeland Security leaders by posing as voters as part of an expansive effort to find noncitizens on the nation’s voter rolls, according to a federal whistle-blower’s account released on Monday. The authorities also required agents to meet quotas, which afforded them a mere 12 minutes to review each voter record. The effort has relied on questionable data, and has likely improperly flagged U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, the whistle-blower said in a nearly 30-page report. The whistle-blower report, provided to Senators Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla, both Democrats, offers an inside view of the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.” The New York Times revealed last month the existence of the operation, which has deployed hundreds of federal agents to scour voter rolls managed by the states in a widespread hunt for evidence of voter fraud. The investigation stems from President Trump’s longstanding fixation on noncitizen voting, despite decades of research showing the practice is vanishingly rare. Read Article

National: ‘Theatrical’ litigation: Republican AGs fight for Trump voting rules that their election officials say they can’t implement | Tierney Sneed and Jerey Herb/CNN

Republican attorneys general have shown their support for President Donald Trump’s election agenda by pressing courts to greenlight his proposed crackdown on mail voting. But election officials in at least half of those states have said that they won’t be able to comply with proposed US Postal Service mandates in time, according to court filings and interviews with CNN. Moreover, in those states, Republican-leaning counties may ultimately face steeper hurdles than Democratic ones, election officials of both parties say. In several of the states, local officials have received no guidance from their state election chiefs on how they should prepare for the possibility that the new rules – which could require the replacement of thousands of ballot envelopes and a major reallocation of staff resources so that voter lists can be submitted to USPS – would suddenly be imposed. Read Article

National: Trump’s Effort to Assert Control Over Elections Continues, Despite Court Loss | Zolan Kanno-Youngs/The New York Times

The Supreme Court on Monday dealt President Trump a major blow when it blocked his executive order to restrict mail ballots. But Mr. Trump’s battle to assert control over the election process is far from finished. The stymied attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail ballots was just one piece of a broader effort involving the full power of the federal government to take more control of state-run elections. Just days before the Supreme Court blocked Mr. Trump’s mail ballot order, the Justice Department sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, escalating a fight to gain access to private voter data and election records. Federal agents are scouring voter rolls managed by states for noncitizens, despite a lack of evidence of widespread fraud. Mr. Trump’s homeland security secretary recently pushed for an investigation into whether a commonly used voting machine can be trusted, casting doubt on digital voting systems. “This is far from over,” said Benjamin Hovland, who was ousted from the independent, bipartisan Election Assistance Commission by the Trump administration this year. Mr. Hovland acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s decision mitigated “real-world impact” on voters and election workers, particularly since voters in some states had already begun to mail in their ballots. But he said Mr. Trump’s actions were alarming. Read Article

National: Election officials prepare for chaos as Trump seeks to tilt the midterms to Republicans | Peter Eisler, Ned Parker, Linda So and Mike Spector/Reuters

Two months before Americans vote in midterm elections that could reshape the balance of power in Washington, local and state officials across the country are rehearsing for a crisis that once seemed unthinkable: What if the U.S. president tries to use the power of the federal government to tilt the vote his way? In California, officials have gamed out what would happen if Donald Trump dispatches federal agents to polling places, intimidating voters and suppressing turnout. In Michigan, state officials are advising local clerks how to respond if the federal government demands access to voting machines. And coast to coast, election officials are bracing for legal battles over everything from ballot seizures to voter-fraud investigations. Reuters interviewed more than 50 state and local election officials from both political parties, including a dozen secretaries of state, the top election officials in their states. Nearly all said they are adopting new strategies to prepare for political interference, misinformation, cyber attacks and even threats of violence ahead of the midterms. Their efforts span jurisdictions large and small, in areas controlled by Trump’s Republican Party as well as the opposition Democratic Party. Read Article

National: Americans’ increased belief in voter fraud is a scary prospect in 2026 | Aaron Blake/CNN

President Donald Trump messing with the 2026 midterms beforehand — as he’s trying to do by sharply restricting mail ballots — is only part of the potential threat he’s posing to US elections. The other is his demonstrated tendency for claiming elections have been stolen after the fact, which resulted in the largest attack on the US Capitol in 200 years. New polling suggests Trump has kept that soil fertilized with a large portion of the country. Indeed, the president on Friday posted on social media the 5-year-old video of him telling January 6, 2021, rioters to go home and repeating his false claim that he won in 2020. And amid his repeated claims of widespread voter fraud, the polling suggests that soil might be even more fertile than its been in recent years, which is a scary prospect. Read Article

National: The new threat election officials fear: Trump’s federal government | Patrick Marley and Laura Meckler/The Washington Post

The activists staking out the ballot drop boxes in suburban Phoenix wore body armor and face coverings. With guns at their sides, they recorded residents as they deposited their votes during the last midterm elections. Voting-rights groups sued, and a federal judge put a stop to them, ruling they had to stay at least 250 feet away while armed to ensure voters were not intimidated. Four years later and 100 miles to the south, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover is treating the 2022 incident as a lesson on the importance of moving quickly this fall if anyone — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — tries to interfere with the election’s administration. For her county along the U.S.-Mexico border, Conover has drawn up court papers so she can immediately file litigation to protect the vote. “When it comes to preparing for elections, we are on overdrive,” she said. Read Article

Alaska: After a Yearslong Nightmare, Relief for American Samoans Punished for Voting | Alex Burness’/Bolts

Mike Pese visited the grave of his mother, Miliama Suli, in Anchorage on Sept. 13, as he has every week since she died in March. On previous visits, he’d shared with her his fears about the yearslong legal case hanging over his family: The Republican-led state attorney general’s office had moved to convict him and 10 relatives for illegally voting, threatening up to 10 years of prison time. The family lived together in the small harbor town of Whittier, Alaska. They all hail originally from the faraway U.S. territory of American Samoa, which they thought gave them the right to vote in their local elections, as is the case for people born in every other U.S. state and territory. But unbeknownst to them, and even to many Alaska officials, American Samoans are denied voting rights outside of American Samoa, since they are classified as U.S. nationals and not citizens. State officials accused them of intentionally voting as non-citizens, and filed the criminal charges that have consumed Pese’s family for nearly three years. Read Article

California: ‘I did not find them’: GOP chairman makes rare apology for election fraud claim | Anabel Sosa/SF Gate

As voter fraud allegations run rampant within the Republican Party, the head of Marin County’s party made an unexpected apology last week for claims he made about dead people voting in the county last year. John Turnacliff, the chairman of the Marin County Republicans, claimed in February that dozens of dead people voted on Proposition 50, last year’s redistricting measure, and he requested that the county’s registrar of voters investigate. But during an open comment period during a county meeting last Tuesday, Turnacliff admitted that he was wrong after no election fraud was found. “I’m here today to retract that statement that I made a few months ago as far as those voters being on the roll. I did not find them,” he said. “I apologize to the Board of Supervisors and to the registrar’s office and to the registrar for any angst and consternation that could have put on you since then.” Read Article

Georgia: ‘It’s really embarrassing that this is still a possibility’ — AI could exploit a flaw in voting equipment and match voters to their ballots | AP News

Security researchers say rapid advances in artificial intelligence are making it more critical to address a flaw in Georgia’s voting equipment that can allow voters to be matched to their ballots after they have been cast. The system’s vulnerability has been drawing increased attention, with election security advocates criticizing state election officials for failing to fix it before the November elections. Georgia election officials say they have taken steps to address the potential harm, but some advocates say the state is not going far enough. Other jurisdictions across the country use the same voting equipment made by Dominion Voting Systems, a company that has since been sold and renamed Liberty Vote. But many have applied a software update to fix the flaw, and some other states do not allow the public release of records that are needed to exploit it, said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group focused on election technology. Georgia, a presidential battleground with one of the nation’s most closely watched U.S. Senate races this year, is the only place where the system is used statewide. Lindeman said that, combined with an open records law that has allowed access to key documents, creates a “perfect storm. It’s really embarrassing that this is still a possibility,” Lindeman said. Read Article

Minnesota Supreme Court sides with city in voter roster debate | Sarah Ritter/The Minnesota Star Tribune

The city of Oak Grove is allowed to use paper voter rosters in the upcoming November election despite serious objections from Anoka County, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled. The state’s highest court on Friday decided that the northern suburb has the authority to choose whether to check in voters with paper rosters during the general election. Anoka County switched over to tablets in 2018, and argued that all precincts within its jurisdiction must use the electronic poll pads. “This is a major victory for local election authority and the rule of law,” said Doug Seaton, founder of the Upper Midwest Law Center, a conservative legal group that represented the city at no cost. “Oak Grove made a lawful decision for its own precincts, and the Minnesota Supreme Court confirmed that state and county officials cannot rewrite the statute simply because they prefer a different system.” Read Article