National: Ballot Rejections Soared in Rural Counties After USPS Reduced Mail Service | Ken B. Morales, Jen Fifield, and Misty Harris/ProPublica

Data analysis shows that delays resulting from the U.S. Postal Service’s cost-cutting measures have endangered the validity of ballots cast in rural areas across the country. Over the past three years, as mail volume continued to plummet and annual deficits ballooned, the Postal Service started consolidating the processing of first-class mail at larger regional plants instead of at smaller hubs closer to local post offices. Then, in a little-noted switch that mostly took effect after the 2024 election, the agency cut the frequency of mail pickups in half at many post offices 50 miles or more from these processing plants, from twice daily to once. Read Article

National: Why reported challenges with touchscreen voting machines don’t signal election rigging | Ali Swenson and Melissa Goldin/Associated Press

As early voting gets underway for the midterm elections, social media reports have surfaced featuring voters—particularly Democrats in states like Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Ohio, and Kansas—claiming that touchscreen ballot-marking devices are switching their votes. Election administrators and voting experts emphasize that these anecdotes are almost uniformly the result of unintended touches, screen miscalibration, or minor user error rather than coordinated election rigging. Officials note that all machines undergo pre-election testing and that voters can review their printed ballot records, seek immediate assistance from poll workers, or have screens recalibrated to ensure their selections are accurately recorded. Read Article

National: Trump administration stokes concerns about Chinese-made parts in voting equipment, but experts say risks remain low | Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

The Trump administration and some conservative election activists argue that foreign-made components in voting machines present a national security risk, and believe the federal government should take steps to mitigate it for the midterm elections. But voting equipment manufacturers say it’s impossible to build the equipment without Chinese-made parts — and they already take precautions to protect against sabotage and foreign interference. The same Chinese-manufactured computer parts are used in critical infrastructure from ports and the electrical grid to telecommunications and water systems, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting. Smith said companies and election officials work to develop what she called “defensive depth,” a system of safeguards to protect against any attempts to manipulate results. “You may have a risk inherent in your supply chain, but that does not mean you won’t end up with a legitimate, correct, accurate, fully verified result at the end of the day,” Smith said. Read Article

National: Democrats sue to block Trump administration from usurping states’ authority on elections | Michael Kunzelman/Associated Press

Top Democratic congressional leaders and party committees filed a federal lawsuit in Washington seeking to block the Trump administration from encroaching on state-administered election authorities or intimidating local officials. The legal challenge asks the court to bar federal actions aimed at purging legally registered voters, blocking mail-in ballots, or prosecuting election workers ahead of the midterms, specifically pointing to Justice Department litigation targeting states over noncitizen voter lists. Plaintiffs argue the efforts constitute an unlawful attempt to seize control of state election processes. Read Article

National: Trump Appointees Asked a Federal Cybersecurity Agency to Secretly Acquire a Voting Machine — and Hack It | Andy Mannix and Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

Political appointees within the Department of Homeland Security directed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during Trump's second term to covertly procure and hack a voting machine without notifying the vendor, alarming career staffers who feared the effort was intended to manufacture pretexts for invalidating unfavorable election results. The initiative ultimately stalled because necessary technical personnel had been laid off under federal workforce reductions, but it underscored a broader pattern of political interference. Investigative findings reveal that the administration has slashed CISA's workforce by roughly a third, dismantled information-sharing relationships, and published sensitive state election records, leaving state and local election officials largely on their own to secure infrastructure ahead of the midterms. Read Article

National: Blanche won’t rule out DOJ post-election action in a ‘doomsday’ scenario | Ryan J. Reilly and Jane C. Timm/NBC News

Attorney General Todd Blanche stated that while the Justice Department does not intend to improperly interfere with elections, he could not entirely rule out a "doomsday" scenario in which federal intervention might occur regarding vote certification or ballot handling ahead of the midterms. Blanche's remarks follow recent DOJ litigation targeting states over potential noncitizen voting lists, such as a suit compelling California to review registered voters. Voting experts emphasize that no federal statute authorizes the department to challenge ballots or delay state certification processes. Read Article

National: Watching the watchers: Meet the volunteers observing Trump’s poll monitors on election day | Fabiola Cineas/The Guardian

Amid heightened friction over the upcoming 2026 midterms, tens of thousands of volunteers have signed up with grassroots and civil rights organizations—such as the ACLU, Common Cause and local immigrant rights groups to act as poll observers and protect voters. While the Department of Justice plans to deploy about 1,000 federal monitors and the administration has floated the potential presence of immigration and law enforcement officials, voting rights experts and local organizers emphasize that federal monitors lack special overriding authority and that deploying armed federal agents to polling sites is restricted by Civil War-era laws. Community groups are actively mapping enforcement activity and deploying volunteer watchers to ensure vulnerable voters feel safe and confident exercising their rights. Read Article

National: America Is About to See What Happens When Voters Turn to AI | Will Oremus/The Atlantic

As tens of millions of voters increasingly turn to generative AI chatbots and search summaries for election information during the midterms, research reveals significant vulnerabilities, including frequent factual inaccuracies, reliance on unreliable or foreign state-run sources, and susceptibility to "sloptimization" tactics by political campaigns. Security researchers have uncovered coordinated networks of suspicious local news-style websites specifically designed to feed biased or fabricated data into AI models, while watchdog reports highlight instances of chatbots amplifying foreign deepfakes and disinformation. Read Article

Arizona Attorney General sues Maricopa County recorder to restore voting rights to confirmed citizens | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, demanding the immediate reinstatement of voting rights for 25 confirmed U.S. citizens who were incorrectly flagged as noncitizens by the error-prone federal SAVE database and subsequently placed on "not eligible" status. Although county prosecutors verified that the voters are citizens, Heap has refused to update their status without direct documentation from prosecutors, prompting criticism from local officials and a legal challenge as early voting proceeds. Read Article

Californians accused of voter fraud react with shock, confusion, anger | Brittny Mejia and Kevin Rector/Los Angeles Times

Federal authorities arrested and charged 28 lawful permanent residents in California with voter registration and naturalization offenses as part of a Department of Justice sweep dubbed "Operation Protect the Vote". Defendants and their families expressed shock and confusion over the charges, with several stating they had no recollection or intention of registering to vote. While federal prosecutors pointed to the arrests as proof of compromised election systems, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and election experts criticized the high-profile enforcement as a politically motivated scare tactic, noting that the isolated cases represent an infinitesimal fraction of the state's 23 million registered voters and often stem from administrative errors rather than intentional fraud. Read Article

Colorado pushes back on federal election monitors | Colleen Slevin/The Colorado Sun

The Colorado Secretary of State's Office informed the U.S. Department of Justice that federal election monitors planned for Adams County must formally apply for approval to access non-public election spaces, such as mail-in ballot processing and signature verification areas, under state rules. Local county officials and state Democrats criticized the move as a politically motivated intimidation tactic designed to scrutinize a competitive congressional district. Read Article

Top Georgia election officials clash over Trump-fueled conspiracy theories | Jason Morris, Gabe Cohen, and Nicky Robertson/CNN

A sharp divide has emerged between Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the Trump-aligned State Election Board after the board's executive director sent a formal letter asking the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in Georgia's voting systems and inspect Dominion voting equipment. The friction has heightened local anxieties over potential federal interference ahead of the midterms, prompting some county election offices to brief poll workers on protocols should federal agents arrive at polling locations. Read Article

How Michigan stopped Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop from canceling voter registrations| Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop's attempts to aggressively "clean" voter rolls—which included sending warning postcards to over 1,500 voters and altering registration statuses outside her statutory authority—were successfully intercepted by municipal clerks and the Michigan Bureau of Elections. Following complaints from local officials and residents, the state revoked Bishop's access to the Qualified Voter File and restored affected voters' statuses in time for the midterms. The episode has sparked a bipartisan local recall campaign against Bishop, illustrating both the vulnerabilities introduced by rogue local officials and the resilience of decentralized electoral safeguards. Read Article

Nevada voter fraud is shockingly rare, bears scant resemblance to Trump’s portrayal, analysis shows | Michael Lyle/Nevada Current

A new analysis published by Brookings Mountain West and UNLV's Lincy Institute—utilizing data from the Heritage Foundation—reveals that election fraud in Nevada and surrounding Mountain West states is extremely rare. The study identified only 11 instances of election fraud out of nearly 9 million votes cast in Nevada over a ten-year period, with the vast majority resulting in criminal convictions. Researchers noted that historical data shows recorded infractions bear little resemblance to widespread fraud claims, representing a tiny fraction of total ballots cast. Read Article

North Carolina: New state board guidance on unsealed inner envelopes leads to higher mail-in ballot rejection rates | Patricia Mazzei/The New York Times

Voting rights groups and local election officials warned that a new directive from North Carolina's Republican-majority State Board of Elections requiring the rejection of mail-in ballots with unsealed inner envelopes has resulted in a statewide rejection rate of roughly 3 percent, with higher spikes in larger counties. While state election officials defended the rule as a necessary measure to protect ballot integrity, critics and a federal judge who declined an eleventh-hour request to block the guidance noted it could potentially disenfranchise thousands of voters in a state known for razor-thin margins. Read Article

Texas discovers more backlogged voter registration records | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Just days before the start of early voting, Texas county election officials learned of a new state software error that backlogged approximately 15,000 voter address and name update records submitted through the state's Texas.gov portal since September 1. Local registrars—already strained from clearing a separate months-long backlog caused by a Department of Public Safety driver's license portal error—must now rapidly process the delayed records to ensure eligible voters can update their information in time. The Texas Association of County Election Officials strongly criticized the ongoing state-level technical mismanagement of the TEAM voter registration system, noting that the sudden influx creates severe administrative burdens during final pre-election preparations. Read Article

Utah GOP lawmakers requested a study on security of vote-by-mail. Here’s what it found. | Emily R. Anderson/The Salt Lake Tribune

A taxpayer-funded, $100,000 study conducted by Utah Valley University researchers—commissioned by GOP lawmakers following pushback against mail-in voting—concluded that Utah's vote-by-mail system is secure and that neither in-person nor mail voting is inherently more secure than the other. When evaluating proposals to require ID verification at ballot drop boxes, researchers found that staffing every drop box would cost approximately $8.1 million per election year and significantly increase wait times, while deploying "smart drop boxes" or digital ID systems would introduce substantial financial, technical, and logistical hurdles. Despite these findings, Utah is still scheduled under a 2025 law to end automatic mail-in balloting starting in 2029, requiring voters to opt in. Read Article

Wisconsin: In-person absentee voting surges amid declines in ballots arriving by mail | Rich Kremer/WPR

Data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission highlights a dramatic 65 percent statewide surge in in-person absentee voting on the opening day of early voting compared to the 2022 midterms, with major urban centers like Milwaukee, Dane, and Kenosha counties seeing steep increases. Concurrently, mail-in ballots arriving at clerk offices have dropped by nearly 26 percent. Political analysts and election officials attribute this shift in voter behavior to heightened electorate mobilization alongside ongoing concerns regarding postal delivery times and administrative scrutiny over mail-in voting. Read Article

National: Trump’s Attacks on Voting Raise Fears He Will Try to Challenge Midterm Results | Zolan Kanno-Youngs/The New York Times

State and local election officials express growing concern that ongoing executive attacks on election integrity are laying the groundwork to contest adverse midterm results. While judicial decisions have repeatedly blocked attempts to directly assert federal authority over state-administered voting, federal departments have intensified efforts to investigate voter rolls, deploy nationwide polling place monitors, and circulate unsubstantiated claims of voting machine vulnerabilities and noncitizen registration. In response, state administrators across party lines are developing contingency plans to defend local election procedures against potential federal overreach or unannounced law enforcement interventions at polling locations. Read Article

National: Election activists press Trump to ban voting machines or even declare martial law if November results are in question | Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

A coalition of conservative activists and high-profile Trump allies is pressing the administration to utilize federal emergency powers to restrict or ban electronic voting machines ahead of the midterm elections. Figures including Tina Peters, Cleta Mitchell, and Mike Lindell have petitioned the White House and federal agencies to mandate hand-counted paper ballots, invoke national security declarations over alleged foreign hardware vulnerabilities, or deploy federal agents to polling places. Legal scholars, election officials, and civil rights advocates emphasize that the president lacks the constitutional authority to unilaterally alter state-administered voting methods, noting that courts have repeatedly struck down executive actions attempting to assert federal control over election procedures. Read Article

National: Nine ways the Trump administration could interfere with the midterms | Mike Spector, Linda So, Peter Eisler and Ned Parker/Reuters

A comprehensive survey of more than 50 election administrators, legal scholars, and voting rights experts identified key potential flashpoints where federal authority could test state election autonomy ahead of and following the midterm elections. Key scenarios highlighted include federal seizures of voting equipment or ballots, aggressive deployment of federal election monitors, law enforcement or immigration actions near polling sites, national emergency declarations, and direct pressure to delay certification or refuse to seat state-certified winners in Congress. While the White House maintains its actions aim to bolster election integrity, legal experts emphasize that constitutional division of powers, statutory chain-of-custody safeguards, and robust judicial precedent continue to serve as primary guardrails for state-administered elections. Read Article

National: Experts say the midterms could face challenges, but are less concerned than in the spring | Nathaniel Rakich/Votebeat

President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about voter fraud, attempts to reshape U.S. election law, and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election have left plenty of people worried that his administration will try to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections. But what threats are worth taking seriously, and what is just doomerism? Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting and one of the experts who changed her answer, offered a number of reasons for her reevaluation. She noted that, since the spring, several primaries took place without any armed federal intervention, and several states (such as California) have passed laws to strengthen existing prohibitions on voter intimidation. She added that, paradoxically, the Trump administration’s rhetoric hinting about federal agents at polling places “also has given rise to robust pushback, including several lawsuits seeking to prevent this kind of scenario in advance.” Read Article

National: Many GOP states have imposed new voting rules this year, some mirroring Trump’s midterm proposals | Gary Fields and Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Nearly 40 new voting laws passed in Republican-controlled states are taking effect for the first time this midterm election cycle, with many enacting key elements of stalled federal administration proposals. While federal executive orders and congressional proposals for national voter ID, proof-of-citizenship mandates, and mail-voting restrictions were blocked or delayed, state legislatures in places like New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Ohio have successfully enacted parallel measures. Voting rights advocates and civil rights organizations emphasize that the state-level restrictions mirror federal pressure, introducing swift administrative hurdles and increasing disenfranchisement risks for eligible voters. Read Article

National: Officials see gaps in election communications as AI makes foreign influence easier | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

A pull-back from federal foreign-influence tracking initiatives, combined with federal workforce departures, has significantly weakened cross-sector information-sharing channels between government agencies, social media platforms, and non-governmental researchers ahead of the midterm elections. State and local election directors report receiving fewer election-specific intelligence briefings, even as foreign actors leverage advanced artificial intelligence tools to automate, scale, and refine target selection for covert messaging campaigns. While federal officials emphasize that intelligence monitoring and infrastructure support through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency continue, civil society researchers note that the disbanding or restructuring of key federal interagency task forces has created noticeable gaps in real-time threat coordination. Read Article

National: FBI says election officials were targets of suspicious letters containing ‘unknown substance’ | Jessica Husemann and Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

he FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service have launched a nationwide investigation into a series of suspicious letters—some containing an unidentified white powder—sent to election offices, U.S. senators, and political organizations across more than a dozen states. While postal authorities intercepted many of the mailings prior to delivery, several state election headquarters experienced temporary evacuations or hazardous material responses before tests confirmed the substances were harmless. State election directors emphasized that the physical intimidation tactics will not disrupt ongoing voting operations or delay administrative preparations ahead of the midterm elections. Read Article

Opinion: Publish the Poll Tapes | Andrew Appel/CITP Blog

For well over 100 years, from before 1900 to into the 21st century, political parties sent volunteers to witness the in-the-precinct results at the close of the polls on election night. They did that just in case there were slip-ups (to put it politely) in the transmission and aggregation of the precinct results into district-wide election results. Before there were computerized voting machines, there were mechanical voting machines that displayed the totals on little odometers that were uncovered at the end of election day, that you had to copy down by hand—those were witnessed too. And before the mechanical machines, people counted paper ballots by hand, in the precinct, and announced the per-precinct totals to witnesses in the polling place. Read Article

Book Review: The Plot to Delete Democracy | Sue Halpern/The New York Review of Books

Chances are you already know some random things about the Silicon Valley technology billionaires who have embraced—and been embraced by—the Trump administration: that, for example, Peter Thiel’s data mining company, Palantir, supplies surveillance software to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that the recent public stock offering for SpaceX briefly made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, or that the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a former Democratic Party stalwart, turned to Trump after he saw, he said, the most successful people sending “their kids to the most politically radical institutions, which teach them how to be America-hating communists.” You may even know that Thiel, in contrast to most of his Silicon Valley peers, supported Trump’s 2016 campaign, or that during the 2024 campaign Musk was Trump’s largest individual donor, giving $239 million to his pro-Trump America PAC and around $50 million to other Trump-aligned groups, or that Andreessen helped staff the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk’s predatory duchy within Trump’s second administration. Government by Silicon Valley | Sue Halpern | The New York Review of Books

Arizona: US Supreme Court turns away Kari Lake lawyer’s challenge to sanctions in Arizona voting machine lawsuit | Sophie Brams/The Hill

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from an attorney sanctioned for filing a frivolous 2022 lawsuit on behalf of former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. The underlying lawsuit, which sought to prohibit electronic voting machines in Maricopa and Pima counties, was dismissed for lack of standing before a federal judge ordered $122,200 in sanctions against Lake's legal team for making false and misleading statements. By letting the sanction order stand without comment, the high court upheld lower court rulings finding that monetary penalties were necessary to deter attorneys from filing baseless claims that undermine confidence in election infrastructure. Read Article

California threatened by Justice Department over claim of noncitizen voters | Safiyah Riddle and Eric Tucker/Associated Press

The U.S. Department of Justice has threatened California state and local election authorities with emergency federal litigation if they do not review and act within 48 hours on a list of alleged noncitizen voters. Federal officials delivered the flagged names to Los Angeles County on a password-protected thumb drive, demanding that local registrars segregate mail ballots for any individuals whose citizenship cannot be immediately confirmed. California state officials and election clerks pushed back against the demand, calling the 48-hour deadline unreasonable and noting that federal agencies have repeatedly refused to share the underlying methodology or data sources used to generate the list. Read Article

Georgia: Election workers prepare for early voting as talk of DOJ ‘intervention’ leaves advocates unsettled | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

As Georgia election administrators complete routine logic and accuracy testing on voting machines, a request from the State Election Board’s executive director for Department of Justice "intervention" has drawn severe criticism from voting rights advocates and congressional lawmakers. The executive director's letter petitioned federal authorities to compel voting software updates and intervene in state election administration ahead of early voting, prompting advocates to warn against potential federal overreach or poll monitoring. Congressional Democrats condemned the request as an unauthorized attempt to sow public distrust, while local election directors emphasized that rigorous pre-election testing confirms machines are functioning accurately. Read Article