Warren Stewart – Page 136 – The Voting News

Two years ago this month, Republicans and Democrats in Harrisburg reached a deal on the most significant changes to Pennsylvania election law in decades — including greatly expanded mail voting. But now, a year after a presidential race in which Donald Trump’s lies about mail voting and Pennsylvania’s results sowed distrust of the electoral system among his supporters, some Republicans are intensifying efforts to undo a law their party almost universally supported. The law known as Act 77 is facing perhaps its most serious court challenges yet. Republicans filed two lawsuits this summer saying it violates the state constitution. Democrats had hoped courts would quickly throw them out, but the cases have instead been combined and continue to move forward. The national and state Democratic Party organizations asked Friday to join the litigation in defense of Act 77. During oral arguments in one case, a panel of judges aggressively questioned lawyers representing the state, in what one Democratic observer described as “skepticism and hostility.” The hearing raised fears among Democrats that the state court might soon rule against the law. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration would almost certainly appeal a loss to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where a majority-Democratic bench has generally sided with the state on election issues. But while few believe the Supreme Court would ultimately throw out Act 77, some Democrats and good-government advocates worry that even a temporary loss could create significant challenges.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Republican lawsuits over Act 77 election law have Democrats quietly worried

Pennsylvania GOP wants personal voter data to root out fraud, but state already uses a more secure system | Danielle Ohl/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Pennsylvania has spent nearly half a million dollars over the past six years to find and remove outdated registrations from its voter database, a process Senate Republicans now want to take up in a partisan-driven review at added expense to taxpayers. In the weeks since approving a far-reaching subpoena seeking access to sensitive voter information, GOP lawmakers in favor of the effort have claimed the vast troves of data are necessary to identify voters who shouldn’t have cast a ballot in either the November 2020 or May 2021 elections. The senators in charge of the investigation have not defined how they will prove a voter is “illegal” if they suspect fraud, nor have they acknowledged that Pennsylvania has already spent $403,904 for access to a sophisticated voter list maintenance program that regularly performs the analysis Republicans say they are seeking. Senate Republicans, in justifying the investigation, have claimed there is a need to investigate the “validity” of ballots cast during the previous elections, despite several court cases that found no evidence of widespread fraud. They have often pointed to a 2019 auditor general report identifying potential birthdate inaccuracies and duplicate information in fewer than 1% of voter registrations. The Department of State at the time pushed back on the auditor general’s analysis, saying it had “incorrectly flagged thousands of records as potential concerns.”

Full Article: GOP wants personal voter data to root out fraud, but Pa. already uses a more secure system | TribLIVE.com

South Dakota: Lincoln County voter confusion delays talks of buying iPads for polls | Nicole Ki/Sioux Falls Argus Leader

Lincoln County commissioners have decided to delay discussions about adopting a new electronic poll-book system, following public outcry at Tuesday’s meeting about last week’s election. The new digital system would implement iPads at polling locations countywide to streamline the process of signing in voters through KnowInk, the nation’s leading provider for digital poll books. “I’m actually appalled that you would bring up having poll pads after last Thursday’s referendum election,” said resident Karla Lems at the commissioner’s meeting. “Some of the Sioux Falls polling places weren’t changed, and not once were voters notified that they had a new polling place to go to.” … Adopting electronic poll books would increase efficiency at polling locations by cutting the time poll workers would spend manually going through voter registration information. “Usually, we sit there for 40 hours at least, and scan every barcode to update people’s voter information,” said Lund. “This would plug into the poll pad into the computer, and within 24 hours we would have the election [how many voters were there].”

Full Article: Lincoln County voter confusion delays talks of buying iPads for polls

Texas: Republicans Are Laying The Groundwork For Endless Election “Audits” That Go Long Past Trump | Sarah Mimms/BuzzFeed

Republicans are laying the groundwork for candidates to follow former president Donald Trump’s election-denying playbook, creating the potential for vote “audits” up and down the ballot for years to come. Of most concern to election experts and voting rights advocates is Texas’s SB 47, a bill Republicans are currently fast-tracking through the state legislature. It would allow any candidate or party chair to force multiple inquiries into anything they view as an election “irregularity.” These inquiries would not require any burden of proof and could be pursued for potentially years after an election is over, all at the expense of taxpayers. Roughly one-third of Americans believe Trump’s continued lies about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Now add in the potential for similar claims from dozens of losing candidates in every single primary and general election race — not to mention county and state party chairs and committees supporting ballot measures, all of whom can also force a look into a past election — and you have the nightmare outcome of a bill like Texas’s SB 47. “It was the single most concerning bill I have seen all legislative session,” Sarah Walker, executive director for the national, nonpartisan election integrity group Secure Democracy, said this week. The bill, which passed the state Senate Tuesday, still needs a vote in the House, but it is getting an aggressive PR campaign from Trump, in part because it also includes an audit of the 2020 election. Trump has spent weeks putting intense pressure on Gov. Greg Abbott, who is up for reelection next year, to do a “strong and real” audit (and rejecting the post-election audit the state is already doing in response to his complaints as “weak”) despite winning the state by 6 points. Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: Election Audits In Texas Could Go On For Years

Wisconsin: Head of GOP election inquiry compares Milwaukee newspaper to Nazi propagandist | Lucas Robinson/Wisconsin State Journal

Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, compared the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief after the newspaper and other outlets reported that Gableman had backed off from calling on city officials to testify in his probe. Gableman directed his comments to a Journal Sentinel story in which one of his own aides said city officials will not be required to sit for interviews about last year’s election. The interviews were requested under subpoenas issued to city officials across five cities this month. “What they’re doing over at the Journal would make Joseph Goebbels blush,” Gableman told Dan O’Donnell, the host of a conservative talk show on WISN-AM. “What they’re doing over at the Journal would make Joseph Goebbels blush,” Gableman told Dan O’Donnell, the host of a conservative talk show on WISN-AM. Goebbels served as Hitler’s propaganda minister during the Nazi regime. An antisemite pivotal in creating Hitler’s cult of personality, Goebbels helped mastermind the most infamous moments of Hitler’s rule, from book-burnings and rallies to Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Germany’s Jewish community.

US election reviews have not appeased those who think the game is rigged | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Back in May, I spent some time with a small group of people who had gathered outside of Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix to express their support for the investigation into the election results in Maricopa county, the largest county in Arizona. Sitting under a tent in the desert heat, several people said the two official audits Maricopa county had authorized already weren’t sufficient. I asked the group if they would accept that Biden was the winner if that was what the audit showed. “Personally, I would, yes,” said Kelly Johnson, a 61-year-old who traveled to Phoenix from southern California. I’ve been thinking a lot about that conversation as I watched the Arizona review conclude, finding no evidence of fraud and affirming Biden’s win. And I found myself returning to that conversation as I reported this week on similar efforts to investigate election results that are unfolding in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Texas. Those supporting the reviews have offered similar assurances that an inquiry can only lead to more trust in the election results. If people have questions, what harm can come from looking under the hood to make sure everything is OK? “If there are things called into question, and there is not full confidence in the electoral process, providing audits and research and evidence that in fact these processes and procedures and the election results you can have confidence in, only supports that position where you can have confidence and here is why,” Wisconsin state senator Kathy Bernier told me last week.

Full Article: US election reviews have not appeased those who think the game is rigged | US news | The Guardian

New Hampshire showed how to audit an election properly | Sarah Salem/The Washington Post

Pennsylvania is barreling toward a hyperpartisan, divisive election audit, not unlike the one in Maricopa County, Ariz. But there’s a way to carry out an ethical audit, election experts say. Just look at how New Hampshire did it. Verified election experts, a transparent process and bipartisan support marked a recent audit conducted in New Hampshire after a discrepancy in a state legislative race. That audit serves as an example of a bipartisan, “ethical” audit, antithetical to the one carried out in Maricopa County, said David Levine, an advisory committee member for the Global Cyber Alliance’s Cybersecurity Toolkit for Elections. “[New Hampshire] brought in some genuine election experts who understood election security and integrity, and then they conducted a very transparent bipartisan process that was spurred on by bipartisan-supported election legislation,” Levine said. One of those experts who conducted the New Hampshire audit was Philip Stark. Stark calls the Maricopa County audit a “fishing expedition,” in contrast to New Hampshire’s “forensic audit” that engendered widespread public confidence in the process. “The New Hampshire audit was a forensic audit in the sense that there was a known problem,” he said. “That’s not what happened in Maricopa. There was no evidence that anything was wrong.”

Full Article: New Hampshire showed how to audit an election properly – The Washington Post

National: Behind the Curtain of Post-Election Canvassing, Audits, and Certification | Matthew Weil and Christopher Thomas/Bipartisan Policy Center

Debates about voting policy tend to center on the parts of the process voters interact with most, such as the number of days of early voting or availability of mail voting options. It is, however, the way states approach the period that begins as polls close that can shape whether voters have confidence in election results. The canvassing and certification period is a black box for most Americans who rarely think about what goes into counting, certifying, and auditing ballots once they are cast. During an era of close contests and hyperpolarization, there is minimal room for error and ample opportunity for misinformation and misunderstanding. In 2021, the perceived need for further analysis of election results gave rise to a series of semi-private, unofficial audits.¹ These audits cast doubt on the American voting process, despite being unable to find any evidence to support their claims of fraud. Perhaps the greatest threat to American elections is not any particular of election administration itself, but the decoupling of reality from perception. As the gap between the reality and perception of elections grows, we see private audits haphazardly attempt to achieve what election officials already do in the aftermath of each election: confirm the accuracy of the results. Yet unlike the official certification processes already in place, these circus-like audits are intended to usurp rather than instill voter confidence. Furthermore, many of the audits failed to uphold security best practices and threatened the integrity of voting systems – forcing some jurisdictions to invest millions in new technology, an unnecessary waste of already limited election office resources.

Full Article: Behind the Curtain of Post-Election Canvassing, Audits, and Certification | Bipartisan Policy Center

National: ‘Subverting Justice’: Senate panel details the 9 times Trump pressured Justice Department to overturn election results | Kevin Johnson/USA TODAY

On the very day that Attorney General William Barr left office in late December, then-President Donald Trump and top White House aides began a “relentless” pressure campaign aimed at interim Justice Department leaders, including acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a new Senate committee report. The effort included “near-daily outreach” to the department, such as nine calls and meetings with Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation found. The White House push continued right up to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters sought to block Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s election. According to the committee, then-acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark repeatedly sought to “induce Rosen into helping Trump’s election subversion scheme” by telling Rosen that he would decline Trump’s offer that he take Rosen’s place if Rosen agreed to join. The report said Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, pressured Rosen on “multiple occasions” to launch election fraud investigations, “violating longstanding restrictions on White House intervention in DOJ law enforcement matters.” According to the report, Meadows attempted to push Rosen to meet with Trump’s outside lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was waging a parallel legal campaign in the courts, where he pressed debunked allegations of voter fraud in multiple states.

Full Article: Senate details Donald Trump’s push at DOJ to overturn 2020 election

National: Report Cites New Details of Trump Pressure on Justice Dept. Over Election | Katie Benner/The New York Times

Even by the standards of President Donald J. Trump, it was an extraordinary Oval Office showdown. On the agenda was Mr. Trump’s desire to install a loyalist as acting attorney general to carry out his demands for more aggressive investigations into his unfounded claims of election fraud. On the other side during that meeting on the evening of Jan. 3 were the top leaders of the Justice Department, who warned Mr. Trump that they and other senior officials would resign en masse if he followed through. They received immediate support from another key participant: Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. According to others at the meeting, Mr. Cipollone indicated that he and his top deputy, Patrick F. Philbin, would also step down if Mr. Trump acted on his plan. Mr. Trump’s proposed plan, Mr. Cipollone argued, would be a “murder-suicide pact,” one participant recalled. Only near the end of the nearly three-hour meeting did Mr. Trump relent and agree to drop his threat. Mr. Cipollone’s stand that night is among the new details contained in a lengthy interim report prepared by the Senate Judiciary Committee about Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to do his bidding in the chaotic final weeks of his presidency. The report draws on documents, emails and testimony from three top Justice Department officials, including the acting attorney general for Mr. Trump’s last month in office, Jeffrey A. Rosen; the acting deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, and Byung J. Pak, who until early January was U.S. attorney in Atlanta. It provides the most complete account yet of Mr. Trump’s efforts to push the department to validate election fraud claims that had been disproved by the F.B.I. and state investigators.

Full Article: New Details of Trump Pressure on Justice Dept. Over Election – The New York Times

National: ‘The intelligence was there’: Law enforcement warnings abounded in the runup to Jan. 6 | Betsy Woodruff Swan/Politico

On Dec. 24, a private intelligence company that works with law enforcement issued a grave warning: Users of a pro-Trump internet forum were talking about turning violent on Jan. 6. “[A] supposedly violent insurrection by [Trump’s] supporters has ‘always been the plan,’” read a briefing by that company, SITE Intelligence Group. SITE sent this bulletin and others to its numerous subscribers, including U.S. federal law enforcement. That briefing is among a host of previously unreported documents that circulated among law enforcement officials in the weeks before Jan. 6 — laying out, some with jarring specificity, the threats that culminated in the attack on the Capitol. They showed just how much of a danger far-right extremists posed to federal buildings and lawmakers. And they bolster the argument that Jan. 6 was not an intelligence failure. “A potpourri of communities overtly strategized to storm the Capitol building and arrest — if not outright kill — public officials and carry out a coup,” said Rita Katz, the founder and executive director of SITE, which supplied many of the most detailed and specific warnings ahead of Jan. 6. She said Jan. 6 represented the most “profound failure to act” she has ever seen in decades of sharing intelligence with the U.S. government. “Law enforcement officials were alerting their superiors and other agencies to the threats SITE had identified—many of which ended up manifesting that day, just as they were written,” she said. “These warnings were distributed by the FBI and other agencies well before January 6.”

Full Article: ‘The intelligence was there’: Law enforcement warnings abounded in the runup to Jan. 6 – POLITICO

National: Christian Conservative Lawyer Had Secretive Role in Bid to Block Election Result | Eric Lipton and Mark Walker/The New York Times

One of the nation’s most prominent religious conservative lawyers played a critical behind-the-scenes role in the lawsuit that Republican state attorneys general filed in December in a last-ditch effort to overturn the election of President Biden, documents show. The lawyer, Michael P. Farris, is the chief executive of a group known as Alliance Defending Freedom, which is active in opposing abortion and gay rights. He circulated a detailed draft of the lawsuit that Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, ultimately filed against states including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin in an effort to help President Donald J. Trump remain in office. Mr. Paxton filed the lawsuit on Dec. 7, after making some changes but keeping large chunks of the draft circulated by Mr. Farris. An additional 17 Republican attorneys general filed a brief with the Supreme Court supporting Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit. Within four days, the matter was rejected by the court. But Mr. Farris’s role highlighted how religious conservatives supported Mr. Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to retain power by blocking certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.

Full Article: How Michael P. Farris Tried to Block 2020 Election Outcome – The New York Times

National: Trump allies did little to investigate election fraud claims, court documents show | Tierney Sneed and Katelyn Polantz/CNN

Allies of former President Donald Trump testified under oath that they did little to check out some of the uncorroborated claims they made about 2020 election fraud before amplifying them on the national stage, according to newly available court records reviewed by CNN. While the bogus fraud claims have long been debunked, these latest revelations are being made in sworn depositions and highlight how little vetting was done by certain Trump allies seeking to spread doubt about the integrity of the presidential election results. The more than 2,000 pages of documents reviewed by CNN provide the most significant look yet at evidence collected in several defamation cases brought against top Trump mouthpieces. In this lawsuit, former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer alleges he was defamed by the Trump campaign, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and prominent conservatives. According to the account that Giuliani gave in the case, he spent less than an hour reviewing allegations that Coomer was part of a plot to rig the election before publicly making those claims at a November press conference.

Full Article: Donald Trump allies did little to investigate election fraud claims, court documents show – CNNPolitics

Arizona: Maricopa County officials blast election review’s ‘spread of disinformation’ | Diannie Chavez/Cronkite News

Maricopa County supervisors told a congressional committee Thursday that the state Senate’s review of the county’s 2020 election results amounted to a “staggering refusal to follow the will of the voters.” The remarks came during a House Oversight and Reform Committee that asked whether the Arizona election probe and copycats springing up in other states are a threat to American democracy. The four-hour hearing was sometimes tedious, sometimes fiery, but it did not appear to change any minds. Democrats on the committee called the six-month, multimillion-dollar Cyber Ninjas’ “audit” of the election little more than an attempt to erode confidence in the electoral process by raising multiple conspiratorial questions. And Republicans insisted that more questions need to be asked. “We have identified there are some things we can do better in our elections in Arizona,” said Ken Bennett, the former Arizona secretary of state who was the Senate’s liaison to Cyber Ninjas. “I hope the Legislature and the governor will follow through and … introduce bills to tighten things up.” Bennett said people on both sides of the issue should “understand that there’s nothing wrong with auditing elections.”

Full Article: Maricopa officials blast election review’s ‘spread of disinformation’ – Cronkite News – Arizona PBS

Colorado: Mesa Clerk was given detailed instructions on how to back up election files | Charles Ashby/Grand Junction Sentinel

Before Colorado Secretary of State and Dominion Voting System technicians came to Mesa County in May to conduct a software update of its elections system, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was given a step-by-step guide on how to back up election files and told just who could be present during that computer upgrade. In an April 30 email to all county clerks in the state obtained by The Daily Sentinel, Jessi Romero, voting systems manager in the Secretary of State’s Office, laid out the details on how to prepare for its “trusted build” software update, something the state and county clerks have done once a year since 2005. In it, Romero wrote that “only authorized staff, county elections staff and Dominion staff may be present during trusted build,” and asked each clerk to agree to the terms of the upgrade to preserve the security of election equipment, which included limiting the number of people who could be present, all of which had to have passed criminal history background checks. Peters agreed to those terms, but only after state officials declined Peters’ request to allow others into the office to view that upgrade, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. “The onsite installation of the trusted build is not the time for members of the public, representatives from the local parties or county officials other than the clerk and recorder to observe or ask questions about the process or any of the disinformation being pushed about the election,” Romero wrote. “If, when we arrive or during the process, there are others present beyond Dominion, county election staff that have been authorized and the clerk and recorder in the area where the trusted build will take place, we will move on to the next county,” Romero added. “It will then be the responsibility of the clerk and recorder to ship equipment to Denver so it may be upgraded at a time that works for Dominion and the (SOS office).” Those computer upgrades have to be done in person because county election systems are not accessible via the internet, the Secretary of State’s Office says.

Full Article: Clerk was given detailed instructions on how to back up election files | Western Colorado | gjsentinel.com

Florida: Lake County GOP demands election audit, despite Trump’s win | Steven Lemongelloand Gray Rohrer/Orlando Sentinel

Lake County Republicans are the latest GOP group to echo former President Trump’s false claims of election fraud by demanding a statewide forensic audit of Florida, a state Trump won by almost 372,000 votes. In a letter and two resolutions unanimously approved last week and sent to Florida GOP leaders, the Lake County Republican Executive Committee claimed “a majority of citizens doubt that the November 3, 2020, election was conducted openly and fairly” and “doubt the number of legal votes cast for each candidate equals the reported and certified results, in Lake County, the State of Florida, and the United States.” The Lake County GOP said it “demands” that the Legislature conduct an “immediate, open, transparent and independent full forensic audit, including a hand recount” of Lake County and the entire state, “at least as thorough as the audit being conducted in Maricopa County, Arizona.” Trump received almost 60% of the vote in Lake County over President Biden in 2020, and won Florida by 51% to 48%. Despite DeSantis’ praise for how the state conducted the election, he later called for and signed a controversial election law that significantly reduced drop boxes and added new restrictions for mail-in ballots and canvassing.

Full Article: Lake County GOP demands Florida election audit, despite Trump’s win – Orlando Sentinel

Georgia: Criminal inquiry into Trump’s election interference gathers steam | Peter Stone/The Guardian

Donald Trump is facing increasing legal scrutiny in the crucial battleground state of Georgia over his attempt to sway the 2020 election there, and that heat is now overlapping with investigations in Congress looking at the former president’s efforts to subvert American democracy. A criminal investigation into Trump’s 2 January call prodding Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “just find” him 11,780 votes to block Joe Biden’s win in the state is making headway. The Georgia district attorney running the inquiry is now also sharing information with the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC. Meanwhile, a justice department taskforce investigating threats to election officials nationwide has launched inquiries in Georgia, where election officers and workers received death threats or warnings of violence, including some after Trump singled out one official publicly for not backing his baseless fraud claims. Despite these investigations, Trump is still pushing bogus fraud claims in Georgia. Trump wrote to Raffensperger in September asking him to decertify the election results, which is impossible, and with an eye on the 2022 elections is trying to oust Raffensperger, as well as the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and other top Republicans who defied his demands to block Biden’s win. Former justice department officials and voting rights advocates say Trump’s conspiratorial attacks on Georgia’s election results, and the threats to public officials, need to be investigated diligently, and prosecuted if warranted by law enforcement, to protect election integrity and public officials.

Full Article: Criminal inquiry into Trump’s Georgia election interference gathers steam | Georgia | The Guardian

Idaho wants MyPillow CEO to pay for costs to refute his false election fraud claim | Hayat Norimine/Idaho Statesman

After MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely claimed election fraud occurred in Idaho, Secretary of State officials audited three counties to disprove that claim. Now, the state plans to send Lindell a bill. Idaho Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck confirmed to the Idaho Statesman that the office plans to bill the CEO for the costs associated with auditing the three counties, a total estimated at about $6,500. Houck announced the bill on CNN on Thursday. In Idaho, former President Donald Trump handily won in the 2020 presidential election with 63.8% of the votes. But Lindell, in a widely circulated document titled “The Big Lie,” alleged that presidential election results in all 44 Idaho counties were electronically manipulated to switch votes from Trump to Joe Biden. Seven Idaho counties have no electronic means to count votes, Houck said. Houck said the suggestion to bill Lindell came from a citizen, and that totaling the expenses and sending the bill will likely take at least another two weeks.

Full Article: Idaho plans to send MyPillow CEO a bill after election audit | Idaho Statesman

Michigan: Macomb County clerk pursues forensic audit of election server | Carol Thompson/The Detroit News

Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said Tuesday he plans to hire a cyber security firm to conduct a forensic audit of the county’s election server to “restore the confidence of our election processes in Macomb County.” “I cannot say with certainty whether or not we will find something from the past, but I can say that Macomb will lead the state in election integrity in the future,” Forlini said in a statement. “We are in the process of establishing best election practices that we will continually look at and modify as laws and technology change.” Former President Donald Trump beat Democrat Joe Biden 53%-45% in Macomb County last year, the second consecutive time the Republican won the county. But Biden won the state by about 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, and Trump has made unsubstantiated claims fraud cost him the election. Forlini said he has no reason to doubt the results in Macomb County. The audit will build public confidence in the local election system and assuage some residents’ fears about outsiders’ ability to interfere in the results, he said. “I’m trying to establish all the best practices for good, clean elections,” Forlini told The Detroit News. “Not to say they weren’t clean before; I’m not trying to allude to that. I’m trying to say that I want to be able to answer in the affirmative that, from a technology standpoint, we have clean elections.”

Full Article: Macomb County clerk pursues forensic audit of election server

North Carolina: GOP lawmaker backs down from threat to force way into Durham County elections office | Laura Leslie/WRAL

A group of Republican House members announced Thursday that they are launching a fraud investigation into North Carolina elections and said they would start by inspecting voting machines in Durham County, with or without the cooperation of state or county election officials. Rep. Jeff McNeely, R-Iredell, conducted a “random drawing” of a county name out of a hat, and Durham County was chosen. Perhaps coincidentally, Republicans have accused Durham County of voter fraud in the past, especially in 2016, when a late vote tally there swung the governor’s race in favor of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper over then-incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. Citing “many, many millions of accusations” of “machine tampering and votes being switched because of modems,” McNeely said at a news conference that lawmakers intend to see for themselves whether the machines have modems in them. Voting machines in North Carolina do not have modems and are not connected to the internet, by state law.

Full Article: GOP lawmaker backs down from threat to force way into Durham elections office :: WRAL.com

South Carolina: Lexington County GOP calls for 2020 election audit, confusing GOP Lexington State Senator | Adam Mintzer/WIS

The Lexington County Republican Party wants the 2020 election results to be looked at again despite their party’s big wins in the county and state. In a resolution the county party passed this week, the Lexington County GOP says people in Lexington and across the state witnessed quote “questionable activities” as the votes in the 2020 election were being counted. “[V]oter rolls have not been sufficiently cleaned as required by law throughout the state, therefore, allowing for illegal votes via residency, citizens located on the death registry and other circumstances,” the county party writes in the resolution without providing further evidence. State Senator Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, says she is confused by what her own constituents are trying to achieve through this audit and says going through with it could potentially waste time and millions of dollars. “To call for that since we won so big in South Carolina it’s really a waste of taxpayer money. And it would be taxpayer money. I mean who else is going to pay for that? I mean, we won three senate seats, we won 2 house seats, we turned back over a congressional seat, and Trump won 55 percent in the state and 65 in Lexington county. What are we looking for?” Shealy said.

Full Article: Lexington County GOP calls for 2020 election audit, confusing GOP Lexington State Senator

Virginia: Republican gubernatorial nominee calls for audit of voting machines | Julia Manchester/The Hill

Republican Virginia gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin called for an audit of the state’s voting machines on Monday, saying the process should be carried out as a means of transparency. “I think we need to make sure that people trust these voting machines,” Youngkin said during a virtual forum with the Richmond Crusade for Voters. “And I just think, like, I grew up in a world where you have an audit every year, in businesses you have an audit. So let’s just audit the voting machines, publish it so everybody can see it,” he said. Youngkin also called for the Department of Elections to be moved out of the governor’s office, saying it should not be political. “I think it should be independent, and a governor, whether it’s me or somebody else, should not be allowed to tinker with the Department of Elections,” he said. Youngkin called on voter rolls to be updated, citing a recent update in Newport News, Va., that resulted in 3,000 people being removed because they did not change their addresses and did not vote in the 2018 and 2020 federal elections in Virginia. “So let’s just make that a good process, everybody’s going to trust it,” he said. “I do think people showing up with a picture ID is a good thing, and this is not an issue to keep people from voting. It’s just to make sure that folks are who they say they are when they come vote, and people seem to trust that, that seems to be uniformly supported regardless of party.”

Full Article: Youngkin calls for audit of voting machines in Virginia | TheHill

Wisconsin: Michael Gableman, the GOP attorney reviewing 2020 election, is backing off on the subpoenas to cities days after issuing them | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In a dramatic turnaround, an attorney reviewing the 2020 election for Assembly Republicans on Thursday canceled interviews with mayors and city clerks and backed off on subpoenas he issued to them days ago. Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman over the last week demanded the officials give him every election record they have and sit for interviews with him this month. The request comprised hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of pages of records. On Thursday, Gableman reversed course and said the officials for now do not need to come in for interviews and could simply provide him with copies of records they have already made available to others under the state’s open records law. Gableman may later ask for additional records, according to his aide, Zakory Niemierowicz. Interviews with mayors and city clerks could be scheduled later if needed, according to Michael Haas, the city attorney for Madison. “I think they did not appreciate the volume of documents that were being requested,” Haas said.

Full Article: Michael Gableman cancels interviews with Wisconsin election officials

Wisconsin Republican heading review of 2020 election says he does not understand how elections work | Patrick Marley Natalie Eilbert/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The attorney leading a partisan review of Wisconsin’s 2020 election acknowledged this week that he doesn’t understand how elections are supposed to be run. The admission by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman comes as he subpoenas mayors and election officials. His comment raises fresh questions about how long Gableman’s taxpayer-financed review will take. He called an Oct. 31 deadline set for him by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester unrealistic. “Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work,” Gableman said in an interview late Tuesday before addressing the Green Bay City Council about his plans. Gableman’s acknowledgment that he does not know how elections work comes 10 months after he told a crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump without evidence that elected officials had allowed bureaucrats to “steal our vote.” Recounts in the state’s two most populous counties and court decisions determined Joe Biden won by more than 20,000 votes, or 0.6 percentage points. Vos this summer hired Gableman and gave him a $676,000 budget to review the election. In the interview, Gableman said he planned to write a report that started by comparing what happened in 2020 with what should have happened. “Section one: What should have occurred during the election? How do these things work? Most people don’t know about that,” he said. “Election laws are unlike, say, laws about don’t kill me — they’re not intuitive. No one can call elections laws common sense. Once you understand them, it may be common sense but it’s not intuitive. And so most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work.”

Full Article: Republican reviewing 2020 vote says he doesn’t know how elections work

North Carolina: Right-wing legislators want to inspect Durham County’s voting machines. Election officials say ‘no.’ | Lynn Bonner/NC Policy Watch

A group of right-wing North Carolina House members calling themselves the Freedom Caucus want to crack open Durham County’s voting machines to check for vote manipulation despite no evidence of irregularities. Members of the group announced their intentions at a news conference Thursday morning, and said they were picking a county at random. Durham is a heavily Democratic county and voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden in a state that Donald Trump won. “We started an investigation as to whether there were any foreign objects or modems or anything,” said Rep. Jeff McNeely, an Iredell Republican. Later on the House floor, Rep. Zack Hawkins, a Durham Democrat, said members of the Freedom Caucus are not getting into the county’s voting machines. “You are not welcome in Durham County,” he said. In an email, Durham Board of Elections Director Derek Bowens said no one can open the machines. “No one will be permitted to inspect voting equipment in Durham County as per statute and direction from the Executive Director of the State Board of Elections,” he wrote.

Full Article: Right-wing legislators want to inspect Durham’s voting machines. Election officials say ‘no.’ | The Pulse

“God’s Will Is Being Thwarted.” Even in Solid Republican Counties, Hard-Liners Seek More Partisan Control of Elections. | Jeremy Schwartz/ProPublica and The Texas Tribune

Michele Carew would seem an unlikely target of Donald Trump loyalists who have fixated their fury on the notion that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president. The nonpartisan elections administrator in the staunchly Republican Hood County, just an hour southwest of Fort Worth, oversaw an election in which Trump got some 81% of the vote. It was among the former president’s larger margins of victory in Texas, which also went for him. Yet over the past 10 months, Carew’s work has come under persistent attack from hard-line Republicans. They allege disloyalty and liberal bias at the root of her actions, from the time she denied a reporter with the fervently pro-Trump network One America News entrance to a training that was not open to the public to accusations, disputed by the Texas secretary of state’s office, that she is violating state law by using electronic machines that randomly number ballots. Viewing her decisions as a litmus test of her loyalty to the Republican Party, they have demanded that Carew be fired or her position abolished and her duties transferred to an elected county clerk who has used social media to promote baseless allegations of widespread election fraud. Republican politicians and conspiracy theorists continue to cast doubt on the election process across the country, particularly in areas where President Joe Biden won. They have demanded audits in states like Arizona, where the results of a Republican-led review in Maricopa County confirmed Biden’s victory. They have also moved to restrict voting in multiple states, including Texas, which passed sweeping legislation that has already drawn lawsuits alleging the disenfranchisement of vulnerable voters. Last week, Trump issued a public letter demanding an audit in Texas. Hours later, the Texas secretary of state’s office announced that it had begun a “comprehensive forensic audit” in four of the state’s largest counties: Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin. Biden won three of the four.

Full Article: “God’s Will Is Being Thwarted.” Even in Solid Republican Counties, Hard-Liners Seek More Partisan Control of Elections. — ProPublica

Arizona Vote Review ‘Made Up the Numbers,’ Election Experts Say | Michael Wines and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Source: Arizona Vote Review ‘Made Up the Numbers,’ Election Experts Say – The New York Times

The circuslike review of the 2020 vote commissioned by Arizona Republicans took another wild turn on Friday when veteran election experts charged that the very foundation of its findings — the results of a hand count of 2.1 million ballots — was based on numbers so unreliable that they appear to be guesswork rather than tabulations. The organizers of the review “made up the numbers,” the headline of the experts’ report reads. The experts, a data analyst for the Arizona Republican Party and two retired executives of an election consulting firm in Boston, said in their report that workers for the investigators failed to count thousands of ballots in a pallet of 40 ballot-filled boxes delivered to them in the spring. The final report by the Republican investigators concluded that President Biden actually won 99 more votes than were reported, and that former President Donald J. Trump tallied 261 fewer votes. But given the large undercount found in just a sliver of the 2.1 million ballots, it would effectively be impossible for the Republican investigators to arrive at such precise numbers, the experts said.

National: False election claims undermine efforts to increase security | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Officials say the biggest threat facing U.S. elections isn’t Russian hacking or domestic voter fraud but disinformation and misinformation increasingly undermining the public’s perception of voting security. Since the 2016 vote, Congress has allocated millions of dollars to states in an attempt to shore up cybersecurity and replace outdated, vulnerable voting machines, but even as improvements are made, faith in the system is being eroded. “I believe that the biggest vulnerability is disinformation, that these machines are not functioning in the way that they were intended,” Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Commissioner Thomas Hicks, who was nominated by former President Obama, said Thursday during a virtual event hosted by Freedom House, the Bush Institute, Issue One and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. EAC Chairman Donald Palmer, nominated by former President Trump, agreed with Hicks, telling The Hill Friday that “our systems are secure, and they have been tested and are secure, and the misinformation about those systems, that hurts voter confidence.” Concerns over misleading claims undermining elections are nothing new, but gained widespread public attention after 2016. In the months leading up to November, Russian government hackers targeted election infrastructure in all 50 states, successfully accessing voter registration systems in two of them, though no votes were changed.

Full Article: False election claims undermine efforts to increase security | TheHill

National: New legislation seeks to expand protections for election workers | Linda So/Reuters

A U.S. senator introduced legislation on Monday to broaden protections for election workers, their family members and physical polling locations in response to a Reuters investigation into threats against election administrators. The Election Worker and Polling Place Protection Act aims to make the workers who help administer America’s elections safer — from officials to volunteers and the contractors who set up and maintain voting equipment. The protections would extend to family members of election officials and prohibit threats of damage to polling places, tabulation centers or other election infrastructure. The measure, sponsored by Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, cites two recent Reuters reports about threats of physical harm and death against election workers across the country, from senior officials to volunteer poll workers along with their families. The barrage, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s ceaseless false claims that the 2020 vote was stolen, has continued nearly a year after the November election. There have only been four known arrests in response to the threats and no convictions. “Threats of violence targeting election officials and polling places are threats against our Constitution and the right to vote,” said Ossoff, 34, elected this year. “At this moment of peril for our democracy, my bill will strengthen federal laws protecting election workers and polling places from violent threats and acts of violence.”

Full Article: New U.S. legislation seeks to expand protections for election workers | Reuters

National: Trump seeking to elevate Republicans who refuse to accept Biden victory | Sam Levine/The Guardian