Warren Stewart – Page 106 – The Voting News

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

May 20, 2022

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

May 20, 2022

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

May 20, 2022

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

May 20, 2022

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

Arizona would likely see recounts after every election under popular bill | Jen Fifield/AZ Mirror

May 20, 2022

Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, would likely be required to recount all ballots cast in every election moving forward if a proposed change to state law passes. The bill, awaiting a final vote as early as today in the Arizona Legislature after garnering bipartisan support, would vastly widen the margin of votes between candidates that triggers an automatic recount in primary and general elections, for almost every type of race. The change would prompt more frequent recounts in large and small counties alike. In the 2020 general election, it would have triggered two statewide recounts and two countywide recounts in Maricopa County, including the presidential race which Joe Biden won narrowly in the state. The stated goal is to build voter confidence in election outcomes in a battleground state where margins are often tight and recounts are currently rarely allowed. State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, who introduced Senate Bill 1008, says it would still only require recounts on races that are very close. “Here is an opportunity to help reinforce the process,” Ugenti-Rita said. “To give the voters confidence that, when races are razor tight, we make sure they were counted accurately.”

Full Article: Arizona would likely see recounts after every election under popular bill

One Colorado Race Will Be About Voters’ Faith in Elections. It’s Not Looking Good. | Jennifer Oldham/Politico

May 20, 2022

Spring snowflakes floated outside wall-to-wall windows framing Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s downtown Denver office as she reached for one of her two cell phones. She was looking for a video in which MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, the Donald Trump ally and conspiracy theorist, accused her of murder. “Jena Griswold is a criminal beyond all criminals,” said Lindell on his online show, the “Lindell Report,” which broadcasts on frankspeech.com, his face in one box on the screen adjacent to another with the face of his co-host Brannon Howse. “I got news for you, Jena, it’s too late, you already committed a murder and we caught you.” The statement caught the attention of Howse, who paused from moving things around his desk and asked: “A murder? A murder? A murder?” “It’s a para … a … a … it’s an analogy,” Lindell responded. This, Griswold says, is a large part of what has made her job so difficult over the past two years. “It seems fantastic, the fact that [Lindell] called me a murderer,” said Griswold, 37, the first Democrat to win secretary of state in Colorado in more than 50 years. “Except it generates tons of death threats.”

Full Article: One Colorado Race Will Be About Voters’ Faith in Elections. It’s Not Looking Good. – POLITICO

Colorado: Mesa County District Attorney finds human error behind election audit used to prop up fraud claims | Amanda Pampuro/Courthouse News Service

May 20, 2022

Following a criminal investigation, the Mesa County, Colorado, District Attorney’s Office concluded human error, not criminal fraud, caused anomalies identified in an election audit used to prop up county elections chief Tina Peters’ claims of voter fraud. The audit, compiled at Peters’ request, found three suspicious events occurred in October during the 2020 election and in March 2021 during the Grand Junction municipal election. After ruling out county elections staff, the report suggested these events were triggered by either Dominion Voting Systems staff or an unknown remote party via the internet. Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein disagreed with the audit’s conclusion during a presentation to the Board of County Commissioners on Thursday. “We can prove what actually happened, and that was human error,” Rubinstein said. “We have evidence that [elections manager] Sandra Brown did both. We have no evidence that what Sandra Brown did was in ill intent or a criminal offense. We find no evidence that it affected the election at all.” Brown was fired from her position this past November. Rubenstein said neither Brown nor the audit report’s authors, Walter Daugherity and Jeffrey O’Donnell, agreed to speak with investigators. In a statement provided to Rubenstein, O’Donnell said he declined to cooperate because “the report clearly states that it was written in defense of Tina Peters and others’ legal cases.”

Full Article: Mesa County DA finds human error behind election audit used to prop up fraud claims | Courthouse News Service

Georgia county under scrutiny after claim of post-election breach | Emma Brown and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

May 20, 2022

A former elections supervisor in rural Coffee County, Ga., has told The Washington Post that she opened her offices to a businessman active in the election-denier movement to help investigate results she did not trust in the weeks after President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat. Trump had carried the conservative county by 40 points, but elections supervisor Misty Hampton said she remained suspicious of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia. Hampton made a video that went viral soon after the election, claiming to show that Dominion Voting System machines, the ones used in her county, could be manipulated. She said in interviews that she hoped the Georgia businessman who visited later, Scott Hall, and others who accompanied him could help identify vulnerabilities and prove “that this election was not done true and correct.” Hampton said she could not remember when the visit occurred or what Hall and the others did when they were there. She said they did not enter a room that housed the county’s touch-screen voting machines, but she said she did not know whether they entered the room housing the election management system server, the central computer used to tally election results. “I’m not a babysitter,” she told The Post. Hall, who owns a bail bond business, did not respond to requests for comment.

Full Article: Coffee County, Georgia, under scrutiny after claim of post-election breach – The Washington Post

Michigan election chief: Trump suggested I be arrested for treason and executed | ynthia McFadden, Kevin Monahan and Alexandra Chaidez/NBC

May 20, 2022

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s top election official, faced an onslaught of threats after the 2020 presidential election for refusing to overturn results that showed Joe Biden had won the state. In those hectic weeks, she says she also received an especially disturbing piece of information: President Donald Trump suggested in a White House meeting that she should be arrested for treason and executed. Benson, a Democrat, revealed the alleged remark for the first time in an interview with NBC News. She said she learned of it from a source familiar with Trump’s White House meeting. “It was surreal and I felt sad,” Benson said, recalling her reaction. “It certainly amplified the heightened sense of anxiety, stress and uncertainty of that time — which I still feel in many ways — because it showed there was no bottom to how far he (Trump) and his supporters were willing to stoop to overturn or discredit a legitimate election.” Reached for comment, Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said: “I have it on good authority that Secretary Benson knowingly lied throughout her interview with NBC News.” Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, is now locked in an election fight with a Republican candidate who parrots Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. In speeches and on her podcast, Kristina Karamo has said the election was “rigged and stolen” and “Secretary of State Benson should go to jail.”

Full Article: Michigan election chief: Trump suggested I be arrested for treason and executed

Nevada: Lawsuit seeks to change how public can observe vote counting in Washoe County | Mark Robison/Reno Gazette Journal

May 20, 2022

A lawsuit to decide just how closely the public can observe the vote-counting process will be heard Wednesday in Washoe County District Court. Robert Beadles is funding the two-pronged effort – one here and one in Clark County – which he says he’s doing to create more transparency in elections. A California transplant who moved to Reno in 2019, he was recently elected to the Washoe County Republican Party central committee. He’s spoken frequently at public meetings about widespread voter fraud in Nevada, despite the Secretary of State’s investigation finding there was no evidence of such fraud in the 2020 general election. “This isn’t one of those things where it’s Republican or Democrat,” Beadles said in a phone call with the RGJ. “It’s literally for every single legal voter and so that anybody who wants to make sure their vote is counted legitimately can be a part of the process. There’s just too much secrecy when you look into how our election system actually works.” Attorneys for the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada filed documents opposing the efforts, saying they would “upend Nevada’s election administration just a few weeks before the primary election, on a legal theory that was uniformly rejected by Nevada courts prior to the 2020 election and has no basis in Nevada law.”

Full Article: Election security: Suit seeks changes in vote counting observation

New York: ES&S Uses Undergraduate Project to Lobby Legislature on Risky Voting Machines | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

May 20, 2022

The New York State Legislature is considering a bill that would ban all-in-one voting machines. That is, voting machines that can both print votes on a ballot and scan and count votes from a ballot – all in the same paper path. This is an important safeguard because such machines, if they are hacked by the installation of fraudulent software, can change or add votes that the voter did not intend and never got a chance to see on paper. One voting machine company, Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), which makes an all-in-one voting machine, the ExpressVote XL, is lobbying hard against this bill. As part of its lobbying package, ES&S is claiming that “Rochester Institute of Technology researchers found zero attacks” on the ExpressVote XL, based on an article (included in ES&S’s lobbying package) from Rochester Institute of Technology entitled “RIT cybersecurity student researchers put voting machine security to the test.“ If this were actually a scientific article, one could critique it as actual science. But it’s not a scientific paper: The article is written by Scott Bureau, Senior Communications Specialist, RIT Marketing and Communications in the RIT public relations department. The article describes an undergraduate student “capstone project.” The students were interviewed by ES&S, allowed ES&S to inspect their testing site, and then signed a nondisclosure agreement with ES&S. The students made up two attack scenarios, then spent 10 days trying to find attacks. They found some vulnerabilities, but not one that could change votes.

Full Article: ES&S Uses Undergraduate Project to Lobby New York Legislature on Risky Voting Machines

Pennsylvania Department of State addresses three Election Day issues, including two in midstate counties | Robby Brod/WITF

May 20, 2022

Pennsylvania’s primaries mostly went smoothly, but there were three incidents that prompted state officials to respond. Leigh Chapman, Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state, said about 22,000 mail-in ballots in Lancaster County printed by a new vendor had a code that couldn’t be read by the scanner. “To address this, the department recommends the best practice of assigning two-person teams to handmark new ballots. One will read out the marking from the original ballot; the second person will mark the ballot,” she said. “There’s also an observer who watches the process to make sure the re-marked ballot is accurate.” She said it will take “days” to count the affected ballots, which involves hand-counting them and putting them through the county-owned optical scan machine. Chapman said other counties in Pennsylvania use the same vendor, but the issue was contained to the Lancaster County ballots. Election officials in Berks County reported programming errors with their new electronic poll books. As a result, some polling places opened late, and lines were reported at about two dozen precincts.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Department of State addresses three Election Day issues, including two in midstate counties | WITF

Pennsylvania: Inside the Lancaster County operation where staff are remarking 16,000 mail ballots that could decide the GOP U.S. Senate primary | Gillian McGoldrick/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

May 20, 2022

The fate of Tuesday’s Republican U.S. Senate primary race has come down to two of the state’s most populous counties — Lancaster and Allegheny — where there are still potentially significant numbers of ballots uncounted in a contest that’s still too close to call. Lancaster County is one of the most populated Republican strongholds in the state, meaning the remaining Republican ballots — approximately 5,500, according to the county’s GOP chair — likely will help decide the outcome of this race. Candidates Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick were still within recount territory — within 0.5% of one another — as of Wednesday afternoon. In Allegheny County, a small number of votes are still uncounted — about 2%. But in a race this close, any of those votes could change the outcome of the election. Those results aren’t expected to be posted until Friday, according to county officials. Christa Miller, the chief elections clerk in Lancaster County, her staff and elections volunteers, are responsible for remarking 16,000 ballots that wouldn’t scan on Tuesday due to a printer error.

Full Article: Inside the Lancaster County operation where staff are remarking 16,000 mail ballots that could decide the GOP U.S. Senate primary | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Wisconsin judge skeptical of election grant arguments | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

May 20, 2022

A judge on Tuesday voiced skepticism about a lawsuit challenging the legality of private grant money awarded to Madison to help run the 2020 election, calling some of the arguments “ridiculous,” a “stretch” and “close to preposterous.” The lawsuit argues that private grants given to Madison from a group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg amounted to illegal bribery. The Wisconsin Elections Commission in December rejected that complaint, and this lawsuit is an appeal of that decision. Four nearly identical lawsuits are also pending in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha. The case in Madison was the first to hold arguments. Three Wisconsin courts have previously rejected similar lawsuits arguing that the grants were illegal. Similar lawsuits filed in other swing states have also been rejected. Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke referenced those rulings when he questioned attorney Erick Kaardal Tuesday. Kardaal said the commission got it wrong and Madison should not have been allowed to use a portion of the grant money to pay for absentee ballot drop boxes because, he said, they are illegal, based on a Waukesha County circuit court ruling issued after the election. The Wisconsin Supreme Court is currently weighing an appeal of that ruling.

Full Article: Wisconsin judge skeptical of election grant arguments | AP News

Wyoming: Crook County may have to reduce polling locations due to continued concerns over election integrity | Hugh Cook/Wyoming Public Media

May 20, 2022

Skepticism about election integrity and voter fraud persists in Wyoming, even though local and state officials say elections are safe and secure. These beliefs could lead Crook County to reduce the number of polling locations. “If people continue to be concerned about election integrity, then we would have to shut down some polling places so that we could monitor them closer,” explained Crook County Clerk Linda Fritz. There are several factors that must be taken into consideration to provide enhanced security measures, which would be costly to the county. “If the community is concerned about the security of the machines, we would have to go to buildings that are monitored daily with cameras or that have staff there to know that they’ve not been, [that] they’re locked in one room that no one else has access to until election day, like the city halls,” she said. “Crook County wouldn’t have that ability in some of the rural areas because there isn’t either internet access so that we could be monitoring them or the expense alone. To put up that kind of security would almost require us to shut down some of those rural polling places.” That extra cost, Fritz said, could reduce the 13 polling locations countywide to five or six locations. To provide a greater level of security, some counties have invested in game cameras to monitor polling sites to alleviate concerns about alleged wrongdoing, she said. But there’s no evidence of any widespread voter fraud in Crook County or Wyoming. For the level of fraud to take place that some allege has occurred, there would have to be widespread involvement and complicity with the system, she explained.

Full Article: Crook County may have to reduce polling locations due to continued concerns over election integrity | Wyoming Public Media

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

May 13, 2022

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

May 13, 2022

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

May 13, 2022

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

May 13, 2022

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

Arizona justices to decide if public has right to see Cyber Ninja election audit records | Michael McDaniel/Courthouse News Service

May 13, 2022

The Arizona Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over whether the state Senate has the authority to conceal records from an audit of the 2020 presidential election. American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, filed suit in 2021 after Arizona Republicans contracted the private firm Cyber Ninjas to audit the results of the 2020 election. The now-defunct Cyber Ninjas found President Joe Biden was lawfully elected but identified what it considered to be 53,304 questionable ballots. Maricopa County investigated the authenticity of those ballots and determined that only 37 may have been illegally cast. The case landed before the Arizona Supreme Court after the Arizona Court of Appeals and a trial judge rejected the state Senate’s assertion that legislative privilege granted some documents protection against disclosure. The state’s high court has barred the court-ordered release of the records while it considers the case. Andy Gaona of Coppersmith Brockelman, representing American Oversight before the court Tuesday, argued that legislative privilege is not a political tool to hide information. “[Legislative] privilege is not intended to benefit individual legislators; it is not intended to protect them from embarrassment,” Gaona said. “It is not intended to allow them to shield communications as they see fit. What it’s intended to do is to benefit the public by ensuring that their elected representatives — and this is what Appeals says — are not held either criminally or civilly liable for their actions.”

Full Article: Arizona justices to decide if public has right to see Cyber Ninja election audit records | Courthouse News Service

Colorado judge bars indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from overseeing 2022 elections | Timothy Bella and Emma Brown/The Washington Post

May 13, 2022

A Colorado judge on Tuesday ruled that Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R), a supporter of former president Donald Trump who has embraced election-fraud conspiracy theories, is barred from overseeing elections in her home county because of her indictment for allegedly tampering with voting equipment. Peters, who is running for the GOP nomination for secretary of state in Colorado, had already been prohibited by a judge from overseeing last year’s local elections. Mesa County District Judge Valerie Robison ruled on a lawsuit brought this year by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) that called for Peters and deputy Belinda Knisley to be barred from overseeing this year’s midterm elections and the upcoming Mesa County primary. The embattled clerk is facing multiple investigations, and 10 felony and misdemeanor counts from a grand jury indictment, stemming from allegations of election equipment security breach and campaign finance violations. Knisley was also indicted by the grand jury and suspended from her county position last year. “Based on the circumstances of this case … the Court determines that the Petitioners have met the burden of showing that Peters and Knisley have committed a neglect of duty and are unable to perform the duties of the Mesa County Designated Election Official,” Robison wrote in her ruling.

Full Article: Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, indicted Colorado GOP official, barred from overseeing 2022 elections – The Washington Post

Colorado passes election security bill inspired by clerk accused of tampering | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

May 13, 2022

Legislators in Colorado on Tuesday passed a bill aimed at stopping insider threats against election administration, particularly the technology used to process and certify ballots. The bill, which passed with bipartisan support, makes several changes to how county election offices safeguard and provide access to their systems, including requiring continuous video surveillance of all voting systems components, and installing key-card access to rooms where equipment is kept. It also prohibits the unauthorized copying of ballot-machine hard drives, and makes it a felony to tamper with voting systems, publish devices’ passwords online or give unauthorized individuals access to any election equipment. The legislation, which now goes to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk, was inspired directly by the case of Tina Peters, the clerk and recorder of votes in Mesa County who is currently under indictment for several of those exact offenses. Peters, who has openly embraced lies promoted by former President Donald Trump and others about the 2020 election, was accused last year of allowing an unauthorized individual to observe a secure software update on her county’s ballot-processing machines, and letting that person make copies of hard drives and passwords, images of which were displayed a few months later at a conspiracy-theorist conference hosted by pillow manufacturer Mike Lindell.

Full Article: Colorado passes election security bill inspired by clerk accused of tampering

Colorado: Adams County clerk wears bulletproof vest due to increase in threats | Pattrik Perez/The Denver Channel

May 13, 2022

Following the 2020 presidential election, Adams County’s top elections official says he’s had to adopt additional security measures because of threats from conspiracy theorists. “When I left the Marine Corps, I thought that was the last time that I was going to be wearing body armor,” said Adams County Clerk and Recorder Josh Zygielbaum. “And here I am again, almost 15 years later and not as nearly as good a shape as I was then, but, you know, still wearing body armor.” As first reported by ABC News, Zygielbaum says the decision to wear a bulletproof vest was made because of increasing threats, both direct and indirect, from election deniers, which concerns him and his staff. “I think the worst one that we’ve received was somebody telling us that they would see us on a battlefield and they would walk away from it,” Zygielbaum said. Some of the security improvements he’s implementing include a remodel to his elections office, which will better protect his employees from the public once complete.

Full Article: Adams County clerk wears bulletproof vest due to increase in threats

Georgia: Judge says Perdue’s election fraud claims are ‘conjecture and paranoia’ | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

May 13, 2022

A Fulton County judge has rejected former U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s request to inspect ballots from the November 2020 election, saying his evidence of voting fraud amounts to “conjecture and paranoia.” Perdue’s lawsuit claimed fraud had cost him a chance to defeat Democrat Jon Ossoff in November 2020. The two candidates advanced to a January 2021 runoff, which Ossoff won. Perdue’s lawsuit cited some of the same discredited allegations of fraud that former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said allowed Joe Biden to win the presidential election in Georgia. On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney dismissed the lawsuit and Perdue’s request for a “forensic inspection” of absentee ballots. The judge said Perdue’s claims consisted of “speculation, conjecture and paranoia — sufficient fodder for talk shows, op-ed pieces and social media platforms, but far short of what would legally justify a court taking such action.” Perdue issued a statement criticizing the ruling. “Today’s ruling is another example of how the establishment continues to cover up what happened in 2020, and we will vigorously appeal the decision,” he said. “Courts across the country have been dismissing cases not based on evidence, but because of procedural nonsense.”

Full Article: Judge: Perdue’s election fraud claims are ‘conjecture and paranoia’

Michigan: How a political activist convinced 3 people to tamper with voting machine | Francis X. Donnelly/The Detroit News

May 13, 2022

It began with a phone call to the wrong person last year. It ended with three residents seizing the voting machine of a tiny northern Michigan town. They were recruited by a political activist who, among other things, said she believed a satellite owned by the Vatican contained evidence that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, according to her interview with police. The men disassembled the vote tabulator but couldn’t reach its software and, even if they had, it didn’t have any information. It had long been given to the county elections office. b“I can’t believe anything this ridiculous would happen in Cross Village,” said Diana Keller, the township clerk. “There were some idiots who didn’t know what they were doing, or knew but didn’t care.” The ringleader, Tera Jackson, 56, who wasn’t present when the men handled the machine, was arrested and pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of creating a disturbance. She received a delayed sentence in February. The three men, who police believe were duped by Jackson, weren’t charged. Neither Jackson nor the men would comment for this story. The outcome left few people happy. Keller’s brother, Steve, who is the town supervisor, said Jackson was barely punished and more people should have been charged.

Full Article: Political activist convinced 3 people to tamper with Michigan voting machine

Michigan authorities expand probe into voting machine access | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

May 13, 2022

The Michigan State Police have seized a tabulator in a township in Barry County as part of an ongoing investigation into unauthorized access to voting machines. Jamie Knight, the supervisor in Irving Township, disclosed the seizure in a Thursday statement in which she said authorities, including Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office, had obtained a search warrant and executed it on April 29. … Investigators had “expanded” a probe that began with a complaint in Roscommon County “to other counties,” said Lt. Derrick Carroll, a spokesman for the Michigan State Police. “This is an open investigation, and we will continue to investigate allegations of unauthorized access to tabulation machines until we have exhausted all leads,” Carroll said in a statement. “This alleged unauthorized access did not, in any way, affect the 2020 election.” Carroll didn’t specify how many counties were now entangled in the investigation or why the probe had expanded. n February, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson asked the Attorney General’s office and the Michigan State Police to investigate reports that an “unnamed third party” was granted access to voting technology in Roscommon County.

Full Article: Michigan authorities expand probe into voting machine access

Nevada: Nye County’s planned switch to hand-counted paper ballots for general election raises alarms | Michael Lyle/Nevada Current

May 13, 2022

Nye County is poised to appoint a new county clerk in August and pave the way for hand-counting paper ballots in the 2022 general election, a move election watchers worry could create a logistical nightmare that could spill over to a congressional race and even statewide elections. Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant helped convince Nye commissioners to make the switch, even as Nye County Clerk Sandra Merlino decried a hand-counting method as prone to error. Marchant blamed his defeat for the 2020 race in fourth congressional district, an area that includes Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln counties, on unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. Kristopher Dahir, a Republican running against Marchant in the 2022 primary for secretary of state, criticized Marchant for creating “chaos” adding that it “almost seems like they want an insurrection instead of an election.” “I don’t believe he lost because of fraud. I think he lost because he lost,” Dahir said. “I think when it comes to what we are doing now, I think he’s doing it to try to get elected. He’s doing this to show, ‘I’m the fighter, I’m the guy.’ I don’t believe we tear this place apart to try to fix something.”

Full Article: Nye’s planned switch to hand-counted paper ballots for general election raises alarms – Nevada Current

North Carolina: Partisan attacks are undermining the efforts of election workers | Rusty Jacobs/North Carolina Public Radio

May 13, 2022

Annie Risku thought she had a lot to celebrate on election night, back in 2020. She had just taken over as Wayne County’s director of elections that July. And despite a pandemic, the state experienced historic voter turnout. In Wayne County, Risku’s office successfully processed more than 10 times the typical number of absentee-by-mail ballots. “We were so focused on COVID, preparing for the pandemic, keeping the voters safe, keeping their hands clean, keeping them from breathing on one another,” Risku said with a wry laugh during a recent interview in her downtown Goldsboro office. Then came the wave of intense skepticism about the elections process, including from voters in this county that Donald Trump carried. She says it caught her a little off-guard. “We had, after 2020, a lot of individuals who didn’t trust that we had actually counted all the votes,” Risku explained. One woman demanded to enter her office to watch Risku count ballots, even though no such thing was happening or ever happens. Ballot counting is conducted according to state law in a prescribed manner and in public view. For example, county boards begin processing mail-in ballots at weekly meetings starting five weeks before Primary and General Election Day. And county boards hold public meetings to process ballots during the 10-day canvas period after Election Day, which culminates in the certification of official results.

Full Article: Partisan attacks are undermining the efforts of North Carolina’s election workers | WUNC

Oregon: Two-thirds of Clackamas County ballots will need to be duplicated by hand due to printing error | Jamie Goldberg/The Oregonian

May 13, 2022

The vast majority of ballots that Clackamas County election officials sent to voters have defective barcodes making them unreadable by voting counting machines, an error that will cost the county extra money and delay election results. County Clerk Sherry Hall said Wednesday that about two-thirds of the ballots that have been returned to the county so far are marred by the error and require that the voter’s choice in each race be duplicated by hand. The county is preparing for a similar percentage of ballots returned in the coming days to have the same issue, she said. Election officials didn’t notice the error before ballots were sent out. Hall said those ballots will still be counted, but the process of tallying those votes will take extra time and money. At least two election workers registered with different political parties will participate in the copying of votes to new ballots, Hall said. Secretary of State Shemia Fagan incorrectly assured reporters multiple times Wednesday that the county would be able to use a machine to transfer the votes onto new ballots and wouldn’t have to do the job by hand. Her office issued a correction Thursday.

Full Article: Two-thirds of Clackamas County ballots will need to be duplicated by hand due to printing error – oregonlive.com

South Carolina: Early voting coming after lawmakers reach deal on election board oversight | Zak Koeske/The State

May 13, 2022

True early voting in South Carolina appears likely to become a reality this year. Both the House and Senate on Wednesday approved elections bills that add two weeks of early in-person voting, establish a set number of early voting sites in each county and authorize election officials to begin examining and tabulating absentee votes prior to Election Day. The popular legislation had appeared dead just a few weeks ago due to the Senate’s insistence on including a provision giving the body say-so over the governor’s appointments to the state elections board, which the House and Gov. Henry McMaster would not entertain. Senators late Wednesday dropped that demand, settling instead for confirmation of the state election director and a process for removing the elections board or its executive director if they fail to enforce and defend or publicly discredit state elections laws. “In a way, what we have here is better than advice and consent on the board,” said Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, the amended election bill’s sponsor. Campsen explained that while senators may not be able to deny board nominees up front, they now have a process for removing them once they’re seated, if need be.

Full Article: No-excuse early SC voting could be in place by 2022 primaries | The State

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