National: Trump, aides chase vote-rigging claims even after latest probe finds nothing | Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco and Phil Stewart/Reuters

Late last summer, Kurt Olsen’s patience had run out. U.S. President Donald Trump had enlisted Olsen months earlier to seek evidence of foreign interference in U.S. elections and re-investigate Trump’s 2020 loss. A prominent election-denier, attorney and former Navy SEAL, Olsen aimed to prove the discredited conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems machines had been infected with malicious code controlled by Venezuela, according to three sources familiar with the matter. But a secret federal investigation of Puerto Rico’s Dominion machines had found no trace of hacking after the administration seized the machines in May and directed a cybersecurity contractor to scour them for months. Confronted with the results, Olsen turned on the contractor, Virginia-based Mojave ​Research Inc. in a September message to Trump, the three sources said. Infuriated, Olsen accused the firm of blocking his work, serving the “deep state” and secretly taking money from billionaire George Soros, a Democratic donor and frequent right-wing target, they said. Read Article

National: Trump Justice Department Curbs Efforts to Safeguard States From Election Crimes | Ben Penn/Bloomberg Law

The Justice Department is curtailing election year coordination aimed at protecting state-run voting processes, increasing risks of the Trump administration interfering in the November midterms or unwittingly exposing precincts to threats, said multiple state officials and former DOJ election crime lawyers. Ahead of an election that will determine whether Republicans retain control of Congress, DOJ leaders have eliminated a centralized command post, discontinued mandatory election law training for prosecutors, and restricted access to threat briefings for state officials, said people briefed on the situation. To attorneys steeped in federal-state election law enforcement norms, DOJ’s information-sharing pullback is a subtler form of undermining the election integrity principles that this administration touts as a priority. It coincides with the department’s escalating push to seize state voting records and FBI Director Kash Patel’s promise of imminent arrests tied to the 2020 presidential election. President Donald Trump has also hinted at stripping states’ constitutional authority over election administration. Read Article

Alabama elections now subject to audit, but bill sponsor wants some changes | Anna Barrett/News From The States

The sponsor of a new law requiring audits of general elections in Alabama said Monday he wants to make some changes in the future. HB 95, sponsored by Rep. Joe Lovvorn, R-Auburn, requires probate judges to conduct a post-election audit of every ballot in one precinct after every county and statewide general election. An executive amendment from Gov. Kay Ivey added to the legislation in the final days of the 2026 legislative session removed a requirement that the audited precinct be randomly selected. Lovvorn said in a phone interview Monday was the same amendment that was adopted in a Senate committee in February, but later tabled on the Senate floor in late March. Read Article

Arizona: Conservative groups lose appeal of election overhaul lawsuit | Caitlin Sievers/Arizona Mirror

An appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit from conservative groups that challenged how Arizona counties verify early ballot signatures and run ballot drop-boxes, among other things. Brought by the America First Legal Foundation and the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona on behalf of a group of voters, the lawsuit rehashed numerous claims that election deniers have made unsuccessfully in court for years. The conservative groups argued that Maricopa, Yavapai and Coconino counties illegally used unstaffed ballot drop boxes, canceled voter registrations and used improper procedures to verify voter signatures on vote-by-mail ballot envelopes. The America First Legal Foundation was created by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Project 2025 and one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisors. The Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, which mostly operates under the name EZAZ, is run by conservative political operative Merissa Caldwell, formerly Merissa Hamilton. The Arizona Court of Appeals on Wednesday affirmed a Yavapai County Superior Court judge’s 2025 decision to dismiss the case. Read Article

California: Volunteer dismissed from poll training after pushing back on political commentary by Shasta election official Clint Curtis | Annelise Pierce/Shasta Scout

Two women say they were told to leave a poll worker training session Thursday after expressing discontent with political commentary made by Shasta’s chief election official. A third poll worker made it through her training earlier in the week but was left with significant concerns. Shasta County community member Joyce Lively was present at a poll worker training on Thursday when Curtis brought the Riverside topic up about ten minutes into the session. She said he mentioned the matter in passing as he discussed poll worker positions, saying a particular position could be the one to prevent an event like the alleged 45,000 ballot discrepancy in Riverside County. Lively said it bothered her that Shasta’s election official was treating an unproven claim made by activists as fact, especially in a space that’s supposed to be nonpartisan. “I put up my hand and I said I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t bring politics into the training situation,” Lively said afterwards. Curtis responded by calling the ballot discrepancy a “statement of fact,” Lively said. She said she pushed back firmly but politely, telling him the allegation was a matter of opinion and something she felt didn’t belong in a poll worker training, “He looked at me and smiled and said ‘you’re dismissed’,” Lively recounted. “I asked him if he was serious and he said yes he was.”Read Article

Colorado: Appeals court declines to rehear Tina Peters’ arguments | Tom Hesse/CPR

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals will not take a second crack at Tina Peters’ appeal despite a request from her attorney asking for more consideration of some of their arguments. Peters’ attorneys requested the rehearing on April 16, two weeks after the Court of Appeals ordered a re-sentencing for the former Mesa County Clerk on the grounds that the trial judge, 21st Judicial District Court Judge Matthew Barrett, had improperly considered Peters’ public comments and may have violated her First Amendment right to free speech. Today, the Court of Appeals rejected that rehearing request. In their request for a rehearing, Peters’ attorneys argued that the Court of Appeals “misapprehended” their arguments on the supremacy clause. Peters has long maintained that she was acting in a federal capacity when she permitted unauthorized access to county voting equipment and, therefore, should be immune from state charges. Thus far, no court has sided with Peters’ claims. Read Article

Georgia’s voting technology blunder | Cory Doctorow/Medium

Nearly 25 years ago, in the aftermath of Bush v Gore, I got involved in a bunch of ugly tech policy fights over voting machines. The hanging chad debacle in Florida prompted Congress to appropriate funds for states to purchase new touchscreen voting machines based on a robust, open standard. The problem was, those machines didn’t exist. The voting machine industry in those days was already very consolidated (it’s far more consolidated today). They went shopping for a standards body that would publish a spec for a “standard” voting machine that could soak up those federal dollars in time for the 2004 election. The only taker was the IEEE, who unwisely offered to serve as host for this impossible rush job. Once the voting machine reps were around a table at IEEE — largely sheltered from antitrust scrutiny thanks to the broad latitude enjoyed by firms engaged in standardization, which is otherwise uncomfortably close to collusion — they admitted what everyone already knew: there was zero chance they were going to develop a new standard in time for the election. Read Article

Georgia elections board weighs paper ballots options for November voting | Caleb Groves/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Faced with a vote-counting system that may soon violate state law, the State Election Board is weighing Georgia’s backup system: paper ballots filled out by hand. The Republican-controlled board spent hours Wednesday debating its rulemaking authority and a proposal to abandon Georgia’s current touchscreen voting system that uses QR codes, unreadable by humans, to count votes. The proposal would switch the state to a system where voters would fill in bubbles on a paper ballot that would then be read by a scanner. Critics — including many local election officials — fear a midyear switch would cause disruption at the polls in November. Others said the rule change would overstep the board’s legal authority. Proponents say those concerns are overblown, noting that poll workers are supposed to be trained to use the backup system and a majority of the country already uses paper ballots. The move comes as the state hurtles toward a July deadline to eliminate using QR codes to tally votes, leaving election officials and elections in limbo with no clear plan for compliance. Read Article

Michigan: Antrim County voters confused after clerk attempts to cancel hundreds of voter registrations | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Hundreds of voters have reportedly been affected by Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s attempt to cancel voter registrations in the small northern county, leaving voters confused and local clerks frustrated. The Michigan Bureau of Elections sent a letter to Bishop last week accusing her of improperly changing and canceling voter registrations. Such changes “fall outside the scope” of her authority as a county clerk, the bureau wrote, and failed “to comply with the law.” Michigan law puts municipal clerks, not county clerks, in charge of voter list maintenance. Bishop has until Thursday to respond to the state with an explanation of why she made the changes and lists of the affected voters. Read Article

North Carolina: No voter ID? Proposal could make it easier for election officials to reject your ballot | Paul Specht/WRAL

State election leaders may soon make it easier for county officials to reject ballots submitted by voters seeking an exception to North Carolina’s voter identification requirements. North Carolina voters are required to show a form of ID — such as driver’s license or a U-S passport — in order to cast a ballot. Voters who are unable to show ID can seek an exemption from the rule by testifying that they are a victim of a recent natural disaster, have a religious objection to being photographed, or have an impediment to obtaining ID, such as a disability or lack of transportation. Under current rules, county elections boards can reject a voter’s exemption request if they believe it to be false — but only if board members vote unanimously. The North Carolina State Board of Elections is considering changing the rule so that local boards can reject those exemption requests by a majority vote, rather than a unanimous vote. Read Article

Pennsylvania Supreme Court case challenges state rule for registering voters | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

Should voter registration applications be rejected if voters’ personal information doesn’t match government databases? The Pennsylvania Department of State said in 2018 that the answer should be no. But in a case currently pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Potter County Commissioner Robert Rossman is arguing the department is misinterpreting the law. If Rossman’s challenge is successful, it could result in more voter applications being rejected. In 2018, the Department of State issued a directive stating that, based on state and federal law, counties can’t reject voter applications solely because the driver’s license number or last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number don’t match state or federal databases, as could happen if the voter makes a mistake when filling out the application. Read Article

Texas: New lawsuit seeks to force Dallas County to use precinct voting again for runoff after messy primary | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Some Dallas County Republicans on Monday sued the county elections department in a bid to require voters to cast ballots for the May 26 primary runoff at specific polling places in their precincts rather than any location in the county. That precinct-based voting system on primary election day in March created chaos. Local party leadership is trying to reverse a decision made by its former chair, who resigned last week after facing backlash for agreeing to use countywide voting on election day in the runoff. But early voting for the runoff election starts May 18, and Dallas County election officials say it’s too late to change course. The lawsuit, filed in the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals by Barry Wernick, a Republican precinct chair and a candidate for Dallas County Commissioner District 2, is asking the court to require the county to use precinct polling places for the runoff election. Some Dallas Republicans sue county to force a return to precinct voting for May runoff - Votebeat

Wisconsin: Judge rules against ex-Trump attorney in Wisconsin fake elector case | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A state prosecution will proceed against a top architect of an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election on felony charges related to a plan to gather signatures of Republicans falsely claiming to be electors for President Donald Trump. A Wisconsin judge on Thursday ruled against former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro in his effort to keep statements he made to investigators in other battleground states about the fake elector plan from being introduced in the criminal filed by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul against Chesebro and others over the scheme. Kaul in 2024 filed 11 counts of felony forgery charges against Chesebro, former Trump campaign attorney Jim Troupis and former Trump aide Mike Roman. The charges allege the three lied to the Wisconsin Republicans who signed paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 election for former President Joe Biden. Read Article

National: Trump Doesn’t Have the Power to Enact His Latest Elections Scheme | David A. Graham/The Atlantic

Anxiety among election officials and experts had been building for months before Donald Trump issued his latest executive order purporting to ensure election integrity late last month. When the actual text emerged, the reaction wasn’t relief exactly—but a definite sense that things could have been much worse. Americans have many reasons to be worried about whether the midterm elections will be free and fair. As I laid out in a cover story last fall, the president’s plan to subvert the 2026 election is multifaceted and already in swing. But last month’s order and the dismissive reaction it’s received from experts—along with this weekend’s decisive defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, which shows how the competitive-authoritarian playbook that Trump has imitated can be beaten—also point to the reasons to resist doomerism. Trump Doesn’t Have the Power to Enact His Latest Elections Scheme - The Atlantic

National: As a supreme court ruling looms, the US is dismantling Black voting power | Carol Anderson/The Guardian

There are moments in American history when the stakes are unmistakable. This is one of them. The forthcoming decision in Louisiana v Callais will not just be another supreme court ruling in a long line of voting cases. This time the issue is whether the Voting Rights Act (VRA) can still require states to draw electoral maps that give Black voters a meaningful chance to elect representatives. The challenge to the VRA is the latest brick in a wall that has been under construction for more than a decade, a wall designed to silence Black voters and an attempt to contain, carve up and cancel out the voices of minority communities to once again cement one party rule. Let’s be honest about what is happening. After the civil war, Reconstruction cracked open the door to a multiracial democracy. Black Americans registered. Black Americans voted. Black Americans held office. For a brief moment, the promise of the 15th amendment felt real. That progress was met with terror and violence – and then Jim Crow laws that choked off political power for nearly a century. As a supreme court ruling looms, the US is dismantling Black voting power | Carol Anderson | The Guardian

National: Department of Justice moves to undo Jan. 6 rioters’ convictions for seditious conspiracy | Salvador Rizzo, Jeremy Roebuck and Perry Stein/The Washington Post

Federal prosecutors are seeking to wipe out the seditious conspiracy convictions of 12 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who helped plan the Jan. 6, 2021, riots and led the charge into the U.S. Capitol, according to court documents filed Tuesday. The request, from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro of D.C., is likely to be granted because prosecutors have broad discretion to pursue or drop criminal charges, even after defendants have been convicted. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers and a lead organizer behind the riots, is among those whose convictions Pirro is seeking to erase. The move to undo the most serious convictions stemming from the assault on the Capitol marks the latest step in President Donald Trump’s quest to rewrite the event’s violent history. A mob of Trump supporters gathered in D.C. and disrupted Congress’s certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential race, echoing Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen. If Pirro’s request is approved by the courts, it will wipe out the last remaining convictions related to the Jan. 6 assault. DOJ moves to undo Jan. 6 rioters’ convictions for seditious conspiracy - The Washington Post

National: US Postal Service union launches ad campaign promoting mail voting | Susan Haigh/Associated Press

A major U.S. Postal Service union is launching a national TV ad campaign promoting voting by mail, stepping into a politically charged debate as skepticism about mail-in ballots has been raised by President Donald Trump and others. The 30-second message features a variety of voters, among them a busy farmer and a flight attendant, explaining why they cast their ballots by mail. Sponsored by the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union, the advertising campaign announced Tuesday will begin airing this week in Ohio, where Union Army soldiers during the Civil War cast the first mail ballots in 1864. It will then move to other states. The ad ends with the message: “Vote by mail — keep it, protect it, expand it.” It comes two weeks after Trump signed an executive order that seeks to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and subsequently bar postal workers from sending absentee ballots to those who are not on each state’s approved list. Read Article

National: Local election officials fear retribution ahead of fall midterms | Gregory Svirnovskiy/Politico

Local election officials are expressing grave concerns about federal interference into their work, as the fall midterms kick into high gear and experts fret over President Donald Trump’s push to assert greater control over voting. Fifty percent of local election officials are either somewhat or very worried about political leaders interfering with their work, according to a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice published on Monday, with just 28 percent saying they have no concerns about the prospect. And 45 percent of respondents expressed concern with being targeted by politically motivated investigations. The numbers aren’t all that surprising, said Lawrence Norden, the Brennan Center’s vice president of elections and government. “I think since at least 2020, when you had threats against election officials reach unprecedented levels and a lot of controversy around being able to address Covid and of course, Jan. 6 — after that, I think this is just a reality that election officials have been living with,” he said. “So unfortunately, I’m not really surprised by those numbers.” Read Article

National: Ballots become battlegrounds for voting rules, redistricting, election power | Anna Claire Vollers/Stateline

More than a third of state ballot measures that voters will be asked to consider this year relate to democracy, with questions on voting rights, election processes, redistricting and similar issues. “It’s the redistricting fights that are really getting heated after the Trump administration began pressuring Republican-led states to shore up the GOP majority in Congress in preparation for the midterm election,” said Quentin Savwoir, director of programs and strategy at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive policy organization that tracks ballot initiatives. For example, next week Virginians will be asked whether they want to temporarily allow the state to redraw its congressional districts, in response to aggressive congressional map changes in other states that have been encouraged by President Donald Trump. If approved, the proposal could create four Democrat-leaning districts and affect the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives. Read Article

National: Top federal election official says her conspiratorial rant against Democrats is being investigated | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

Christy McCormick, the Republican vice-chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), told Democracy Docket Wednesday that her inflammatory comments against Democrats last year are under “investigation.” During a panel discussion in October with the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute (AFPI), McCormick falsely claimed that Democrats actively promote and rely on voting by “illegal citizens” to win elections. “They need the votes. They’re losing ground,” McCormick said when asked why she thinks the “left” opposes measures to tighten voting rules. “Everybody is seeing how people are going toward the right. They need open borders, they need illegal citizens to increase their votes,” she continued. “And this is why they’re fighting so adamantly against us.” At the time, McCormick was appearing on the panel in her official capacity as a commissioner of the EAC, an independent agency that helps all states — including those led by Democrats — administer fair and impartial elections. Read Article

National: Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections | Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield/ProPublica

In mid-December 2020, federal officials responsible for protecting American elections from fraud converged in a windowless, dim, fortified room at the Justice Department’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters. They had been summoned by Attorney General William Barr. Over the preceding weeks, Donald Trump’s claims that the presidential election had been stolen from him had reached a crescendo. He’d become obsessed with a conspiracy theory that voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan, had switched votes from him to Joe Biden. With each day, Trump ratcheted up the pressure to unleash the might of the federal government to undo his defeat. Barr interrogated experts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, crammed in beside top FBI officials around a cheap table. He needed the group of around 10 to answer a crucial question: Was it really possible the 2020 presidential vote had been hacked? Read Article

Alaska: ‘It would be catastrophic’: A Supreme Court decision could upend crucial Senate race | Lisa Kashinsky/Politico

In the villages that dot Kodiak Island off the coast of southwest Alaska, the post arrives by plane. Mailing a ballot to the archipelago’s hub takes at least two days — if the region’s frequent storms haven’t grounded air traffic. It’s a common problem across Alaska. And it’s a big reason why the state allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted for up to 10 days afterward, a critical reprieve for voters in remote communities that are disconnected from the state’s highway system and sometimes even polling locations. That’s why Alaskans across the political spectrum are sounding the alarm about a pending Supreme Court ruling. A majority of justices appear to be leaning toward barring states from counting late-arriving ballots, a ruling that would upend voting laws in Alaska and more than a dozen other states. That could potentially disenfranchise hundreds of voters in Kodiak’s distant villages and thousands more across the remote reaches of The Last Frontier — and upend Alaska’s election process in a state that could determine Senate control. Read Article

A California sheriff seized ballots, testing the limits of local power over elections | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

Over the past few weeks, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — who is also a Republican candidate for governor of California — has taken the unusual step of seizing ballots from a recent election, launching his own recount, and opening a criminal investigation into how the election was run. The premise of Bianco’s investigation is sharply disputed. Bianco has pointed to the claims of a conservative citizens’ activist group that says it found an apparent discrepancy of tens of thousands of ballots — a figure election officials and independent experts say stems from a misreading of preliminary vote data, not an actual gap between ballots cast and ballots counted. California’s attorney general moved to stop the investigation, which is now on pause. Bianco seized more ballots, anyway, and says the effort to stop his recount is “politically motivated.” Courts this week ordered the unsealing of the warrants used to justify the seizures, which showed a yearslong relationship between Bianco’s office and the conservative activist group. On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court also ordered a halt to Bianco’s investigation. Read Article

Illinois: DuPage County forced to pay bill after vendor disables election equipment | Alicia Fabbre/Daily Herald

DuPage County Board members this week approved a $629,068 expenditure after learning that election-related equipment had been disabled and wouldn’t be reactivated until a vendor was paid. Vendor Hart InterCivic billed the DuPage County clerk’s office in September. The invoice was for services related to the county’s electronic poll books. Election officials use the devices to review and process voter information. County board members did not learn the bill was unpaid until after the company contacted DuPage on April 1. According to a memo to the board, Hart InterCivic notified the county that it had turned off “phone service” to the electronic poll books and would not provide services until the invoice is paid. Read Article

Indiana GOP election division leaders resign | Niki Kelly/Indiana Capital Chronicle

The top two Republicans at the Indiana Election Division have tendered their resignations, effective May 6 — the day after the primary election. Co-director Brad King is retiring after 24 years in the role and a host of accomplishments to his name. Co-General Counsel Valerie Warycha, who is supporting GOP Secretary of State candidate David Shelton, is also leaving. King and Warycha work alongside the Democratic co-director and co-general counsel in the Indiana Election Division, which is part of Secretary of State Diego Morales’ agency. He is seeking renomination at state convention this summer. Read Article

Kansas lawmakers overturn governor’s veto, approving voting system changes | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Kansas state lawmakers on Thursday overturned a veto by Gov. Laura Kelly, on a bill that she said would “suppress civic engagement and make it harder for Kansans to vote.” The legislation now to be enacted is the SAVE Kansas act, which directs the Kansas secretary of state to regularly check voter rolls, using a new, controversial tool offered by the federal government called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system. That tool, originally designed to check whether noncitizens were eligible for various benefits, has been repurposed by the second Trump administration to root out noncitizen voting, despite it being exceptionally rare. Kansas’s law also puts new security requirements on the websites used to collect voter registrations. They must use the .gov domain and meet nine other security requirements, including that data is transmitted using “encryption in transit,” that encryption standards are aligned with those set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and that audit logs are maintained. Read Article

Michigan Bureau of Elections says Antrim County clerk improperly changed, canceled voter registrations | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The Michigan Bureau of Elections is demanding answers from a controversial county clerk who reportedly canceled or changed voters’ registrations when she wasn’t supposed to. The bureau sent a letter to Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop on Tuesday saying it had received information suggesting she had made voter registration changes “that fall outside the scope of your statutory authority and fail to comply with the law.” Bishop, a Republican, was first elected in 2024 on a platform of cleaning up Antrim County’s voter roll. She is associated with the wing of the Republican Party that claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. The bureau learned that Bishop, who took office in 2025, apparently sent confirmation and cancellation notices — essentially, notices sent by election officials when they believe a voter has moved — to an unknown number of voters who didn’t vote in the last two major elections. However, the bureau noted in the letter, “Michigan law is explicit that a clerk may not cancel, or cause the cancellation of, a voter’s registration solely because a voter has missed one or two elections.” Read Article

North Carolina to feed data to Homeland Security under new noncitizen removal rules | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

The North Carolina State Board of Elections on Thursday approved a new process for partnering with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to remove potential noncitizens from the voter rolls. The rules, which the board’s Republican majority passed in a 3-2 vote, formalize the board’s new agreement with Homeland Security, which will run potentially millions of voters at a time through its citizenship databases. The state could begin uploading voter data to DHS as early as Friday. The board’s two Democrats fiercely opposed the rules, saying they did not trust DHS to provide the state with accurate data and believed it could disenfranchise eligible voters. “We are now saying you have to carry your papers,” board member Jeff Carmon said. Read Article

South Dakota: ‘Absolute chaos’: State, local officials disagree on path forward amid delay in early voting | Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight

County auditors and the state’s lead election official disagree about how to handle a delay of early and absentee voting for the June 2 primary election in South Dakota. Codington County Auditor Brenda Hanten told local media on Wednesday that the county would begin early and absentee voting on time by using sample ballots as the county waits for official ballots, under the guidance of South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson. Hanten walked back those plans on Thursday, telling South Dakota Searchlight she hadn’t yet discussed the plan with her state’s attorney when she made those comments. Codington County will not use sample ballots and will wait until official ballots are mailed. Read Article

Texas counties receive subpoenas for voters’ records from Department of Homeland Security | Natalia Contreras/Houston Public Media

At least three Texas counties last week either received or were told they would soon receive administrative subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department is seeking detailed records about some individual voters, including their registration applications and voter history, though counties don't yet know which ones. The subpoenas appear to be linked to a series of efforts by the Trump administration to verify the citizenship of registered voters. In December, Texas turned over the state's voter roll to the Justice Department. The transfer included voters' identifiable information such as dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. It did not include, however, voters' registration applications or signatures — the state does not have access to that information, which is kept by county voter registrars. Lubbock County's elections administrator, Roxzine Stinson, said she met with a Homeland Security representative who informed her she would soon receive a subpoena seeking additional information for at least 10 voters, and potentially up to 30. Stinson said she'll seek guidance from the county's legal department on how to respond. The Homeland Security representative told Stinson, "all 254 counties will be contacted," she said. Read Article