Warren Stewart – Page 108 – The Voting News

A standoff over the security of voting machines between a Republican-leaning county in New Mexico and Democratic state officials that threatened to erupt into a wider political crisis was defused Friday after local commissioners voted to certify their election results. The move by the Otero County commission reversed an earlier decision against certifying results of the June 7 primary because of unspecified concerns with Dominion voting systems, a target of widespread conspiracy theories since the 2020 presidential election. The two commissioners who voted in favor said they had been threatened with prosecution by the state attorney general and had no choice under the law — but criticized their position as being little more than rubber stamps. Commissioner Couy Griffin was the lone dissenting vote, but acknowledged that he had no basis for questioning the results of the election. He dialed in to the meeting because he was in Washington, D.C., where hours before he had been sentenced for entering restricted U.S. Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. “My vote to remain a ‘no’ isn’t based on any evidence. It’s not based on any facts,” Griffin said, nevertheless requesting a hand recount of ballots. “It’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition.”

Full Article: Screams, threats as New Mexico counties certify vote | AP News

Tennessee: Election Commission lawsuit against Shelby County withdrawn after vote on new machines | Katherine Burgess/Memphis Commercial Appeal

The Shelby County Election Commission has withdrawn its lawsuit against Shelby County Government, according to Linda Phillips, administrator of elections. The withdrawal comes after the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, whose members were sued, voted to fund new voting machines for the November election. “Effective yesterday, we mutually agreed to withdraw the lawsuit, and we all look forward to executing the November election with new voting machines,” Phillips said in a written statement. The end of the lawsuit and the upcoming purchase of new voting machines for the county ends a years-long standoff between the majority-Democrat County Commission, which prefers hand-marked paper ballots, and the majority-Republican Election Commission, which prefers ballot-marking devices. The two bodies have clashed in public and private over which method is most cost-effective, least susceptible to hacking and easier to audit.

Full Article: Election Commission lawsuit against Shelby County withdrawn after vote on new machines

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson now says he helped coordinate effort to pass false elector slates to Pence, but his new explanation drew a quick rebuke | Molly Beck and Lawrence Andrea/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

After initially claiming to be “basically unaware” of an effort by his staff to get fake presidential elector documents to Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday he coordinated with a Wisconsin attorney to pass along such information and alleged a Pennsylvania congressman brought slates of fake electors to his office — a claim that was immediately disputed. Evidence presented this week by the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol showed Johnson’s chief of staff tried to deliver the two states’ lists of fake presidential electors for former President Donald Trump to Pence on the morning of the U.S. Capitol insurrection but was rebuffed by Pence’s aide. Johnson initially told reporters this week he did not know where the documents came from and that his staff sought to forward it to Pence. But he said in a Thursday interview on WIBA-AM that he had since discovered the documents came from Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, and acknowledged he coordinated with Dane County attorney Jim Troupis and his chief of staff by text message that morning to get to Pence a document Troupis described as regarding “Wisconsin electors.” Kelly’s office immediately pushed back on Johnson’s claim, saying: “Senator Johnson’s statements about Representative Kelly are patently false.” “Mr. Kelly has not spoken to Sen. Johnson for the better part of a decade, and he has no knowledge of the claims Mr. Johnson is making related to the 2020 election.”

Full Article: Johnson now says he coordinated effort to handoff false elector slates

Wisconsin election investigator says he deleted records | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

The former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice hired to investigate President Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state testified Thursday that he routinely deleted records, and deactivated a personal email account, even after receiving open records requests. Michael Gableman testified in a court hearing about whether the person who hired him, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, should face penalties after earlier being found in contempt for how he handled the records requests from American Oversight. Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn decided against penalizing Vos for contempt, but said she would determine later whether to penalize Vos for how he handled open records requests. She set a hearing for July 28. Bailey-Rihn said that Gableman gave testimony that conflicted at times, but it was clear that he had destroyed records “that were contrary to what fits into the scheme of things.” Vos hired Gableman a year ago under pressure from Donald Trump to investigate the former president’s loss to Biden by just under 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. The investigation has cost taxpayers about $900,000 so far. Biden’s victory has survived two recounts, multiple lawsuits, a nonpartisan audit and a review by a conservative law firm.

Full Article: Wisconsin election investigator says he deleted records | AP News

National: DOJ’s Jeffrey Clark met with Trump days before Jan. 6 with plan to potentially overturn election | Michael Kranish/The Washington Post

Three days before Congress was slated to certify the 2020 presidential election, a little-known Justice Department official named Jeffrey Clark rushed to meet President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a last-ditch attempt to reverse the results. Clark, an environmental lawyer by trade, had outlined a plan in a letter he wanted to send to the leaders of key states Joe Biden won. It said that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote and that the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump” for Congress to approve. In fact, Clark’s bosses had warned there was not evidence to overturn the election and had rejected his letter days earlier. Now they learned Clark was about to meet with Trump. Acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen tracked down his deputy, Richard Donoghue, who had been walking on the Mall in muddy jeans and an Army T-shirt. There was no time to change. They raced to the Oval Office. As Rosen and Donoghue listened, Clark told Trump that he would send the letter if the president named him attorney general. “History is calling,” Clark told the president, according to a deposition from Donoghue excerpted in a recent court filing. “This is our opportunity. We can get this done.” Donoghue urged Trump not to put Clark in charge, calling him “not competent” and warning of “mass resignations” by Justice Department officials if he became the nation’s top law enforcement official, according to Donoghue’s account.

Full Article: DOJ’s Jeffrey Clark met with Trump days before Jan. 6 with plan to potentially overturn election – The Washington Post

Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel says | Lauren Gambino and Hugo Lowell/The Guardian

The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol presented evidence on Thursday that Donald Trump was told his last-gasp attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election was unlawful but forged ahead anyway. Trump then pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject a tally of state electors as part of a plot that brought the country “dangerously close to catastrophe”, the panel heard. With live witnesses and recorded depositions from its yearlong investigation, the panel offered a dramatic accounting of the days and hours that preceded the assault. Chilling new evidence also detailed the frantic moments after rioters stormed the Capitol, as Pence was rushed from the Senate chamber to a secure underground location. “Approximately 40 feet – that’s all there was – 40 feet between the vice-president and the mob,” said the California congressman Pete Aguilar, a Democrat who led the panel’s third hearing. “Make no mistake about the fact that the vice-president’s life was in danger.” The committee spent the majority of the hearing dissecting the “completely nonsensical and antidemocratic” theory, devised by the conservative law professor John Eastman and embraced by Trump, that suggested Pence had the authority to reverse the results of the 2020 election. The vice-president has no such power.

Full Article: Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel says | January 6 hearings | The Guardian

A small county in New Mexico shows where ‘big lie’ delusions can lead | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

This is a story about how a small county in New Mexico has decided to reject the results of the state’s primary elections after being infected by Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud. The first character in this story is Couy Griffin. In March, Griffin was found guilty of a misdemeanor charge of illegally entering or remaining on restricted grounds by a federal judge — a verdict that followed Griffin’s presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Griffin is a fervent supporter of the former president, being one of the founders of the group Cowboys for Trump. He is also an elected member of the three-person county commission in Otero County, N.M. That brings us to the second character in the story, David Clements. Clements gained national attention after being fired from New Mexico State University after refusing to comply with the school’s coronavirus rules and has since made a name for himself as part of the election-fraud circuit. He’s turned up at public hearings around the country sowing doubt about the reliability of voting mechanisms used in the 2020 election. Given those descriptions, it was perhaps inevitable that Clements and Griffin would at some point align. As they did, in February. At a meeting of the Otero County Commission, Clements and his wife, Erin, argued successfully for the county to engage in a review of its election results akin to the one in Maricopa County, Ariz., last year. That the Arizona “audit” failed to find concrete evidence of fraud or questionable practices — and not for lack of looking — did not appear to spur any caution on the part of commissioners. Neither did the fact that Otero County, unlike Maricopa, was won by Donald Trump, with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Full Article: A small county in New Mexico shows where ‘big lie’ delusions can lead – The Washington Post

National: Across the US, 2020 election deniers seek to run the polls | Daniel Jackson/Courthouse News Service

When Nevada holds its primary election on June 14, GOP voters will consider candidates for secretary of state, typically a sleepy contest over who can out-administrate the other. One thinks Nevada voters have not actually elected anyone for the last 16 years. Appearing on a podcast in January, Jim Marchant claimed that because of a conspiracy financed by billionaire George Soros, “we haven’t in Nevada elected anybody since 2006. They have been installed by the deep state cabal.” Merchant’s failed 2020 campaign for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District ended with him filing a lawsuit alleging election irregularities that asked the judge to order a new election. The judge dismissed his claims, saying she lacked jurisdiction. Ever since, Marchant has claimed he was the victim of election fraud and has vowed to “overhaul” the election system in the state. … According to Mark Lindeman, director of Verified Voting, some of the policy questions raised are subjects on which reasonable people can disagree, such as whether a state should hold a period of early voting. “What’s not normal is the frame of some of these campaigns of rejecting the legitimacy of the 2020 election. That is radical,” Lindeman said. Lindeman said democracy depends on election officials acting impartially, and if officials say they have the right to overturn the election, the election cannot be free and fair.

Full Article: Across the US, 2020 election deniers seek to run the polls | Courthouse News Service

National: Republicans Who Deny 2020 Election Outcome Press Closer to Power Over Future Elections | Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The potential for far-right Republicans to reshape the election systems of major battleground states is growing much closer to reality. As the halfway point nears of a midterm year that is vastly friendlier to Republicans, the party’s voters have nominated dozens of candidates for offices with power over the administration and certification of elections who have spread falsehoods about the 2020 presidential contest and sowed distrust in American democracy. The only way to restore trust, these candidates say, is by electing them. In Michigan, Pennsylvania and now Nevada, Republican voters have elevated candidates who owe their political rise to their amplification of doubts about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, and who are now vying in elections for governor, secretary of state and attorney general — offices that will hold significant sway over the administration of the 2024 presidential election in critical swing states. The rise of election deniers is far from over. Primary contests coming later this month in Colorado and in early August in Arizona and Wisconsin will provide more clarity on the depth of Republican voters’ desire to rally behind candidates devoted to the false idea that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump.

Full Article: Republicans Who Deny 2020 Election Outcome Press Closer to Power Over Future Elections – The New York Times

National: Justice Department secures first guilty plea for threats to election workers | David Nakamura/The Washington Post

A Nebraska man pleaded guilty Thursday on charges that he threatened an election official over social media last year, marking the first conviction for a Justice Department task force charged with protecting poll workers. Federal authorities said Travis Ford, 42, of Lincoln, Neb., posted multiple hostile messages on an Instagram page associated with the official, who was not named in a Justice Department news release. “Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t. Do you think Soros will/can protect you?” Ford wrote in one August 2021 message, apparently referring to Democratic megadonor George Soros, who has long been the subject of false conspiracies from far-right and anti-Semitic groups. In another posting, Ford wrote: “Your security detail is far too thin and incompetent to protect you. This world is unpredictable these days … anything can happen to anyone.” He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 6 and faces up to two years in prison, the Justice Department said. “The Justice Department will not tolerate illegal threats of violence against public officials,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Threats of violence against election officials are dangerous for people’s safety and dangerous for our democracy.”

Full Article: Travis Ford pleads guilty to threatening elections official on Instagram – The Washington Post

National: Some of Trump’s nuttiest election lies were around voting machines | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The master narrative of yesterday’s Jan. 6 hearing was that former president Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies helped prod the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and are continuing to press politics in a dangerous direction. Even some Trump campaign and administration officials didn’t buy his baseless attacks, which have riven the nation for nearly two years now. Those officials watched with alarm and dismay after the election as the president embraced easily disprovable conspiracy theories and ignored evidence, according to video testimony. Some of Trumps most unbelievable claims were around voting machines. Barr called the Trump-embraced conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems machines had been manipulated to flip votes to Biden “idiotic” and “disturbing.” He said Trump allies promoted the allegations with “zero basis.” Yet, despite their absurdity, the false claims caught fire among Trump supporters — surging distrust in election machines and election workers. Barr told Trump the theories did not hold water, he said. But to no avail. “[The claims] were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people,” Barr said. They prompted widespread belief “that there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn’t count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense.” Trump campaign aide Alex Cannon disputed the phony claims in a conversation with Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, Cannon told investigators. He also pointed to a report by state and federal officials finding the 2020 election was the most secure in history, which had been touted by then-Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency [CISA] Director Chris Krebs. The response: “I believe Mr. Navarro accused me of being an agent of the ‘deep state’ working with Chris Krebs against the president,” Cannon said.

Full Article: Some of Trump’s nuttiest election lies were around voting machines – The Washington Post

National: Senators urge feds to alert police to threats against election workers | Linda So/Reuters

A group of Democratic U.S. senators this week urged federal law enforcement agencies to alert local police to rising threats against election officials, according to a memo seen by Reuters on Thursday. “The onslaught of threats against election workers is unacceptable and raises serious concerns about state and local governments’ ability to recruit and retain election workers needed to administer future elections,” Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Dick Durbin told the federal agencies on Wednesday in the previously unreported memo. Klobuchar and Durbin were joined by 20 other Democratic senators asking the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to distribute a public service announcement to local and state police about increased threats against election workers, according to the memo. “We have heard that in many cases when election officials report threats, local law enforcement agencies treat them as isolated incidents, instead of as part of a growing nationwide trend,” the senators said. A DHS spokesperson said it has enhanced collaboration with government partners by “sharing timely and actionable information” on threats. The FBI confirmed it received the memo.

Full Article: U.S. senators urge feds to alert police to threats against election workers | Reuters

Editorial: The latest GOP primaries point to serious election chaos ahead | Paul Waldman/The Washington Post

We’re in primary season, which means that almost every Tuesday, a few new election deniers win the Republican nomination for seats from governor to senator to city councilperson. And what we’re seeing in the latest primaries is truly ominous for the future of democracy. November’s election is going to bring chaos. And as bad as it will be, it’s only a taste of what’s to come in 2024. That election could be an outright cataclysm — potentially nothing less than the end of democracy as we have known it. Consider the Nevada primaries that just concluded on Tuesday. Nevada is exactly the kind of swing state that could go to the opposition party in an off year, and the Republican Party there is now dominated by conspiracy theorists. Its nominee for Senate is Adam Laxalt, who insists that Donald Trump was the true winner in 2020 and has said that while fraud happens in cities where Democrats live, the vote in Republican areas is “legitimate.” Even worse, the Republican nominee for secretary of state is right-wing extremist Jim Marchant. He got into the election denial business when he lost a race for U.S. House; he claimed it was stolen from him. Marchant’s website says his top priority will be overhauling Nevada’s “fraudulent” elections, and he has said he would not have certified Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the state. Marchant is just one of many election deniers running for governor and secretary of state this year, including in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan. Almost inevitably, some of them are going to win.

Full Article: Opinion | The latest GOP primaries point to serious election chaos ahead – The Washington Post

Alaska Supreme Court reverses lower court decision, allowing certification of U.S. House special primary results | Iris Samuels/Anchorage Daily News

The Alaska Supreme Court on Saturday reversed a lower court ruling that would have delayed the certification of U.S. House primary election results until visually impaired voters were given “a full and fair opportunity to vote independently, secretly and privately.” The state appealed the Superior Court’s decision to the Alaska Supreme Court soon after the lower court ruled in favor of a request from the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights to ensure visually impaired voters are given adequate voting access. “Where the Division has — and continues — to discriminate and effectively disenfranchise a population of voters on the basis of their disability, the law requires that it must be ordered to cease such a practice immediately, without regard to the ‘cascading’ consequences,” attorneys for the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights wrote in their filing to the Supreme Court. The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Supreme Court decision. Attorneys for the state argued that that delaying the certification of election results would have far-reaching consequences on the election. It would require delaying the special general election, currently scheduled on Aug. 16, to a later date, meaning Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat would remain vacant for a longer period. It would also force that election — the state’s first under ranked choice voting — to be held entirely by mail.

Full Article: Alaska Supreme Court reverses lower court decision, allowing certification of U.S. House special primary results

Georgia: Court filing offers new evidence of post-election breach in Coffee County | Emma Brown and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

A cybersecurity executive who has aided efforts by election deniers to investigate the 2020 vote said in a recent court document that he had “forensically examined” the voting system used in Coffee County, Ga. The assertion by executive Benjamin Cotton that he examined the county’s voting system is the strongest indication yet that the security of election equipment there may have been compromised following Donald Trump’s loss. Representatives of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said in April that while his office had investigated several election-related issues in Coffee County, none appeared to amount to a breach of equipment. In May, The Washington Post reported that former county elections official Misty Hampton had opened her offices to a man who was active in the election-denier movement to help investigate after the 2020 vote. Recounting the incident to The Post, Hampton said she did not know what the man, bail bond business owner Scott Hall, and his team did in her office. In the new document, a sworn declaration filed Wednesday in a civil case in federal court in Arizona, Cotton, founder of the digital forensics firm CyFIR, wrote that he had examined Dominion Voting Systems used in several jurisdictions. Among them were Coffee County, Mesa County, Colo., and Maricopa County, Ariz., where he worked as a contractor on a Republican-commissioned ballot review.

Full Article: Court filing offers new evidence of post-election breach in Coffee County, Georgia – The Washington Post

Iowa: Malfunction in voting machine statewide creates recounts across state | Ethan Stein/KCRG

The Iowa Secretary of State’s office learned multiple counties saw an error with a voting machine on election day, according to an email from our KCRG-TV9 i9 Investigative Team received. The error, which affected less than 1% of ballots in Sioux County, created the recommendation for a recount in multiple counties during a time of increased concern over election security. According to an email from the Secretary of State’s Legal Counsel, a paper jam created a discrepancy between the displayed number of ballots in an election machine and the number of people who voted in a percent. “The Iowa Secretary of State’s Office has learned that some counties are experiencing paper jams when voters are inserting their ballot into the tabulator,” she wrote. “In some instances, this causes the “ballots cast” number on the tabulator to increase by one extra vote, which leads to the appearance that more ballots were cast than voters who signed a Declaration of Eligibility.”

Full Article: Malfunction in voting machine statewide creates recounts across Iowa

Missouri photo ID bill adds extra steps for voters and those who run elections | Sarah Kellogg/St. Louis Public Radio

The election omnibus bill that Missouri lawmakers passed this year was originally a seven-page attempt to again implement a photo ID requirement in order to vote in the state. What made it past the finish line is a more than 50-page bill that includes not only the photo ID requirement, but also changes to absentee voting and the registration process, as well as new rules for election authorities across Missouri. Now as the bill awaits the signature of Gov. Mike Parson, proponents and opponents are preparing to either enforce or challenge it. One aspect of the bill that is almost guaranteed to face a legal challenge is the requirement for voters to provide a photo ID in order to cast their ballot. A previous attempt at implementing a photo ID was struck down two years ago by the Missouri Supreme Court because the sworn statement portion of the law was deemed misleading. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is confident that this bill won’t have the same fate as its predecessor. “We’ve made it very clear, it’s very understandable to the people. And of course, we can still truthfully say, if you’re registered, you can vote. And that could never be said before 2017,” Ashcroft said. But that doesn’t mean opponents won’t try to make this year’s attempt at requiring a photo ID fail again. Denise Lieberman, director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, said that while it’s urging Parson to veto the bill, she is prepared to challenge it in court if it does become law.

Source: Missouri photo ID bill affects voters and election authorities | STLPR

Nevada: Tech glitches delayed voting results in Washoe County primary | Mark Robison/Reno Gazette Journal

Washoe County tested its voting results dashboard back in May, but on the night of Nevada’s primary election, things didn’t go smoothly – so it has revised testing protocols to keep reporting delays from happening again. On Tuesday, there wasn’t a problem counting votes. Washoe County had the ballot data, but it couldn’t get it onto its website’s dashboard where the public, candidates and journalists could see the data. If you were at the Washoe County complex on Ninth Street, results were printed on paper. RGJ staff took photos of those printouts and shared them on its internal communication app in order to report numbers as soon as possible. The situation got so desperate that Washoe County’s communications manager Bethany Drysdale resorted to tweeting out a PDF of election results. “Actually things went really, really well, which is why it was so disappointing, because posting results was the only issue,” Drysdale told the RGJ by phone when asked about technical issues. “Tabulating, scanning of the votes – all that went great.” Early on election night, the field for some candidate names such as George “Eddie” Lorton were blank, although their vote totals were visible. It turns out quotation marks caused the feed to break.

Full Article: Tech glitches delayed voting results in Washoe County primary

New Mexico secretary of state sues county commission over refusal to certify primary results | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to order a three-member county commission to certify the results of the June 7 primary elections in Otero County — after commission members refused to do so this week, citing concerns about Dominion vote-counting machines. The action by the Otero County Commission is one of the first examples of a county blocking the certification of results in the 2022 election cycle, and Oliver, a Democrat, warned of the potential for similar moves in other New Mexico communities. In a statement, Oliver said the Otero County Commissioners were “appeasing unfounded conspiracy theories and potentially nullifying the votes of every Otero County voter who participated in the primary” with their action. On Monday, the commissioners — meeting as a county canvassing board — declined to certify the results after repeatedly raising questions about the vote-tallying process. “I have huge concerns with these voting machines,” one commissioner, Vickie Marquardt, said during the meeting. “I really do. I just don’t think in my heart that they can’t be manipulated.” “I do not trust these machines,” she added. “I want Otero County to have a fair election for everybody.” Dominion machines have been the subject of conspiracy theories since the 2020 election from people who subscribe to former President Donald Trump‘s falsehoods about election fraud. The company has filed several defamation lawsuits.

Full Article: New Mexico secretary of state sues county commission over refusal to certify primary results – CNNPolitics

New Mexico: Otero County declines to certify primary election results | Nicole Maxwell/Alamogordo Daily News

The Otero County Commission did not approve the 2022 Primary election canvass at its special meeting Monday, June 13. The decision came after discussions at this and other Otero County Commission meetings where it was established that the Commission does not trust the accuracy of the Dominion Voting Machines. “I do not trust these machines and I want Otero County to have a fair election for everybody,” Otero County Commission Chairwoman Vickie Marquardt said. New Mexico Secretary of State spokesman Alex Curtas said that the Otero County Commission did not follow any current legal protocols. “We are evaluating our next steps on the Otero commission’s vote today regarding the hand counting of ballots, but there is no current legal protocol for such measures outside the post-election audit,” Curtas said. “Again, that vote by the commission was not following any legal election protocols is not based on any issue identified in the 2022 Primary Election Results specifically.”

Full Article: Otero County declines to certify New Mexico primary election results

New York: Lobbyists killed a bill to protect elections with an assist from the NAACP | Sam Mellins/Albany Times Union

New York’s elections could soon be at risk of getting hacked. That’s because the state Board of Elections may soon approve certain voting machines that experts say are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks. A bill that would have banned those machines passed the state Senate last month, but it died in the state Assembly after the elections committee chair refused to let it come to a vote. After passing the Senate on May 31, the bill, sponsored by state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, D-Brooklyn, and Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Westchester, seemed like a solid bet for passage in the Assembly, since it was sponsored by nearly half of the Assembly’s Democrats, as well as several Republicans. But it never got a vote. It was blocked by a team of opponents, including Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, D-Brooklyn, who chairs the chamber’s Election Law Committee, lobbyists for the voting machine company Election Systems & Software, and—perhaps unexpectedly—the New York State chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, which used language taken directly from a lobbyist’s memo to successfully pressure key lawmakers to kill it. … Election Systems & Software, the voting machine company that lobbied against the bill, is currently seeking state approval for the ExpressVote XL, a ballot-marking machine it manufactures. The machine encodes voters’ choices in barcodes, rather than the traditional filled-in bubbles next to the candidates’ names. Since humans can’t read barcodes, it’s impossible for voters to check whether their selections have been correctly recorded once the machine prints their ballot. The voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems is also seeking state approval for the ImageCast X voting machine, which functions very similarly to the ExpressVote XL.

Full Article: Lobbyists killed a bill to protect elections with an assist from the NAACP

Oregon secretary of state orders extensive post-election audit in Clackamas County | Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle

Clackamas County must perform a more extensive post-election audit than other counties because of its ballot-printing issues, Secretary of State Shemia Fagan ordered Friday. After every election, the secretary of state directs each county to hand-count votes in at least two races on randomly selected batches of ballots to compare with machine-tabulated results. Fagan on Friday said Clackamas County must do more to rebuild trust with voters after a printing issue that delayed results and constantly changing statements from County Clerk Sherry Hall, who oversees elections. “My mission as Oregon’s secretary of state is to build trust,” Fagan said. “But let’s face it, weeks of negative headlines eroded Oregonians’ trust in elections. Even though processing the votes in Clackamas County was slow, it is now my responsibility to confirm that it was done correctly so voters can trust the election results.” Two weeks before the May 17 election, and after ballots had already been sent out, Hall learned that a portion of the county’s ballots had been printed with defective barcodes. That printing error didn’t affect any of the contests on a ballot, but it meant tabulation machines couldn’t detect which races were on a specific ballot. Fixing it meant county election workers, working in teams of two, needed to hand-copy each defective ballot onto a new ballot with a usable barcode. That takes about three minutes per ballot, with one member of the team reading off votes, the second filling out a new ballot and then switching roles to ensure the two ballots match.

Full Article: Oregon secretary of state orders extensive post-election audit in Clackamas County – Oregon Capital Chronicle

Wisconsin Election Investigator Fined $2K Daily for Contempt | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

A judge on Wednesday issued a scathing ruling against the investigator hired by Republicans to look into the 2020 election in Wisconsin, accusing him of unprofessional and misogynistic conduct, forwarding his decision for possible disciplinary action against Michael Gableman. Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington ordered that Gableman be fined $2,000 a day until he complies with his earlier ruling. He also determined that Gableman violated his oath as an attorney following his “disruptive and disrespectful” appearance in court last week. At that hearing, Remington found a defiant Gableman to be in contempt after he refused to answer questions under subpoena in the courtroom. His attorneys tried unsuccessfully to block the subpoena. “Wisconsin demands more from its attorneys,” Remginton wrote. “Gableman’s demeaning conduct has discredited the profession and every other person sworn ’to commit themselves to live by the constitutional processes of our system.” The order comes in an open records lawsuit filed by liberal government watchdog group American Oversight. It is one of three open records lawsuits the group filed against Gableman, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and the state Assembly. The group has won a series of victories before Remington and another Dane County judge after Gableman and Vos failed to produce the requested records in a timely manner.

Full Article: Wisconsin Election Investigator Fined $2K Daily for Contempt | Political News | US News

New Mexico county wants to halt use of vote-count machines | Morgan Lee/Associated Press

A Republican-led county commission in southern New Mexico is seeking to change the way ballots are collected and counted in the run-up to November’s mid-term election. Otero County’s three-member commission includes Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin, who ascribes to unsubstantiated theories that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Griffin was convicted of illegally entering restricted U.S. Capitol grounds — though not the building — amid the riots on Jan. 6, 2021. The commission voted unanimously Thursday to recount ballots from this week’s statewide primary election by hand, remove state-mandated ballot drop boxes that facilitate absentee voting and discontinue the use of vote tabulation machines in the general election. The initiatives were proposed by Griffin and drew support from an advocacy group for “forensic” election reviews that has combed through Otero County election records and canvassed local addresses for registered voters in search of discrepancies in the 2020 election. New Mexico uses paper ballots that can be double-checked later in all elections, and also relies on tabulation machines to rapidly tally votes while minimizing human error. Tabulation equipment is subject to precertification and election results are audited by random samplings to verify levels of accuracy.

Full Article: New Mexico county wants to halt use of vote-count machines | AP News

Do Ballot Barcodes Threaten Election Security? | William T. Adler/Center for Democracy and Technology

Bogus conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been repeatedly debunked. But that hasn’t stopped election conspiracy theorists from attempting to gain influence in election administration, either as low level poll workers or as top state election officials. The infiltration of election deniers into positions of power in administering elections poses a grave danger to American democracy: the possibility that an insider will manipulate election systems in order to bring about a desired election outcome. This elevated insider threat makes it more important than ever that our voting systems are resilient to attack and manipulation. Many 2020 conspiracy theories concerned the voting systems in Georgia, where President Trump focused intensely on discrediting the results. That year, Georgia used ballot marking devices (BMDs) for the first time, for all in-person voters. BMDs are touch screen computers that print out a paper ballot—a major improvement over the paperless machines Georgia had previously been using. Now, voters could physically inspect the record of their vote, rather than be forced to trust the machines to record the votes accurately. BMDs are widely used in U.S. elections and offer several benefits over hand-marked paper ballots (HMPBs). For instance, because they have a variety of user interface options, BMDs enable voters with visual or motor disabilities to vote independently and privately when they might otherwise be unable to do so with a HMPB. But all computerized systems are susceptible to attack. Therefore, the use of BMDs—particularly by large numbers of voters who do not require them for accessibility reasons—has been criticized as posing a serious security threat to elections. The balance between these benefits and risks should be carefully considered.

Full Article: Do Ballot Barcodes Threaten Election Security? – Center for Democracy and Technology

Activists say cyber agency weakens voting tech advisory | Kate Brumback/Associated Press

The nation’s leading cybersecurity agency released a final version Friday of an advisory it previously sent state officials on voting machine vulnerabilities in Georgia and other states that voting integrity activists say weakens a security recommendation on using barcodes to tally votes. The advisory put out by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has to do with vulnerabilities identified in Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X touchscreen voting machines, which produce a paper ballot or record votes electronically. The agency said that although the vulnerabilities should be quickly mitigated, the agency “has no evidence that these vulnerabilities have been exploited in any elections.” Dominion’s systems have been unjustifiably attacked since the 2020 election by people who embraced the false belief that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. The company has filed defamation lawsuits in response to incorrect and outrageous claims made by high-profile Trump allies. The advisory CISA released Friday is based on a report generated by University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, an expert witness in a long-running lawsuit that is unrelated to false allegations stemming from the 2020 election. The machines are used by at least some voters in 16 states, according to a voting equipment tracker maintained by watchdog Verified Voting. In most of those places, they are used only for people who can’t physically fill out a paper ballot by hand. But in some places, including Georgia, almost all in-person voting is done on the affected machines.

Source: Activists say cyber agency weakens voting tech advisory | AP News

National: The GOP drive to install thousands of poll workers sets off alarms | Fredreka Schouten and Kelly Mena/CNN

State and local election officials in Michigan and other political battlegrounds are gearing up to deal with a new element in this year’s elections: a large influx of Republicans seeking to become poll workers, recruited by the Republican National Committee and other conservative organizations to play an active role in administering the midterm elections. The development — and a recent story in Politico detailing GOP recruitment sessions and how some of these would-be poll workers cling to debunked claims about fraud in the 2020 election — have raised alarms that Republican election deniers could infiltrate official election operations and undermine the process.

The surge in interest also comes against the backdrop of efforts by former President Donald Trump’s allies, such as Steve Bannon, to carry out what he calls a “precinct committee strategy,” with the goal of installing Trump loyalists in local Republican Party positions and election posts. “It is jarring to know that there is a political party, or a cohort of a political party, that is feeding folks misinformation and will use that as motivation to potentially interfere with our elections and with citizens’ right to vote,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, told Fredreka in a recent interview. Benson, who said she has been following the uptick in GOP poll worker applications for weeks as part of her regular discussions with local election officials, met Monday with the state attorney general’s office, the Michigan State Police and local officials to discuss, among other topics, how to protect against election interference, her aides said.

Full Article: The GOP drive to install thousands of poll workers sets off alarms – CNNPolitics

National: How Influential Election Deniers Have Fueled a Fight to Control Elections | Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

Key figures in the effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election have thrown their weight behind a slate of Republican candidates for secretary of state across the country, injecting specious theories about voting machines, foreign hacking and voter fraud into campaigns that will determine who controls elections in several battleground states. The America First slate comprises more than a dozen candidates who falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump. It grew out of meetings held by a conspiracy-mongering QAnon leader and a Nevada politician, and has quietly gained support from influential people in the election denier movement — including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, and Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com executive who has financed public forums that promote the candidates and theories about election vulnerabilities. Members of the slate have won party endorsements or are competitive candidates for the Republican nomination in several states, including three — Michigan, Arizona and Nevada — where a relatively small number of ballots have decided presidential victories. And in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the secretary of state, State Senator Doug Mastriano, who is aligned with the group, easily won his primary for governor last month. The candidates cast their races as a fight for the future of democracy, the best chance to reform a broken voting system — and to win elections.

Full Article: How Influential Election Deniers Have Fueled a Fight to Control Elections – The New York Times

National: Trump allies explored using armed workers to seize vote data | Sarah D. Wire/Los Angeles Times

Supporters on the fringes of former President Trump’s circle explored seeking sweeping authority after the 2020 election to enlist armed private contractors to seize and inspect voting machines and election data with the assistance of U.S. marshals, according to a draft letter asking the president to grant them permission. The previously undisclosed “authorizing letter” and accompanying emails were sent on Nov. 21, 2020, from a person involved in efforts to find evidence of fraud in the election that year. The documents, which were reviewed by The Times, are believed to be among those in the possession of the House Jan. 6 committee, which is scheduled to begin public hearings Thursday. The letter appears to be one of the earliest iterations of a draft executive order presented to the then-president in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, by then- Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com Chief Executive Patrick Byrne in an effort to take control of voting machines. The email and attached draft letter were sent to Cyber Ninjas Chief Executive Doug Logan and cybersecurity expert Jim Penrose by Andrew Whitney, a British technology entrepreneur who made his way inside Trump’s circle in 2020 after he sought the president’s support for Oleandrin, a toxic botanical extract Whitney claimed was a miracle cure for COVID-19. Logan, who went on to conduct a partisan “audit” of election results in Maricopa County, Ariz., and Penrose worked for weeks after the 2020 election with a group including Powell, Flynn and Byrne that sought access to voting machines in an attempt to find proof of election fraud.

Full Article: Trump allies explored using armed workers to seize vote data – Los Angeles Times

National: The Supreme Court may take territories off the map of the US | Stephen Kinzer/The Boston Globe