National: Coordinated phishing campaign targeted election officials in nine states, according to FBI | AJ Vicens/CyberScoop
An invoice-themed phishing campaign targeted elections officials in at least nine states in October 2021, according to a warning the FBI issued Tuesday. The attackers sought to steal login credentials and could have had “sustained, undetected” access to election administrators’ systems, the notice said. The emails — sent in batches on at least three separate days — “shared similar attachment files, used compromised email addresses, and were sent close in time, suggesting a concerted effort to target US election officials,” the notice reads. It’s unclear whether any of the phishing attacks were successful. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “The FBI judges cyber actors will likely continue or increase their targeting of US election officials with phishing campaigns in the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections,” the notice reads. Phishing campaigns targeting election administrators through vendors, businesses, or other means was part of the Russian election interference campaign during the 2016 elections. In that case, emails purporting to be from Florida-based elections equipment vendor VR Systems was sent to 122 email addresses “associated with named local government organizations,” according to a National Security Agency assessment of the campaign. According to the new FBI warning, on Oct. 5, 2021, “unidentified cyber actors” sent emails originating from at least two email addresses to unidentified officials in nine unnamed states and to representatives of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS). The emails contained the same attachment titled “INVOICE INQUIRY.PDF,” which would redirect targets to a credential-harvesting website. Full Article: Coordinated phishing campaign targeted election officials in nine states, according to FBINational: Some states take steps to protect election workers as threats increase | Barbara Rodriguez/The 19th News
The people kept showing up at the small Northern California office where Natalie Adona and her co-workers help run elections. Three days in a row, they came to try to push a petition for recall elections, refusing to wear masks despite a mandate and physically pushing their way into the office, according to legal documents. Adona and her colleagues asked for a restraining order against the three people, worried about the trio who they say kept showing up to harass them at their jobs. A judge granted it, then later extended it for one of the people, finding “clear and convincing evidence” that the same person “engaged in unlawful violence or made a credible threat of violence.” An attorney for the trio has denied wrongdoing. The elections office briefly shut down walk-ins. Adona, who is an assistant clerk-recorder for the Nevada County Elections Office, said she has experienced several panic attacks. She still worries about her colleagues. "It was a really unfortunate incident that led to me and my staff feeling pretty afraid,” Adona told The 19th. “Certainly, I think that having a restraining order is an extreme way to settle a problem that I would have liked to have sort of settled by other means. But the circumstances and our county counsel felt it appropriate to go in that direction.” Full Article: Some states take steps to protect election workers as threats increaseNational: New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Before Jan. 6 | Alan Feuer, Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater/The New York Times
Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators have gathered growing evidence of how a tweet by President Donald J. Trump less than three weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, served as a crucial call to action for extremist groups that played a central role in storming the Capitol. Mr. Trump’s Twitter post in the early hours of Dec. 19, 2020, was the first time he publicly urged supporters to come to Washington on the day Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College results showing Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential vote. His message — which concluded with, “Be there, will be wild!” — has long been seen as instrumental in drawing the crowds that attended a pro-Trump rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and then marched to the Capitol. But the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the riot and the parallel inquiry by the House select committee have increasingly shown how Mr. Trump’s post was a powerful catalyst, particularly for far-right militants who believed he was facing his final chance to reverse defeat and whose role in fomenting the violence has come under intense scrutiny. Extremist groups almost immediately celebrated Mr. Trump’s Twitter message, which they widely interpreted as an invitation to descend on the city in force. Responding to the president’s words, the groups sprang into action, court filings and interviews by the House committee show: Extremists began to set up encrypted communications channels, acquire protective gear and, in one case, prepare heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington.
Full Article: New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Before Jan. 6 - The New York TimesEditorial: Merrick Garland Has More Than Enough to Investigate Trump | Timothy L. O’Brien/Bloomberg
A federal judge thinks that former President Donald Trump likely committed fraud — and probably knew it — when he and one of his lawyers, John Eastman, plotted to block Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election so Trump could hold on to power. So how much longer will it take Attorney General Merrick Garland to draw the same conclusion about that attempted coup? Perhaps Garland has already gone down that path. But there are no outward signs that he is investigating Trump with an eye toward a possible criminal prosecution. He has every reason to be circumspect, of course, but he has no reason to ignore the mounting evidence of Trump’s crimes. The latest reminder of what’s at stake came in Monday’s ruling from David Carter, a U.S. District Court judge in California. “Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Judge Carter noted in his Monday ruling. “The plan spurred violent attacks on the seat of our nation’s government, led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers, and deepened public distrust in our political process.” While ordering Eastman to turn over relevant email correspondence with Trump to the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Carter was also clear-eyed about the scope of his and the committee’s powers. Full Article: Merrick Garland Has More Than Enough to Investigate Trump - BloombergColorado County Clerks Association vow to defend democracy against election deniers | Ella Cobb/Daily Camera
Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Molly Fitzpatrick wants Colorado voters to know that thousands of dead people did not vote in the 2020 election. This rumor was one of several that Fitzpatrick and other Colorado county clerks refuted during a news conference hosted by the Colorado County Clerks association on Sunday outside the Denver Elections Division in Denver, where Republican, Democratic and unaffiliated clerks gathered to address allegations of election fraud put forth by election deniers and conspiracy theorists. In the past two years, election conspiracists have targeted Colorado clerks, citing fraud and security issues within Colorado’s election systems. Some of these false claims have ranged from accusations that China hacked Colorado’s voter registration database to reports claiming that Colorado’s voting systems are not properly certified. Fitzpatrick sought to set the record straight. “Unfortunately, over the last several months, there have been claims from election deniers that purport to prove fraudulent elections in Colorado,” Fitzpatrick said. “These claims are often lengthy, and they’re often full of jargon, and they do not provide proof or data. They consistently demonstrate a lack of understanding of our process. Full Article: Colorado County Clerks Association vow to defend democracy against election deniersGeorgia senators vote to strip controversial parts of elections bill | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Georgia Senate committee voted unanimously Tuesday to remove every contentious proposal from a broad elections bill, discarding plans for GBI fraud investigations, paper ballot inspections and funding limitations. The decision to advance a stripped-down bill sets up a showdown in the final days of this year’s legislative session, when lawmakers will attempt to negotiate a final version. The Senate Ethics Committee scrapped much of the bill after hearing testimony Monday from several county election officials who opposed strict ballot handling rules and restrictions on outside donations from nonprofit organizations. One elections supervisor called its requirements little more than “security theater.” Senators shrank the 39-page bill to a two-page measure Tuesday, leaving only a requirement that businesses give workers up to two hours off to vote either on election day or during three weeks of early voting. Under current law, workers are only entitled to time off to vote on election day.
Full Article: Georgia senators vote to strip controversial parts of elections bill
Indiana: Cost to add paper trail for voting machines will be more than $1 million in some counties | Margaret Menge/The Center Square
Two counties in Indiana now using paperless voting machines will each require an estimated $1.2 million worth of additional equipment to add a paper audit trail before the next presidential election. A bill signed earlier this month by Gov. Eric Holcomb requires paper backups for all voting machines in the state by July 1, 2024. Specifically, it requires the 59 counties that use MicroVote voting machines, which are all-electronic and don’t involve a paper ballot, to have “voter verifiable paper audit trail” – or vvpat –printers to retrofit all machines by July 1 of 2024. The printers attach to the MicroVote Infinity voting machines with a cord, and contain a roll of paper tape, similar to cash register tape, that voters can view behind a glass window to verify their selections are correct before casting their vote. In Allen County, the Director of Elections Amy Scrogham says it will cost about $1.2 million to buy vvpats for all of their MicroVote machines. The county has 715 machines, but only 160 vvpats. “We haven’t used them yet,” she says of the vvpats, explaining she decided not to start using them for the first time during the 2020 election, fearing it would overburden election workers who were already dealing with pandemic-related issues. In Hamilton County, Elections Administrator Beth Sheller said the last estimate from MicroVote was a cost of $2,230 for each vvpat printer and a case to carry it in. Hamilton County, she says, has 693 MicroVote voting machines and now has 150 vvpats. Full Article: Cost to add paper trail for voting machines will be more than $1 million in some Indiana counties | Indiana | thecentersquare.comKentucky secretary of state praises latest election bills that will make voting easier and speed the statewide transition to paper ballots | Bruce Schreiner/Associated Press
Amid the flurry of action in Kentucky’s legislature this week, two election-related bills passed that will make voting easier and speed the statewide transition to paper balloting, Secretary of State Michael Adams said. Unlike some states, where measures setting election rules have sparked bitter partisan fights, the two Kentucky measures cleared the GOP-dominated legislature with bipartisan support. The bills — sent to Gov. Andy Beshear — are a follow up to a high-profile election measure enacted last year with bipartisan backing that expanded early voting in Kentucky. Adams, a Republican, urged the Democratic governor to sign the latest measures, which delved into a range of election-related issues — including election security and voting access. “Together, these bills will make voting easier, expand our existing audit process, add much needed legal protections for our election workers and speed up our transition to universal paper ballots,” the secretary of state said Wednesday.
Full Article: Kentucky secretary of state praises latest election bills | AP NewsMichigan: GOP elections bills vetoed by Whitmer could have canceled some voters’ registrations | Clara Hendrickson(Detroit Free Press
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed a pair of GOP bills Friday that would have required hundreds of thousands of voters to take steps to stay registered. The Secretary of State's Office initially worked with lawmakers to develop the bills following a 2019 report from the state's auditor that recommended improvements to Michigan's voter list maintenance. But Republican lawmakers made changes to the legislation the Secretary of State's Office said would add unnecessary costs and open the door to errors. The GOP bills passed on a party-line vote in the state Senate while only a handful of Democrats supported the legislation in the state House. The elections bills aimed at cleaning up Michigan's voter rolls targeted voters with unknown birth dates and those who haven't cast a ballot in decades. The bills would have required those voters to complete a form mailed out by election officials, undergo signature verification and provide identifying information to ensure they could vote in future elections. Whitmer wrote in her veto letter that the bills "do not advance the goal of improving Michigan elections" and said "they would burden clerks and voters while increasing costs to Michigan residents."
Full Article: Gretchen Whitmer vetoes GOP elections bills targeting voter rollsNevada: Commissioner ‘not giving up’ on efforts to switch Washoe County to paper ballots | Mark Robison/Reno Gazette Journal
Jeanne Herman is not done trying to switch Washoe County’s election process to paper ballots – but she faces an uphill battle with continued opposition from fellow commissioners. This week, the Washoe County commissioner representing District 5’s mostly rural areas submitted a single-item resolution. It was a much simpler effort than her controversial 20-item election-overhaul proposal that was rejected in a 4-to-1 vote March 22 at a board meeting featuring seven hours of contentious public comment. “It appeared that it was too complicated for them to handle the original resolution,” she told the RGJ in a phone call about the four commissioners who voted against her plan: Chair Vaughn Hartung, Kitty Jung, Bob Lucey and Alexis Hill. “They weren’t able to discern how to do it or discern whether they had any appetite to do it so I thought, ‘OK, let’s start with first grade. Let’s do one at a time.’” The new lone proposal focuses on paper ballots. That was one of the previous resolution’s items, along with hand-counted results and a beefed-up law enforcement presence at voting sites.
Full Article: Jeanne Herman still wants to switch Washoe County to paper ballotsWisconsin election clerks face unprecedented scrutiny despite no widespread fraud | Local Government | Alexander Shur/Wisconsin State Journal
Since the 2020 presidential election, Florence County Clerk Donna Trudell said she has fielded about two calls a week from people concerned that hackers will break into voting machines in the county to change votes from one party to another in future elections. To ease those concerns, Trudell, who was a deputy clerk for 10 years and county clerk for the last nine, bought new voting machines without modems to assure callers the devices cannot connect to the internet. But the calls keep coming, and now include many voters skeptical that she has really ordered voting machines without modems. Never mind that there’s no evidence that voting machines that do connect to the internet have ever been hacked to change votes in Wisconsin or anywhere else. Or that some clerks in Florence County — where former President Donald Trump beat President Joe Biden by a nearly 3-to-1 margin — have even held public training sessions to show how the new voting machines work.
Full Article: Wisconsin election clerks face unprecedented scrutiny despite no widespread fraud | Local Government | madison.com
Colorado lawmakers advance bill to protect elections workers | James Anderson/Associated Press
A Colorado legislative panel advanced a bill Thursday to add protections for elections workers after hearing disturbing testimony about escalating threats that have prompted many to quit or take security training so they feel safe in their public-service work. State and local elections officials told the House State, Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs Committee that their workers, from municipal front-office staff to county clerks to the state’s highest-ranking elections officials, have experienced an escalation of threats since the 2020 presidential election. The threats — delivered by email, phone, or by the posting on social media of home addresses of workers and their family members — have left some local authorities confronting staff shortages ahead of Colorado’s June primaries and the November midterms. The threats have also prompted some workers to wear bulletproof vests to and from work around elections time and add active-shooter training to routine elections training in several counties, said the bill’s sponsors and several county clerks. Colorado’s elections workers “have truly faced unprecedented threats, especially over the past two years, simply for doing their jobs,” said Democratic Rep. Emily Sirota, a bill sponsor.
Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show | Bob Woodward and Robert Costa/The Washington Post
Full Article: Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show - The Washington PostEditorial: We shouldn’t abandon machine-counted election ballots | Douglas W. Jones/Des Moines Register
Proposals nationally to abandon voting machinery in favor of hand-counted paper ballots reported in the March 13 Register ("Some push for counts by hand," Page 5A) pose significant problems. Hand counting works well where there is only one race on the ballot. In many parliamentary democracies, you vote for your member, the parliament elects the prime minster, and that's it. Hand-counting such ballots is very fast; you just divide the ballots into stacks according to how they are voted and then count the number of pieces of paper in each stack. In contrast, hand counts of U.S.-style ballots are messy. A small rural county might have 20 races on the ballot, and larger urban counties usually have many more. By around 1930, the majority of urban voters in the United States were using mechanical voting machines, so you have to look before that to see how well, or poorly, hand counting works. Clerical errors were common when hand counting was the norm. We still see these errors when votes are processed by hand. The wild swings in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District in 2020 that led to a recount were all attributed to clerical errors. Machines were used to count the ballots in that race, but combining the results from multiple precincts and counties was not fully automated. Outright fraud attracts the most attention. In the days of hand counting, tally clerks sometimes parked pieces of pencil lead under their fingernails so they could mark on ballots they disliked. The mark didn't even need to look like a vote because most states have laws that disqualify ballots having "identifying marks." An even more subtle approach was for biased election workers to demand strict enforcement of disqualifying rules for ballots they disliked while being lenient about accepting ballots they liked. This leads to a spiraling arms race where partisan vote counters disqualify an ever-increasing fraction of the ballots until the election is determined by who can disqualify the most ballots instead of by how the voters feel.
Full Article: Opinion: Don't abandon machine-counted election ballotsGeorgia Local Election Officials Oppose G.O.P. Election Bill | Maya King and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times
A year ago, when Georgia Republicans passed a mammoth law of election measures and voting restrictions, many local election officials felt frustrated and sidelined, as their concerns about resources, ballot access and implementation went largely ignored. This year, Republicans have returned with a new bill — and the election officials are pushing back. A bipartisan coalition of county-level election administrators — the people who carry out the day-to-day work of running elections — is speaking out against the latest Republican measure. At a legislative hearing on Monday, they warned that the proposal would create additional burdens on a dwindling force of election workers and that the provisions could lead to more voter intimidation. “You’re going to waste time, and you’re going to cause me to lose poll workers,” said Joel Natt, a Republican member of the Forsyth County board of elections, referring to a provision in the bill that he said would force workers to count hundreds of blank sheets of paper. “I have 400 poll workers that work for our board. That is 400 people that I could see telling me after May, ‘Have a nice life,’ and it’s hard enough to keep them right now.” Among other provisions, the bill would expand the reach of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation over election crimes; limit private funding of elections; empower partisan poll watchers; and establish new requirements for tracking absentee ballots as they are verified and counted.
Full Article: Local Election Officials in Georgia Oppose G.O.P. Election Bill - The New York TimesNational: Biden administration to give federal employees time off to vote, work the polls | Niels Lesniewski/Roll Call
The Biden administration is directing federal agencies to let federal workers take leave to vote — and to serve as poll workers. Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted that new guidance from the Office of Personnel Management during a virtual event Thursday afternoon, delivering remarks from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “We believe the federal government should serve as a model employer — and, by the way, we’re the largest employer in the country, so we can do this and we should do this — and then therefore serve as a model employer when it comes to helping employees participate in their democracy,” Harris said. “And we’re going to therefore call on all employers to do the same.” The new policy for federal workers was one of several deliverables tied to the anniversary of President Joe Biden’s March 7, 2021, executive order on efforts to expand voting access. Thursday’s event also focused on two new reports stating what can be done to help support voting access for people with disabilities, as well as in tribal communities. “I’m proud to announce that the National Institute of Standards and Technology is releasing a report that lays out a comprehensive assessment of the barriers that disabled Americans face when they’re voting and offers specific recommendations for what we must do with a sense of urgency to break down those barriers — for example, including more disabled people in the design of election procedures because, of course, we should be having the leaders lead and — and not replacing what we think is, is important with what leaders can tell us is important,” Harris said. Full Article: Biden administration to give federal employees time off to vote, work the polls - Roll CallNational: Contentious Fringe Legal Theory Could Reshape State Election Laws | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline
The U.S. Supreme Court this month left open the possibility that it could endorse a fringe conservative legal theory that would give state legislatures unchecked powers over election rules before the 2024 presidential election. Republican officials cited the theory, which asserts that state courts do not have jurisdiction over election policy, in two key cases filed in North Carolina and Pennsylvania over congressional maps selected by their highest courts. Groups in those states—which included voters, Republican state senators and representatives, an election official and a congressional candidate—petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the respective maps. They argued in federal court filings that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the sole power to set rules for federal elections. The high court rejected emergency requests to block the maps, allowing the ones chosen by state courts to stay in place for the 2022 midterm elections. But in a dissent to the North Carolina decision, three conservative justices endorsed the theory known as the “independent state legislature doctrine,” while another signaled he wanted to formally consider the question. That means there appears to be enough votes to put the issue—and the possible legitimization of the doctrine—on the court’s 2023 calendar. Full Article: Contentious Fringe Legal Theory Could Reshape State Election Laws | The Pew Charitable TrustsNational: Where Does American Democracy Go From Here? | Charles Homans/The New York Times
Early last year, Freedom House, an American organization that since World War II has warned against autocracy and repression on the march around the world, issued a special report on a country that had not usually warranted such attention: its own. Noting that the United States had slid down its ranking of countries by political rights and civil liberties — it is now 59th on Freedom House’s list, slightly below Argentina and Mongolia — the report warned that the country faced “an acute crisis for democracy.” In November, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an influential Stockholm-based think tank, followed suit, adding the United States to its list of “backsliding democracies” for the first time. The impetus for these reassessments was Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that followed. But as the reassessments themselves noted, those shocks to the system hardly came out of nowhere; like the Trump presidency itself, they were both products and accelerants of a process of American democratic erosion and disunion that had been underway for years and has continued since. In states across the country, Republican candidates are running for office on the platform that the 2020 election was stolen — a view held by about three-quarters of Republican voters. Since the beginning of 2021, Republicans in at least 25 state legislatures have tried, albeit mostly unsuccessfully, to pass legislation directly targeting the election system: bills that would place election oversight or certification in the hands of partisan legislatures, for instance, and in some cases even bills specifically punishing officials who blocked attempts to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Trump’s favor. And those are just the new developments, happening against a backdrop of a decade-long erosion of voting rights and a steady resurgence of political extremism and violence, and of course a world newly at war over the principles of self-determination and democracy.
Full Article: Where Does American Democracy Go From Here? - The New York TimesNational: Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the Republican Party | Isaac Arnsdorf/ProPublica
Former President Donald Trump has officially endorsed a plan, created by a man who has self-identified with the Oath Keeper militia, that aims to have Trump supporters consolidate control of the Republican Party. The plan, known as the “precinct strategy,” has been repeatedly promoted on Steve Bannon’s popular podcast. As ProPublica detailed last year, it has already inspired thousands of people to fill positions at the lowest rung of the party ladder. Though these positions are low-profile and often vacant, they hold critical powers: They help elect higher-ranking party officers, influence which candidates appear on the ballot, turn out voters on Election Day and even staff the polling precincts where people vote and the election boards that certify the results. “Just heard about an incredible effort underway that will strengthen the Republican Party,” Trump said Sunday in a statement emailed to his supporters. “If members of our Great movement start getting involved (that means YOU becoming a precinct committeeman for your voting precinct), we can take back our great Country from the ground up.”
Full Article: Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the Republican Party — ProPublicaNational: Securing the Midterms: Smarter Tools Watch Over Voter Records | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology
Can automated alerts and machine learning help midterm elections go smoothly and securely? That’s the hope of a Harvard University technology lab and Protect Democracy, a nonprofit focused on preserving democracy in the U.S. Each group offers its own free tool designed to monitor for any unwarranted changes to voter registration records and deliver timely alerts. Harvard Public Interest Tech Lab’s VoteFlare is designed to alert voters, while Protect Democracy’s VoteShield is for election officials’ use. If all goes well, the tools will help constituents and public officials closely monitor for any signs of honest errors or deliberate attacks, allowing them to sort out voting registration discrepancies quickly before they impede ballot casting. Constituents whose information does not match that on their voting records could run into difficulties. Having the wrong party affiliation down prevents voting in the closed primaries, for example. Meanwhile, a mismatch in addresses could block individuals from voting entirely, restrict them to casting a provisional ballot — which is not always counted — or require them to somehow figure out the address on record so they can vote in that precinct, warned Latanya Sweeney, Ji Su Yoo and Jinyan Zang in a 2017 report. Two of those report authors — Sweeney and Zang — helped create VoteFlare. Sweeney, a Harvard professor of the Practice of Government and Technology, led the team. Full Article: Securing the Midterms: Smarter Tools Watch Over Voter RecordsNational: White House releases report on Native American voting rights | Felicia Fonseca/Associated Press
Local, state and federal officials must do more to ensure Native Americans facing persistent, longstanding and deep-rooted barriers to voting have equal access to ballots, a White House report released Thursday said. Native Americans and Alaska Natives vote at lower rates than the national average but have been a key constituency in tight races and states with large Native populations. A surge in voter turnout among tribal members in Arizona, for example, helped lead Joe Biden to victory in the state that hadn’t supported a Democrat in a White House contest since 1996. The Biden administration’s report comes a year after he issued an executive order promoting voting rights and establishing a steering committee to look at particular barriers to voting in Indigenous communities. Those include state laws and local practices that disenfranchise Indigenous voters, unequal access to early voting and reliance on a mail system that is unreliable, the report stated. “For far too long, members of tribal nations and Native communities have faced unnecessary burdens when they attempt to exercise their sacred right to vote,” the White House said. The administration called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation, including the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and another focused on Native Americans. But those bills are going nowhere. Republicans wouldn’t support them, and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have been unwilling to override the filibuster to allow the legislation to pass.
Full Article: White House releases report on Native American voting rights | AP NewsEditorial: Those who want accuracy and integrity rage FOR the (vote-counting) machine, not against it. | EJ Montini/Arizona Republic
If there were only a dozen or so of us living a pioneer-like existence in Arizona, or perhaps a few hundred, maybe even a few thousand, a law that allows only for in-person voting, bans electronics and mandates a hand count of ballots that must be completed within 24 hours might make sense. Might. But there are millions of us, which makes the notion of requiring such a thing … insane. So, naturally, that is exactly what some Republicans in the Arizona Legislature are proposing, a return to the Stone Age of democracy, where there is no machine count, no early voting, no mail-in ballots, no common sense. When the bill to do this was revived in the Senate recently, Republican J.D. Mesnard recognized one of the many obvious problems with it, pointing out that in Maricopa County alone there are about 2.5 million votes cast, each of which has 70 to 80 races printed on it. In other words, that’s about 150 million votes to count.
Full Article: Vote counting machines exist for good reason. Why take them away?Arizona Senate panel votes to require all ballots be hand counted | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star
A Senate panel voted late Monday to require all ballots be counted by hand, despite the concession by one Republican who supported it that it just can't be done. The action by the Government Committee came after various people testified about what they contend was fraud in the 2020 election when the official tally showed more Arizonans voted for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. Many Republicans have refused to accept the results despite the fact that various claims of irregularities have either been debunked outright or failed to gather corroborating evidence. House Bill 2289 is a grab-bag of proposed changes to election laws, but there are two key provisions. One would eliminate the opportunity of most Arizonans to cast early ballots, despite the fact that nearly 90% of those who voted in 2020 used that option. Instead, that right would be reserved for those who are in hospitals, nursing homes and those who would be out of state on Election Day. Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, said he has no problem with that. He has questioned the on-demand early voting that has been the law in Arizona since 1991, saying it doesn't have the kind of checks that occur when someone shows up at the polls and has to present identification. Instead, current law requires only that the person sign the outside of the ballot envelope, with that signature compared with others the county election officials have on file. But Mesnard said he is having real heartburn with the other key provision: Having all ballots counted by hand, at each polling place, within 24 hours of the polls being closed at 7 p.m.
Arizona: Maricopa County’s vote-counting machines were not connected to internet, independent review finds | Mary Jo Pitzl and Ronald J. Hansen/Arizona Republic
Maricopa County's vote-counting machines were not connected to the internet during the 2020 election, an independent review has found, further undercutting claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the results were "rigged." A trio of technology experts overseen by an impartial special master found no evidence of an internet connection, according to results of the review released Wednesday. That echoes the county's long-standing position as well as the findings of independent audits the county conducted a year ago. It also dispels unproven theories from election deniers that the tabulation machines were hooked up to the internet and therefore susceptible to hacking to throw the election to Joe Biden. Biden won Maricopa County by 45,109 votes, according to the official results. In a statement, Bill Gates, a Republican who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said "the unanimous conclusions of this expert panel should be a final stake in the heart of the Senate's so-called 'audit.' "Whenever impartial, independent and competent people have examined the county's election practices, they have found no reason to doubt the integrity of those practices. The Board of Supervisors remains committed to free and fair elections that conform to federal and state laws."
Full Article: Arizona audit: County election machines weren't connected to internetColorado; Supporters of Tina Peters are going after other Colorado clerks. Here’s what they want. | Saja Hindi/Denver Post
For an hour and a half, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman met with a small group of people that showed up at his office to talk about what they insisted were deep-rooted security and fraud problems within Colorado’s election systems. Problems that Broerman, a Republican, and other election officials have repeatedly said don’t exist. Among the visitors was 2020 election denier Shawn Smith of an effort called the U.S. Election Integrity Plan — a group that claims election irregularities and fraud in the 2020 elections in Colorado. One of their requests to Broerman during the meeting in May: give access to the county voting equipment and allow a third party to conduct “a forensic audit.” Broerman declined, but he described to them in detail the redundant systems of election security measures to show why elections in his county are secure and reliable. The clerk said Smith, of Colorado Springs, then responded, “Clerk Broerman, we will either do this with you or through you.” “I took that as a threat that if I didn’t do that, that there would be repercussions for not doing what they wanted me to do,” he said. That wasn’t the last Broerman heard from this group or others. He, like other local elections officials across the country, have been facing increased pressure from people trying to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections using unfounded claims of election fraud, spreading the lie that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Full Article: Colorado county clerks defend against voter fraud claimsConnecticut Bill easing access to absentee voting wins final passage | Mark Pazniokas/Hartford Courant
A bill that would allow out-of-town commuters and caretakers of the disabled or chronically ill to vote by absentee ballot won final legislative passage on a 30-4 vote in the Senate. The measure stops short of allowing no-excuse absentee voting, a step that would require passage of a referendum amending the Connecticut Constitution — something that cannot happen before the 2024 election. Instead, it amends statutory language that is more restrictive than the standard set in the constitution, which disenfranchises voters in some circumstances. The constitution empowers the General Assembly to allow absentee voting by anyone “unable to appear at the polling place on the day of election because of absence from the city or town of which they are inhabitants or because of sickness, or physical disability or … the tenets of their religion.”