Author Archives: Warren Stewart

Misinformation, violence and a paper shortage threaten midterm elections, officials say | Jacob Fischler/Idaho Capital Sun

Members of a U.S. Senate panel and election administrators raised a bevy of concerns Thursday about the challenges elections officials will face this fall, saying problems ranging from a lack of paper to coordinated misinformation campaigns could affect confidence in U.S. democracy. A bipartisan panel of current and former elections officials and experts told the Senate Rules and Administration Committee that state officials face threats of physical violence, while dealing with misinformation, supply chain challenges and funding shortfalls — making the administration of this year’s midterm elections more difficult. Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, listed those developments at the start of the hearing. She highlighted threats that have led Colorado officials to receive active shooter training and obtain bullet-proof vests, with morale among elections administrators nationwide worryingly low. “In light of these challenges, we must support the election officials working on the front lines of our democracy,” Klobuchar said. In addition to relatively new concerns related to holding elections in a pandemic, ranking Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri noted foreign and domestic adversaries persist in targeting election infrastructure and spreading online misinformation.

Full Article: Misinformation, violence and a paper shortage threaten midterm elections, officials say – Idaho Capital Sun

Effort to recruit poll workers relaunches amid fears of shortage | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Full Article: Effort to recruit poll workers relaunches amid fears of shortage – POLITICO

National: Midterm Stakes Grow Clearer: Election Deniers Will Be on Many Ballots | Reid J. Epstein/The New York Times

Full Article: Midterm Stakes Grow Clearer: Election Deniers Will Be on Many Ballots – The New York Times

National: Election Officials Steel Themselves for Threats as Midterm Season Gears Up | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

Forrest Lehman, the elections director in Pennsylvania’s Lycoming County, was brought up short earlier this year by a poll worker’s question: What should I do if I get a death threat? “I never would have had a question like that before 2020,” said Mr. Lehman, expressing relief that he knew of no such threats in his largely rural county. “I don’t expect that to happen,” he added, “but it’s illustrative that it’s on their mind now.” Long accustomed to working out of the spotlight, a number of election administrators say threats and harassment have become a constant undertone to their work since the contentious aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, when then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, and his allies began spreading unsupported claims of widespread fraud after his defeat. Offices in some jurisdictions have implemented new security measures as they prepare for the 2022 midterms, the biggest test of the country’s voting system since then and a crucial proving ground for what could be sharp challenges surrounding the 2024 presidential vote. Primary contests are already in full swing, including high-profile races in Pennsylvania and North Carolina on Tuesday.

Full Article: Election Officials Steel Themselves for Threats as Midterm Season Gears Up – WSJ

National: A pro-Trump film suggests its data are so accurate, it solved a murder. That’s false | Tom Dreisbach/ NPR

A conservative “election integrity” group called True The Vote has made multiple misleading or false claims about its work, NPR has found, including the suggestion that they helped solve the murder of an eight-year-old girl in Atlanta. The claims appear in a new pro-Trump film called “2,000 Mules,” which purports to have “smoking gun” evidence of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election in the form of digital device location tracking data. Former president Donald Trump has embraced the film, which has gained popularity on the political right, along with the claim about the murder case. Trump’s official spokesperson, Liz Harrington, said True The Vote “solved a murder of a young little girl in Atlanta. I mean, they are heroes.” Fans of the film have echoed that message on social media. That claim is false. Authorities in Georgia arrested and secured indictments against two suspects in the murder of Secoriea Turner in August 2021. In response to NPR’s inquiries, True The Vote acknowledged it had contacted law enforcement more than two months later, meaning it played no role in those arrests or indictments. It’s not the only false or misleading claim that True The Vote and Dinesh D’Souza, the director behind “2,000 Mules,” have made, NPR found. Fact-checkers from the Associated Press and PolitiFact have examined the central voter fraud allegations in “2,000 Mules” and found that the film makes many dubious claims. A Washington Post analysis summarized the film’s allegations as a leap of faith – “we’re just asked to trust that True the Vote found what it says it found.”

Full Article: Dinesh D’Souza film ‘2000 Mules’ Falsely Implies Data Solved A Murder : NPR

National: In key battlegrounds, races for secretary of state take on new weight | Simon Montlake/CSMonitor

Most voters can’t name the secretary of state where they live. Traditionally a low-profile office, it doesn’t often merit much in the way of media coverage or fundraising when on the ballot, as it is in 27 states this fall. In Georgia, however, GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has become a household name. His now-famous refusal to “find” 11,780 more votes for former President Donald Trump – and his insistence on the accuracy of the 2020 results in his state – made him both a hero to Democrats and a villain to many Trump supporters. “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated,” President Trump told Mr. Raffensperger in a recorded phone call that was later made public, after he’d recertified Joe Biden’s victory. Now Mr. Raffensperger is facing a tough four-way GOP primary on May 24, in a contest that will test Republican voters’ concerns about “election integrity” and the salience of Mr. Trump’s disproven claims of widespread fraud. Whoever wins the primary, which polls suggest could go to a runoff, will face a Democratic opponent in November’s midterms. Candidates hewing to Mr. Trump’s “election fraud” narrative are running for secretary of state in 17 of the 27 states where the office will be on the ballot in the fall, according to a nonpartisan watchdog group, the States United Democracy Center. And Trump-endorsed candidates are running in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona, all states where Mr. Trump contested the 2020 results.

Full Article: In key battlegrounds, races for secretary of state take on new weight – CSMonitor.com

National: Klobuchar, Warren introduce bill to provide $20 billion for election administration | The Hill

Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to provide $20 billion in federal funding to help states and localities to administer elections, train poll workers and eliminate barriers to voting. The legislation, which is co-sponsored by nine other Senate Democrats, would secure election infrastructure by upgrading voting equipment and registration systems, help recruit and train nonpartisan election officials and poll workers, protect election officials from threats and increase ballot access for minorities, voters with disabilities and those who live overseas or on Indian lands. “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, but in recent years we have seen a barrage of threats seeking to undermine our elections,” said Klobuchar. “It is critical that we respond to these threats head-on by ensuring that state and local governments have the resources needed to strengthen the administration of our elections, protect election officials on the frontlines, and provide all eligible voters with the opportunity to make their voices heard,” she said. Klobuchar called on the Biden administration to prioritize election security funding in his 2023 budget proposal, something the administration later did.

Full Article: Klobuchar, Warren introduce bill to provide $20 billion for election administration | The Hill

Election officials in Arizona, other battleground states, stand up against restrictive voting laws | KiraLerner/AZ Mirror

When Georgia legislators pushed through a restrictive voting bill during the 2021 session, Bartow County election supervisor Joseph Kirk said he felt frustrated and sidelined. Lawmakers largely didn’t take election officials’ views into account, he said, and what resulted was a law that included a number of provisions that he said election officials believe are “to the detriment of voters.”So when Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature tried to pass another voting bill in the session this year that included provisions he didn’t agree with, Kirk made sure to speak out. “Whatever I could do, I did do,” said Kirk, who serves as the treasurer of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials. Across the country, election officials this legislative season made their voices heard in hearings and through appeals to lawmakers, urging them not to enact voting laws that they saw as unfeasible or unnecessary, or that would ultimately make their jobs more difficult. In crucial battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, and Florida, they succeeded in defeating legislation that would have hurt voting access or the integrity of elections. In Georgia, Kirk disagreed with a portion of the 2022 bill that would have changed chain-of-custody requirements for ballots and would have required what he saw as unnecessary security precautions, so he spoke to his lawmakers and in front of committees and sent in written statements.

Full Article: Election officials in Arizona, other battleground states, stand up against restrictive voting laws

Paper Ballots Helped Secure the 2020 Election — What Will 2022 Look Like? | Derek Tisler and urquoise Baker/Brennan Center for Justice

Even with unpre­ced­en­ted chal­lenges and historic turnout in 2020, elec­tion offi­cials across the coun­try admin­istered an elec­tion that the federal govern­ment’s cyber­se­cur­ity agency called the “most secure in Amer­ican history.” Many factors led to this result, from close coordin­a­tion and prepar­a­tion between federal, state, and local agen­cies, to the expan­sion of voting options that reduced stress on elec­tion systems. But one of the most signi­fic­ant was the rapid trans­ition in recent years to voting on paper ballots, a trend that is set to continue into the 2022 and 2024 elec­tions. Experts widely recog­nize paper ballots as one of the most import­ant secur­ity meas­ures that states can adopt. When selec­tions are recor­ded on paper, voters can easily verify that their ballot accur­ately reflects their choices. Paper ballots also facil­it­ate post-elec­tion audits, where elec­tion work­ers can check the paper records against elec­tronic vote totals to confirm that voting machines are work­ing as inten­ded. For example, by repla­cing paper­less voting machines before the 2020 elec­tion, Geor­gia was able to conduct a hand-count of every ballot cast, confirm­ing the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion outcome and dispelling conspir­acy theor­ies about the state’s voting machines. This would not have been possible in Geor­gia as recently as 2018.

Full Article: Paper Ballots Helped Secure the 2020 Election — What Will 2022 Look Like? | Brennan Center for Justice

National: U.S. groups urge social media companies to fight ‘Big Lie,” election disinformation | Reuters

Social media companies including Facebook (FB.O), Twitter , YouTube and TikTok must act now to blunt the effect of false information – including Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that his 2020 defeat was the result of fraud – in this year’s U.S. midterm congressional elections, rights groups said on Thursday. Social media platforms backed away from policies designed to fight election disinformation after the 2020 presidential race won by Democratic President Joe Biden, more than 100 advocacy groups, led by Common Cause, said in a letter to social media executives. A surge of disinformation then led to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Trump and that disinformation continues to multiply, they said, citing research and public reporting. “High-profile disinformation spreaders and other bad actors are continuing to use social media platforms to disseminate messages that undermine trust in elections,” read a letter sent to chief executives and signed by more than 100 groups lead by Common Cause.

Full Article: U.S. groups urge social media companies to fight ‘Big Lie,” election disinformation | Reuters

National: Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republicans, Including McCarthy | Luke Broadwater and Emily Cochrane/The New York Times

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued subpoenas on Thursday to five Republican members of Congress, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, a significant escalation as it digs deeper into the role Republicans played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The panel’s move was an extraordinary step in the annals of congressional investigations — a committee targeting sitting lawmakers, including a top party leader, who have refused to cooperate in a major inquiry into the largest attack on the Capitol in centuries. It reflected the belief among investigators that a group of Republican members of Congress loyal to former President Donald J. Trump had played crucial roles in the events that led to the assault on their own institution, and may have hidden what they know about Mr. Trump’s intentions and actions before, during and after the attack. Mr. McCarthy, the Californian who is in line to be speaker if his party wins the House majority in November, had a heated phone call with Mr. Trump during the riot, in which he implored the president to call off the mob invading the Capitol in his name. When Mr. Trump declined, according to Representative Jaime Herrera Buetler, a Washington Republican who has said Mr. McCarthy recounted the exchange to her, Mr. Trump sided with the rioters, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

Full Article: Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republicans, Including McCarthy – The New York Times