Warren Stewart – Page 13 – The Voting News

In a bipartisan effort to avert a potential crisis in certifying November’s election results, the Pennsylvania House passed a bill Tuesday that would cement the timelines for resolving post-election legal battles and prevent delays in finalizing the state’s electoral votes. A federal law passed in 2022, the Electoral Count Reform Act, set a strict deadline for states to certify slates of presidential electors: Dec. 11. But Pennsylvania doesn’t have its own set of deadlines to meet that target, which could set the state up for a potential conflict with the federal law. “This gap poses a significant risk of missing the federally mandated deadlines for certifying presidential election results,” said Rep. Benjamin Sanchez (D-Montgomery), the bill’s prime sponsor. “Our goal with HB 2473 is to mitigate this risk and guarantee Pennsylvania’s voice is heard and respected when Congress counts the state’s electors.” Read Article

Utah: Iron County certifies 2024 primary election results despite controversy over ballot postmarks | Bryan Schott/Salt Lake Tribune

After 24 hours of handwringing and investigating if hundreds of Utahns’ mail-in ballots with late postmarks could be counted, the Iron County Commission voted 2-1 on Tuesday to officially certify their 2024 primary election results. On Monday, Republican Commissioner Paul Cozzens disrupted the typically routine vote to certify the election results by refusing to approve the final count. He cited the rejection of approximately 400 ballots postmarked after the June 24 deadline. Mailed ballots were sent to Las Vegas for processing, and many mailed before the deadline were not postmarked until the following day, rendering them invalid, county officials said. The commission postponed the certification vote for a day to explore whether the law provided any flexibility that would allow them to include those ballots in the final count. There was none to be found. Commission members and other county officials said they spent the final day to certify their ballots by conferring with the state elections office and legislative leaders, who told them that, under current Utah law, there was no way to include the late ballots. Read Article

Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstates absentee ballot drop boxes | Lawrence Andrea and Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Friday restored the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in the swing state ahead of the upcoming elections — a reversal of a past decision from the court that could impact voter participation. The 4-3 decision was a win for Democrats who argued the longstanding practice of allowing voters to file ballots into the locked, unmanned boxes made voting more accessible. That process, however, was highly criticized in 2020 by former President Donald Trump and Republicans who claimed without evidence that the boxes and absentee voting were rife with fraud. Read Article

Wyoming: Push To Ditch Ballot Machines For Hand Counts Gaining Steam | Cowboy State Daily

A push to eliminate electronic ballot counting machines in favor of hand counts in Wyoming’s elections is spreading across the state, and it has the full support of Secretary of State Chuck Gray. Wyoming Voter Initiatives, the same group that recently turned in 44,000 signatures to get a property tax initiative on the 2026 ballot, is now working on a new effort to have all ballots hand counted. The goal is to get the initiative on the 2026 ballots and implemented for the 2028 elections. In addition to the “People’s Initiative to Restore Hand Tabulation of all Elections in Wyoming” ballot initiative, the group also wants to overhaul the state’s Title 22 election code through the Legislature by enacting measures allowing for public ballot inspections, stricter voter ID and registration requirements, and ban ballot dropboxes. Read Article

National: Mission to support fragile democracies steps up US election monitoring | Andrew Jack/Financial Times

A programme created by former president Jimmy Carter to support elections in fragile democracies is increasing election monitoring in the US as political polarisation and voter distrust grow ahead of November’s presidential contest. The Carter Center’s Democracy Program, which has carried out work recently in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela and Sierra Leone, will support non-partisan election observation missions in up to five US states. The pledge comes as Donald Trump and his supporters continue to cast doubt on the integrity of US ballots following the ex-president’s claim that he would have won the 2020 poll if it had not been rigged. “We have taken our international election observation expertise and have needed to turn it inward to the United States,” Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center and grandson of the 39th US president, told the Financial Times. Read Article

National: Supreme Court rejects effort to limit government communication on misinformation | Derek B. Johnson and Madison Alder/CyberScoop

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an effort by Republican states to sharply limit the ability of the federal government to share information with social media platforms to combat the spread of false information online — something the plaintiffs argued had resulted in censorship of conservative viewpoints. The ruling represents a major victory for the Biden administration, whose communications with social media platforms sought to limit the spread online of election- and COVID-related misinformation. Those communications prompted attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana to bring suit to limit information-sharing between the government and online platforms. In a 6-3 ruling, the court concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit and lacked sufficient evidence to prove that government communications had resulted in the restriction of online speech. The ruling overturned a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that found the government had, through its regular communications and information-sharing efforts, effectively “coerced” the platforms into censoring content. Read Article

National: Trump allies test a new strategy for blocking election results | Amy Gardner , Patrick Marley and Colby Itkowitz/The Washington Post

When a member of Georgia’s Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections refused to join her colleagues as they certified two primaries this year, she claimed she had been denied her right to examine a long list of election records for signs of fraud or other issues. Now the board member, Julie Adams, an avowed believer in the false theory that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump, is suing the board, hoping a judge will affirm that right and potentially empower others in similar positions elsewhere to hold up the outcome of elections. To voting rights activists, election law specialists and Democrats, such actions represent an ominous sign that could presage a chaotic aftermath to the 2024 election. They are particularly worried about the threat of civil unrest or violence, especially if certification proceeds amid protests or efforts to block it. Read Article

National: Fight against misinformation faces headwinds as 2024 election nears | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

We are 135 days out from the 2024 presidential election. The fight against misinformation and disinformation is hopelessly politicized, and the infrastructure set up to push back against bad or misleading information online is far less robust than it was. High-profile efforts to combat bad information about elections, such as the Stanford Internet Observatory, have scaled back or shut down. Some are facing threats, as well as lawsuits and investigations from conservatives who say the groups are allied with the left and targeting speech liberals disagree with. The result of the Republican pushback, some experts say, is a climate that’s friendlier to disinformation baselessly undermining faith in elections, and feeding political extremism. “We may be less prepared 155 days out in 2024 than we were under President Trump” in 2020, Sen. Mark Warner told The Associated Press earlier this month. Warner, a Virginia Democrat, chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. Read Article

National: Black Americans targeted with disinformation as election nears, new report finds | Marquise Francis/NBC

At least 40 million Americans may be regularly targeted and fed disinformation within Black online spaces by a host of sources across social media, fueling false information around the election, according to a new report published Tuesday. Touted as the first deep dive into understanding disinformation targeting Black America, the report, published by Onyx Impact, a nonprofit organization working to combat disinformation within the Black community, identified half a dozen core online networks “reaching or targeting” Black Americans online with false and misleading narratives. Conservative commentators like Candace Owens are among the most influential distributors of false information, according to the report, followed by a variety of sources, such as platforms geared toward the Black manosphere, like the “Fresh and Fit” podcast. Some episodes of the show have outright challenged women’s intelligence and allowed guests to share false and harmful narratives without pushback. Read Article

Opinion | What Happened to Stanford Spells Trouble for the Election | Renée DiResta/The New York Times

In 2020 the Stanford Internet Observatory, where I was until recently the research director, helped lead a project that studied election rumors and disinformation. As part of that work, we frequently encountered conspiratorial thinking from Americans who had been told the 2020 presidential election was going to be stolen. The way theories of “the steal” went viral was eerily routine. First, an image or video, such as a photo of a suitcase near a polling place, was posted as evidence of wrongdoing. The poster would tweet the purported evidence, tagging partisan influencers or media accounts with large followings. Those accounts would promote the rumor, often claiming, “Big if true!” Others would join, and the algorithms would push it out to potentially millions more. Partisan media would follow. If the rumor was found to be false — and it usually was — corrections were rarely made and even then, little noticed. The belief that “the steal” was real led directly to the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Within a couple of years, the same online rumor mill turned its attention to us — the very researchers who documented it. This spells trouble for the 2024 election. Read Article

Arizona RNC delegation chair: ‘I would lynch’ county election official | vonne Wingett Sanchez and Azi Paybarah/The Washington Post

Earlier this month, Shelby Busch — chair of Arizona’s delegation to the Republican convention — was in court trying to learn the identities of local elections workers. Under oath, she said she was unaware of any threats that had been made against the people who helped run the last presidential election and the midterm election that followed. This week, video emerged that showed Busch saying she would “lynch” the official who helps oversee elections in Maricopa County: Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican. “Let’s pretend that this gentleman over here was running for county recorder,” Busch said, seeming to refer to someone off-camera in the video, which was recorded at a public meeting in March. “And he’s a good Christian man that believes what we believe. We can work with that, right? That, that’s unity.” “But,” she said moments later, “if Stephen Richer walked in this room, I would lynch him. I don’t unify with people who don’t believe the principles we believe in and the American cause that founded this country. And so, I want to make that clear when we talk about what it means to unify.” Richer, who posted the video on social media this week, is Jewish. Read Article

Arizona: Election worker arrested in Maricopa County in theft of key for ballot tabulators | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

A temporary election worker in Maricopa County was arrested Friday after allegedly stealing keys and a security fob that can be used to gain access to the county’s ballot tabulation machines. With just a week to go before mail ballots go out, Maricopa County detectives charged Walter Ringfield Jr., a 27-year-old Phoenix resident, with one count of theft and one count of criminal damage, after they say he took a lanyard with the fob and keys attached while working in the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center. He is in custody and won’t be released unless a court order allows, according to court documents. Ringfield told detectives during his arrest that he took the fob for 20 minutes the day before and then gave it back. But detectives located the fob in his house after obtaining a search warrant. His motive for taking it was unclear, but he suggested to detectives that it may have been a mistake. Read Article

California: In Shasta County fights over elections have left wounds that just won’t heal | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

To understand the forces tearing apart California’s Shasta County, consider what has happened to Cathy Darling Allen. In five consecutive elections, voters in the rural county have selected her as their chief election official. That means that since 2004, she’s been responsible for voter registration, the administration of elections, and a host of related tasks. She’s consistently been the only Democrat in countywide office in the conservative county, where Donald Trump won more than 60% of the vote in 2020. In 2022, her most recent appearance on the ballot, she took in nearly 70% of the vote. By those indicators, she seems pretty popular. But she has received a steady stream of threats from a loud minority of Shasta County residents who falsely believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. She has been repeatedly accused in public meetings and on social media of engaging in both satanism and witchcraft. The most committed MAGA activists have circulated petitions accusing her of sedition and treason. She’s been followed walking to her car. Someone — she still isn’t certain who — installed a trail camera behind her office, where votes are counted. Read Article

Georgia: Racist slurs and death threats: The dangerous life of an elections official | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

When Milton Kidd leaves work at the end of the day, he slips out the back door of the domed Douglas County Courthouse, avoiding the public entrance where people might berate him or demand his home address. He never takes the same route home two days in a row, and he makes random turns to avoid being followed. Kidd, a Black man, has a very dangerous job: He is the elections and voter registration director for Douglas County. “Milton Kidd is a nasty n***** living on tax money like the scum he is,” one voter wrote in an email Kidd shared with Stateline. “Living on tax money, like a piece of low IQ n***** shit.” Another resident from Kidd’s county of 149,000 west of Atlanta left him a voicemail. “I don’t know if you’re aware, Milton, but the American people have set a precedent for what they do to f***ing tyrants and oppressors who occupy government office,” the caller said. “Yep, back in the 1700s, they were called the British and the f***ing American people got so fed up with the f***ing British being dicks, kind of like you, and then they just f***ing killed all the f***ing British.” Read Article

Michigan: What cost comparisons show about early in-person voting models | Tom Perkins/Votebeat

The city of Ann Arbor recorded one of the state’s highest rates of early in-person voting in the February primary, and a Votebeat analysis shows it also succeeded in another important measure: It kept the cost per vote low. Ann Arbor spent about $19 per early in-person vote, among the lowest of dozens of municipalities included in the analysis, which gauged only recurring costs like labor. In Lansing, a city similar in size to Ann Arbor, the cost per vote was triple — around $58 — and the turnout rate much lower. Meanwhile, in sparsely populated Ontonagon County in the Upper Peninsula, municipal election officials banded together under a countywide plan. Ontonagon County spent about $63 per vote, though that cost was spread among a dozen municipalities. Read Article

New Hampshire Secretary of State announces 50% state match for locals to buy new voting machines | Kevin Landrigan/Union Leader

City and town election officials can get state reimbursement of $3,500 per machine to replace each of their aging electronic voting machines, the state announced Monday. The state will use $3 million in federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grants to towns that make these purchases through June 30, 2026, to replace any AccuVote machine in use for state and federal elections. The reimbursement is about half what each machine will cost local taxpayers. The money also could be used by communities that don’t need newer machines to buy electronic poll books, which local officials can use to more quickly enter voter registration information at the polls and report results once all ballots are counted. Towns that count ballots by hand will receive a one-time $3,500 grant to improve their process, Secretary of State David Scanlan said. Read Article

Ohio Republican lawmakers working on sweeping changes to election administration | Nick Evans/Ohio Capital Journal

Legislation in the Ohio House and Senate would make sweeping changes to the way Ohioans vote and how those votes are counted. Despite sterling post-election audits in Ohio and the arrival last year of strict new photo voter ID requirements, backers insist more must be done to secure the state’s elections. Among their demands are provisions allowing hand-counted ballots, and new voting machine requirements that could force counties across the state to replace the voting machines they have. Moreover, certified voting machines don’t exist that would meet the bill’s standards, and hand-counting has been shown to be more time-consuming and less accurate than the currently certified voting machines that do exist. The bill would also extend photo ID requirements to absentee voting — making voters include a photocopy of their ID with their completed ballot. And the drafters have plans for in-person voting as well. The bill directs county boards to include a voters’ photograph in the pollbook, so poll workers won’t simply compare a photo ID to person standing in front of them, but also to a photo on file from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Right-wing group sues over errors in voter registration records | Angela Couloumbis and Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

A far-right group is asking a judge to order Pennsylvania to clean up its voter roll, citing flaws it claims to have found in voter registration data as evidence that the state is violating federal law. The group’s claims, however, appear to contradict facts about how the state’s voting systems work, reflecting what one election expert suggested is a “gross misunderstanding of election law.” Much of the information in the suit comes from groups with histories of making false claims about the state’s voter rolls, and the suit includes at least one easily disproved claim. The lawsuit is part of a broader strategy that the lead plaintiff, United Sovereign Americans, has acknowledged: to challenge voter rolls across the country, in separate federal court jurisdictions, to force the issue up to the U.S. Supreme Court in time to affect the 2024 general election. The group filed a similar suit in Maryland that was dismissed in May because the plaintiffs didn’t have legal grounds to sue. Read Article

South Dakota: Hand counting errors muddle post-election audit in McPherson County | Stu Whitney/SD Newswatch

South Dakota’s most populous county, Minnehaha, was in the spotlight this week after its top election official ordered the county’s post-election audit to consist of all 2024 primary ballots being counted by hand. But the debate over counting votes by hand vs. machines found a more decisive venue 250 miles away in McPherson County, on the state’s northeast edge bordering North Dakota, with a population of about 2,300. On June 13, citizen hand-counting boards were formed in the county seat of Leola, South Dakota, to conduct a post-election audit of 100% of the ballots from the June 4 primary, which had been tallied by machine tabulators on election day. Read Article

Texas: Fixing ballot secrecy problems won’t be easy, experts say | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

When Pam Anderson was a county elections clerk in Colorado about a decade ago, she worried about whether the state’s increasingly transparent election process had made it possible to link a ballot to the voter who cast it. As a test, she asked her staff in Jefferson County to see whether they could find a ballot that she had cast in a previous election. It took them less than 20 minutes. Since then, Colorado has taken steps to protect a voter’s right to a secret ballot: Election officials there remove the voting method and polling location from public reports detailing voter participation. The state has invested in training election officials to redact information from the records it releases publicly, and purchased technology to help make those redactions more efficiently, Anderson said. Such measures could help point the way forward for Texas, where recent laws enacted in the name of increasing election transparency have made it possible — in limited instances — to use public records and data to determine how individual voters voted. Read Article

Wisconsin judge allows disabled voters to electronically vote from home | Todd Richmond/Associated Press

Local election officials in battleground state Wisconsin will be allowed to send absentee ballots to disabled voters electronically in November’s presidential election, a judge ruled Tuesday. Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell issued a temporary injunction that allows voters who self-certify that they can’t read or mark a paper ballot without help to request absentee ballots electronically from local clerks. The voters can then cast their ballots at home using devices that help them read and write independently. They will still be required to mail the ballots back to the clerks or return them in person, the same as any other absentee voter in the state. More than 30 states allow certain voters to return their ballots either by fax, email or an online portal, according to data collected by the National Conference of State Legislatures and Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that studies state voting systems. The method has expanded in recent years to include disabled voters in a dozen states. Experts have warned, however, that electronic ballot return carries risks of ballots being intercepted or manipulated and should be used sparingly. Read Article

Wisconsin election officials get some clarity on which tasks they’re allowed to outsource | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin election officials welcomed a clarification from the state attorney general this week on the scope of a constitutional amendment limiting who can conduct elections. But some local clerks and legal experts aren’t convinced that it’s enough to curb confusion over the measure or the risk of disruptive lawsuits. The short text of the amendment states, “No individual other than an election official designated by law may perform any task in the conduct of any primary, election, or referendum.” The opinion from Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, held that clerks can continue working with private vendors on tasks like ballot design, despite a conservative group suggesting — and clerks fearing — otherwise. The amendment “does not apply to more ordinary circumstances in which an election official works with or is assisted by non-election officials in ensuring the proper administration of an election,” Kaul said. He added that clerks can continue working with non-election officials to print ballots and enhance cybersecurity, and can use law enforcement personnel to transfer ballots. Read Article

Wyoming: New initiative seeks to hand count ballots in elections | Wyoming | Jasmine Hall/Gillette News Record

The same group trying to cut property taxes in half is pushing for hand counting ballots in Wyoming elections. Organizers Brent Bien, Cheryl Aguiar and Rich Weber filed their second ballot initiative in January with the Secretary of State’s Office. Now they are traveling across the state to showcase why they believe the change is necessary. Their latest effort seeks to require county clerks to use a hand tabulation system instead of using electronic ballot processing machines. County Clerks’ Association of Wyoming President Malcolm Ervin said election officers have full faith in the machines, testing and auditing procedures already in place in Wyoming. Read Article

Picketed at work, confronted at church: Why election workers have left the job | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Over the course of 20 years as an election administrator in Shasta County, Calif., Cathy Darling Allen oversaw nearly a dozen national election cycles and countless local races. In February, she decided she’d had enough. Allen announced she would be retiring, citing the negative impact that the job was having on her health, especially in recent years. In a public letter, she wrote that she had been diagnosed with heart failure and her chances for recovery relied on substantial stress reduction, something that was “a tough ask to balance with election administration in the current environment.” In an interview with CyberScoop, Allen was more blunt about what triggered her decision to leave: “Being concerned on a daily basis about your own physical safety and the safety of the folks who work for us and the voters who come in to cast their ballots takes a toll.” Allen is not alone in choosing to step down as an election administrator. Across the United States election officials are leaving their posts in droves, citing threats, harassment and acts of violence at levels not seen in decades — a development that experts caution poses a far greater threat to U.S. elections than malicious hackers or AI-enabled deepfakes. Read Article

National: States struggle with unreliable federal funding for making sure elections are secure | Jennifer Shutt/Stateline

The federal government has sought to bolster election security for years through a popular grant program, but the wildly fluctuating funding levels have made it difficult for state officials to plan their budgets and their projects. Rising misinformation and disinformation about elections, often fueled by conspiracy theories, as well as threats against election workers, make the grants especially important, according to elections officials. But U.S. House Republicans are seeking to eliminate funding for election security grants — known as Help America Vote Act, or HAVA grants — in this year’s appropriations process, a move they also unsuccessfully attempted last year. “We continue to unnecessarily risk the very integrity of our elections and American democracy,” Georgia Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop said last week during committee debate on the funding bill. Bishop, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was “concerned about the outdated and the insecure voting systems around the country that pose a very, very serious threat to our national security and to our democratic system.” Read Article

National: Rage against the voting machine | Joseph Gedeon/Politico

Elon Musk set the Xverse ablaze this weekend with a viral post calling to “eliminate electronic voting machines” due to hacking risks, racking up over 75,000 reposts. It came after independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seized on voting irregularities in Puerto Rico’s recent primary to demand a return to hand-marked paper ballots nationwide. “Flip the claim that there’s ‘no evidence of widespread fraud.’ We have evidence of sound elections,” said Pamela Smith, president of the nonpartisan Verified Voting, which promotes the responsible use of technology in elections. Smith argues that while tiny jurisdictions can feasibly hand count ballots, moving to full manual counts in larger locales would be a logistical nightmare — delaying results for weeks or months and costing counties millions to hire enough workers. Not to mention studies showing machines tend to tally votes more accurately than humans do. Read Article

National: 334 public officials in 5 swing states who cast doubt on elections are now influencing them | Erin Mansfield/USA Today

Hundreds of public officials in five key swing states have denied election outcomes, tried to overturn an election or made statements to undermine an election, a new study says. The study identified 334 of these public officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin running the gamut from a state’s second-highest elected official to local boards that certify election results. Those closely divided states are likely to decide the 2024 presidential election. The study by Public Wise, a left-leaning nonprofit group that advocates for representative democracy, is the most comprehensive study to date of state and local public officials who have power over elections but whose commitment to election fairness has been questioned. Most officials Public Wise identified are state lawmakers, and many signed on to letters asking various state and federal officials to stand in the way of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Others include elected county commissioners, elected county sheriffs, elected town officials, and people appointed to run day-to-day election administration or perform routine signoffs on vote certification. Read Article

National: The RNC is launching a massive effort to monitor voting. Critics say it threatens to undermine trust | Joey Cappelletti and Ali Swenson/Associated Press

The Republican National Committee on Friday launched a swing state initiative to mobilize thousands of polling place monitors, poll workers and attorneys to serve as “election integrity” watchdogs in November — an effort that immediately drew concerns that it could lead to harassment of election workers and undermine trust in the vote. The RNC says its plan will help voters have faith in the electoral process and ensure their votes matter. Yet, as former President Donald Trump and his allies continue to spread false claims that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, the effort also sets the stage for a repeat of Trump’s efforts to undermine the results — a gambit that ultimately led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump allies already have signaled that they might not accept the results if he loses to President Joe Biden. Read Article

National: The Biden administration has no firm plan to call out domestic disinformation in the 2024 election | Dan De Luce and Ken Dilanian/NBC

The Biden administration has no firm plans to alert the public about deepfakes or other false information during the 2024 election unless it is clearly coming from a foreign actor and poses a sufficiently grave threat, according to current and former officials. Although cyber experts in and outside of government expect an onslaught of disinformation and deepfakes during this year’s election campaign, officials in the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security remain worried that if they weigh in, they will face accusations that they are attempting to tilt the election in favor of President Joe Biden’s re-election. Lawmakers from both parties have urged the Biden administration to take a more assertive stance. “I’m worried that you may be overly concerned with appearing partisan and that that will freeze you in terms of taking the actions that are necessary,” Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, told cybersecurity and intelligence officials at a hearing last month. Read Article

National: U.S. election official: ‘Whack-a-mole’ strategies less effective to combat disinfo | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop