National: Trump promised pardons for January 6 rioters in ‘first hour’ of his second term. What might this mean? | Martin Pengelly/The Guardian

As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, politicians, legal observers and even sitting federal judges are expressing alarm about his stated intention to pardon or offer commutations to supporters who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and were then convicted of crimes. Clemency for those who sought to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory “would undermine the US judiciary and criminal justice system and send a message to Americans that attacking US democratic institutions is appropriate and justifiable”, said a spokesperson for the Society for the Rule of Law. The group of conservative attorneys, academics, and former federal officials and judges also quoted sitting judges Royce Lamberth (“We cannot condone the normalization of the January 6 US Capitol riot”) and Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee who said “blanket pardons for all January 6 defendants or anything close would be beyond frustrating and disappointing”. Read Article

National: ‘A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6 | Dan Barry and Alan Feuer/The New York Times

In two weeks, Donald J. Trump is to emerge from an arched portal of the United States Capitol to once again take the presidential oath of office. As the Inauguration Day ritual conveying the peaceful transfer of power unfolds, he will stand where the worst of the mayhem of Jan. 6, 2021, took place, largely in his name. Directly behind Mr. Trump will be the metal-and-glass doors where protesters, inflamed by his lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, stormed the Capitol with clubs, chemical irritants and other weapons. To his left, the spot where roaring rioters and outnumbered police officers fought hand to hand. To his right, where the prostrate body of a dying woman was jostled in the bloody fray. Read Article

National: Fears grow for voting rights as Trump plots to reshape US justice department | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Donald Trump could use a second term atop the justice department to gut enforcement of US federal voting laws and deploy an agency that is supposed to protect the right to vote to undermine it, experts have warned. Trump has made no secret of his intention to punish his political enemies and subvert the American voting system. His control of the justice department could allow him to amplify misleading claims of voter fraud by non-citizens and others, as well as investigate local election officials. It could also cause the department’s voting section to largely scale back its enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, returning it to the approach that it took under Trump’s first term. Read Article

National: Fox loses appeal to duck $2.7 billion Smartmatic defamation suit | Griffin Eckstein/Salon

A New York appeals court has rejected Fox Corp.’s request to toss a $2.7 billion defamation suit from voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic. Smartmatic alleged in a suit that the Fox News parent company “effectively endorsed and participated in” a campaign suggesting that the voting machine company participated in election fraud by manipulating the results of the 2020 presidential election. In the ruling from the New York Supreme Court First Appellate Department, a five-judge panel cited a Delaware court decision against Fox Corporation for defaming Dominion Voting Systems as precedent for implicating the Fox News parent company. Fox Corp. agreed to pay $787 million to Dominion in 2023. Read Article

National: What to watch for in 2025, according to election experts | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

As we move beyond the long, anxious 2024 election cycle, we’re entering the 2026 and 2028 cycles with a largely unshaped landscape for elections. To help develop an outlook, we’ve decided to turn our first newsletter of the year over to people who are smarter than us: folks who participated in the experts desk Votebeat ran this past election cycle. Their expectations provide a first guess about what election debates will look like over the next several months. “What will it take to have justifiable confidence in the trustworthiness of our elections every time, no matter who wins?” asked Pamela Smith, CEO and president of Verified Voting. “We are closely monitoring any attempts disguised as election security legislation that will instead disenfranchise voters and dismantle voting rights.” Read Article

Opinion | What to remember about Jan. 6 | Joe Biden/The Washington Post

On this Jan. 6, order will be called. Clerks, staff and members of Congress will gather to certify the results of a free and fair presidential election and ensure a peaceful transfer of power. Capitol Police will stand guard over the citadel of our democracy. The vice president of the United States, faithful to her duty under our Constitution, will preside over the certification of her opponent’s victory in the November election. It is a ceremony that for more than two centuries has made America a beacon to the world, a ceremony that ratifies the will of the voters. For much of our history, this proceeding was treated as pro forma, a routine act. But after what we all witnessed on Jan. 6, 2021, we know we can never again take it for granted. Read Article

Arizona: Maricopa County’s new leaders pledge another election audit — but not like the last one | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Maricopa County’s new leadership will move immediately to commission an independent audit of the county’s election system, incoming supervisors announced at their first meeting Monday, but they promised that it will not be a repeat of the partisan, chaotic review of the county’s 2020 election results. The announcement came as the county swore in three new Republicans on the five-member board of supervisors. Minutes after being elected chairman, returning Supervisor Thomas Galvin affirmed that supervisors would soon hire what he described as a reputable firm to do a “comprehensive review” of election procedures and recommend improvements. Read Article

Arizona counties block access to cast vote records, citing law, privacy | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

After Kari Lake lost her U.S. Senate race in November, some skeptics cried election fraud. They doubted that so many people who voted for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who carried Arizona, would split their ticket and back Ruben Gallego, Lake’s Democratic opponent. In the past, local election analysts could counter such claims by analyzing a dataset known as the cast vote record — an electronic record of each anonymous ballot cast and all the votes recorded on it, including split-ticket votes. But for this election, they’ve hit a roadblock: They can no longer get that data. The counties that gave out their cast-vote record in the past now say that it is not a public record, or that they’ll provide only a heavily redacted version, without ruling specifically on whether the public is entitled to see it. Read Article

Georgia lawmakers consider even more election changes after a smooth 2024 election | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Every year, Georgia Republicans pass new “election integrity” laws they say are needed to boost voters’ confidence since the close 2020 election. Now that Donald Trump won a clear victory, the GOP base is emboldened by his return to power and is pushing for even more changes to Georgia’s voting laws — this time, without the false claim that the election was stolen. From hand ballot counts to an elimination of no-excuse absentee voting, the Georgia General Assembly could consider a wide variety of election proposals during the 2025 legislative session. Conservative activists are also seeking to require paper ballots filled out by hand instead of touchscreens, stronger authority to challenge voters’ eligibility and new rules to certify election results. Read Article

Maine’s voter ID effort includes limits on ballot drop boxes | Billy Kobin/Bangor Daily News

The conservative proponents of a November referendum on requiring photo identification to vote in Maine tucked in absentee voting limits that would hit two of the state’s liberal bastions hardest. The “Voter ID for ME” initiative would bar municipalities from having more than one absentee ballot drop box, a provision that would only affect Portland and Orono, the home of the University of Maine. The initiative would require a “bipartisan team of election officials” — rather than the local clerk or their designees — to retrieve ballots from the boxes. Read Article

Michigan: Trump’s false 2020 electors make renewed bid to get charges dropped | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

In a series of new court filings, Michigan Republicans who signed a certificate falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election contended their actions amounted to “participating in the political process” and urged a judge to dismiss their charges. The new filings provided the most detailed look yet at false electors’ defense arguments. They also represented an attempt to knock down felony charges that Nessel, a Democrat, announced in July 2023 against the 16 Michigan Republicans whose names appeared on the false certificates, which were used by the Trump campaign in an unsuccessful bid to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Read Article

Minnesota GOP asks state Supreme Court to halt special election in suburban House race | Rochelle Olson/The Minnesota Star Tribune

The state Republican Party and conservative Minnesota Voters Alliance have asked the state Supreme Court to void Gov. Tim Walz’s decision to hold a special election Jan. 28 for a DFL-held House seat. The legal challenge is among the unsettled issues that will determine which party controls the Legislature in the 2025 session, which starts in just more than a week. Republicans will begin the session with a 67-66 advantage in the House because the Roseville-area seat was left open after a court order voided a DFLer’s victory. Until the December court order, the DFL and GOP were to open the session tied at 67 members each and had been discussing a power-sharing agreement. But now Republicans say the 67-66 advantage will allow them to elect a speaker and control committee assignments. DFLers disagree; they say 68 votes are needed for any House action, including the election of a speaker. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court halts certification of apparent Riggs win | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

The North Carolina Supreme Court issued an order on Tuesday blocking the state from certifying a winner in the race for a seat on the high court. Granting the request of Republican Jefferson Griffin, who trails his opponent, Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs, by 734 votes, the court’s Republican majority issued a temporary stay that will prevent the State Board of Elections from certifying Riggs as the winner. Anita Earls, the only other Democrat on the court alongside Riggs, dissented, writing that “the public interest requires that the court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.” Riggs recused herself from the case. Read Article

Texas: Dallas County scrambles to secure voter check-in software before May 3 election | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

Less than four months until voters return to the polls, Dallas County is scrambling to secure new check-in software after failures during the Nov. 5 general election. And the window for getting it done is tight. The county’s electronic pollbooks from Election Systems & Software malfunctioned during last year’s election, resulting in nearly 4,000 people voting with ballots tied to precincts where they do not live. As a result, the Texas secretary of state decertified that version of the pollbook software in December, said Judd Ryan, ES&S senior vice president of sales. Read Article

Texas: Can these 5 bills to expand voting access win bipartisan support in the Legislature? | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Republican lawmakers in Texas are signaling this year that they will continue pushing for restrictions on voting in the name of combating voter fraud, including ending countywide voting and requiring proof of citizenship to register. But some efforts to expand voting access — including legislation that has come up in past legislative sessions — could gain bipartisan support, some policy experts say. Bills that would expand the acceptable forms of ID voters can present at the polls and one that expands mail-voting access for people with disabilities, among others, have a chance to move forward, said Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy at the Secure Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit research group. They’re not sure bets to become law, of course. Read Article

Wisconsin: Two changes that could speed up election results — and stave off conspiracy theories | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

It’s a known risk for the municipal clerks who run Wisconsin elections: Starting at 7 a.m. on election day, they have around 16 hours to finish counting every vote, or they may start facing accusations of a fraudulent late-night “ballot dump.” Those baseless allegations, which sometimes go viral, have plagued election officials across the state but especially in Milwaukee, where counting often finishes in the early morning hours after election day. Republican candidates have repeatedly cast suspicion on the timing of results in the largely Democratic city to explain away their statewide losses. Currently, there’s little election officials can do to finish counting ballots sooner. Under state law, clerks must wait until the morning of election day to begin processing ballots and counting votes, even if they received those ballots weeks earlier. Read Article

Jimmy Carter sought to expand democracy worldwide long after he left the White House | Farai Mutsaka and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Amid everything else on his desk — the Iran hostage crisis, domestic economic turmoil, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a grueling 1980 reelection fight — President Jimmy Carter elevated the independence of a country in southern Africa as a top agenda item. Carter hosted then-Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe at the White House soon after his country achieved independence and later described Zimbabwe’s adoption of democracy as “our greatest single success.” Three decades later, Carter, who was long out of office, found the door slammed shut when he and other dignitaries sought to visit Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission to observe reported human rights abuses after a violent disputed election in 2008. He had become a critic of Mugabe’s regime and was denied a visa. Read Article

National: What did US election officials learn about our democracy from 2024’s vote? | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Until the 2020 election, local election officials worked in obscurity and anonymity, ensuring that the election was fairly administered and complied with state and federal laws. But ever since the president-elect’s loss in 2020, they have borne the brunt of his efforts to sow doubt about the integrity of US elections. They have faced vicious harassment campaigns, been bombarded with public records requests, and been on the frontlines combating misinformation about voting. A number left the profession altogether. Many election officials had been preparing for an intense period of uncertainty after election day, concerned that, as in the 2020 election, the winner of the presidential election would be uncertain and they would face immense pressure as Trump and his allies sought to subvert the election results. But when the race was called fairly quickly for Trump, the results were widely accepted, with few questions about who won. Read Article

National: The Year of the AI Election Wasn’t Quite What Everyone Expected | Vittoria Elliott/WIRED

In the spring, the US saw what was likely its first AI candidate. In a brief campaign for the mayor of Wyoming, virtual integrated citizen (VIC), a ChatGPT-based bot created by real human Victor Miller, promised to govern entirely by AI. At the outset of 2024, many suggested that even if not winning office, generative AI would play a pivotal role in—and pose significant risks to—democratic elections, as more than 2 billion people voted in more than 60 countries. But now, experts and analysts have changed their tune, saying that generative AI likely had little to no effect at all. So were all those prognostications that 2024 would be the AI election year wrong? The truth is … not really. Experts who spoke to WIRED say that this might have still been the “AI election”—just not in the way many expected. Read Article

National: The rise in mail voting comes with a price, as mismatched signatures lead to ballot rejections | Audrey McAvoy and Ayanna Alexander/Associated Press

As with many voters on Maui, Joshua Kamalo thought the race for president wasn’t the only big contest on the November ballot. He also was focused on a hotly contested seat for the local governing board. He made sure to return his ballot in the virtually all vote-by-mail state early, doing so two weeks before Election Day. A week later, he received a letter telling him the county couldn’t verify his signature on the return envelope, jeopardizing his vote. And he wasn’t the only one. Two other people at the biodiesel company where he works also had their ballots rejected, as did his daughter. In each case, the county said their signatures didn’t match the ones on file. Read Article

National: Vote-swapping campaign for 2024 fell short of its aims | Meghnad Bose and Uzma Afreen/Votebeat

Progressives determined to defeat Donald Trump but unsatisfied with Kamala Harris’s position on the war in Gaza were offered an 11th-hour voting option this year: In October, a group called Swap Your Vote began offering to match voters in politically “safe” states with those in swing states. The idea was that a prospective Democratic voter in a reliably blue state could instead cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate on behalf of their match in the swing state. The swing-state voter would feel like, through the trade, they were voting their conscience without putting their broader election aims at risk. Read Article

National: State Department sanctions Russian, Iranian groups for election interference | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

The U.S. State Department has sanctioned two foreign organizations and one individual who it alleges worked on behalf of Russian and Iranian intelligence agencies to interfere in the 2024 U.S. general election. “These actors sought to stoke sociopolitical tensions and undermine our election institutions during the 2024 U.S. general election,” said State Department Press Secretary Matthew Miller in a statement. “Today’s sanctions build on numerous previous U.S. government actions that have disrupted Iran’s attempts to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and Russia’s global malign influence campaigns and illicit cyber activities.” Read Article

Arizona official who delayed county’s 2022 election certification didn’t have immunity, court says | Associated Press

An appeals court has rejected an Arizona official’s argument that felony charges against him for delaying certification of his rural county’s 2022 election results should be dismissed because he has legislative immunity. In an order Tuesday, the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby’s duty to certify the election results wasn’t discretionary. The court also said certifying election results is an administrative responsibility and that legislative immunity doesn’t apply to Crosby’s situation. Read Article

Iowa: Trump fraud lawsuit against Register unlikely to succeed, experts say | William Morris/Des Moines Register

Legal experts representing different ends of the political spectrum say the recent lawsuit by President-elect Donald Trump against the Des Moines Register is based on a strained interpretation of Iowa law and is unlikely to find success in court. Trump filed suit Dec. 16 against the Register, its parent company Gannett and longtime Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, alleging violations of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. The complaint centers on a poll published by the Register in early November that understated Trump’s support, showing Vice President Kamala Harris with a 3-point lead over Trump in Iowa just days before Trump went on to win the state by 13 points. Trump’s suit alleges the poll was fraudulent and an attempt at election interference. The Register has said it stands by its work. Several experts who have reviewed Trump’s petition say his legal theory is a stretch. Read Article

Kansas once required voters to prove citizenship. That didn’t work out so well | John Hanna/Associated Press

Republicans made claims about illegal voting by noncitizens a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign messaging and plan to push legislation in the new Congress requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Yet there’s one place with a GOP supermajority where linking voting to citizenship appears to be a nonstarter: Kansas. That’s because the state has been there, done that, and all but a few Republicans would prefer not to go there again. Kansas imposed a proof-of-citizenship requirement over a decade ago that grew into one of the biggest political fiascos in the state in recent memory. The law, passed by the state Legislature in 2011 and implemented two years later, ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote. That was 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn’t been enforced since 2018. Read Article

Missouri: Local election authorities say Hoskins’ plan to increase hand-counting ballots would cost counties time, resources | Hannah Falcon/WGEM

Missouri’s new secretary of state-elect wants to increase the amount of ballots that are hand-counted in any given election, but some local election authorities say that would take more time and resources. Currently, Missouri’s local election officials have to hand count 5% of ballots after the election to make sure that sample size matches the results from the voting machines. Hoskins proposes an increase, to hand counting 10% or 15% of the ballots instead. Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller said this would increase the time needed for audits. “So you would essentially triple the time that it would take, the cost that it would take, and then you would also need to make sure you have the time needed to actually conduct that audit,” Schoeller said. Read Article

North Carolina: Stein, Cooper revamp lawsuit against GOP bill on elections | Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi/Raleigh News & Observer

Incoming Gov. Josh Stein and Gov. Roy Cooper sought to expand a lawsuit on Monday to challenge a new wide-ranging law passed by the GOP-led legislature that removes power from incoming Democratic officeholders. Cooper and Stein had already filed a separate lawsuit earlier over the wide-ranging bill known as Senate Bill 382, but that case focused on a change making the State Highway Patrol a standalone department, removing it from the N.C. Department of Public Safety. On Monday, Cooper and Stein added to an ongoing lawsuit filed in Wake County Superior Court to target the portion of SB 382 that transfers the governor’s power to appoint members of the State Board of Elections to the state auditor, as well as the part of the bill that shifts the power to appoint the chair of each county board of elections from the governor to the auditor. Read Article

Pennsylvania court sides with state over Fulton County’s handling of voting machines after 2020 election | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania court on Tuesday ruled 6-1 that the secretary of state has the authority to direct counties not to allow “unauthorized third party access” to voting machines or risk having those machines decertified and unable to be deployed for elections. The Commonwealth Court said the Department of State does not have to reimburse counties when they decertify machines, a defeat for Fulton County in a dispute that arose after two Republican county commissioners permitted Wake Technology Services Inc. to examine and obtain data from Dominion voting machines in 2021. That led the state elections agency to issue a directive against such third-party access based on concerns it could compromise security. Fulton’s machines were decertified as a result of the Wake TSI examination and the secretary of state was sued by the county as well as Republican county commissioners Randy Bunch and Stuart Ulsh. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission seeks answers on uncounted Madison ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously authorized an investigation Thursday into Madison’s mishandling of nearly 200 absentee ballots from the November 2024 election that were never counted. It’s the first such investigation that the bipartisan commission has authorized since becoming an agency in 2016. The review will allow the agency to probe whether Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl violated the law or abused her discretion. Read Article

National: Why Democrats’ Version of ‘Stop the Steal’ Isn’t Taking Off | Stuart A. Thompson, Kaleigh Rogers and Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

The 2024 presidential election has set off a new wave of election denialism online — only this time, it is coming from voters on the left. Much as many supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump did after the 2020 election, some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris are demanding recounts in key states in a bid to verify or even overturn the result. They are scrutinizing election results for signs of tampering, questioning whether election machines flipped votes and wondering whether digital technology could have injected fake votes. Read Article