Three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. She told him that some Republican members of Congress believed the only path for President Donald Trump to change the outcome of the 2020 election and stay in power was for him to declare martial law. The text from Greene (R-Ga.), revealed this week, brought to the fore the chorus of Republicans who were publicly and privately advocating for Trump to try to use the military and defense apparatus of the U.S. government to strong-arm his way past an electoral defeat. Now, discussions involving the Trump White House about using emergency powers have become an important — but little-known — part of the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation of the 2021 attack on the Capitol. In subpoenas, document requests and court filings, the panel has demanded information about any Trump administration plans to use presidential emergency powers to invoke martial law or take other steps to overturn the 2020 election. Interviews with committee members and a review of the panel’s information requests reveals a focus on emergency powers that were being considered by Trump and his allies in several categories: invoking the Insurrection Act, declaring martial law, using presidential powers to justify seizing assets of voting-machine companies, and using the military to require a rerun of the election. “Trump’s invocation of these emergency powers would have been unprecedented in all of American history,” said J. Michael Luttig, a conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge.
National: Democrats urge Biden to use presidential powers, ‘whatever means necessary’ to protect voters | Deborah Barfield Berry USA Today
With federal voting rights legislation stalled in Congress, Democratic lawmakers and civil rights activists are calling on the Biden administration to issue a new executive order aimed at better protecting voters against restrictive state election laws. Democrats and activists are increasingly disappointed with the lack of progress on passing sweeping voter protection legislation. And with high-stakes midterms elections looming, there's also growing concern about ballot access for voters of color — historically a key voting bloc for Democrats. Rep. Joyce Beatty, , an Ohio Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the Biden administration should "do whatever is necessary, whether that's an executive order, whether that is us figuring out a legislative approach that we can get through." White House officials said they haven’t ruled out any avenues. "Everything's on the table,’’ Cedric Richmond, senior advisor to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement told USA TODAY. He added: “Where there's constitutional things we can do you can look for us to do them.”
Full Article: Voting rights: Biden urged to consider executive order to protect votersArizona: Maricopa County officials want record ‘corrected’ after election fraud report by Attorney General | Michael McDaniel/Courthouse News Service
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors asked Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Wednesday to correct the record after publishing controversial interim findings on the integrity of the 2020 election. Brnovich’s interim findings, sent to the state Senate on April 6, cited concerns over signature verification, chain-of-custody procedures and the use of private money in the election. The bipartisan board’s letter to Brnovich comes after an executive session Wednesday during which the board and the county recorder unanimously decided to refute his findings with correspondence. “It’s disappointing that we have to write this in response to an office that saw fit to take no action for all of 2021 until the politics changed,” said Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, at the executive meeting Wednesday. “I have been so disappointed on so many levels with Republican electeds, Republican colleagues, Republican friends.” Richer told the board Brnovich’s report caused his staff trouble and threats. “But I’ve never been more disappointed than when somebody omits information, misstates information and besmirches the good name of the hard-working people in my office and reopens vitriol, hate and threats that they shouldn’t have to deal with,” Richer said. Later, the board questioned whether Brnovich released his report after pressure from his party and from former President Donald Trump. Full Article: County officials want record ‘corrected’ after election fraud report by Arizona AG | Courthouse News ServiceColorado judge orders Elbert County Clerk to turn over copies of voting hard drives | Coleen Sleven/Associated Press
A judge has ordered a county clerk who copied his voting system’s hard drives to turn over his copies to Colorado’s secretary of state by the end of the day Wednesday. Secretary of State Jena Griswold sued to force Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder to turn over the external hard drives containing the copies and Judge Gary M. Kramer ruled late Friday that Schroeder must follow her lawful orders. Kramer also ordered Schroeder to answer Griswold’s questions about who has had access to the copies in filings. It’s one of a handful of cases across the United States in which authorities are investigating whether local officials directed or aided in suspected security breaches at their own election offices. Some of them have expressed doubt about the results of the 2020 presidential election. Schroeder’s lawyer, John Case, declined to comment on the order Monday. Schroeder has said he copied the hard drives because he wanted to preserve the results of the 2020 election. He first made a copy of the hard drives of the election server, the image cast central computers and the adjudication computer before the state updated voting software. He then made a copy of that set of copies.
Full Article: Judge orders clerk to turn over copies of voting hard drives | AP NewsGeorgia early voting check-in system restored after outage | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s voter check-in system was restored Thursday morning after a statewide outage had caused problems with early voting in the primary election, according to the secretary of state’s office. Voters were still able to cast ballots during the outage, but poll workers had to use backup procedures to verify their registration information before they were allowed to vote. The problem was caused by a “glitch” after primary and backup servers automatically restarted Wednesday night, said a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. Restarting the servers Thursday morning appeared to fix the issue, The disruption affected Georgia’s voter registration system, called ElectioNet, which is used to check in voters at early voting locations during the primary. The secretary of state’s office announced plans to replace the ElectioNet system earlier this year, but the new computer system wasn’t ready in time for the primary.
Idaho Governor’s Cybersecurity Task Force Releases Recommendations | Betsy Z. Russell/Big Country News
After eight months of work, Gov. Brad Little’s Cybersecurity Task Force released its final report Wednesday at the Idaho National Laboratory, laying out 18 recommendations to improve Idaho’s resistance to cyber-attacks. They range from increasing K-12 computer science and math literacy to outreach to rural communities on how to combat threats to establishing a “Cyber Fusion Center” to communicate threats and lead response for everyone from government, utilities and universities to private companies. “We all know that cybersecurity intrusions, corruption and fraud are global threats,” Little said. “They challenge the security of all citizens, businesses and governments at every level.” Led by the INL and the Idaho Department of Commerce, the 19-member task force started meeting last August, focusing on critical infrastructure, workforce development and education, election security and cybersecurity awareness. “Active public engagement is vital,” said Tom Kealey, director of the Idaho Department of Commerce, who co-chaired the task force with INL Associate Lab Director Zach Tudor. “With nearly every Idaho citizen, business and organization connected to the internet and other networks, cybersecurity becomes everyone’s responsibility.” Full Article: Idaho Governor's Cybersecurity Task Force Releases Recommendations | Idaho | bigcountrynewsconnection.comMichigan State Police seizes voting machine as it expands investigation into potential breaches tied to 2020 election | Annie Grayer and Zachary Cohen/CNN
The Michigan State Police has expanded its investigation into whether third parties gained unauthorized access to voting machine data after the 2020 election, and is now examining potential breaches in at least one new county, CNN has learned. In a raid last Friday, state police seized one voting machine tabulator in Irving Township, Barry County Clerk Pamela Palmer told CNN on Thursday. Palmer told CNN that she was not aware of any issues until police notified her of the voting machine seizure. Michigan State Police first opened its investigation into potential voting machine breaches in February after the Secretary of State's Office notified it that an unnamed third party was allowed to access vote tabulator components and technology in Roscommon County. Michigan State Police Lt. Derrick Carroll told CNN on Wednesday that the department's investigation has expanded to more counties where they were notified of breaches of election systems, but would not confirm the seizure in Irving Township specifically. It's unclear if the investigation includes localities beyond Roscommon County and Irving Township but a source familiar with the investigation told CNN that state police are aware of a third potential breach.
Mississippi: So long, paperless voting machines | Press Register
It is richly ironic that it took a fake election scandal to finally convince lawmakers and election officials in Mississippi of the real potential for a rigged or botched election. Thanks to Donald Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election, Mississippi Republicans decided to finally act and pass a law this year that will require all counties in Mississippi by 2024 to have a system in place that provides a paper backup to electronically tabulated vote totals. Mississippi is one of just six states where a significant number of voters still only have access to paperless machines. For those Mississippi voters, approximately 1 out of 3, the only record of their choices is what’s recorded on the electronic memory card inside the voting machines themselves. That includes Leflore and Carroll counties. The percentage, though, is a marked improvement from just a few years ago, when Mississippi counties — with the misguided consent of both the U.S. Justice Department and the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office — began removing en masse the balky external printers with which the touchscreen machines were initially equipped. Verified Voting is a nonpartisan organization that maintains a database on the election equipment used in every U.S. county. According to its records, 75% of Mississippi voters in 2016 lived in counties where the balloting was done on touchscreen machines without a voter-verified paper trail. By 2020, that figure was down to 56%. It’s projected to drop to 34% by this year’s November elections. The new law should bring the figure down to zero in a couple more years. Full Article: So long, paperless voting machines | Press RegisterOhio: Scanning problems at Cuyahoga County polling locations temporarily caused voting delays on Election Day; but ‘integrity’ remained intact, officials say | Kaitlin Durbin/Cleveland Plain Dealer
Technical issues Tuesday morning temporarily caused delays in voting across Cuyahoga County. Although some voters left without casting a ballot, officials say residents were never turned away, and voters can have confidence their ballots will be counted. The scanning issues did not affect the ability to vote; it only affected how voters were checked in, Cuyahoga County Board of Elections spokesman Mike West said, and everything was resolved shortly after 8 a.m. The problem occurred with the electronic poll books, which are the online rosters of eligible voters in the district or precinct. When a voter checks in at the polls, the machines are supposed to verify the person is in the correct location and scan and record the stub number for that person’s ballot. But machines were “not automatically recording,” West said. Instead, poll workers were having to look up voters in paper poll books and enter the stub numbers manually. None of the problems prevented a person from voting, he said. He didn’t know how many ballots had been submitted in the roughly 90 minutes that the electronic scanners weren’t working, but he said by 9 a.m. more than 12,000 people had already voted.
Full Article: Scanning problems at Cuyahoga County polling locations temporarily caused voting delays on Election Day; but ‘integrity’ remained intact, officials say - cleveland.comOregon: Printing error affecting many Clackamas County ballots will require copying votes by hand, raising county costs and delaying election results | Jamie Goldberg/The Oregonian
Clackamas County election officials sent ballots with defective barcodes to an unknown number of voters for the May 17 primary, an error that will cost the county extra money and will likely delay election results. County Clerk Sherry Hall announced Wednesday that a printing error had caused the barcodes on many ballots to be blurred, making them unreadable by the county’s ballot processing equipment. Election officials didn’t notice the error before the ballots were sent to voters. It’s one of at least four errors or misdeeds, one of them criminal, that have marred Clackamas County elections since 2010 and one of two significant mistakes the county elections office made this year. Hall said the defective ballots will still be counted, but the process of tallying those votes will take more time because election workers will have to fill out new ballots by hand for voters whose barcodes were defective. At least two election workers registered with different political parties will participate in the transferring of votes to the new ballots to ensure mistakes are avoided, Hall said. Election observers will witness the process and the county will keep the damaged ballots on file.
Full Article: Printing error affecting many Clackamas County ballots will require copying votes by hand, raising county costs and delaying election results - oregonlive.comPennsylvania elections chief concerned about voter intimidation, says primary results might be delayed | Teresa Boeckel/York Daily Record
Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh Chapman voiced concerns about voter intimidation in one Pennsylvania county where a district attorney plans to have detectives watch a drop box. Her remarks came Thursday as she addressed questions from the news media about the May 17 primary. Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin plans to have detectives monitor drop boxes, and anyone who drops off more than one ballot could face a fine or jail time, media outlets have reported. Voters are only allowed to return their own ballot unless they have a disability and a designated agent to submit it. Martin has told news media an investigation showed "hundreds" of voters turned in more than one ballot during the 2021 election. Chapman said no evidence exists of widespread voter fraud through ballot drop boxes.
Full Article: Voter intimidation, delayed primary results possible, PA official saysTennessee: Divide over voting equipment in Shelby County | Joyce Peterson/WMC
The clock is ticking for Shelby County to order new voting equipment, but the two groups tasked with getting it done still don’t see eye to eye on which kind of voting machines to buy. Mark Luttrell, the former sheriff and mayor of Shelby County, now heads the Shelby County Election Commission. Job one, he told Action News 5, is to get this done. “We are woefully, woefully inadequate when it comes to this,” he said, “If there’s been any voter suppression in Shelby County, it’s because we don’t have up-to-date equipment. It’s just not efficient.” Even with a short ballot and low voter turnout, final results in Tuesday’s primary took several hours to tabulate. “It’s taking longer,” said Shelby County Administrator of Elections Linda Phillips, “because our equipment is old. With every election, it gets a little slower. It gets a little harder.”
Full Article: Divide over voting equipment in Shelby CountyWisconsin: I’m frankly amazed’: Another judge orders Republicans to prevent destruction of records in Gableman election review | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A second judge Wednesday ordered Wisconsin Republicans to prevent the destruction of public records as they review the 2020 election at taxpayer expense. Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn said she was compelled to issue the order but was astonished she had to do it because the review is being overseen by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. "I'm frankly amazed that I have to say don't destroy records that are subject to an open records request or order that to occur. I think all of us know what the law is," Bailey-Rihn said at the end of a 30-minute hearing. She said as a former justice Gableman should know what the records law requires and has an ethical obligation to follow it. Gableman has contended he is exempt from retaining records because the lawmakers who hired him are not required to hold onto records under state law. Bailey-Rihn issued her order two weeks after Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington issued a similar order in another open records lawsuit. Those two lawsuits and a third one were brought by American Oversight, a liberal group that has been tracking the Assembly review of the presidential election. A month ago, Bailey-Rihn found Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester in contempt of court for failing to release records about the election review. She will determine later whether Vos has now met his obligations and whether he should be fined.
Full Article: Judge orders Wisconsin Republicans to retain election review recordsTrump allies breach U.S. voting systems in search of ‘evidence’ | Alexander Ulmer and Nathan Layne/Reuters
Eighteen months after Donald Trump lost the White House, loyal supporters continue to falsely assert that compromised balloting machines across America robbed him of the 2020 election. To stand up that bogus claim, some Trump die-hards are taking the law into their own hands – by attempting, with some success, to compromise the voting systems themselves. Previously unreported surveillance video captured one such effort in August in the rural Colorado town of Kiowa. Footage obtained by Reuters through a public-records request shows Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, the county’s top election official, fiddling with cables and typing on his phone as he copied computer drives containing sensitive voting information. Schroeder, a Republican, later testified that he was receiving instructions on how to copy the system’s data from a retired Air Force colonel and political activist bent on proving Trump lost because of fraud. That day, Aug. 26, Schroeder made a “forensic image of everything on the election server,” according to his testimony, and later gave the cloned hard drives to two lawyers. Schroeder is now under investigation for possible violation of election laws by the Colorado secretary of state, which has also sued him seeking the return of the data. Schroeder is defying that state demand and has refused to identify one of the lawyers who took possession of the hard drives. The other is a private attorney who works with an activist backed by Mike Lindell, the pillow mogul and election conspiracy theorist.
Full Article: Trump allies breach U.S. voting systems in search of 'evidence'National: GAO: EAC Can Decide on State Funding for Election Officials’ Security | Lisbeth Perez/MeriTalk
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has been given full discretion to decide if states can allocate funds from the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) to provide security services for state or local election officials, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In December 2021, the EAC reached out to GAO to determine whether states may use certain grant funds made available to them under HAVA to provide “physical security services and social media threat monitoring” in connection with election activities. HAVA authorizes the use of grant funds for states to improve the administration of elections for Federal office. However, the law does not explicitly authorize nor prohibit the use of funds for security services. GAO stated in its decision that “if not otherwise specified in the law, an expense is authorized where it bears a reasonable, logical relationship to the purpose of the appropriation to be charged.” “Here, a decision to allow the use of grant funds for the physical security services and social media threat monitoring would be within EAC’s legitimate range of discretion,” the report says. “Congress vested in EAC the authority to administer the HAVA grants [but] also vested in EAC the authority to determine whether a particular grant expenditure helps ‘improv[e] the administration of elections for Federal office.’” Full Article: GAO: EAC Can Decide on State Funding for Election Officials’ Security – MeriTalkNational: Digital Response launches new election program | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop
The U.S. Digital Response, the nonprofit civic-tech group that sprung up during the COVID-19 pandemic to assist local governments with online service delivery, is adding a new program focused on developing tools to help election officials. The effort will see the organization’s engineers and managers work with county- and local-level election administrators on using open-source technologies to build products like poll-location search tools, election information websites and applications that help officials manage poll workers. “What we specialize in is simple tools that make an impact that are quick,” Priya Garg, one of the heads of the organization’s new elections program, told StateScoop. U.S. Digital Response has offered its assistance to election administrators since its founding in 2020, when it developed poll-locator tools for tribal voters in Arizona and built an app for Harris County, Texas, to recruit and organize poll workers in the country’s third-biggest voting jurisdiction. The beefed-up elections program is the product of a major grant USDR recently received from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit group of election-minded technologists that received $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, in 2020. U.S. Digital Response leaders declined to disclose the value of the grant, only saying that it was a “multi-million-dollar” award capable of sustaining the group’s work for several years. Full Article: U.S. Digital Response launches new election programNational: Cyber agency director says election security a top priority ahead of midterms | The Hill
Jen Easterly, the head of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told lawmakers on Thursday that election security is a top priority for her agency, as it anticipates Russian interference in the upcoming midterm elections. Easterly, who was testifying before the House Committee on Appropriations on the agency’s budget request, said midterm election security “is obviously one of our top priorities,” adding CISA was focused on guiding states and localities to combat disinformation campaigns — a tactic the Russians are expected to deploy. “We are here to help and make sure that all state and local election directors have the resources that they need to ensure the integrity of their election security,” Easterly said. Easterly was responding to a question from Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), who asked how the agency plans to defend the integrity of the election given previous attempts from Russians to penetrate voter registration databases and steal personal data. Full Article: Cyber agency director says election security a top priority ahead of midterms | The HillNational: Mark Meadows’ 2,319 text messages reveal Trump’s inner circle communications before and after January 6 | Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stuart/CNN
CNN has obtained 2,319 text messages that former President Donald Trump's White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent and received between Election Day 2020 and President Joe Biden's January 20, 2021 inauguration. The vast trove of texts offers the most revealing picture to date of how Trump's inner circle, supporters and Republican lawmakers worked behind the scenes to try to overturn the election results and then reacted to the violence that effort unleashed at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. The logs, which Meadows selectively provided to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack, show how the former chief of staff was at the nexus of sprawling conspiracy theories baselessly claiming the election had been stolen. They also demonstrate how he played a key role in the attempts to stop Biden's certification on January 6. The never-before-seen texts include messages from Trump's family -- daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and son Donald Trump Jr. -- as well as White House and campaign officials, Cabinet members, Republican Party leaders, January 6 rally organizers, Rudy Giuliani, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, Sean Hannity and other Fox hosts. There are also text exchanges with more than 40 current and former Republican members of Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
National: GOP lawmakers were deeply involved in Trump plans to overturn election, new evidence suggests | Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu/Politico
Republican members of Congress were heavily involved in calls and meetings with former President Donald Trump and his top aides as they devised a strategy to overturn the election in December 2020, according to new evidence filed in federal court late Friday. Deposition excerpts filed by the Jan 6. select committee — part of an effort to force former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to appear for an interview — suggest that some of Trump’s top allies in Congress were frequently present in meetings where a handful of strategies to prevent then-President-elect Joe Biden from taking office were discussed, including efforts to replace the leadership of the Justice Department with figures who would sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election. Lawmakers who attended meetings, in person or by phone, included Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and numerous members of the House Freedom Caucus, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows who provided key testimony about the conversations and meetings Meadows had in December 2020.
Full Article: GOP lawmakers were deeply involved in Trump plans to overturn election, new evidence suggests - POLITICONational: New Details Underscore House G.O.P. Role in Jan. 6 Planning | Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer/The New York Times
It was less than two weeks before President Donald J. Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress would have what they saw as their last chance to overturn the 2020 election, and Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, was growing anxious. “Time continues to count down,” he wrote in a text message to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, adding: “11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!” It has been clear for more than a year that ultraconservative members of Congress were deeply involved in attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power: They joined baseless lawsuits, spread the lie of widespread election fraud and were among the 147 Republicans who voted on Jan. 6, 2021, against certifying President Biden’s victory in at least one state. But in a court filing and in text messages obtained by CNN, new pieces of evidence have emerged in recent days fleshing out the degree of their involvement with the Trump White House in strategy sessions, at least one of which included discussions about encouraging Mr. Trump’s supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, despite warnings of potential violence. Some continued to push to try to keep Mr. Trump in office even after a mob of his supporters attacked the complex. “In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, wrote to Mr. Meadows on Jan. 17, 2021, misspelling the word “martial.”
Editorial: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election | J. Michael Luttig/CNN
Nearly a year and a half later, surprisingly few understand what January 6 was all about. Fewer still understand why former President Donald Trump and Republicans persist in their long-disproven claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Much less why they are obsessed about making the 2024 race a referendum on the "stolen" election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen. January 6 was never about a stolen election or even about actual voting fraud. It was always and only about an election that Trump lost fair and square, under legislatively promulgated election rules in a handful of swing states that he and other Republicans contend were unlawfully changed by state election officials and state courts to expand the right and opportunity to vote, largely in response to the Covid pandemic. The Republicans' mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective. That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020 election, as they would have us believe. That's constitutionally impossible. Trump's and the Republicans' far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.
Arizona GOP candidates sue to block use of voting machines in upcoming midterms | Michael McDaniel/Courthouse News Service
Republican candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state sued state and county officials to bar the use of electronic voting machines ahead of the midterm election in November. In the federal complaint filed Friday and made available Monday, gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem claim an injunction to stop the use of voting machines is necessary since the “voting system does not reliably provide trustworthy and verifiable election results.” Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Lake and Finchem in their respective races. Lake and Finchem want a federal judge to prohibit the use of electronic voting machines in the state in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. They claim voting on paper ballots and hand-counting those votes is the only efficient and secure method for proceeding. The candidates claim there is a history of voting machine failure in Arizona and abroad. Additionally, they contend state officials neglected security procedures and claim Dominion Voting Systems, a voting software company, lied and ignored a state legislative subpoena inquiring about the data relating to the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. Dominion is not named as a defendant in the complaint. Lake announced the lawsuit at one of her political rallies in Morristown, Arizona, in March alongside the founder and CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell. Lindell teased a class-action suit at the rally, with over 300 plaintiffs supposedly committed. Full Article: Arizona GOP candidates sue to block use of voting machines in upcoming midterms | Courthouse News ServiceGeorgia restores automatic voter registration after sharp decrease in 2021 | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The sudden drop in voter registrations stood out to Richard Barron, Fulton County’s former elections director, when he first noticed it in February 2021. Without explanation, the number of registration applications had dramatically declined, from 35,000 the previous February to less than 6,000 in the same month a year later. Similar decreases happened across Georgia throughout last year. Barron suspected something had changed with Georgia’s automatic registration program, which was supposed to sign up eligible voters by default at driver’s licenses offices unless they opt out. He said his staff called and emailed the secretary of state’s office several times but didn’t find answers. It turned out the Georgia Department of Driver Services had shut off automatic voter registration when it redesigned its website early last year as part of a broader technology overhaul. Instead of registering drivers by default, the new website required drivers to click “Yes” or “No” when asked whether they wanted to sign up.
Michigan Republican resigns from GOP post citing ‘delusional lies’ | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News
Tony Daunt, a longtime Michigan Republican insider, resigned Tuesday night from the GOP's state committee, saying party leaders had made the coming election a test of "who is most cravenly loyal" to former President Donald Trump. Daunt, who is one of two Republican members of the Board of State Canvassers, made the comment in an email addressed to Judy Rapanos, chairwoman of the 4th Congressional District Republican Committee. The message was obtained by The Detroit News. For five years, Daunt has been one of about 100 members of the Republican Party's state committee, a panel that helps guide the party's decisions. But that ended Tuesday with his immediate resignation, three days after a contentious GOP convention in Grand Rapids.
Full Article: Michigan Republican resigns from GOP post citing 'delusional lies'North Carolina counties prepare voting systems for early voting | Jordan Wilkie/Carolina Public Press
North Carolina counties finished testing their voting machines and election reporting systems last week in preparation for voting, which begins in person on Thursday ahead of the May 17 primary. Voting in modern elections relies on a series of computers to count and report votes. North Carolina counties completed the voting machine review, called “logic and accuracy” testing, and a mock election to make sure results uploads were running smoothly by April 21, according to the state’s election calendar. “We conduct these tests to ensure that tabulation and results reporting go smoothly on election nights, and so county board staff are comfortable with the process,” said Pat Gannon, spokesperson for the N.C. State Board of Elections. That North Carolina combines its testing of logic and accuracy with mock elections to prepare for elections is a great practice, according to Mark Lindeman, director of Verified Voting, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization dedicated to elections security. Full Article: NC counties prepare voting systems for early voting - Carolina Public PressNevada Voter ID, mail voting rollback ballot questions likely dead after court rulings | Riley Snyder and Michelle Rindels/The Nevada Independent
A pair of Carson City judges struck what appeared to be fatal blows to proposed GOP-backed voting initiatives on Monday, invalidating efforts to roll back the Democrat-backed universal vote by mail law passed in 2021 and a measure implementing voter identification requirements. In separate rulings, Senior Judge Frances Doherty blocked the effort to file a referendum against AB321, the measure passed by lawmakers in 2021 to permanently implement universal mail-in ballot. In a separate case, Senior Judge William Maddox ruled that the voter ID initiative’s description of effect — a 200-word summary — was argumentative and ordered a new description be written, effectively scrapping all signatures collected at this point. “On both proposed initiatives, the courts agreed with us that the descriptions provided to potential Nevada voters were deceptive and inaccurate, and could not go forward,” Wolf Rifkin attorney Bradley Schrager, who represented the plantiffs, said in a statement. “In both instances, people with agendas undermining confidence in our elections were found to be misleading the voters about their ballot measures. Today the justice system made clear that such tactics are not tolerable.” Both measures were sponsored by Repair the Vote, a political action committee led by former Nevada Republican Club President David Gibbs. In a brief interview Monday, Gibbs said there was virtually no chance of getting the signatures needed to qualify the measures for the ballot by a deadline in the next few weeks. Full Article: Voter ID, mail voting rollback ballot questions likely dead after court rulings – The Nevada IndependentEditorial: Big Lie pushes rural Nevada to make their elections slow, expensive and error-prone | Sheila Leslie/Reno Gazette Journal
As a 45-year Nevadan by choice, I’ve spent many happy days in our rural areas, working in human services and recreating in the gorgeous remote basin and range lands around Table Mountain, Mt. Jefferson and the Twin Rivers area of the Arc Dome Wilderness. I’ve worked with ranchers in frontier Eastern Nevada to fight various iterations of the Las Vegas water grab which threatened their land and livelihoods. I’ve helped small communities set up family resource centers to support their residents, financed with lots of local ingenuity and pride, and I’ve helped rural judges access resources for defendants living with a severe mental illness while simultaneously reducing their jail populations. Over these decades, I always found local officials and community leaders to be generous with their time and creative with their solutions. Even as an urban-based Nevadan from a much more liberal political perspective, I found plenty of common ground and genuine respect for different points of view. That’s why it’s been so incredibly disheartening to see the vast majority of rural Nevadans refuse to believe their own eyes when they saw violent insurrectionists invade the U.S. Capitol. It’s been hard to see them continually vote for climate change deniers even as they suffer from megadroughts and wildfires. And it’s been painful to watch our rural neighbors succumb to the lies and nonsense of Trumpism, buying into wild conspiracy theories that make no sense.
Full Article: Big Lie pushes rural Nevada to make their elections slow, expensive and error-proneRhode Island Senate approves early voting bill, online mail ballot applications | Katherine Gregg/The Providence Journal
Despite strong pushback from legislative Republicans — and the state GOP — the Senate on Tuesday approved a bill to make it easier to vote almost three weeks early and in absentia. The mostly party-line vote was 28 to 6, with House Majority Whip Maryellen Goodwin calling it a "great day for democracy" and Republican Sen. Elaine Morgan calling the legislation a "travesty" of democracy. (The only Democrat who broke ranks was Sen. Roger Picard.) Most basically, the legislation allows voters to cast ballots 20 days ahead of an election, and to apply for absentee ballots — also known as mail ballots — online, using a driver's license or state identification card number as their ID. It eliminates the required confirmation of two witnesses or a notary to the signing of a mail ballot. It also calls for the creation of a permanent list of nursing home residents — and others who are disabled "for an indefinite period" — to whom mail ballot applications would be sent automatically in every election. This would stop only if a local elections clerk received "reliable information that a voter no longer qualifies for the service" for whatever reason, including death.
Full Article: RI Senate approves early voting bill, online mail ballot applications