Author Archives: Warren Stewart

National: Facing Foreign Election Foes, States Hire ‘Cyber Navigators’ | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

After more than a year of virtual meetings, Bill Ekblad showed up last week at eight southern Minnesota election offices to deliver a simple message to county election chiefs and information technology directors: You don’t need to face the massive cybersecurity threat alone. A Navy veteran who served 26 years as a cybersecurity strategist, Ekblad is Minnesota’s first cyber navigator, charged with helping local election offices defend against the ongoing menace from foreign foes. “Savvy adversaries are finding new ways to wreak havoc, and that could be leveraged in the election world,” he said from the road. “Counties don’t have to face these challenges by themselves.” If a phishing attempt targeted one county election official, it’s likely officials in one of the other 87 counties got a similar email, Ekblad said. Getting ahead of that threat by communicating with every election official around the state is essential, he added. Local election officials are on the front lines of election defense, but they often are underfunded or lack the technical knowhow to protect systems from cyber threats. Seeing this vulnerability, at least seven states—Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio—in recent years have launched cyber navigator programs that offer local election officials state-backed contacts to meet the challenge. Several other states are considering following suit. Mark Lindeman, an acting co-director of Verified Voting, an election security nonprofit, said cyber navigators are akin to personal trainers or financial advisers.

Full Article: Facing Foreign Election Foes, States Hire ‘Cyber Navigators’ | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: House passes bill bolstering landmark voting law | Brian Slodysko/Associated Press

House Democrats have passed legislation that would strengthen a landmark civil rights-era voting law weakened by the Supreme Court over the past decade, a step party leaders tout as progress in their quest to fight back against voting restrictions advanced in Republican-led states. The bill, which is part of a broader Democratic effort to enact a sweeping overhaul of elections, was approved on a 219-212 vote, with no Republican support. Its Tuesday passage was praised by President Joe Biden, who said it would protect a “sacred right” and called on the Senate to “send this important bill to my desk.” But the measure faces dim prospects in that chamber, where Democrats do not have enough votes to overcome opposition from Senate Republicans, who have rejected the bill as “unnecessary” and a Democratic “power grab.” That bottleneck puts Democrats right back where they started with a slim chance of enacting any voting legislation before the 2022 midterm elections, when some in the party fear new GOP laws will make it harder for many Americans to vote.

Full Article: House passes bill bolstering landmark voting law

National: U.S. Attorney General urges election officials to share threats | Linda So/Reuters

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland urged state and local election officials on Thursday to immediately provide the FBI any threatening communications they receive following a rise in threats against U.S. election administrators. “To help us help you, I urge that you preserve and immediately provide to the FBI any threatening communications you receive in any form,” Garland told a meeting of election officials that was also attended by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and senior Justice Department officials. In late June, the DOJ launched a task force with the FBI to investigate threats against election workers. “Our attention to this issue will not wane,” said Garland, according to a transcript of his remarks. “The Department is committed to investigating and prosecuting violations of federal law against election officials and election workers, and to supporting your safety and security.”

Full Article: U.S. Attorney General urges election officials to share threats | Reuters

National: How a Defunct Federal Provision Helped Pave the Way for New Voting Restrictions | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Georgia toughened identification requirements for absentee voting. Arizona authorized removing voters from the rolls if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years. Florida and Georgia cut back sharply the use of drop boxes for mail-in ballots. All of these new voting restrictions would have been rejected or at least softened if a federal civil rights protection from the 1960s were still intact, experts in election law said. For decades, the heart of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a practice known as preclearance, largely detailed under Section 5 of the statute. It forced states with a history of racial discrimination to seek approval from the Department of Justice before enacting new voting laws. Through preclearance, thousands of proposed voting changes were blocked by Justice Department lawyers in both Democratic and Republican administrations. In 2013, however, Section 5 was hollowed out by the Supreme Court, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a majority opinion that racial discrimination in voting no longer constituted a significant threat. As Republican-led state legislatures have tightened voting rules after the 2020 election, new restrictions have been enacted or proposed in four states that are no longer required to seek approval before changing voting laws: Georgia, Arizona, Texas and Florida. Those new restrictions would almost certainly have been halted, stalled or altered had Section 5 still been in use, according to interviews with former federal prosecutors and a review by The New York Times of past civil rights actions by the Justice Department.

Full Article: How a Defunct Federal Provision Helped Pave the Way for New Voting Restrictions – The New York Times

National: States Are Making It Harder for Disabled People to Vote | Sarah Katz/The Atlantic

It’s long been difficult for Americans with disabilities to vote. Inaccessible paths are an obstacle to people who use wheelchairs. Long lines are a huge hurdle to people with chronic pain. Voting machines without audio or large-print ballots are an impediment to those who are blind or who have low vision. But last year, something different happened: As states passed pandemic-driven reforms to make voting easier for everyone, they inadvertently made voting a lot easier for most people with disabilities.And vote, they did. Nearly 62 percent of Americans with disabilities voted in 2020, a surge of nearly 6 percentage points over 2016, or 1.7 million more voters. The number of disabled voters reporting difficulties while voting also dropped significantly; in 2020, 11 percent of disabled voters reported having problems, down from 26 percent in 2012, according to an Election Assistance Commission report. That’s not to say voting was suddenly simple: Mail-in ballots aren’t easier for everyone, including those with visual or cognitive disabilities. And in 2020, disabled Americans were still roughly 7 percent less likely to vote than nondisabled Americans. But the changes made a real difference. Now state policy makers want to turn back the clock. Citing exaggerated concerns about voter fraud, state legislators have passed a wave of new bills that will make it harder for disabled people to vote in future elections. Overall, lawmakers have introduced more than 400 bills in 49 states this year that would restrict access to voting for people with disabilities. At least 18 states have already passed such laws. These laws either target mail-in ballots, reduce the amount of time voters have to request or mail in a ballot, restrict the availability of drop-off locations, impose stricter signature requirements for mail-in voting, or enact new and stricter voter-ID requirements.

Full Article: States Are Making It Harder for Disabled People to Vote – The Atlantic

Arizona: Election officials are tearing into the Maricopa County audit | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Election officials are tearing into the Maricopa County audit – The Washington Post

National: Election officials call for audit guidelines after Trump-fueled surge | Yach Montellaro/Politico

Full Article: Election officials call for audit guidelines after Trump-fueled surge – POLITICO

National: Election officials are pushing back against partisan audits launched by Trump allies | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Election officials are pushing back against partisan audits launched by Trump allies – The Washington Post

National: Election Officials Still Face Death Threats And Conspiracies | Miles Parks/NPR

It’s been more than nine months since Election Day 2020, but as the nation’s top election officials met in Iowa over the weekend, it was clear the shadow of that race will stretch far into the future of American democracy. The conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from former President Donald Trump has upended almost all aspects of election administration: Local officials who a decade ago would have gone about their bureaucratic business in relative anonymity are facing threats and intense pressure, and a large chunk of American voters have no confidence the system is fair. “This is the very unfortunate new normal,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, who had dozens of armed protesters visit her home in December after last year’s election. Elections are run in the U.S. at the state and local levels, so the top voting officials across the country are usually secretaries of state. They met this weekend in Des Moines for their first in-person gathering since January 2020.

Full Article: Election Officials Still Face Death Threats And Conspiracies : NPR

National: House Democrats Introduce John Lewis Voting Rights Legislation | Nicholas Fandos/The New York Times

Full Article: House Democrats Introduce John Lewis Voting Rights Legislation – The New York Times

National: As Democrats Renew Voting Rights Push, Offsetting Roberts Court Is Top of Mind | Carl Hulse/The New York Times

When Judge John G. Roberts Jr. faced the Senate for his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in September 2005, critics sounded the alarm about his longstanding skepticism toward the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which many view as crucial to the political gains of Black Americans over the last half century. “I fear that if Judge Roberts is confirmed to be chief justice of the United States, the Supreme Court would no longer hear the people’s cries for justice,” Representative John Lewis, the civil rights leader from Georgia, said in urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject the nomination. Judge Roberts was easily confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate despite pleas from Mr. Lewis and other civil rights activists. He went on to oversee the court in rulings that weakened the Voting Right Acts, compromising its decades-long role as a protector of minority access to the ballot box across much of the South. Mr. Lewis died last July, just months before Republican state legislatures enacted an onslaught of voting restrictions after the 2020 elections. But it is not only those legislatures that Democrats see as their adversaries on election issues. “We are also up against a Supreme Court that is keen on destroying our nation’s most consequential voting rights law,” Representative Terry A. Sewell, Democrat of Alabama, said this week during a Democratic call celebrating the anniversary of women’s right to vote.

Full Article: As Democrats Renew Voting Rights Push, Offsetting Roberts Court Is Top of Mind – The New York Times

National: How Eric Coomer Became the ‘Perfect Villain’ for Voting Conspiracists | Susan Dominus/The New York Times

It was already late on Nov. 9 when Eric Coomer, then the director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, left his temporary office on Daley Plaza in Chicago and headed back to the hotel where he’d been staying for the previous few weeks. Both the plaza and the hotel had the eerie post-apocalyptic feel of urban life during the pandemic, compounding the sense of disorientation and apprehension he felt as he made his way up to his room. Earlier that evening, a colleague sent him a link to a video of Coomer speaking at a conference with a menacing comment below it. “Hi Eric! We know what you did,” the commenter wrote. That link eventually led Coomer to a second video, which he watched in his hotel room. What he saw, he quickly realized, was something that was likely to wreck his life, hurt his employer and possibly erode trust in the electoral process. Over the past decade, Coomer, 51, has helped make Dominion one of the largest providers of voting machines and software in the United States. He was a gifted programmer, known to be serious about his work but informal about almost everything else — prone to profanities, with a sense of humor that could have blunt force. Coomer, who traveled around the world for competitive endurance bike races, would have blended in on the campus of Google, just one in a crowd of nonconformist tech types. In the more corporate business of elections, he stood out for the full-sleeve tattoos on his arms (one of Francis Bacon’s “Screaming Popes,” some Picasso bulls) and the half-inch holes in his ears where he once wore what are known as plugs.

Full Article: How Eric Coomer Became the ‘Perfect Villain’ for Voting Conspiracists – The New York Times