Author Archives: Warren Stewart

National: Talk of martial law, Insurrection Act draws notice of Jan. 6 committee | Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger/The Washington Post

Full Article: Talk of martial law, Insurrection Act draws notice of Jan. 6 committee – The Washington Post

National: Trump’s lies helped prompt one critical election reform | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Full Article: Trump’s lies helped prompt one critical election reform – The Washington Post

National: GAO: EAC Can Decide on State Funding for Election Officials’ Security | Lisbeth Perez/MeriTalk

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has been given full discretion to decide if states can allocate funds from the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) to provide security services for state or local election officials, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In December 2021, the EAC reached out to GAO to determine whether states may use certain grant funds made available to them under HAVA to provide “physical security services and social media threat monitoring” in connection with election activities. HAVA authorizes the use of grant funds for states to improve the administration of elections for Federal office. However, the law does not explicitly authorize nor prohibit the use of funds for security services. GAO stated in its decision that “if not otherwise specified in the law, an expense is authorized where it bears a reasonable, logical relationship to the purpose of the appropriation to be charged.” “Here, a decision to allow the use of grant funds for the physical security services and social media threat monitoring would be within EAC’s legitimate range of discretion,” the report says. “Congress vested in EAC the authority to administer the HAVA grants [but] also vested in EAC the authority to determine whether a particular grant expenditure helps ‘improv[e] the administration of elections for Federal office.’”

Full Article: GAO: EAC Can Decide on State Funding for Election Officials’ Security – MeriTalk

National: Digital Response launches new election program | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

The U.S. Digital Response, the nonprofit civic-tech group that sprung up during the COVID-19 pandemic to assist local governments with online service delivery, is adding a new program focused on developing tools to help election officials. The effort will see the organization’s engineers and managers work with county- and local-level election administrators on using open-source technologies to build products like poll-location search tools, election information websites and applications that help officials manage poll workers. “What we specialize in is simple tools that make an impact that are quick,” Priya Garg, one of the heads of the organization’s new elections program, told StateScoop. U.S. Digital Response has offered its assistance to election administrators since its founding in 2020, when it developed poll-locator tools for tribal voters in Arizona and built an app for Harris County, Texas, to recruit and organize poll workers in the country’s third-biggest voting jurisdiction. The beefed-up elections program is the product of a major grant USDR recently received from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit group of election-minded technologists that received $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, in 2020. U.S. Digital Response leaders declined to disclose the value of the grant, only saying that it was a “multi-million-dollar” award capable of sustaining the group’s work for several years.

Full Article: U.S. Digital Response launches new election program

National: Cyber agency director says election security a top priority ahead of midterms | The Hill

Jen Easterly, the head of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told lawmakers on Thursday that election security is a top priority for her agency, as it anticipates Russian interference in the upcoming midterm elections. Easterly, who was testifying before the House Committee on Appropriations on the agency’s budget request, said midterm election security “is obviously one of our top priorities,” adding CISA was focused on guiding states and localities to combat disinformation campaigns — a tactic the Russians are expected to deploy. “We are here to help and make sure that all state and local election directors have the resources that they need to ensure the integrity of their election security,” Easterly said. Easterly was responding to a question from Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), who asked how the agency plans to defend the integrity of the election given previous attempts from Russians to penetrate voter registration databases and steal personal data.

Full Article: Cyber agency director says election security a top priority ahead of midterms | The Hill

National: Mark Meadows’ 2,319 text messages reveal Trump’s inner circle communications before and after January 6 | Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stuart/CNN

Full Article: Mark Meadows’ 2,319 text messages reveal Trump’s inner circle communications before and after January 6 – CNNPolitics

National: GOP lawmakers were deeply involved in Trump plans to overturn election, new evidence suggests | Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu/Politico

Republican members of Congress were heavily involved in calls and meetings with former President Donald Trump and his top aides as they devised a strategy to overturn the election in December 2020, according to new evidence filed in federal court late Friday. Deposition excerpts filed by the Jan 6. select committee — part of an effort to force former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to appear for an interview — suggest that some of Trump’s top allies in Congress were frequently present in meetings where a handful of strategies to prevent then-President-elect Joe Biden from taking office were discussed, including efforts to replace the leadership of the Justice Department with figures who would sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election. Lawmakers who attended meetings, in person or by phone, included Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and numerous members of the House Freedom Caucus, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows who provided key testimony about the conversations and meetings Meadows had in December 2020.

Full Article: GOP lawmakers were deeply involved in Trump plans to overturn election, new evidence suggests – POLITICO

National: New Details Underscore House G.O.P. Role in Jan. 6 Planning | Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Full Article: New Details Underscore House G.O.P. Role in Jan. 6 Planning – The New York Times

National: In election misinformation fight, ‘2020 changed everything’ | Amanda Seitz/Associated Press

Beth Bowers grew up in the 1960s and 1970s with parents who marched in protests, wrote letters to members of Congress and voted in elections big and small. Her father, a World War II veteran, and her mother, an educational counselor, did not use social media sites in their lifetimes. But Bowers is sure they would be disheartened to see how easily falsehoods about the U.S. elections are disseminated online to millions and millions of people. That’s why the Evanston, Illinois, mom spends a few hours each week scouring Facebook groups for conspiracy theories or lies as part of a nationwide volunteer effort to debunk misinformation about voting. “The good thing about this work is, it’d be so easy to become incredibly cynical and hopeless, but I think we feel like this is something we can do and make a difference,” Bowers, 59, said in a phone interview. As voters ready for hundreds of elections of local and national importance this year, officials and voting rights advocates are bracing for a repeat of the misinformation that overwhelmed the 2020 presidential race and seeded distrust about the legitimacy of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. It culminated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by angry supporters of then-President Donald Trump who believed his lies that the election was stolen from him.

Full Article: In election misinformation fight, ‘2020 changed everything’ | AP News

Russian Cyberattack Could Capitalize on Election Doubts | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

As the war in Ukraine continues, the United States is warning that Russia and aligned criminal groups may launch cyberattacks against critical American infrastructure, potentially including election systems ahead of November’s midterms. Election officials and cybersecurity experts worry that a disruption from Russia or other foreign actors may capitalize on plummeting confidence in election integrity among American voters, fueled by myths and disinformation that have saturated the country. Even with new protections, heightened awareness and information-sharing across all levels of government, widespread skepticism about election integrity makes a potential Russian cyberattack more concerning, said Noah Praetz, cofounder of the Elections Group, which consults with state and local election officials. An attack on a key jurisdiction, such as a county in a swing state, could put enough doubt in voters’ minds that the results can’t be trusted, even if votes weren’t changed in the attack, he said. The consequences of a cyber event, even if backup plans work, are probably worse than they were four years ago because confidence in elections is down,” said Praetz, who previously ran elections in Cook County, Illinois. “It’s a pretty precarious situation for our country right now.”

Full Article: Russian Cyberattack Could Capitalize on Election Doubts | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: Democrats ask officials in Florida, Arizona, Texas and Ohio details about election disinformation | Jacqueline Alemany/The Washington Post

Full Article: Democrats ask officials in Florida, Arizona, Texas and Ohio details about election disinformation – The Washington Post

National: Trump Allies Continue Legal Drive to Erase His Loss, Stoking Election Doubts | Maggie Haberman, Alexandra Berzon and Michael S. Schmidt/The New York Times

A group of President Donald J. Trump’s allies and associates spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election based on his lie that he was the true winner. Now, some of the same confidants who tried and failed to invalidate the results based on a set of bogus legal theories are pushing an even wilder sequel: that by “decertifying” the 2020 vote in key states, the outcome can still be reversed. In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Mr. Trump — including the lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. Some of those allies are casting their work as a precursor to reinstating the former president. The efforts have failed to change any statewide outcomes or uncover mass election fraud. Legal experts dismiss them as preposterous, noting that there is no plausible scenario under the Constitution for returning Mr. Trump to office.

Full Article: Trump Allies Are Still Feeding the False 2020 Election Narrative – The New York Times

National: Trump-Aligned Sheriffs Target Election Officials | Jessica Pishko/Bolts

Christopher Schmaling, the sheriff of Racine County, Wisconsin, told the reporters gathered in his office on October 28, 2021 that he’d called a press conference “so that our citizens can better understand how the election law was broken.” Standing at a podium with large screens behind him blaring “ELECTION INTEGRITY”, Schmaling warned that the allegations might be difficult to follow at first. “This isn’t your typical criminal investigation, it’s complex—to be quite frank, it’s a bit challenging to understand at first,” he told the room full of reporters. But Schmaling promised that by the end of his office’s presentation, the public would “see firsthand that the election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered by the members of the W.E.C., the Wisconsin Elections Commission.” Schmaling and Michael Luell, a sergeant in the sheriff’s office who had investigated a complaint about election malfeasance, spent more than an hour running reporters through a PowerPoint presentation, outlining what they claimed was devastating proof that state election commissioners had committed a crime. At first, the press event, which the sheriff’s office streamed live on its Facebook page, sounded more like a civics lesson than a criminal case, as Schmaling explained the makeup of the state’s election commission—six commissioners serving staggered five year terms, appointed by either legislative leaders or the governor.

Full Article: Trump-Aligned Sheriffs Target Election Officials | Bolts

National: Election Officials Face Their Biggest Threat Yet — Jail Time | Ryan Teague Beckwith/Bloomberg

Over the last two years, local elections officials across the U.S. have faced a deadly pandemic, shortages of funding and workers, false claims of election fraud and even death threats. Now they could face prison, too. Under a spate of laws proposed or passed in at least 10 states, elections administrators could see criminal charges and penalties that include thousands of dollars in fines or even prison time for technical infractions of election statutes. In Arizona, a new law makes it a felony, punishable by up to 2 1/2 years in prison, followed by loss of voting rights or gun ownership, for an elections official to send a mail-in ballot to any voter who has not requested one. It’s now a felony in Kentucky, with a possible five-year prison term, for an official to accept a donation or “anything of value” to assist with an election. In Florida, elections officials could face up to $25,000 in fines if they leave a ballot drop box unsupervised. Broad new laws in Iowa and Texas make it a felony, with prison terms of up to five years in Iowa and up to two years in Texas, for elections officials who fail to follow a number of election procedures, while similar bills are pending in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Full Article: Republican Voter Laws Threaten U.S. Election Officials With Jail Time – Bloomberg

National: Voting rights for disabled people under attack from new election laws | Deborah Barfield Berry and Rick Rouan/USA Today

Teri Saltzman said she took her time to look over her ballot at home in Pflugerville, Texas, during the state’s recent primary, using specialized glasses that magnified the small print. But Saltzman, who is legally blind, still missed the lines on the envelope flap that required her to fill in identification numbers needed for election officials to count her vote. “To this day, I am unsure that my vote was counted,” said Saltzman, 59. The addition of the lines was among the election changes lawmakers approved last year in Texas – one of several states where advocates say new laws could have an outsized impact on voters with disabilities. They worry that stricter identification requirements, restrictions on voting by mail, reducing the number of drop boxes and other changes could hurt access for people with disabilities in local and midterm elections. “We’re not usually the target of voter suppression. Often people with disabilities just get caught in the crosshairs,’’ said Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager for the National Disability Rights Network. Concerns about the fallout from those new laws come after turnout among voters with disabilities surged in the 2020 election. As election officials took steps to make the election safer during the pandemic, they also made it easier for people with disabilities to vote.

Full Article: Voting rights for disabled people under attack from new election laws