Wisconsin clerks hope new law can alleviate statewide election official shortage | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin clerks say two decisions on legislation this week — a new law expanding towns’ ability to hire clerks and a veto that blocks broader standing to sue election officials — will help ease mounting pressure on local election offices, which have faced record turnover and increasing legal threats. The new law allows small towns to more easily hire clerks that live outside of municipal limits, a change clerks say is urgently needed as finding small-town clerks has become harder in recent years amid increased scrutiny, new laws and ever-evolving rules. As the new law moved through the Legislature, some small towns ran elections with no clerks at all. “There are lots of townships that will benefit from this,” said Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican. “It’s going to help tremendously.” Read Article

National: The Feds Cut Funding for Election Cybersecurity. How Will Public Officials Adapt? | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Governing

Election officials frequently face all manner of cybersecurity threats. Cyber attackers may try to breach voter registration databases and steal information, take down websites that help voters find polls, spoof official websites and more. Just this November, Utah Lt. Gov Deidre Henderson issued a warning about AI-generated fake election results circulating online. Across the country, public officials have often turned to trusted federally supported resources for help managing these dangers. The nonprofit Center for Internet Security (CIS) has traditionally provided no-cost and low-cost cybersecurity services and intelligence to state and local governments, in particular through its Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). For decades, the MS-ISAC has helped states defend against and respond to cyber attacks. States and localities that are ISAC members receive threat intelligence as well as one-on-one consultations with cybersecurity experts, some cybersecurity tools and a 24/7 security operations center. Read Article

National: DHS lookup tool may expose sensitive data of hundreds of millions of Americans, secretaries of state warn | Colin Wood/StateScoop

A repurposed IT system being used by the Department of Homeland Security presents “unacceptable risks” to the nation’s eligible voters, according to a group of secretaries of state who on Monday signed off on a letter opposing a recent proposal by the federal agency. The remarks, which include the signatures of a dozen secretaries of state, mostly from states run by Democrats, are a 29-page protest against a disclosure by DHS that it plans to codify its repurposing of a system originally designed to check immigration statuses and verify benefits eligibility. The arcane and purportedly unwieldy system, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program, is subject to numerous legal changes under DHS’s proposal, including that it would be used not for its original narrow purpose, but allow bulk searches and searches of “individuals that are U.S. citizens by birth” to find ineligible voters and instances of voter fraud. Read Article

National: Justice Department sues six more states to get detailed voter data |Michael Casey/Associated Press

The Justice Department on Tuesday sued six more states in its ongoing campaign to obtain detailed voter data and other election information. The department announced it was suing Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington over their “failure” to produce statewide voter registration lists. It has portrayed the litigation as part of an effort to ensure the security of elections, but Democratic officials have raised concerns over how the data will be used and whether the department will follow privacy laws in protecting it. Tuesday’s actions bring to at least 14 the number of states the Justice Department has sued in its quest for the voter information. Read Article

National: Changes to the agency that helps secure elections lead to midterm worries | Steve Karnowski and Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Since it was created in 2018, the federal government’s cybersecurity agency has helped warn state and local election officials about potential threats from foreign governments, showed officials how to protect polling places from attacks and gamed out how to respond to the unexpected, such as an Election Day bomb threat or sudden disinformation campaign. The agency was largely absent from that space for elections this month in several states, a potential preview for the 2026 midterms. Shifting priorities of the Trump administration, staffing reductions and budget cuts have many election officials concerned about how engaged the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will be next year, when control of Congress will be at stake in those elections. Some officials say they have begun scrambling to fill the anticipated gaps. “We do not have a sense of whether we can rely on CISA for these services as we approach a big election year in 2026,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who until recently led the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State. Read Article

National: They tried to overturn the 2020 US election. Now, they hold power in Trump’s Washington | Rachel Leingang/The Guardian

The people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have more power than ever – and they plan to use it. Bolstered by the president, they have prominent roles in key parts of the federal government. Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who helped advance Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election in 2020, now leads the civil rights division of the justice department. An election denier, Heather Honey, now serves as the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the Department of Homeland Security. Kurt Olsen, an attorney involved in the “stop the steal” movement, is now a special government employee investigating the 2020 election. A movement that once pressured elected officials to bend to its whims is now part of the government. Read Article

Arizona: Lawsuit seeks change to Independent Party’s name | Ray Stern/Arizona Republic

The decision to let the state’s No Labels Party change its name to the Arizona Independent Party should be declared unlawful and reversed, a new lawsuit demands. Citing worries of “a virtual certainty of substantial voter confusion and frustration,” the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission’s suit targets Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who made the October decision to make the name change official on Dec. 1. The commission, which filed the lawsuit Dec. 2 in Maricopa County Superior Court, charges that Fontes’ decision interferes with the agency’s duties to support candidates and educate voters and election officials, violating the 1998 Citizens Clean Elections Act that created the agency. The commission oversees public campaign financing for eligible candidates and provides voter education, including organizing candidate debates. Read Article

Colorado governor’s office affirms rejection of Tina Peters transfer request | Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline

The office of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis affirmed this week a decision by state prison officials not to fulfill a request by the Trump administration to transfer custody of Tina Peters from the state to federal authorities. Peters, the former Republican Mesa County clerk, is serving a 9-year prison sentence for her role in a scheme to breach the security of her own election equipment. President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded that she be released. The director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons sent a letter to the Colorado Department of Corrections last month requesting that the state “initiate the transfer” of Peters to the bureau. Read Article

Georgia: Fight Over 2020 Election Persists as Midterms Approach | Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset/The New York Times

The election interference case against President Trump in Georgia was dismissed last week, but the ghosts of the 2020 election are still looming over the state as next year’s midterms approach. Mr. Trump’s Justice Departmenta has been investigating Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Atlanta who brought criminal charges against him. Though the full contours of the investigation are unclear, The New York Times has learned that several dozen subpoenas have already been issued, according to a copy of one of them and interviews with veterans of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Georgia. Federal prosecutors are separately trying to obtain copies of tens of thousands of ballots that were cast in Georgia in 2020. And races for governor and other statewide offices feature candidates who actively helped or resisted the president’s efforts to cling to power after he lost in 2020. Read Article

Michigan request tests limits on federal interference in elections | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

Earlier this month, a group of Republican state lawmakers in Michigan sent a letter asking the U.S. Justice Department to “deploy official election monitors and provide comprehensive oversight for Michigan’s 2026 primary and general elections.” Besides election monitors, which the Justice Department for years has deployed around the country to observe elections, the letter isn’t clear on what the Republican lawmakers mean by “comprehensive oversight,” or exactly what legal authority they believe would allow such an intervention. President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly pushed for more federal oversight of elections. In March, he issued a sweeping executive order that would overhaul the way elections are administered in many states, though federal courts have since blocked many of its provisions on the grounds that the Constitution doesn’t grant him such authority. His administration is appealing at least some of those decisions. Read Article

Montana: New voting law cost counties more money, added work for staff, blocked ballots | Jenna Martin/Daily Montanan

A new law passed in the 2025 Montana legislative session required voters to add their birth year to their ballots for the November 2025 municipal elections. While the Montana Secretary of State touted “only one percent” of ballots rejected due to missing or mismatched birth year, the individual county statistics show a different story, adding extra costs and labor to counties across the state as they worked to resolve the rejected ballots. “663 rejected ballots is definitely an uptick,” said Flathead County Election Administrator Debbie Pierson, pointing out that the voters of Flathead County reduced the number of rejected ballots due to signature mismatch by 50% when compared to the school district election that took place earlier this year. Read Article

Nevada: Supreme Court mail-in-ballot counting case could affect Nevada elections | Ricardo Torres-Cortez/Las Vegas Review-Journal

An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case could shake up future elections for Nevada and 15 other states that allow post-Election Day mail-ballot counting. Earlier this month, the higher court agreed to hear the case out of Mississippi that’s challenging a state law that permits mail ballots postmarked by Election Day there to be tallied upwards of five days after polls close. Nevada gives those ballots up to four days to arrive, and up to three days for the ones without a postmark. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the deadlines last year, denying an appeal by the Republican National Committee President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Nevada Republican Party. The party argues that the practice of delayed counting undermines election integrity and trust in the process. Read Article

North Carolina: Trump ally admits goal of eliminating same-day registration in federal voting rights trial | George Chidi/The Guardian

During a federal trial in North Carolina over whether a new voter registration law discriminates against college students, a prominent rightwing election integrity activist previewed Republicans’ long-range plans to end same-day registration. Judge Thomas Schroeder is deliberating over the future of provisions in Senate bill 747, which increased registration requirements for voters who cast ballots on the same day they register to vote during North Carolina’s early voting period. Schroeder called for briefs at the end of November after a week-long trial in Winston-Salem. Cleta Mitchell, an ally of Donald Trump in his bid to overturn the 2020 election and the founder of the Election Integrity Network, offered testimony in depositions and hearings in the case, but only after losing a legally strenuous fight to avoid participating in the case. Read Article

Ohio bill cutting grace period to return absentee ballots headed to Governor | Karen Kasler/The Statehouse News Bureau

A bill to require all absentee ballots arrive at boards of elections by election day—eliminating the four day grace period in current law–is headed to Gov. Mike DeWine. But while he signs most bills that come to him, he’s suggested it’s not certain that he’ll sign this one. Republican backers have said Senate Bill 293 is needed because ballots need to be at boards of elections on election night to have an unofficial count as soon as possible. And they’ve noted that Attorney General Dave Yost received a letter from the Department of Justice in September, warning that Ohio could face a federal lawsuit following an executive order Trump issued in March stating that there is “a uniform and nondiscriminatory ballot receipt deadline of Election Day for all methods of voting”, with ballots from military and overseas voters exempted. But Democrats said eliminating the four-day grace period doesn’t do anything to stop voter fraud, which is already extremely rare. And they’ve said thousands of ballots would have been thrown out last year if this bill would have been law then. Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose did confirm that, telling a House committee that around 8,000 ballots were received after election day in November 2024, but he noted that was 0.012% of the total number of ballots cast. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Why marbles, playing cards, and ping pong balls decide so many local races | Carter Walker/Votebeat

At the Lancaster County Government Center on Friday, 26 clear-plastic bowls sat in front of blue index cards on a table, each card corresponding to a candidate for Mountville Borough tax collector. Christa Miller, the county’s election director, shook a leather-wrapped bottle filled with red, numbered marbles, and tipped it upside down until one of the marbles fell into her hand. Down the line of bowls she went, adding a marble to each and calling out the number. When she got to the 19th bowl, with Keith Tarvin’s card behind it, she drew the lowest numbered marble, one. And so it was decided: Tarvin, who wasn’t there to witness the process, would be the borough’s next tax collector. The elaborate production was necessary because Tarvin and the other 25 candidates represented by a plastic bowl had all gotten the same number of votes in the Nov. 5 municipal election: a single write-in vote. Read Article

South Carolina election agency picks new leader after firing director | Lucy Valeski/The State

Jenny Wooten should lead the agency overseeing South Carolina’s elections, the state Election Commission unanimously decided Tuesday. The agency’s top leaders were fired, and later arrested, in the last several months amid several ongoing investigations. Wooten then became interim director of the agency after former Executive Director Howard Knapp was fired. The state Senate now has to approve hiring her. Knapp was fired by the Election Commission on Sept. 17. The commission later offered up a laundry list of reasons for his ouster in October, including allegedly falsifying documents to the commission, creating a toxic work environment and misleading the commission on a contract. Read Article

Texas: Hundreds of voters flagged as potential noncitizens may have already proven their citizenship | Natalia Contreras/Texas Tribune

County election officials investigating the eligibility of 2,724 Texas voters flagged as potential noncitizens have so far found that hundreds of the voters registered through the state Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID. DPS keeps copies of the proof of citizenship that registrants provide, such as birth certificates or passports. The agency also keeps copies of proof of lawful presence in the U.S., such as green cards, provided by immigrants. But the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune it did not check the voters flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to verify citizenship. Re4ad Article

Texas: Trump inaccurately praises paper ballot use in Dallas County | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

President Donald Trump inaccurately announced in a Truth Social post early Tuesday that “Dallas County, Texas, just went to all PAPER BALLOTS.” For years, the Dallas County Elections Department has used paper ballots that voters insert into machines to mark their selections and then put into tabulators to be counted. In September, the Dallas County Republican Party voted to explore the prospect of hand-counting hand-marked paper ballots on the March 3 primary’s Election Day, not during early voting. But the party has not confirmed if it will go forward with the plan and is slated to make the decision on Thursday, according to GOP chair Allen West. The president’s social media post drew surprise from Commissioners Court members during their Tuesday meeting, where County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins clarified Trump’s message “was incorrect.” It also prompted commissioners to share worries over the Republicans’ plan if it advances. Read Article

Virginia’s tough rules for felons to regain their voting rights could soon be changing | Dean Mirshahi/NPR

Tati King says he wants to set an example for his grandchildren that it’s important to make sure their voices are heard. It’s why King, a 54-year-old living in Alexandria, Va., is suing Virginia election officials in federal court to get his voting rights restored. “I want them to see that their grandfather was on the right side of things for once in his life,” he said. King lost his ability to vote in the state because of a 2018 felony drug possession conviction. He served 11 months in prison and is now challenging Virginia’s constitutional rule that automatically strips anyone’s voting rights if they’re convicted of a felony. The constitution gives the governor sole authority to restore those rights. Read Articlew

National: Dominion Voting’s new owner pledges impartiality, says, ‘I’m not on anybody’s side’ | Marshall Cohen/CNN

The new owner of Dominion Voting Systems affirmed in his first interview since buying the company that President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and pledged that his company’s machines, used by nearly a third of US voters, won’t be misused to help either political party. Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican election official from St. Louis who already runs a separate election tech company, bought Dominion last month and rebranded it Liberty Vote. The surprise move, and a public announcement that seemingly embraced parts of Trump’s push to transform voting procedures, spooked election officials around the US, raising concerns about the future of a company that unexpectedly found itself at the center of Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Read Article

National: Secretaries of state ask DOJ to clarify how it’s using their voter data | Colin Wood/StateScoop

After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls, which can include information like driver’s license numbers, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and birth dates. The letter, addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, flags an Aug. 28 call with Michael Gates, who was deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division until he stepped down this month. Gates, the secretaries wrote, assured them that the DOJ would protect the voter information in compliance with the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. Read Article

National: Officials prep for possible 2026 election interference from Trump | Miles Parks/NPR

Less than a year from the midterm elections, state and local voting officials from both major political parties are actively preparing for the possibility of interference by a federal government helmed by President Trump. The problem is, no one knows what might be coming. Steve Simon, the Democratic secretary of state of Minnesota, likened it to planning for natural disasters. “You have to use your imagination to consider and plan for the most extreme scenario,” Simon said. Carly Koppes, the Republican clerk of Weld County in Colorado, said officials in her state are shoring up their relationships with local law enforcement and county and state attorney’s offices, to make sure any effort to interfere with voting is “met with a pretty good force of resistance.””We have to plan for the worst and hope we get the best,” Koppes said. “I think we’re all kind of conditioned at this point to expect anything and everything, and our bingo cards keep getting bigger and bigger with things that we would have never have had on them.” Read Article

National: 60 Attorneys on the Year of Chaos Inside Trump’s Justice Department | Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser/The New York Times

President Trump’s second term has brought a period of turmoil and controversy unlike any in the history of the Justice Department. Trump and his appointees have blasted through the walls designed to protect the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency from political influence; they have directed the course of criminal investigations, openly flouted ethics rules and caused a breakdown of institutional culture. To date, more than 200 career attorneys have been fired, and thousands more have resigned. What was it like inside this institution as Trump’s officials took control? It’s not an easy question to answer. Justice Department norms dictate that career attorneys, who are generally nonpartisan public servants, rarely speak to the press. And the Trump administration’s attempts to crack down on leaks have made all federal employees fearful of sharing information. But the exodus of lawyers has created an opportunity to understand what’s happening within the agency. We interviewed more than 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department. Much of what they told us is reported here for the first time. Read Article

National: Federal judge questions changes to SAVE database for voter screening | Natalia Contreras andAlexander Shur/Votebeat

A federal judge on Monday declined to order the federal government to undo its overhaul of SAVE, a database that some states are using to check voters’ citizenship status, but said she doubted the legality of the government’s changes. SAVE, which is operated by the Department of Homeland Security, was typically used by states to check residents’ eligibility for public benefits. But the changes the Trump administration introduced in April made SAVE easier to use for screening voters’ citizenship, allowing state election officials to upload voter registration records for verification in bulk, instead of one by one, and search by Social Security number. The League of Women Voters and other plaintiffs in the case claimed that the changes made SAVE less accurate and were illegal, and asked the court for a temporary order that the database revert to how it operated before the overhaul. Read Article

National: Responses in opinion polls may be coming from AI​ | Eglė Krištopaitytė/Cybernews

Surveys have played a crucial role in the United States’ elections for nearly a century, but their reliability is now threatened by AI tools, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ​Researchers from Dartmouth College have developed an autonomous synthetic respondent that operates from a 500-word prompt. In 43,000 tests, the AI tool passed 99.8% of attention checks designed to detect automated responses. It made zero errors in logic and successfully concealed its non-human nature. Moreover, the tool tailored responses according to randomly assigned demographics, such as providing simpler answers when assigned less education. Presidential approval ratings swung from 34% to either 98% or 0%, depending on whether the poll was programmed to favor Democrats or Republicans. Similarly, generic ballot support went from 38% Republican to either 97% or 1%. Read Article

National: Inside the Multimillion-Dollar Plan to Make Mobile Voting Happen | Steven Levy/WIRED

The loudest objections against mobile or internet voting come from cryptographers and security experts, who believe that the safety risks are insurmountable. Take two people who were at the 2017 conference with Kiniry. Ron Rivest is the legendary “R” in the RSA protocol that protects the internet, a winner of the coveted Turing Award, and a former professor at MIT. His view: Mobile voting is far from ready for prime time. “What you can do with mobile phones is interesting, but we’re not there yet, and I haven’t seen anything to make me think otherwise,” he says, “Tusk is driven by trying to make this stuff happen in the real world, which is not the right way to do it. They need to go through the process of writing a peer-reviewed paper. Putting up code doesn’t cut it.” Computer scientist and voting expert David Jefferson is also unimpressed. Though he acknowledges that Kiniry is one of the country’s top voting system experts, he sees Tusk’s effort as doomed. “I’m willing to concede rock-solid cryptography, but it does not weaken the argument about how insecure online voting systems are in general. Open source and perfect cryptography do not address the most serious vulnerabilities.” Read Article

Alaska: Anchorage officials clarify role of electronic voting in city’s mail elections after report | Bella Biondini and Sabrina Bodon/Anchorage Daily News

After the publication of a report this week on the city’s remote voting options, Anchorage officials sought to clarify its offerings, which they say were mischaracterized in a national news story. Among the options to vote in Anchorage’s by-mail local elections, voters can choose to cast their ballots electronically, an option the municipality has offered since 2018. In the last year, the city established a “secure document portal” that gives registered voters, no matter where they are, the ability to vote electronically with preapproval without having to email or fax their paper ballot. Municipal Clerk Jamie Heinz, in a statement Thursday responding to a New York Times article on the city’s use of electronic voting, called the story an “egregious misrepresentation of MOA Elections. The article claims a new ‘experiment’ will allow all voters to cast ballots from their smartphones. This is factually inaccurate,“ Heinz said. Read Article

Arizona proposal would end automatic mail ballots for early-voter list | Gary Grado/Votebeat

A Republican state lawmaker who is also running for secretary of state has introduced a proposed ballot measure that would overhaul early voting in Arizona by eliminating the early-voter list, shortening the time to cast early ballots, and requiring proof of citizenship to receive an early ballot. State Rep. Alex Kolodin, who as a lawmaker and a former lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party has pushed to abolish the state’s early-voter list, said in a press release that he’s pushing legislation to put the measure on the ballot because “Arizonans are tired of excuses and chaos on Election Day.” Some provisions of his proposed measure are already in state law, including a poll closing time of 7 p.m. on Election Day and a voter ID requirement. Read Article

Colorado: Trump administration moves to take custody of imprisoned elections clerk Tina Peters | Colleen Slevin/Associated Press

The Trump administration is seeking a transfer from state prison to federal custody of a former Colorado county clerk who has become a hero to election conspiracy theorists, the state and one of her lawyers said Friday. The Colorado Department of Corrections said Friday that it received a letter from the federal Bureau of Prisons regarding Tina Peters on Wednesday. Neither the department nor the Bureau of Prisons immediately responded to a request to provide a copy of the letter but a corrections department spokesperson, Alondra Gonzalez, confirmed the letter was a request to move Peters to federal custody. A member of Peters’ legal team, Peter Ticktin, said he had seen the letter and also described it as a request to move her to a federal prison to serve out her sentence there. “It is not to have her released,” he said. Read Article

Georgia lawmakers weigh seismic changes to voting equipment | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

Ahead of the momentous 2020 presidential election, Georgia’s state leaders faced a choice. The state’s voting system prior to that year consisted of 27,000 electronic voting machines that had been in use since 2002, which were reaching the end of their life and needed to be replaced. Legislators at the time voted for Georgia’s new election system largely along party lines, with Democrats largely favoring hand-marked paper ballots that require voters to fill out ballots with pencils or pens, and Republicans supporting ballot-marking devices, which still required voters to make selections on a machine but produced a paper ballot that would be scanned to tabulate the results. The new machines, purchased for $107 million and manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, were used statewide in Georgia for the first time during the 2020 election. But nearly six years later, Democrats and Republicans have seemingly found themselves on opposite ends of a similar debate. Some GOP lawmakers are now leading a push to replace ballot-marking devices with hand-marked paper ballots, and there are Democrats who are cautioning against abandoning Georgia’s current ballot-marking device system before the end of the state’s 10-year contract in 2029. Read Article