Warren Stewart – Page 12 – The Voting News

This fall’s municipal elections will give Montana voters their first encounter with a new requirement to provide their birth year on the back of mail-in ballot envelopes alongside the previously required signature line. The change is a result of a legislative mandate aimed at enhancing mail election security that took effect Oct. 1. Election officials in Montana’s two largest counties, Yellowstone and Missoula, said this week that the change had already forced them to reject hundreds of ballots in early returns — 411 as of Thursday, according to Missoula County Election Administrator Bradley Seaman, and about 440 as of Wednesday, according to Yellowstone County Election Administrator Dayna Causby. Read Article

Ohio: The Long Road to Election Day | Kendall Verhovek/Brennan Center for Justice

Tonya Wichman: We’re a smaller county so we only have two full-time people on staff that work alongside part-time clerks. Our role here is a little bit different than a large county that has departments for everything. But like every other county, we work in bipartisan teams. We can’t even open doors in Ohio without a member of the opposite party. The two of us personally run every aspect of an election. That includes voter registration, programming the ballot and the poll books, working through the new security implementations, setting up polling locations, and more. Throughout the year, we do list maintenance to remove people who pass away. We also process petitions for anyone that wants to be on the ballot, verify signatures for candidate petitions, and go through the legal details with the prosecutor’s office to make sure everything lines up with the state’s election code. We also take continuing education programs to make sure we learn how to make things more efficient and better for our voters. So when people ask, “Do you just work two days a year?” the answer is, “No, we spend the entire year getting ready for the next election.” Even right now, we’re working on next year’s May primary — and we started back in July. Read Article

Pennsylvania criminal case highlights problems with third-party voter registration drives | Carter Walker/Votebeat

In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, workers with an Arizona-based consulting firm conducting a voter registration drive tried to submit fake registrations in Pennsylvania in an effort to earn more money, the state attorney general is alleging in a criminal complaint filed this month. The case grew out of investigations in a few counties into voter registration applications that prosecutors had flagged as irregular before the election. But election officials across the commonwealth say the problems with these types of third-party voter registration drives aren’t limited to this incident of alleged fraud. Rather, they say, systemic problems with the way third-party voter registration organizations operate often result in street canvassers submitting incomplete or invalid registrations. Read Article

Virginia: Judge indicates support for disenfranchised voters in challenge to felony voting laws | Joe Dodson/Courthouse News Service

A judge signaled that he was likely going to rule in favor of a pair of disenfranchised voters Thursday who argued Virginia’s felony voting law violates a 150-year-old federal statute. U.S. District Judge John Gibney, a Barack Obama appointee, said that while he was leaning toward the plaintiffs, he wanted further briefing on the impact of a favorable ruling. He also indicated support for certifying a class that includes all Virginians who are currently or will be disqualified from voting due to convictions for crimes that were not considered felonies at common law in 1870. “We’re very optimistic about the judge’s comments at the end of the hearing,” attorney Brittany Amadi, partner at Wilmer Cutler, representing the plaintiffs, said in an interview. “Our plaintiffs have been waiting for some, some of them years and years to get their voting rights back, and so we’re very excited about the opportunity for those plaintiffs to restore their rights.” Read Article

Washington: Ballots could now be tossed if voters submit them via U.S. Postal Service due to postmarking delays | By Emry Dinman/The Spokesman-Review

Voters who have not submitted their ballots yet should stop submitting them through the mail due to unprecedented concerns ballots will not be postmarked in time for the election, according to recommendations from the Washington secretary of state. State law allows mail-in ballots to be received and still counted after Election Day, even if they arrive to election workers days later, but only if they are postmarked on Election Day or before. Postal union leadership and election officials say the U.S. Postal Service’s delivery of mail – and, critically for the upcoming election, postmarking – has been significantly delayed by multiple factors stemming from former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s “10-year plan” to reform the postal service. The Spokane County Elections Office has recommended voters shouldn’t return their ballots via a mailbox any later than Friday, a full four days before the election; the Washington Secretary of State’s Office goes even further, cautioning voters to not use a mailbox within seven to 10 days ahead of the election. Read Article

National: Trump Empowers Election Deniers, Still Fixated on 2020 Grievances | Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

October 24, 2025

Election officials from nearly all 50 states gathered on a call last month with the Homeland Security Department’s point person on “election integrity,” eager to hear how the woman filling a newly created Trump administration position might help safeguard the vote ahead of next year’s midterms. But many of them left alarmed. Rather than offering assurances that the federal government’s election protection programs would continue uninterrupted, the new official, Heather Honey, instead used portions of the meeting to echo rhetoric that has infused the right-wing election activist movement that emerged since President Trump falsely claimed that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud, according to five people with knowledge of the call. Read Article

National: Trump’s Most Reviled Voting Company Sold to a GOP Official. That’s Not the Worst of It. | Susan Greenhalgh/Slate

October 24, 2025

Earlier this month, news broke that Dominion Voting Systems had been sold to a former Republican election official.The announcement that the second-largest U.S. voting system vendor would be in the hands of a self-declared partisan sparked concerns and speculation on blogs and social media. Should a former Republican official be charged with providing and programming the voting machines to count more than a quarter of all U.S. ballots?As someone who has studied election systems and the election industry for 20 years, I’ve gotten questions from family and friends wanting to know if this is something to be worried about.My response has been: Not particularly. But don’t misunderstand the nonchalance—it’s not because it’s not wildly inappropriate and troubling for a declared partisan to control voting equipment. It’s because the partisan ownership of an election supplier is merely one aspect of the badly broken, opaque, and corrupted election system industry that we’ve been subjected to for decades. Read Arrticle

National: Dominion voting machines owner rebrands, treads carefully with Trump – Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Patrick Marley and Sarah Ellison/The Washington Post

When a Republican businessman announced this month that he had purchased a voting equipment company at the center of MAGA conspiracy theories, he rebranded the company in a way that seemed designed to appease critics who falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. But behind the scenes, the new owner of Dominion Voting Systems is sounding skeptical of those conspiracy theories and voicing disagreement with parts of the president’s executive order that could upend how voting is conducted, according to election officials who have spoken with him. The discordant messages from the new owner reflect the near-impossible task that election technology companies are facing after a barrage of false claims from Trump and his allies resulted in damaged reputations, lost business and threats against employees. As they head into the 2026 midterm elections, they are trying to ward off similar attacks that could hamper their ability to sell equipment and get contracts with local and state governments. Read Article

National: Does the sale of Dominion Voting Systems mean a transformation? Depends who’s asking | Miles Parks and Bente Birkeland/NPR

When Scott Leiendecker announced he was buying Dominion Voting Systems — the elections technology company at the heart of countless 2020 election conspiracy theories — he teased a transformation. “As of today, Dominion is gone,” read the first line of a press release that seemed to many readers to lean into the unfounded rumors that have swirled around the company (and led to hundreds of millions of dollars in defamation settlements) since Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. “We are turning the page and beginning the vital work of restoring faith in American elections,” Leiendecker wrote in a public letter posted on the website for his new company, Liberty Vote. But in private, when speaking to the company’s county election official customers, the messaging has been different, raising the question of how much the company plans to change. Read Article

National: White House Hires ‘Stop the Steal’ Lawyer to Investigate 2020 Election Claims | Josh Dawsey, Eliza Collins and Ryan Barber/The Wall Street Journal

A former Trump campaign lawyer who worked on the effort to overturn the 2020 election results has joined the administration to investigate that year’s election and voting-related issues, according to people familiar with the matter. Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who unsuccessfully pushed claims of voter fraud, has joined the administration as a “special government employee,” some of the people said. The appointment gives Olsen 130 days to work from within the White House without giving up any private business interests. He is talking directly with President Trump, the people said. Trump asked Olsen to join the administration to work on election issues important to him, a senior administration official said. Olsen started his job in the past month, some of the people said, and has told others he wants to examine election machines. Read Article

National: Your ballot or other mail may not get postmarked by USPS the day it’s dropped off | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

Changes at the U.S. Postal Service are forcing people who rely on postmarks when voting, filing taxes or mailing legal documents to be extra careful when cutting it close to deadlines. Postmarks include the dates that USPS stamps on envelopes, and those are often used to determine whether a piece of first-class mail was sent on time. But the Postal Service has proposed revising its mailing standards to say that postmark date “does not inherently or necessarily align” with the date that a mail piece was first accepted by a letter carrier or dropped off at a post office or collection box. “In other words, the date on a machine-applied postmark may reflect the date on which the mailpiece was first accepted by the Postal Service, but that is not definitively the case,” USPS said in a recent Federal Register notice. Read Article

National: These cases could give the Supreme Court an opening to reshape election law | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

Election officials and voters preparing for next year’s midterm elections face disruptions on multiple fronts, including President Donald Trump’s efforts to influence voting procedures, a rare midcycle redistricting push in several state legislatures, and activity in the U.S. Supreme Court, whose election-related docket could have a big impact. This month, the justices heard arguments in two cases with potentially profound implications for elections and redistricting — and at least two more significant election-related cases are seeking a spot on the court’s docket. The highest-profile case, Louisiana v. Callais, was before the justices this week for a rare reargument. It’s a complex and long-running dispute over political maps in Louisiana, and voting rights advocates have warned it could allow the conservative majority to erode or strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, further limiting the use of race as a factor in redistricting as a remedy for past discrimination. Read Article

National: Voting Rights Act faces a near-death experience at US Supreme Court | Jan Wolfe/Reuters

The Voting Rights Act, a landmark law barring discrimination in voting, was a product of the U.S. civil rights era, sought by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King, passed by Congress and signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Six decades later, it faces its greatest threat, with the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, looking poised to hollow out one key section after gutting a different one in 2013. The court is expected to rule in the coming months in a case argued on Wednesday concerning a map delineating U.S. House of Representatives districts in Louisiana. The conservative justices signaled they could undercut the law’s Section 2, which bars voting maps that would result in diluting the voting power of minorities, even without direct proof of racist intent. In doing so, the court would not be striking down the Voting Rights Act. But the question is what will be left of the law after the court issues its decision. Read Article

Arizona Supreme Court hands Democrats win on election policy, but GOP changes still possible | Ray Stern/Arizona Republic

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes praised a recent decision by the state Supreme Court that gives him more control over election policies, calling a lawsuit that prompted the ruling a political ploy. The Oct. 16 decision declared that the Arizona Administrative Procedure Act, a comprehensive set of rules found in state law governing the workings of state agencies, cannot bind the creation of the state’s Elections Procedures Manual. The elections policy manual is updated every two years by the Secretary of State’s Office. It serves as a guidebook to election policy in the state but must comply with state and federal law. Once approved by the governor and state attorney general, it’s a crime to deviate from it during elections. Read Article

Georgia’s Sweeping Anti-Voting Law Suppressed Black Votes, New Data Shows | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

Four years after GOP lawmakers in Georgia enacted one of the most aggressive anti-voting laws in the country, new evidence filed in federal court shows that Senate Bill 202 (SB 202) has drastically deepened racial inequalities in voting access in the state. The findings came in a recent filing by voting advocates challenging the law, and they were drawn from 2024 election data and expert testimony. They indicate that more than 1.6 million registered voters faced increased barriers because of the law, with Black and minority voters bearing the biggest brunt. Read Article

Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales sued over new voting laws affecting naturalized citizens | Kayla Dwyer/Indianapolis Star

Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales and the directors of the Indiana Election Division are being taken to federal court over two new state laws that impact naturalized citizens who vote. Both laws, which became effective July 1 of this year, require some form of cross-check between voter information and citizenship status in a manner that some voting rights organizations, in a lawsuit filed Oct. 21, allege violates both the National Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act by creating unnecessary barriers for a certain class of U.S. citizen. “Many individuals (we have) assisted to obtain citizenship over the years fled from countries where they never had the chance to participate in a democracy,” Cole Varga, CEO of Exodus Refugee Immigration, one of the plaintiffs, wrote in a statement. “We cannot allow their voices to be silenced again in Indiana.” Read Article

Maine: Question 1 could stop prisoners from voting | Emily Bader/The Maine Monitor

Some civil rights advocates are worried that Question 1 on next month’s referendum ballot could block incarcerated people’s right to vote. The coalition Voter ID for ME successfully petitioned through a citizen initiative to put the proposed legislation on the November 4 ballot. Question 1 asks voters to consider requiring photo identification to vote both in-person and absentee. It would also prohibit absentee ballot requests by phone, end the ongoing absentee voter registration program, limit the number of drop boxes in municipalities and eliminate two days of absentee voting, among other changes to voting procedures. Read Article

Michigan: Dearborn ballot error leads to dispute with Wayne County over reprint cost | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Taxpayers will be on the hook for reprint costs after Dearborn, Michigan, printed and mailed out thousands of ballots that listed an incorrect candidate. But it’s unclear whether paying the bill will be the responsibility of the city or Wayne County. City officials estimate that Dearborn printed about 10,000 ballots that incorrectly listed Mohammed Shegara as a candidate for City Council even though he dropped out of the race in April. Roughly 9,000 of those went out to voters, City Clerk George Darany told Votebeat. To reprint and resend corrected ballots cost about $3,600, Darany said. The postage part of that, 21.3 cents per ballot, came out of the city’s account already, but no one has been billed yet for the reprint part, which is about 15 cents a ballot. Read Article

Nevada’s recent cyber attack shows the importance of shoring up security for election systems | Kerry Durmick/Nevada Current

On August 24th, Nevadans woke up to several key government sites having gone dark – taken offline by a massive cyber attack. The cyber attack ended up crippling several critical services like the Department of Motor Vehicles for over a week, and the full extent of the data that was compromised is still unknown as state officials, the Cyber Security Infrastructure Administration, and the FBI continue their investigation. However, one critical state service – the Secretary of State’s voter registration information – remained untouched. This was due in large part to a 2021 law that mandated centralizing voter data into a top-down voter registration system, consolidating all counties’ voter information. The old system, which had required each county to individually track and record voter data, was a bottom-up system where counties had to manage their own lists and cybersecurity before the information was transmitted to the SOS system. In contrast, the Voter Registration and Election Management System (VREMS) requires that all counties report voter registration and election data into a single system, which allows for more uniform list maintenance and provides a more secure cybersecurity infrastructure, as seen with the cyber attack earlier this year. The change, although expensive, has resulted in a safer and more transparent system for election officials and voters alike. Read Article

Ohio GOP proposes restrictions on mail-in ballot deadline, prompting concern from veterans | Morgan Trau/Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would restrict the mail-in deadline, requiring all absentee ballots to be received by elections officials by the time polls close. Some veterans raised concerns that this could prevent military and overseas ballots from being counted. “It’s a feeling that when your country calls you, you go,” Army veteran Adam Miller said. Joining the military is one of the most patriotic things an Ohioan can do, he said, but so is participating in the democratic process. “Being able to cast your vote is one of the fundamental freedoms that patriots fought for,” he said. When you are deployed overseas or in another country, the only way to vote is by mail — which Miller did when he was fighting in the Middle East. Read Article

South Carolina: How a $28 million contract for voting machines ballooned into $33 million election agency headache | Nick Reynolds/The Post and Courier.

State election officials brokered an agreement to avoid defaulting on a multi-million-dollar agreement for voting machines, quelling distant fears the bank that financed the deal could potentially repossess the equipment. The final price tag will run millions of dollars more than officials originally anticipated. In a settlement finalized at an Oct. 20 state Election Commission meeting, the agency’s governing board announced it would pay TD Bank around $33 million for its recent purchase of 3,240 ballot readers from voting tabulation firm ES&S on a delayed basis. The move averts an emerging minor fiscal crisis for the agency after officials learned it was unable to make the first $10 million payment to the bank last month due to a budgeting error. The miscue had sparked concerns from figures like state Treasurer Curtis Loftis that the bank could potentially repossess the machines and damage the state’s credit rating. Read Article

Texas asked to halt rollout of updated voter registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Groups representing election officials across Texas are asking the state to halt the rollout of its updated voter registration system and address issues that they say “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.” The groups outlined their complaints in a letter sent Friday to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson. County election officials across the state have for months reported problems that they say began when the state overhauled its voter registration system, known as TEAM, in July. Those issues contributed to a backlog of tens of thousands of voter registration applications, Votebeat reported, though that now has nearly been cleared. Election officials also said issues with TEAM were affecting their preparations for the upcoming constitutional amendment election. Read Article

Wisconsin Attorney General appeals ruling requiring election officials to verify voters’ citizenship status | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Attorney General Josh Kaul is appealing a Waukesha County judge’s ruling that requires election officials to verify the citizenship status of all Wisconsin voters before the next statewide election in February. Kaul filed an appeal Monday of Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Maxwell’s Oct. 6 decision that mandates the Wisconsin Elections Commission to review the state’s voter rolls over the next five months to determine whether anyone who is not a U.S. citizen is registered to vote. “The circuit court’s decision and order drastically alters voter registration and elections in Wisconsin, violates state law, and threatens voting rights,” Kaul wrote in the Oct. 20 filing to the Dane County-based District IV Court of Appeals. Read Article

National: Supreme Court appears poised to weaken key pillar of Voting Rights Act | Sam Levine/The Guardian

October 17, 2025

The conservative majority on the US supreme court appeared poised to weaken a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act after a lengthy oral argument on Wednesday, paving the way for a significant upheaval in American civil rights law. After hearing arguments from lawyers for nearly two and a half hours, it seemed clear there was a majority on the court in favor of narrowing section two of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racially discriminatory electoral practices, as it applies to redistricting. The only remaining question in the case, Louisiana v Callais, appeared to be how far the court was willing to go. A ruling narrowing section two would strip minority voters of a tool to challenge discrimination. For decades, voting rights lawyers have turned to section two to challenge district lines – from congressional districts to school boards – that dilute the influence of minority voters. Supreme court precedent requires plaintiffs to clear a series of challenging hurdles in order to strike down an existing district. Read Article

National: One Republican Now Controls a Huge Chunk of US Election Infrastructure | Kim Zetter/WIRED

October 17, 2025

Former GOP operative Scott Leiendecker just bought Dominion Voting Systems, giving him ownership of voting systems used in 27 states. Election experts have concerns. With the Dominion acquisition, Leiendecker gains control of election equipment in more than half of the states. Dominion equipment is used across 26 states plus Puerto Rico. Knowink electronic pollbooks, which replace traditional paper pollbooks used to verify the eligibility of voters when they sign in at precincts, are used in 29 states plus the District of Columbia. But there are jurisdictions across 14 states, covering 20 million registered voters, that use both Dominion and Knowink systems. This gives companies that Leiendecker controls ownership of equipment that covers the entire election process in those jurisdictions—from the verification of registered voters to the casting of ballots and tabulation of results. Read Article

National: Layoffs, reassignments further deplete CISA | Eric Geller/Cybersecurity Dive

The Trump administration is pursuing twin strategies to shrink the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, laying off staffers and ordering others to either take new jobs elsewhere or leave the government. The layoffs and forced relocations are the latest phase of the White House’s massive downsizing of CISA, which experts warn could further deplete the U.S.’s already weakened cyber-defense force. While the full consequences of the staff reductions remain unclear, they could include diminished support for critical infrastructure organizations and a reduced readiness to counter evolving nation-state and criminal threats. Read Article

National: Hands Off Our Elections: States and Congress, Not Presidents, Set the Rules | Michael Mcnulty/The Fulcrum

Trust in elections is fragile – and once lost, it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. While Democrats and Republicans disagree on many election policies, there is broad bipartisan agreement on one point: executive branch interference in elections undermines the constitutional authority of states and Congress to determine how elections are run. Recent executive branch actions threaten to upend this constitutional balance, and Congress must act before it’s too late. To be clear – this is not just about the current president. Keeping the executive branch out of elections is a crucial safeguard against power grabs by any future president, Democrat or Republican. The Constitution is clear: Congress and states make the rules for federal elections, not presidents. Article 1, Section 4, the “Elections Clause,” gives states primary responsibility for administering elections and Congress the authority to “make or alter” those rules. The framers intentionally excluded the executive branch from this power, because they knew the grave risks of letting the president decide the rules of the game. Their foresight has protected our republic from the kinds of authoritarian power grabs that have undermined democracies around the world. Read Article

National: Democrats introduce bill to halt mass voter roll purges | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the Department of Justice has made an ambitious effort to collect sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including information that one election expert described as “the holy trinity” of identity theft: Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and dates of birth. In states where Trump’s party or allies control the levers of government, this information is handed over willingly. In states where they do not, the DOJ has formally asked, then threatened and then sued states that refuse. The department has also claimed many of these reluctant states are failing to properly maintain their voter registration rolls, and has pushed states to more aggressively remove potentially ineligible voters. This week, Democrats in the House and Senate introduced new legislation that seeks to defang those efforts by raising the legal bar for states to purge voters based on several factors, such as inactivity or changing residency within the same state. Read Article

National: Midterm elections will likely see increased effects of misinformation, reduced federal security activity, experts say | Paige Gross/News From The States

A year after the 2024 presidential election, technologists and election experts are wrestling with their new reality; tech-aided misinformation and disinformation campaigns are and will continue to be a part of the United States’ democratic process. Technology has always played a role in information dissemination in elections, said Daniel Trielli, an assistant professor of media and democracy at the University of Maryland. Mass use of the internet in the early 2000s gave everyday people the ability to be “publishers,” which increased the amount of misinformation, he said. But the rise of social media platforms and the evolving technologies, like generative artificial intelligence, in the last five years have brought it to new levels. “We have had much more volume of misinformation, disinformation grabbing the attention of the electorate,” Trielli said. “And quickly following through that, we see a professionalization of disinformation … The active use of these social media platforms to spread disinformation.” Read Article

Arizona says it will sue Mike Johnson if he does not swear in new rep – and likely trigger the release of the Epstein files | Joe Sommerlad/The Independent