Warren Stewart – Page 129 – The Voting News

Pennsylvania’s election was sleepy compared with 2020. Some voters still saw high stakes: ‘The country’s just in such a state.’ | Andrew Seidman and Julia Terruso/Philadelphia Inquirer

November 5, 2021

In some ways, the 2021 election was similar to last year’s. Lots of Pennsylvania voters chose to cast ballots by mail — about 736,000 as of Tuesday afternoon, something not possible a couple of years ago. And partisan tensions flared at some polls, with debate over the future of the country, even in highly contentious school board races. But in most ways, Tuesday’s election was nothing like 2020. The glare of the national spotlight on Pennsylvania had faded. Elections officials said the process was relatively smooth and complaint-free. And unlike last year’s record, officials were expecting a low turnout typical for off-year elections. In one marquee race, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner was projected to handily win reelection against Republican Chuck Peruto, the expected outcome in a city with seven times as many Democrats as Republicans. But in other races, the night was shaping up as a strong night for the GOP. A little before 1 a.m., New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was in an unexpectedly tight battle with Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli. And minutes later, the Associated Press projected Republican Kevin Brobson would beat Democrat Maria McLaughlin for a seat on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. In perhaps the nation’s highest-profile race — in Virginia, the only state other than New Jersey picking a governor —Republican Glenn Youngkin topped Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who previously held the office. Both parties will be scrutinizing the results in those and other races for evidence about the views of the electorate as they prepare for the first midterm election of Joe Biden’s presidency next year. Republicans were hoping to capitalize on Biden’s declining approval ratings, voters’ discontent with rising inflation, and controversy over how race is taught in public schools to win contests in blue states like Virginia and purple ones like Pennsylvania. And such divisions were apparent even in municipal elections. “The country’s just in such a state,” said Donna Weickel, 77, after she and her husband cast their votes for Republicans in Buckingham Township, Bucks County.

Full Article: Pa.’s election was sleepy compared with 2020. Some voters still saw high stakes: ‘The country’s just in such a state.’

Texas voting law faces lawsuit from Justice Department, targeting restrictions on mail-in ballots and voter assistance | Cassandra Pollock/The Texas Tribune

November 5, 2021

Disabled, elderly and non-English speaking voters risk disenfranchisement under Texas’ new voting law passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday challenging the legislation known as Senate Bill 1. Signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in September, the legislation further tightened the state’s election laws, with a host of changes including a ban on drive-thru voting and new rules for voting by mail. While Democrats and voter advocacy groups have attacked SB 1 as a Republican move to suppress turnout in Texas cities — primarily voters of color who tend to lean Democratic — the Justice Department focused its suit on two provisions which it says violate the federal Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One places strict limits on how much assistance can be given to voters who, because of disabilities or limited English proficiency, may need help navigating the voting process. The second places new constraints on how people who vote by mail verify their identities. The suit, filed in San Antonio federal court, argues that both provisions”will curtail fundamental voting rights without advancing any legitimate state interest.”

Full Article: Texas voting law faces lawsuit from Justice Department | The Texas Tribune

Wisconsin: Racine County sheriff seeks charges for state elections commissioners | Molly Beck and Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

November 5, 2021

The Racine County sheriff is recommending charges against five state election officials because they told clerks to bypass state law during the coronavirus pandemic and send absentee ballots to nursing homes instead of first visiting in person. Attorney General Josh Kaul blasted the move made by Sheriff Christopher Schmaling on Wednesday, calling it “a disgraceful publicity stunt” and “an abuse of authority.” Schmaling said Wednesday in a news release he wants Commissioners Marge Bostelmann, Julie Glancey, Ann Jacobs, Dean Knudson and Mark Thomsen to be charged with five separate crimes related to the incident, including felony charges of misconduct in public office and election fraud and three misdemeanor counts of being a party to a crime. Thomsen, Jacobs and Glancey are Democrats; Knudson and Bostelmann are Republicans. Schmaling is not recommending charges against staff of the Ridgewood Care Center or the local election clerks who oversaw absentee voting at the nursing home, which the sheriff alleges was handled improperly for eight voters. The announcement came a day after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said Racine County officials should charge a nursing home worker or local clerk if they believe election laws were broken at the facility but said he sees no reason to assume voting problems occurred at other nursing homes.

Full Article: Racine sheriff seeks charges for Wisconsin elections commissioners

New Jersey poll workers struggle to connect to the internet, causing delays | Neil Vigdor and Tracey Tully/The New York Times

November 3, 2021

Election workers in New Jersey encountered problems on Tuesday connecting electronic polling books to the internet, resulting in long lines in some parts of the state as voters tried to cast ballots, including in the race for governor, officials said. The state is using the tablet-like devices for the first time in an election. Known as e-poll books, the devices pull a list of eligible voters for each polling location from a statewide database. They were used at 139 early-voting sites in New Jersey. The e-poll books are used in tandem with electronic voting machines. It was not immediately clear how widespread the connectivity problems were or whether they were caused by technical issues or user error. Some voters and elected officials expressed frustration over the delays, which they said had led some people to leave polling sites without voting. “I woke up to a phone call about it,” Mayor Jason F. Cilento of Dunellen, N.J., said in an interview. Mr. Cilento, a Republican, said he went to the lone polling station in Dunellen, a borough of 7,400 people in Middlesex County, in central New Jersey, where he found 30 to 40 people waiting in line as election workers struggled to get the system online. “They were annoyed, of course,” he said. “Then there were reboots.”

Full Article: Wifi Struggles in New Jersey Contribute to Voting Problems – The New York Times

Baseless fraud claims are hurting election security in this Michigan town | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

November 3, 2021

A second local election official who parroted former president Donald Trump’s baseless election fraud claims is now under police investigation for how she handled voting equipment. Stephanie Scott (R), clerk of tiny Adams Township in Michigan, potentially made her township’s election equipment more vulnerable to hacking when she allegedly removed a tablet from an election machine that counts votes from paper ballots and may have tampered with it before police recovered it, the Associated Press reported. Whaaaat? A few days earlier, state officials barred Scott from running her township’s elections after she resisted signing off on state-required logic and accuracy testing for election equipment. Scott has echoed conspiracy theories from Trump, saying she doesn’t trust the election equipment and suggested the testing may have been cover for state officials to rig vote tabulators. “The county clerk’s office and now Secretary of State are demanding I drop off my machine for unfettered access, and God only knows doing what to it,” she told the nonprofit news organization Michigan Bridge. “When you have the fox guarding the hen house, somebody’s got to stand up and guard those hens.” Scott also blocked a contractor from performing preventive maintenance on voting equipment. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) ordered the clerk in neighboring Hillsdale County to supervise Adams Township elections after Scott was stripped of the responsibility.

Full Article: Baseless fraud claims are hurting election security in this Michigan town – The Washington Post

Voting machine company Smartmatic sues OAN, Newsmax over election claims | Maureen Breslin/The Hill

November 3, 2021

Smartmatic, a company that creates election and voting technology and support services, is suing conservative news outlets One American News Network (OAN) and Newsmax for alleged slander and libel about its voting systems, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Smartmatic’s complaint against OAN and Newsmax has not yet been posted to the courts, according to Reuters, citing court records. Smartmatic had previously filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, Fox News hosts, as well as attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, accusing them of harming the company’s brand with their accusations of the voting machines’ role in alleged widespread election fraud. Fox News and its hosts have stated that these cases should be dismissed, claiming that former President Trump‘s allegations were newsworthy, even if false, and that outlets should be allowed to report on them. OAN rose to fame following the 2020 election as it promoted far-right political viewpoints and reported with affinity for Trump, covering his rallies and featuring hosts who praise the former president and his policies.

Full Article: Voting machine company Smartmatic sues OAN, Newsmax over election claims | TheHill

National: CISA promotes election cybersecurity platform debunking misinformation | Jonathan Greig/ZDNet

November 3, 2021

CISA has published a trove of information about election cybersecurity and misinformation for Election Day. Voters in dozens of states are heading to the polls today, with crucial gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia as well as pivotal mayoral elections in Atlanta, New York City, Buffalo and Boston. The cybersecurity body reiterated that there is “no specific, credible threat to election infrastructure” but noted that they are “ready to provide cyber incident response and expertise if needed.” CISA created an “Election Security Rumor vs Reality” page to debunk rumors and misinformation that float around the internet. The agency has been forced to address numerous conspiracy theories and misinformation — sometimes from elected officials themselves — since the 2020 presidential election. CISA said that with more than 30 states voting on a variety of positions and referendums, they decided to host an election situational awareness room that allows them to “coordinate with federal partners, state and local election officials, private sector election partners, and political organizations to share real-time information and provide support as needed.” “CISA has supported state and local election officials to help secure their systems and push back against malicious actors seeking to disrupt our democratic process and interfere in our elections,” CISA election security initiative director Geoff Hale said. “We look forward to continuing this work in collaboration with our election partners to ensure the security and resilience of elections in 2021 and beyond.”

Full Article: CISA promotes election cybersecurity platform debunking misinformation | ZDNet

National: House select committee targets 134-year-old law in effort to prevent another January 6 | Jeremy Herb and Pamela Brown/CNN

November 3, 2021

Members of the January 6 committee are working on potential legislation to tighten the process of certifying a presidential election in an effort to eliminate contentious avenues that spurred the January 6 riot, sources tell CNN. The legislation would give the committee a focus on developing a law as part of the investigation, undercutting a legal argument that former President Donald Trump has made that the committee has no true legislative purpose for seeking his White House documents. The effort is still in its early stages, but a proposed bill could offer more specific instructions for when Congress can overturn a state’s slate of electors, and more clearly define the role the vice president plays in counting the votes — after Trump and his allies pressured Mike Pence to try to block President Joe Biden’s win, the sources say. Specifically, members are focused on making changes to a 19th Century law known as the Electoral Count Act that was intended to give Congress a process by which to certify the Electoral College votes submitted by the states. It’s a mundane but crucial part of the presidential election machinery, one that Trump and his allies attempted to exploit last year.

Full Article: Electoral Count Act: House select committee targets 134-year-old law in effort to prevent another January 6 – CNNPolitics

National: Republicans want more eyes on election workers. Experts worry about their intent | Miles Parks/NPR

November 3, 2021

For anyone hoping that voting and elections post-2020 would become less polarized, the recent Take Back Virginia rally outside Richmond was not a good sign. It opened with those in attendance pledging allegiance to a flag that was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the building to stop the official counting of Electoral College votes in the belief that they could prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. For many of the speakers at the event, election integrity was at the top of their priority list — and not just opposition to ballot drop boxes or voting by mail. Instead, the emphasis was for direct involvement by regular voters and activists to monitor election workers. The push for more poll watchers is a clear outgrowth of the lies and disinformation spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Just a third of Republicans trust U.S. elections are fair, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released on Monday.

Full Article: Following Trump, Republicans push for more poll watchers : NPR

National: ‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidency | Ed Pilkington/The Guardian

November 3, 2021

On 4 January, the conservative lawyer John Eastman was summoned to the Oval Office to meet Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence. Within 48 hours, Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election would formally be certified by Congress, sealing Trump’s fate and removing him from the White House. The atmosphere in the room was tense. The then US president was “fired up” to make what amounted to a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results and snatch a second term in office in the most powerful job on Earth. Eastman, who had a decades-long reputation as a prominent conservative law professor, had already prepared a two-page memo in which he had outlined an incendiary scenario under which Pence, presiding over the joint session of Congress that was to be convened on 6 January, effectively overrides the votes of millions of Americans in seven states that Biden had won, then “gavels President Trump as re-elected”. The Eastman memo, first revealed by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book Peril, goes on to predict “howls” of protest from Democrats. The theory was that Pence, acting as the “ultimate arbiter” of the process, would then send the matter to the House of Representatives which, following an arcane rule that says that where no candidate has reached the necessary majority each state will have one vote, also decides to turn the world upside down and hand the election to the losing candidate, Donald Trump. Eastman’s by now notorious memo, and the surreal encounter in the Oval Office, are among the central twists in the unfolding story of Trump’s audacious bid to hang on to power. They form the basis of what critics argue was nothing less than an attempted electoral coup.

Full Article: ‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidency | US elections 2020 | The Guardian

National: ‘It’s been a barrage every day’: US election workers face threats and harassment | Sam Levine/The Guardian

November 3, 2021

Before he leaves his house to walk his dog these days, Rick Barron’s 12-year-old-daughter reminds him that he needs to keep an eye out because she worries her dad could be the target of an attack. Barron, 55, is the director of voting and elections in Fulton county, which includes Atlanta and is the most populous county in Georgia. For the last year, he’s been subject to a barrage of voicemails and emails with threats, including some threatening violence and death, as Donald Trump and his allies have falsely claimed the election was stolen. “You will be served lead,” someone said on a voicemail left for Barron in recent months. It’s an experience being shared by state and local officials across the United States. For decades, those officials have largely been invisible, working out of the public spotlight to ensure the machinery of elections runs smoothly. But as Trump and allies target that machinery as part of an effort to insist something was amiss in 2020, those officials have been thrust into the national spotlight and subject to vicious harassment. Nearly one in three election officials feel unsafe in their job, according to an April survey commissioned by the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s been a barrage every day,” Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, told the Guardian. She said the threats have bombarded virtually every part of her office, including services that have nothing to do with elections.

Full Article: ‘It’s been a barrage every day’: US election workers face threats and harassment | US voting rights | The Guardian

Arizona Attorney General questions former Maricopa County election offical | Jonathan J. Cooper/Associated Press

November 3, 2021

Former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said Monday he was questioned by investigators from Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office about the 2020 election. The questioning of Fontes, a Democrat who oversaw mail-in balloting last year but lost his own re-election bid, suggests Brnovich is pressing ahead with his pledge to review the findings of the state Senate Republicans’ partisan review of the 2020 election. That review, led and almost entirely funded by supporters of former President Donald Trump, confirmed President Joe Biden’s victory in Maricopa County but spread falsehoods about alleged malfeasance. Brnovich is seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate but could be weighed down by sharp criticism from Trump, who retains considerable sway with the GOP base. Trump repeatedly attacked Brnovich earlier this year as “lackluster,” claiming the attorney general wasn’t doing enough to advance the false claim that Trump’s loss in Arizona was the result of fraud. Fontes, who is running in a contested Democratic primary for secretary of state, said he spoke for about an hour Monday morning with two special agents from Brnovich’s office. He said the discussion was “professional and collegial,” but he said the agents did not seem to know much about election systems. “If they were trying to build an actual case, they would’ve been prepared before they asked me any questions,” Fontes told The Associated Press. “This is nothing more than political box-checking and an abuse of power by a desperate Republican Senate nominee.”

Full Article: Arizona AG questions former Maricopa County election offical

Colorado officials counter false election claims | Charles Ashby/Grand Junction Sentinel

November 3, 2021

Embattled Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters continuously repeats falsehoods about how Colorado elections are conducted, local and state officials say. From questioning why passwords are kept secret to barcodes that are being phased out that are used to tabulate only a fraction of all ballots while simultaneously criticizing using machines to count them, Peters is relying on voter-fraud conspiracy theories and ignoring how elections are actually conducted, the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and others say. “Colorado is considered the nation’s leader in election security,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said. “Clerk Peters is incorrect, and compromised the entire Mesa County election system to try to prove conspiracy theories.” As a result, local and state election officials are concerned that Peters’ false statements about how elections actually are conducted are leaving some voters to question them. They say that may partly be because Peters has yet to get the state required certification to operate elections because she hasn’t completed that training, something clerks are required to do within two years of taking office, according to Secretary of State records. Peters has been overseeing the county elections for nearly three years. To help counter Peters’ disinformation, those same officials addressed, point for point, several of her false claims, which some say border on the absurd.

Full Article: Officials counter false election claims | Western Colorado | gjsentinel.com

Colorado: Election misinformation reaches Arapahoe County clerk’s office | Ellis Arnold/Littleton Independent

November 3, 2021

In the months leading up the election that ends today, the Arapahoe County office that oversees elections received messages about dubious claims playing out at the state level about election security — lingering echoes of unproven claims about wrongdoing in the 2020 presidential election. A letter defending an embattled elections official — Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters — was sent to at least several Colorado county clerks, according to reporting by news outlet Colorado Newsline. The letter was dated Aug. 27. The typed section of the letter discusses Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s investigation into an election-system security breach involving Peters, Colorado Newsline reported. The office of Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Joan Lopez received a copy of that letter, addressed to Lopez, with the return address blacked out, a spokesperson for the clerk told Colorado Community Media. “We have also received several emails incorporating a similar theme — defending Tina Peters as a ‘hero,’ accusing Secretary of State (Jena) Griswold of overstepping her authority, alleging that voter fraud is rampant” and so on, the spokesperson, Tom Skelley, told CCM via email. “Many of those emails were obviously copied and pasted from one original source just as this letter was.” Neither Lopez nor the office’s staff have received any direct threats of violence, Skelley said. “We have, however, seen references to a coming ‘Civil War,’ mentions of ‘treason (being) punishable by Death’ and demands for a ‘forensic’ audit of ballots,” Skelley said.

Full Article: Election misinformation reaches Arapahoe County clerk’s office | Littletonindependent.net

Florida Bars State Professors From Testifying in Voting Rights Case | Michael Wines/The New York Times

November 3, 2021

Three University of Florida professors have been barred from assisting plaintiffs in a lawsuit to overturn the state’s new law restricting voting rights, lawyers said in a federal court filing on Friday. The ban is an extraordinary limit on speech that raises questions of academic freedom and First Amendment rights. University officials told the three that because the school was a state institution, participating in a lawsuit against the state “is adverse to U.F.’s interests” and could not be permitted. In their filing, the lawyers sought to question Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on whether he was involved in the decision. Mr. DeSantis has resisted questioning, arguing that all of his communications about the law are protected from disclosure because discussions about legislation are privileged. In their filing on Friday, lawyers for the plaintiffs said the federal questions in the case — including whether the law discriminates against minority groups — override any state protections. The university’s refusal to allow the professors to testify was a marked turnabout for the University of Florida. Like schools nationwide, the university has routinely allowed academic experts to offer expert testimony in lawsuits, even when they oppose the interests of the political party in power. Leading experts on academic freedom said they knew of no similar restrictions on professors’ speech and testimony and said the action was probably unconstitutional.

Full Article: Florida Bars State Professors From Testifying in Voting Rights Case – The New York Times

Florida: Lake Elections Supervisor Alan Hays to GOP election-fraud claims: ‘PUT UP OR SHUT UP!!’ – Stephen Hudak/Orlando Sentinel

November 3, 2021

Irritated by Lake County Republican leaders who want a forensic audit of the 2020 vote and who allege the “entire election system is fraught with flaws,” Elections Supervisor Alan Hays — a long-time member of the GOP — posted a rebuttal on his official website Tuesday, demanding they “PUT UP OR SHUT UP!!” ”As an election professional, I find it disturbing that some of our citizenry continue to promote a narrative that is unsubstantiated in fact or example,” he wrote. “It begins with the unrelenting desire to believe that an election was ‘stolen,’ and that ‘the vast majority of us witnessed (this) on election night 2020.’ ” Hays, a former state legislator, defended the elections in Florida and in Lake, where he has served as supervisor since January 2017. He posted the lengthy “News Bulletin” on lakevotes.com as citizens in five Lake cities went to the polls to choose municipal leaders, including a mayor in Mount Dora. “There continues to be reliance on unproven algorithms and analysis that has been the basis of these ‘stolen’ election claims,” he wrote. The Lake County Republican Executive Committee last month passed resolutions demanding the Legislature conduct an “immediate, open, transparent and independent full forensic audit, including a hand recount” of Lake County and the entire state, though Trump won the county and Florida by almost 372,000 votes. They wanted the review to be “at least as thorough as the audit being conducted in Maricopa County, Arizona.”

Full Article: Lake Elections Supervisor Alan Hays to GOP election-fraud claims: ‘PUT UP OR SHUT UP!!’ – Orlando Sentinel

Georgia Secretary of State: Trump ‘had no idea how elections work’ | Reid Wilson/The Hill

November 3, 2021

Former President Trump demonstrated virtually no knowledge of the conduct of modern elections procedures in a long and rambling phone call with Georgia’s top elections administrator as he ticked off a host of debunked and fanciful conspiracy theories he blamed for his electoral defeat. The man on the other end of that call in early January, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), details months of mistruths and disinformation perpetuated by the Trump campaign that led up to their conversation in a new book out Tuesday, “Integrity Counts.” The book includes a roughly 40-page transcript of the call itself, which shows an increasingly agitated Trump grasping at allegations that Raffensperger and his top deputy systematically refute as then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows pleaded with the Georgia officials to investigate further and Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to deliver the state’s electoral votes. President Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton to carry Georgia’s electoral votes, by a margin of 11,779 votes. “Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break,” Trump told Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the general counsel to the secretary of state, according to the transcript. “This repeated request for votes showed me that President Trump really had no idea how elections work. The secretary of state’s office doesn’t allocate any votes,” Raffensperger writes in an annotation of the call.

Full Article: Georgia secretary of state: Trump ‘had no idea how elections work’ | TheHill

Michigan: Missing Hillsdale County voting equipment found, state checking whether tampering occurred | John Tunison/MLlive.com

November 3, 2021

Authorities have recovered voting equipment that went missing after a rural township clerk in Hillsdale County was barred from administering next week’s Nov. 2 election. Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott refused to allow legally-required maintenance and accuracy testing on voting machines, leading to the ruling about the upcoming election, state officials said. Hillsdale County Clerk Marney Kast has said she suspected Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott was in possession of a “tablet” that contained sensitive election information. Kast said Scott did not turn over the tablet, described as the “brains” of the voting machine, and that Scott said she was “consulting her attorney” when asked to relinquish it. On social media, Scott has promoted election conspiracy theories. In a release issued late in the day Friday, Oct. 29 by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office, officials said state police recovered the missing election equipment from the Adams Township Hall earlier in the day. It wasn’t immediately clear if the equipment was at the township hall all along, or somewhere else. Tracy Wimmer, a Secretary of State spokesperson, said an investigation is ongoing as to whether the equipment shows any tampering. She sad the matter is “currently the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation” and she planned no further comment about specific details of the investigation.

Full Article: Missing Hillsdale County voting equipment found, state checking whether tampering occurred – mlive.com

New Jersey voters faced a new way to sign in. It didn’t always go smoothly for poll workers or those casting ballots. | Ted Sherman/NJ.com

November 3, 2021

As New Jersey voters waited in line on Tuesday, they were handed a disposable rubber-tipped stylus to electronically sign their names before casting their ballots. Signing the poll book is an Election Day exercise that in the past involved thick volumes of scrawled signatures tracking one’s participation in Democracy over the years — while serving to verify someone’s identify. But this year, the process was a little different. And that didn’t come without problems. Counties for the first time were using electronic poll books instead of paper ones — a change mandated by the move to early voting in the state. The electronic system, which updates the state voter database in real-time, has a record of all eligible voters for each polling location. It is meant to prevent someone from voting in multiple locations or on different days, officials explained, making possible the offering of early voting with safeguards intended to to flag those trying to vote more than once. But at a number of polling locations, election workers had issues connecting through the internet to the state database, which led to long lines in some places, and voters even being turned away from others.

Full Article: N.J. voters faced a new way to sign in. It didn’t always go smoothly for poll workers or those casting ballots. – nj.com

Pennsylvania: Republican lawsuit over mail-in ballots in Delaware County dismissed by judge | Rob Tornoe/Philadelphia Inquirer

November 3, 2021

A petition over 670 flawed mail-in ballots filed by a lawyer for two Republican candidates running for Delaware County Council was largely dismissed ahead of Tuesday’s election. The lawsuit, filed by longtime Republican lawyer Michael Puppio, asked for an emergency hearing over the absentee ballots that Delaware County acknowledged were mailed to the wrong addresses, as well as more than 5,000 ballots that were mailed out late by a vendor. Common Pleas Court Judge Kelly Eckel dismissed the bulk of the lawsuit Monday night, ruling that the board of election will continue to oversee Tuesday’s election after putting safeguards in place and correcting the ballot issues. The judge will allow two watchers — one from each political party — to monitor the mail-in ballots in Delaware County for any irregularities. The 670 ballots in question were mailed to addresses that did not match the voter information on the ballot inside. The county said it has taken steps to identify those ballots and send new ones to the voters who received them. Delaware County Solicitor Bill Martin criticized Republicans for attempting to wrestle control of the election out of the hands of the county board of elections over an issue he said had already been “appropriately remedied.”

Full Article: Republican lawsuit over mail-in ballots in Delaware County dismissed by judge

Pennsylvania voting official sues Trump, Giuliani, others over 2020 allegations | Betsy Woddruff Swan, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein/Politico

November 3, 2021

The supervisor of a voting machine warehouse in the Philadelphia suburbs is suing Donald Trump and top political advisers in a Philadelphia-based county court, saying the former president slandered him during a months-long effort to overturn the 2020 election results. In a 60-page lawsuit, James Savage, the voting machine warehouse custodian in Delaware County, says that in the aftermath of Trump’s effort, he suffered two heart attacks and has regularly received threats. In addition to Trump, he’s suing some of Trump’s key advisers, including his former campaign attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, who has largely escaped investigators’ scrutiny so far. “Simply put, Mr. Savage’s physical safety, and his reputation, were acceptable collateral damage for the wicked intentions of the Defendants herein,” says Savage’s attorney J. Conor Corcoran, “executed during their lubricious attempt to question the legitimacy of President Joseph Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.” Savage is seeking monetary damages and a jury trial on charges of defamation and civil conspiracy. The suit against Trump, Giuliani, Ellis, local GOP officials and others was first reported by Law360.

Full Article: Pa. voting official sues Trump, Giuliani, others over 2020 allegations – POLITICO

Virginia’s defenders of democracy ensure free, fair and secure elections | Chris Piper/Richmond Times-Dispatch

November 3, 2021

A cornerstone of our American democracy is a free, fair and secure election process. Regardless of your party affiliation, you need to be assured the process encourages eligible voters to vote and that their choices are accurately recorded and counted. Thousands of Virginians passionately defend this cornerstone. More than 133 certified registrars who follow 470 pages of Virginia election law operate year-round to ensure it. And when election season comes around, another 15,000 Virginians join the process as poll watchers, precinct captains and other roles. These are your friends and neighbors — people you see in the grocery store, or at church or while walking in your neighborhood. They are trained and retrained to be on the front lines of the election to ensure a free and fair process with an accurate outcome decided by the majority of voters. They show up and work hard to protect your vote and the collective wishes of your community. These guardians are the front line of a process that the Virginia Department of Elections has in place to ensure your elections are not susceptible to subterfuge. These are your defenders of democracy. In recent years, much misinformation and disinformation has been disseminated about our election system. Some (but not all, of course) of these efforts have been intentional and designed to whittle away at public trust. But facts still stand soundly behind your ability to trust that our elections are an accurate reflection of the voice of the people. While cybersecurity always is a concern, it’s important to know that Virginia law prohibits voting machines from being connected to the internet — and there always is a paper record of your vote.

Full Article: Chris Piper column: Virginia’s defenders of democracy ensure free, fair and secure elections | Columnists | richmond.com

Wisconsin elections commissioner says fellow Republicans are looking for a scapegoat after Trump’s loss | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

November 3, 2021

A Republican state elections commissioner says lawmakers calling for his resignation are looking for a scapegoat because Donald Trump lost Wisconsin. Dean Knudson made the comments Friday, a day after Racine County Sheriff Chris Schmaling accused him and other commissioners of committing felonies by telling election clerks to mail absentee ballots to nursing homes instead of visiting them in person during the COVID-19 pandemic. Knudson denied the allegation and questioned why Schmaling isn’t pursuing charges against anyone in Racine County if he believes fraud occurred. He said Republican lawmakers — some of whom he served with when he was in the Assembly — were wrong to ask him to step down. “Certain public figures in Wisconsin are under intense pressure to find someone to be the fall guy for Trump’s loss in 2020 in Wisconsin,” Knudson said. “It is the equivalent of losing the playoff football game and six months later still complaining about the bad call by the referee and insisting that they never officiate a game again. “There are a lot of individuals that are under pressure to try to find some explanation other than the obvious one.” Asked what that obvious explanation was, he said, “That (Joe) Biden got more votes in Wisconsin than Trump did.”

Source: Wisconsin elections commissioner says fellow Republicans are looking for a scapegoat after Trump’s loss

Wisconsin elections commission administrator: GOP calls for her resignation are ‘partisan politics at its worst’ | Mitchell Schmidt/Wisconsin State Journal

November 3, 2021

State elections commission administrator Meagan Wolfe said Monday that calls for her resignation by some state Republicans following allegations brought forth last week by the Racine County sheriff are “partisan politics at its worst.” Wolfe also said she is still learning the details of Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling’s investigation related to the Ridgewood Care Center in Racine County, but added that “it sounds like there are some procedures that may not have been followed” related to absentee voting at the Mount Pleasant center. If anyone felt coerced or influenced to vote in a specific manner, as Schmaling suggested, Wolfe said local law enforcement should investigate. “The commission is not a law enforcement entity and we cannot prosecute crimes,” she said. Wolfe’s comments came after Schmaling last week accused the commission of breaking the law during last year’s election by issuing guidance directing election clerks to mail absentee ballots to nursing homes if special voting deputies, or SVDs, were unable to visit residents in person during the COVID-19 pandemic. The allegations were followed by calls for Wolfe’s resignation from close to a dozen state Republicans, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester. “I think in some ways they think I’m an easy target — I’m not,” Wolfe said during a press conference Monday. “I don’t think that the claims have any basis and I do think this is partisan politics at its worst, but at the same time I have an obligation as the state’s nonpartisan elections official to rise above it.”

Full Article: Elections chief Meagan Wolfe: GOP calls for her resignation are ‘partisan politics at its worst’ | Local Government | madison.com

National: Officials on alert for cyber threats ahead of election day | Maggie Miller/The Hill

October 29, 2021

Officials are on alert for threats to elections ahead of Election Day in states including Virginia on Tuesday, one year after a contentious 2020 presidential election. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) put out a statement Monday announcing that it would set up an election situational awareness room to monitor elections in over 30 states. This space will serve to coordinate election security efforts between CISA, the key agency responsible for election security, and election officials at the state and local levels, along with representatives from political organizations and other private sector groups. CISA stressed Monday that while preparations were underway to monitor for any security concerns, there is currently “no specific, credible threat to election infrastructure.” “CISA has supported state and local election officials to help secure their systems and push back against malicious actors seeking to disrupt our democratic process and interfere in our elections,” Geoff Hale, the director of CISA’s Election Security Initiative, said in a statement Monday. “We look forward to continuing this work in collaboration with our election partners to ensure the security and resilience of elections in 2021 and beyond.” The agency is also again using its “rumor control” page to help push back against election disinformation and misinformation. The page was created by the agency ahead of the 2020 presidential election, and was a key factor behind President Trump’s decision to fire former CISA Director Christopher Krebs in the days after the election, as CISA and election officials sought to stress the accuracy of the 2020 election results.

Full Article: Officials on alert for cyber threats ahead of election day | TheHill

Pennsylvania elections officials brace for 2021 vote in toxic political climate | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

October 29, 2021

This is supposed to be a low-key election. But there’s no such thing anymore for the people who actually run elections in Pennsylvania. Yes, voter turnout drops significantly after a presidential race, as public interest dissipates and the stakes feel lower. And officials haven’t had to scramble to respond to changing election rules the way they did last year. But after a year of Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election tearing at the country’s political fabric, anxiety is as high as ever for local elections officials before polls open Tuesday, according to interviews with about a dozen of them. They used to toil in obscurity for little pay or recognition. Now they’re targets. They continue to face anger and baseless accusations from voters and even other elected officials. The threats and harassment of last year have lessened, but they haven’t gone away. And when the small technical or human errors that have long been a benign feature of American elections pop up, they brace themselves for it to be weaponized, spun, or just amplified in a way that erodes voter trust. “It’s definitely different, and it’s not as fun as it used to be,” said Tim Benyo, the chief elections clerk for Lehigh County. “Now everyone attacks, and you’ve got to talk them off the ledge to try to get them to see how things really are.” “I catch myself mentally preparing to see what fire I have to put out,” added Benyo, who’s been running Pennsylvania elections since 2008.

Full Article: Pennsylvania elections officials brace for 2021 vote in toxic political climate

National: ‘It’s absolutely getting worse’: Secretaries of state targeted by Trump election lies live in fear for their safety and are desperate for protection | Isaac Dovere and Jeremy Herb/CNN

October 29, 2021

“I am a hunter — and I think you should be hunted,” a woman can be heard saying in a voicemail left for Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in September. “You will never be safe in Arizona again.” Or there’s the man who spit, “Die you bitch, die! Die you bitch, die!” repeatedly into the phone, in another of several dozen threatening and angry voicemails directed at the Democratic secretary of state and shared exclusively with CNN by her office. Officials and aides in secretary of state offices in Arizona and other states targeted by former President Donald Trump in his attack on last year’s election results told CNN about living in constant terror — nervously watching the people around them at events, checking in their rearview mirrors for cars following them home and sitting up at night wondering what might happen next. Law enforcement has never had to think much about protecting secretaries of state, let alone allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars in security, tracking and follow-up. Their jobs used to be mundane, unexciting, bureaucratic. These are small offices in a handful of states with enormous power in administering elections, from mailing ballots to overseeing voting machines to keeping track of counted votes.

Full Article: Secretaries of state targeted by Trump election lies live in fear for their safety and are desperate for protection – CNNPolitics

An army of poll watchers — many driven by GOP’s ‘election integrity’ push — turns out across Virginia | Meagan Flynn and Shawn Boburg/The Washington Post

October 29, 2021

Loudoun County General Registrar Judy Brown doesn’t recall seeing many poll watchers during early voting last year — they usually turn up only on Election Day, primarily during presidential elections. But that’s changed. “This year,” she said, “we have had poll watchers here every day, all day long, watching the process of what’s going on.” And in a county that has been trending blue for years, more poll watchers are wearing Republican badges, Brown said, often outnumbering Democrats 2 to 1 at each location. They observe the voter check-in and the ballot drop boxes. They have asked to observe election officers opening voting equipment. They watch as election officers report the vote tallies at the end of the night and ensure slates are blank when the polls open in the morning. “I really think it’s a result of all the stuff in the news media about there being fraud in the election process last year,” Brown said. “They can come to the same conclusion as we do: that there is no fraud in the process.”

Full Article: GOP ‘election integrity’ push drives increase in poll watchers in Virginia, registrars say – The Washington Post

National: Elections Officials Are Still Receiving Death Threats and Harassment About the 2020 Election. They’re Asking Congress For Help. | Kate Elizabeth Queram/Route Fifty

October 29, 2021

Two weeks after the 2020 presidential election, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the home of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state. “Katie, come out and play,” they chanted. “We’re watching you.” The threats, which also targeted Hobbs’ children and husband, came from far-right voters who believed former President Donald Trump’s false assertions that the election was stolen from him in states like Arizona, Hobbs said this week at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. And they’ve reached far beyond her, she added. “What concerns me more is the near-constant harassment faced by the public servants who administer our elections,” said Hobbs, a candidate for governor in Arizona. “These are people who truly make our government work. They never ran for office or appeared in political ads. But nearly every day they are on the receiving end of abusive phone calls and emails. We’re seeing high turnover among elections staff, and I fear that many more will reach a breaking point and decide that this line of public service is no longer worth it.” The hearing, held Tuesday, gave state and local election officials the opportunity to brief lawmakers on the continued threats and harassment directed their way, most stemming from the failed legal challenges and torrent of misinformation that followed last year’s election. Their testimony urged Congress to pass a suite of voting rights legislation, including a bill that would strengthen protections for election administrators during the voting, counting and certification processes.

Full Article: Elections Officials Are Still Receiving Death Threats and Harassment About the 2020 Election. They’re Asking Congress For Help. – Route Fifty

National: Election officials don’t need to report cyber incidents to the feds. That could soon change. | AJ Vicens/CyberScoop

October 29, 2021

Security personnel charged with the challenging and high-stakes work of protecting election systems from digital threats might soon have another task on their to-do list: reporting any cyber incidents to the federal government. That’s if election technology, designated critical infrastructure in 2017, falls under proposed rules requiring critical infrastructure owners and operators to notify federal officials about cyber incidents, such as attempted hacks and ransomware attacks. The idea has surfaced again in a recent Stanford Internet Observatory paper authored by a former high ranking election security official who offered recommendations for election administration reform, ranging from increased funding to centralizing election IT infrastructure at the state level. The proposals are consistent with multiple bills under consideration in Congress, where momentum is building to require operators of critical infrastructure — pipeline owners, electrical grids, and other industries key to U.S. interests — to disclose yet-to-be defined cyber “incidents” to the Department of Homeland Security, FBI or officials who can quickly respond to cyberattacks. It remains unclear whether the federal government could mandate that the roughly 10,000 election jurisdictions — ranging from small towns to counties to states — report cyber incidents. And if it could, questions abound about who should hold that responsibility at a time when partisan politics are testing trust in the electoral system.

Full Article: Election officials don’t need to report cyber incidents to the feds. That could soon change.

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