Texans with disabilities fear voting obstacles under proposed GOP restrictions | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune

It took Nancy Crowther three hours, four public bus rides and an impressive amount of gumption to make sure her vote counted in the 2020 election. She’s hoping Texas lawmakers don’t make it even harder the next time. With Texas Republicans determined to enact additional voting restrictions in the upcoming special legislative session, much of the uproar has focused on changes that could make it harder for people of color to cast ballots. Less attention has fallen on another group of voters bracing for what could happen to them under the GOP’s renewed push to further tighten the state’s voting procedures — people with disabilities, for whom the voting process is already lined with potential obstacles. Among them are people like Crowther, a 64-year-old retiree, who could have been shut out from voting last November had it not been for her own tenacious determination. Immunocompromised because of a neuromuscular disease, Crowther chose to forgo her usual trip to a nearby polling place and instead turned to mail-in voting in hopes of safeguarding her health during the pandemic. But as Election Day neared — and after experiencing interruptions in her mail service — she began to worry her ballot wouldn’t make it back to the county in time.

Full Article: Texans with disabilities fear voting obstacles under proposed GOP restrictions | The Texas Tribune

Wisconsin man is scanning ballots in his own review of 2020 election | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Republican lawmakers aren’t the only ones examining Wisconsin’s presidential election. A New London man has been making copies of ballots in some communities as he conducts his own review of an election Joe Biden narrowly won. “Our intention is to have true and honest elections. You hear all kinds of rumors and we want to dispel some of those if they’re not true,” Peter Bernegger said when asked about his endeavor. Bernegger declined to say what his plans are but said he would announce them in the coming weeks. Recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties and more than a half dozen lawsuits upheld Biden’s victory. Bernegger’s push to inspect ballots comes as Republican lawmakers ramp up their own review of the election. They have hired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman and former law enforcement officers at taxpayer expense to conduct their review as they decide whether to pass more election-related legislation. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester has acknowledged Biden won the election. That has won him enmity from former President Donald Trump, who has said Vos, Senate President Chris Kapenga of Delafield and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu of Oostburg haven’t done enough to investigate the election.

Full Article: Wisconsin man is scanning ballots in his own review of 2020 election

A Michigan Republican Senator spent eight months searching for evidence of election fraud, but all he found was lies. | Tim Alberta/The Atlantic

Right around the time Donald Trump was flexing his conspiratorial muscles on Saturday night, recycling old ruses and inventing new boogeymen in his first public speech since inciting a siege of the U.S. Capitol in January, a dairy farmer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula sat down to supper. It had been a trying day. The farmer, Ed McBroom, battled sidewinding rain while working his 320 acres, loading feed and breeding livestock and at one point delivering a distressed calf backwards from its mother’s womb, before hanging the newborn animal by its hind legs for respiratory drainage. Now, having slipped off his manure-caked rubber boots, McBroom groaned as he leaned into his home-grown meal of unpasteurized milk and spaghetti with hamburger sauce. He would dine peacefully at his banquet-length antique table, surrounded by his family of 15, unaware that in nearby Ohio, the former president was accusing him—thankfully, this time not by name—of covering up the greatest crime in American history. A few days earlier, McBroom, a Republican state senator who chairs the Oversight Committee, had released a report detailing his eight-month-long investigation into the legitimacy of the 2020 election. The stakes could hardly have been higher. Against a backdrop of confusion and suspicion and frightening civic friction—with Trump claiming he’d been cheated out of victory, and anecdotes about fraud coursing through every corner of the state—McBroom had led an exhaustive probe of Michigan’s electoral integrity. His committee interviewed scores of witnesses, subpoenaed and reviewed thousands of pages of documents, dissected the procedural mechanics of Michigan’s highly decentralized elections system, and scrutinized the most trafficked claims about corruption at the state’s ballot box in November. McBroom’s conclusion hit Lansing like a meteor: It was all a bunch of nonsense.

Full Article: The Michigan Republican Who Decided to Tell the Truth – The Atlantic

Election security could be set back by the partisan audit in Arizona | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Election security experts are waiting with a mixture of resignation and dread for the results of a hyperpartisan audit that’s wrapping up in Maricopa County, Ariz. The counting phase of that audit ended Friday after weeks of serious security flubs including workers failing to track ballots from one location to another, using unvetted equipment and leaving laptops and other technology unattended. The audit is being conducted by a Florida firm called Cyber Ninjas with no history or expertise in the area and whose CEO Doug Logan has endorsed wild conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from former president Donald Trump. Auditors have chased unhinged and unfounded claims about secret watermarks on ballots and traces of bamboo in ballots that were secretly flown in from Asia.  Cyber Ninjas’s final report is expected in the next few weeks. But election security analysts are already warning the results will be untrustworthy and could further undermine public faith in what intelligence and law enforcement leaders have called the most secure election in history.  “This endeavor has been a flawed and really failed effort from the very beginning,” Liz Howard, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at New York University’s Brennan Center and an official observer of the Maricopa audit, told me. “I assume whatever they put out will be riddled with errors, incomplete and will not provide an accurate assessment of the election.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Election security could be set back by the partisan audit in Arizona – The Washington Post

National: Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Restrictions | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave states new latitude to impose restrictions on voting, using a ruling in a case from Arizona to signal that challenges to laws being passed by Republican legislatures that make it harder for minority groups to vote would face a hostile reception from a majority of the justices. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The decision was among the most consequential in decades on voting rights, and it was the first time the court had considered how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to restrictions that have a particular impact on people of color. The six conservative justices in the majority concluded that the relevant part of the act can be used to strike down voting restrictions only when they impose substantial and disproportionate burdens on minority voters, effectively blocking their ability to cast a ballot — a standard suggesting that the Supreme Court would not be inclined to overturn many of the measures Republicans have pursued or approved around the country.

Full Article: Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Restrictions – The New York Times

National: Trump audit excitement meets with fear from election officials Zach Montellaro/Politico

A monthslong examination of all the ballots from the 2020 election in Arizona’s most populous county may be winding down soon. But now the state is spreading the “audit” playbook across the country. Supporters of former President Donald Trump — fueled by Trump’s false claim that he did not lose the 2020 election — are behind a new push to review the results in states including Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The new drive is worrying state election administrators, who say the efforts will further inflame conspiracy theories and erode faith in the American democratic system. The burden of these reviews could fall on the shoulders of state and local election officials, further complicating a field where many are worried about a brain drain due to exhaustion and threats workers faced in the aftermath of the 2020 election. “We’re wasting a lot of taxpayer money. We’re wasting a lot of people’s time,” said Jennifer Morrell, a former elections administrator and consultant who served as a nonpartisan observer for the Arizona secretary of state during the Arizona review. “We’re sucking a lot of energy from the folks that need to be preparing and working on the next election.”

Full Article: Trump audit excitement meets with fear from election officials – POLITICO

National: Voting rights ruling increases pressure on Democrats to act | Bryan Slodisko and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Congressional Democrats are facing renewed pressure to pass legislation that would protect voting rights after a Supreme Court ruling Thursday made it harder to challenge Republican efforts to limit ballot access in many states. The 6-3 ruling on a case out of Arizona was the second time in a decade that conservatives on the Supreme Court have weakened components of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark Civil Rights-era law. But this opinion was released in a much different political climate, in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s lie that last year’s election was stolen. Trump’s fabrications spurred Republicans in states such as Georgia and Florida to pass tougher rules on voting under the cloak of election integrity. Democrats on Capitol Hill have already tried to respond with a sweeping voting and elections bill that Senate Republicans united to block last week. A separate bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore sections of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court previously weakened, has been similarly dismissed by most Republicans. Those setbacks, combined with the Supreme Court’s decision, have fueled a sense of urgency among Democrats to act while they still have narrow majorities in the House and Senate. But passing voting legislation at this point would almost certainly require changes to the filibuster, allowing Democrats to act without GOP support.

Full Article: Voting rights ruling increases pressure on Democrats to act

National: Giuliani’s Messages With Fox Sought by Dominion in Election Suit | Erik Larson/Bloomberg

Rudy Giuliani, already being sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. over his debunked election-conspiracy claims, has been issued a subpoena in a similar lawsuit the company filed against Fox News Network. The former New York mayor and Donald Trump’s personal lawyer was asked to hand over all documents stemming from his appearances on Fox starting in 2016 as well as all communications with the network related to the 2020 presidential election and Dominion, according to a June 28 filing in state court in Delaware. The subpoena also seeks Giuliani’s communications concerning the “truth or falsity” of the claims he made about Dominion while appearing on Fox, plus documents about the nature of his relationship with the network, “whether formal or informal, compensated or uncompensated.” Giuliani is fighting to dismiss the defamation suit filed against him by Dominion in Washington, as are former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and MyPillow Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mike Lindell. All three repeatedly claimed without evidence that Dominion and its employees were at the center of a plot to flip millions of votes away from Trump, with help from foreign hackers, corrupt Democrats and “communist money.”

Full Article: Allen Weisselberg, Trump Organization CFO, Surrenders to Authorities in NY – Bloomberg

National: Threats Against Election Officials Are a Threat to Democracy | Sue Halpern/The New Yorker

For Tina Barton, the death threats began a few days after last November’s general election. At the time, Barton was in her eighth year as the clerk of Rochester Hills, a city of seventy-five thousand people in southeastern Michigan, where her many responsibilities included administering elections. On the evening of November 3rd, after the city’s election results were transmitted to a central tabulator, it looked like the absentee ballots for some precincts had not been included, so Barton and her crew resubmitted them. The next morning, when they realized that these ballots had, in fact, been transmitted the first time, the mistake was fixed. Barton assumed that was the end of it. Within days, Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, held a press conference in nearby Bloomfield Hills. Although Barton was appointed by a nonpartisan city council, she is a Republican and considered McDaniel an ally. “I was never called by them to say, ‘Hey, Tina, what happened there?’ ” Barton said. “There was never, like, let’s check the facts.” Instead, at the press conference, McDaniel falsely claimed that two thousand votes for Trump had gone to Biden. “It was a complete mischaracterization,” Barton told me. “They needed language to support the agenda that they were pushing, and they used me, specifically, for the shock factor, because I was a Republican. I think they were trying to make the case that, if it could happen in Rochester Hills, it could happen anywhere.” Barton posted an explanatory video on Twitter, which quickly amassed more than a million views. A torrent of death threats followed, left on her office voice mail and sent via Facebook Messenger. “To have someone say you deserve a knife to your throat, that you should be executed, that they are going to eff up your family, shakes you,” she said. “And I’m fortunate. My husband is a sheriff’s deputy. That added a layer of security a lot of election officials don’t have.” Barton is now a senior adviser to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (E.A.C.), where she works with election administrators all over the country. “These are true public servants,” she said. “They are in it because they have a passion for democracy. And now they are asking themselves if they are willing to put themselves and their families at risk to do this job.”

Full Article: Threats Against Election Officials Are a Threat to Democracy | The New Yorker

Editorial: The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk | Richard L. Hasen/The New York Times

In two disturbing rulings closing out the Supreme Court’s term, the court’s six-justice conservative majority, over the loud protests of its three-liberal minority, has shown itself hostile to American democracy. In one case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court has weakened the last remaining legal tool for protecting minority voters in federal courts from a new wave of legislation seeking to suppress the vote that is emanating from Republican-controlled states. In the other, Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta, the court has laid the groundwork for lower courts to strike down campaign finance disclosure laws and laws that limit campaign contributions to federal, state and local candidates. The court is putting our democratic form of government at risk not only in these two decisions but in its overall course over the past few decades. Let’s begin with voting rights. In Brnovich, the court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, held that two Arizona rules — one that does not count votes for any office cast by a voter in the wrong precinct and another that prevents third-party collection of absentee ballots (sometimes pejoratively referred to by Donald Trump and his allies as ballot harvesting) — do not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Full Article: Opinion | The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk – The New York Times

Arizona: Maricopa County will obtain new voting machines after 2020 audit concludes | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Arizona’s most populous county is scrapping its voting machines and procuring new ones in the wake of the conspiracy-soaked Republican audit of last year’s ballots. In December, Arizona Senate Republicans subpoenaed nearly 400 of Maricopa County’s machines, along with ballots cast by voters, for an unusual audit of the 2020 election results. The GOP hired private firms, led by the Florida-based cybersecurity company Cyber Ninjas, to do the work, delivering the election machines and ballots to them this year. But as the audit — and its procedures, which have alarmed and confused election experts — continued this spring and summer, concerns about the machines grew. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, told the county Board of Supervisors last month that she believed the security of the county’s election machines had been compromised by Cyber Ninjas’ work and would consider decertifying the machines if Maricopa sought to reuse them. In Arizona, the secretary of state can decertify machinery in consultation with the state’s election equipment certification committee, a three-person panel appointed by Hobbs.

Full Article: Maricopa County will obtain new voting machines after 2020 audit concludes

Arizona Republic takes state Senate, Cyber Ninjas to court for election audit records | Ryan Randazzo/Arizona Republic

The Arizona Republic has gone to court to demand records from the state Senate and one of its contractors to shed light on the audit of 2020 election results, much of which has been kept from the public despite the importance of the ballot recount. The news organization on Wednesday filed a special action in Maricopa County Superior Court seeking financial records and communications about the audit from the Senate and Cyber Ninjas, the contractor it hired to lead the work. But for the most part, the state has kept information on how the audit is being conducted, the businesses doing the work, where the money is coming from and what officials are saying to each other about it away from the public. … The Republic is seeking the records to provide the public with a better understanding of the unprecedented audit of the election, which involved the Senate issuing subpoenas to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and moving election equipment and about 2.1 million ballots to the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum for inspection by private contractors. The audit has taken weeks and has yet to conclude. “Arizona law entitles the public to know how this audit is being conducted and funded,” attorney David Bodney, who represents The Republic, said Wednesday after the action was filed in court. “And the Arizona public records law does not permit the Senate to play ‘hide the ball’ by delegating core responsibilities to a third party like Cyber Ninjas and concealing records of government activities and public expenditures in Cyber Ninjas’ files.”

Full Article: AZ Republic takes Senate, Cyber Ninjas to court for ballot audit info

California’s recall election will cost $276 million, recall date set for Sept. 14 | Michael R. Blood and Kathleen Ronayne/Associated Press

California on Thursday scheduled a Sept. 14 recall election that could drive Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, the result of a political uprising largely driven by angst over state coronavirus orders that shuttered schools and businesses and upended life for millions of Californians. The election in the nation’s most populous state will be a marquee contest with national implications, watched closely as a barometer of the public mood heading toward the 2022 elections, when a closely divided Congress again will be in play. The date was set by Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat, after election officials certified that enough valid petition signatures had been turned in to qualify the election for the ballot. The announcement will set off a furious, 10-week burst of campaigning through the California summer, a time when voters typically are ignoring politics to enjoy vacationing, backyard barbecuing and travel. Many voters have yet to pay attention to the emerging election, while polls have shown Newsom would beat back the effort to remove him. Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in heavily Democratic California since 2006. Republican candidates have depicted Newsom as an incompetent fop whose bungled leadership inflicted unnecessary financial pain statewide, while Democrats have sought to frame the contest as driven by far-right extremists and supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Source: California sets date for recall election targeting Newsom

Colorado’s county clerks recommend election-system changes after 2020 election | Sandra Fish/The Colorado Sun

Colorado’s county clerks are pushing for a host of changes to the state’s election system in an effort to quash conspiracy theories stemming from the 2020 election, including improvements to ballot-signature verification and making images of ballots available to the public. The Colorado County Clerks Association pitched the recommendations Tuesday to the Bipartisan Election Advisory Commission, a panel of county clerks, state election officials and interest groups. The 23-member commission, which advises the Secretary of State’s Office, received the proposals on Tuesday at the end of its meeting. Much of the meeting centered on persistent, false allegations of fraud in the presidential contest. Just two weeks ago, Secretary of State Jena Griswold implemented emergency rules preventing unauthorized third-party examination of election equipment. Those rules will be incorporated into a larger package of proposed permanent election rules recommended Wednesday. The recommendations and new rule come as some Colorado counties continue to receive demands from the public and advocacy groups for outside audits of the 2020 election, according to documents obtained by The Colorado Sun through an open-records request.

Source: Colorado’s county clerks recommend election-system changes after 2020 election

Georgia: Federal judge hears arguments seeking halt to parts of new voting law | Maya T. Prabhu and Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge heard arguments Thursday opposing portions of Georgia’s new voting law, with plaintiffs asking the court to rule as some state voters head to the polls for special election runoffs later this month. It’s unclear when U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee will make a decision. Eight lawsuits have been filed against the voting law Republican legislators passed earlier this year, and Thursday’s arguments were the first on the measure made before a federal judge. Thursday’s case is different from the voting rights litigation filed last week by the U.S. Department of Justice that opposes voter ID requirements, ballot drop box limits, provisional ballot rejections and a ban on volunteers handing out food and water to voters waiting in line. Brought by the Coalition for Good Governance, an election security organization, the lawsuit opposes a requirement that voters request absentee ballots at least 11 days before election day, leaving little time to apply to vote absentee in a quick runoff election.

Full Article: Federal judge hears arguments seeking halt to parts of new Georgia voting law

Michigan: Calls for ‘forensic audit’ of election don’t have much merit, expert says | Arpan Lobo/The Holland Sentinel

Last week, a committee led by Republicans in the Michigan Senate published a report dismissing the idea of fraud in the November 2020 election. The investigation that led to the report rejected claims, mainly pushed by former President Donald Trump and allies, that widespread election fraud took place in Michigan, where Trump lost to President Joe Biden by around 3 percentage points, or 154,000 votes. Despite the report’s release, there are still pushes to conduct additional audits of election machines in Michigan, or “forensic audits.” But such a task would find little, if any merit of fraud and only further undermine confidence in elections, one national voting expert says. “A lot of the election-deniers have been falling back on this term ‘forensic audit.’ I think it’s a really good question to ask them, ‘Tell me exactly what a forensic audit means from your perspective,’ because this term doesn’t actually have meaning as most of these folks are using it,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, during a Wednesday media briefing. In Michigan, around 250 audits of local results in the 2020 election have been conducted. In March, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who oversaw the audit process, said the audits affirmed Michigan’s election results as accurate. Still, there are calls for Michigan to complete a similar process to what took place in Arizona, where partisan officials inspected individual ballots for potential malfeasance, although multiple audits have already confirmed the election results in question.

Full Article: Calls for ‘forensic audit’ of don’t have much merit, expert says

New York City Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Back Results | Katie Glueck/The New York Times

The New York City mayor’s race plunged into chaos on Tuesday night when the city Board of Elections released a new tally of votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, and then removed the tabulations from its website after citing a “discrepancy.” The results released earlier in the day had suggested that the race between Eric Adams and his two closest rivals had tightened significantly. But just a few hours after releasing the preliminary results, the elections board issued a cryptic tweet revealing a “discrepancy” in the report, saying that it was working with its “technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred.” By Tuesday evening, the tabulations had been taken down, replaced by a new advisory that the ranked-choice results would be available “starting on June 30.” Then, around 10:30 p.m., the board finally released a statement, explaining that it had failed to remove sample ballot images used to test its ranked-choice voting software. When the board ran the program, it counted “both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records,” the statement said. The ranked-choice numbers, it said, would be tabulated again. The extraordinary sequence of events seeded further confusion about the outcome, and threw the closely watched contest into a new period of uncertainty at a consequential moment for the city.

Full Article: New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Back Results – The New York Times

New York: ‘A relic from the past’: Troubled election agency ignites fury | Erin Durkin/Politico

Eric Adams and Kathryn Garcia are suing. Donald Trump is pushing conspiracy theories. And the final results in New York’s mayoral primary may not be known for weeks or possibly months. The botched count of the city’s ranked-choice election results Tuesday sparked a flood of criticism and calls for reform of New York’s notorious Board of Elections — but as candidate Maya Wiley said Tuesday night, “It is impossible to be surprised.” Like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and July 4 on Coney Island, bungled votes and the uproar that follows have become a tradition in New York where elections have long been run by a board controlled by political party machines and staffed through patronage. The Board of Elections was forced to retract a set of mayoral primary results it published on Tuesday, admitting that staffers had accidentally included 135,000 test ballots in the numbers. The election is the first citywide contest conducted under a new system of ranked-choice voting. “It’s broken. It’s arcane,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said of the board on Wednesday. “This is a partisan board with no accountability… They’re a relic from the past.” The cycle of election day fumbles — followed by recriminations, hearings and investigations — has played out many times before. But New York elected officials have never taken action to overhaul the board, whose structure is dictated by state law.

Full Article: ‘A relic from the past’: New York’s troubled election agency ignites fury – POLITICO

Ohio Governor signs partisan judicial election bill | Jackie Borchardt/Cincinnati Enquirer

Ohio voters will see an R or a D next to the names of state Supreme Court and appellate court candidates on the November 2022 ballot after Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation Thursday. Ohio was the only state where judicial candidates run in partisan primaries and nonpartisan general elections. Now it will be one of seven states that elect judges for its higher courts in partisan elections, according to the National Center for State Courts. DeWine signed into law Senate Bill 80, which makes partisan elections for only state Supreme Court and appellate court races. Lower court races will continue to be a hybrid of partisan and nonpartisan elections. The legislation followed two state Supreme Court elections where Republicans lost three of four seats, moving the court from a 7-0 GOP majority to a 4-3 majority. Five Republicans in the House and Senate joined Democrats in voting against the bill. Republicans backing the change said it was needed to better inform voters, who are less likely to vote in judicial races than partisan offices. “With party affiliations already listed for primaries, this bill follows that precedent and continues that implementation of transparency for the general elections here in our state,” Rep. D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron, a sponsor of the companion bill House Bill 149, said in a statement.

Full Article: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signs partisan judicial election bill

Pennsylvania’s election audit moves follow the partisan playbook | Chris DeLuzio/The Hill

In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, across the country, we saw radical efforts to spread lies about voter fraud, attack voting rights and overturn the results of the presidential election. These attempts are grounded in dishonesty and naked partisan self-interest, often relying on bad faith, pretextual arguments about election security. Pennsylvania Republicans’ latest bid to create a…

Pennsylvania: Election-related lawsuits that failed on standing or evidence still left counties with huge legal bills | Julia Agos/WITF

In the months leading up to the 2020 election, county officials pleaded with the Republican-controlled state legislature to allow pre-canvassing before Election Day and to clarify procedures with mail-in ballots and dropboxes. “We don’t want Pennsylvania to become a national news story,” the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania tweeted back in September. Administrators worried the gray areas in election procedure would leave counties vulnerable to attacks and accusations. And that’s exactly what happened. Pennsylvania counties and the Department of State became the target of unprecedented litigation before and after the election that resulted in extensive legal fees.

Full Article: Election-related lawsuits that failed on standing or evidence still left Pa. counties with huge legal bills | WITF

Texas: Law adds auditable paper voting system requirement in state | Thomas Wallner/Graham Leader

Senate Bill 598 was signed into law two weeks ago and will require voting machines in the state to have an auditable paper voting system, including the systems available for voting in Young County. SB 598 was approved during the 87th Legislative Session following approval from the Texas Senate in April and Texas House of Representatives in May. The bill was sent to the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott June 1, and was signed into law June 14. According to SB 598, no later than 24 hours after all ballots have been counted in an election, the election records custodian will conduct a risk-limiting audit for a selected statewide race or election measure. The Texas Secretary of State will select the precincts to be counted and the office or proposition to be counted. Hart InterCivic will be at the Young County Courthouse Tuesday, July 27, to demonstrate the new technology and software which will be implemented with SB 598, and the office of Young County Elections is inviting the public and poll workers to the event. The company will be presenting at the Young County Courtroom on the first floor from 1-2 p.m.

Full Article: Law adds auditable paper voting system requirement in state | Graham Leader

Wisconsin Governor vetoes bill limiting grants to help run elections | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have barred a nonprofit group from repeating its practice of giving millions of dollars to more than 200 Wisconsin communities to help them run elections. The Center for Tech and Civic Life gave money to cities around the country last year using $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The effort riled Republicans because most of the money in Wisconsin — $8.8 million out of $10.6 million — went to the state’s five largest cities, where Democratic voters are concentrated. Assembly Bill 173 would have prohibited local governments from accepting donations to help run elections from the center or other private groups. Any donations to the state for conducting elections would have to be equally distributed to local governments based on their populations. The Democratic governor in his veto message noted election officials must follow strict state laws for how they run elections, regardless of how they get their funding. Center for Tech and Civic Life officials said the group made the donations because government funding didn’t account for all the increased costs during the coronavirus pandemic. Evers wrote in his veto message that the donations “helped them conduct safe elections under extraordinary circumstances.” “During the coronavirus pandemic, our state and local election officials performed admirably to ensure the 2020 elections in each of our communities were conducted freely, fairly, and in accordance with our election laws,” Evers wrote.

Full Article: Wisconsin Gov. Evers vetoes bill limiting grants to help run elections

Arizona’s Maricopa County will replace voting equipment, fearful that GOP-backed election review has compromised security | Rosalind S. Helderman/The Washington Post

Arizona’s Maricopa County announced Monday that it will replace voting equipment that was turned over to a private contractor for a Republican-commissioned review of the 2020 presidential election, concerned that the process compromised the security of the machines. Officials from Maricopa, the state’s largest county and home to Phoenix, provided no estimates of the costs involved but have previously said that the machines cost millions to acquire. “The voters of Maricopa County can rest assured, the County will never use equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections,” the county said in a statement. “As a result, the County will not use the subpoenaed equipment in any future elections.” The announcement probably reflects an added cost to taxpayers for a controversial review that has been embraced by supporters of former president Donald Trump, who has falsely claimed that the 2020 election was rigged in Arizona and other battlegrounds that he lost. The review was ordered by the Republican-led state Senate, which seized voting equipment, including nine tabulating machines used at a central counting facility and 385 precinct-based tabulators, as well as nearly 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County, with a legislative subpoena in late April. The review is being led by a Florida company called Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive has echoed Trump’s false claims. Audit organizers have said that they have completed a hand recount but that they will not release results from their review until August. Spokesmen for the audit and for Senate President Karen Fann (R), who ordered the review, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Maricopa’s announcement.

Full Article: Arizona’s Maricopa County will replace voting equipment, fearful that GOP-backed election review has compromised security – The Washington Post

Arizona: Maricopa County won’t reuse voting equipment that was with Cyber Ninjas for audit | Jen Fifield/Arizona Republic

Maricopa County will not reuse most of its voting equipment after it has been with Arizona Senate contractors for its audit of November election results, the county announced Monday. The potential cost to taxpayers is so far unknown. The county is about half way through a $6.1 million lease with Dominion Voting Systems for the equipment, but it’s unclear whether it will have to pay the rest of the money owed under that lease, and whether the county or Senate will be on the hook. The county’s Board of Supervisors wrote in a June 28 letter to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs that they share her concerns about whether the hundreds of vote-counting machines that they had to give the Senate’s contractors are safe to use, in part considering the contractors are not certified to handle election equipment in the United States. The Senate got the voting machines, as well as nearly 2.1 million ballots and voter information from the Nov. 3 election in April after issuing subpoenas and after a judge ruled the subpoenas were valid. The Senate handed the machines over to contractors in an attempt to tell whether they had been hacked or manipulated during the election, even though a previous independent audit commissioned by the county found that was not the case and the machines counted votes properly. Hobbs had written in a May 20 letter to the county’s Board of Supervisors, recorder and Elections Department director that if the county tries to use the machines again, even if it performs a full analysis in an attempt to determine whether the machines were still safe to use, her office would “consider decertification proceedings.” In Arizona, voting systems must be certified to be used in elections.

Full Article: Maricopa County will get new voting machines after Senate’s election audit

The most brutal debunking of Trump’s fraud claims yet — from Republicans | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

The Republican Party’s response to former president Donald Trump and his allies’ wild, baseless claims of voter fraud has been anything but courageous. It’s been entirely clear most reputable members of the GOP are uncomfortable responding, often instead lodging watered-down or adjacent claims. Some Republicans have spoken out but generally only when forced to pick a side — such as when their state became the focus of Trump’s lies. But when the rubber has met the road, GOP lawmakers have routinely landed on one side: against Trump’s claims. Perhaps the starkest example of that came Wednesday, from a Republican-led state Senate committee in Michigan. A report from the Oversight Committee makes little mention of Trump, instead focusing on claims made by allies or general conspiracy theories about the vote count in Michigan. But the committee was brutal in statements on those claims, just about all of which can be traced to Trump in one way or another. The sum total is a broad, unsparing repudiation of Trump’s fraud claims in Michigan.

Full Article: A brutal Republican debunking of Trump’s fraud claims – The Washington Post

Pennsylvania Republicans Look To Evade A Veto And Enact Voter ID By Ballot Measure | Katie Meyer/NPR

Facing a veto on their sweeping plan to overhaul state election laws, Pennsylvania Republicans have set in motion a plan to circumvent the Democratic governor and create a mandatory voter ID requirement. They aim to do it via an amendment to the state constitution — a process that requires approval from the Legislature and subsequent victory on a statewide ballot measure. Critics say it’s a technique that Republicans appear increasingly willing to use as they clash with Gov. Tom Wolf over highly politicized issues such as voting and the pandemic. “The Republicans don’t want to go through the legislative process for their far-right wacky ideas because they know the governor will veto it,” Democratic state Sen. Vincent Hughes said. “So now they’re just going to change the constitution.” But GOP supporters of the tactic argue that approval by a majority of Pennsylvania voters would signal that an idea has merit. “If that’s a veto no matter what, that’s why we have a constitutional amendment, to let the voters decide,” said Republican Jake Corman, the Senate president pro tempore. “And they will ultimately make the final decision on whether there should be voter ID in Pennsylvania.” Still, Democrats see political gamesmanship. Hughes, who voted against the amendment when it passed the state Senate last week on near party lines, has served in the Legislature for decades. He said he has seen a lot of procedural tricks during his time in Harrisburg, but this one strikes him as a new development.

Full Article: GOP Wants To Add Voter ID To The Pennsylvania Constitution : NPR

National: A racist myth of immigrants voting fuels claims of fraud | Paige St. John/Los Angeles Times

For more than three decades, the racist myth has circulated around elections, often told in rich detail, of undocumented immigrants traveling poll to poll to vote illegally. In some variations, they travel by bus. In others, a van, usually white. Occasionally, the story goes, the perpetrators are caught, but usually not. But the core of this canard remained generally the same as it spread out of California and into national politics. The story has been used by political candidates, anti-immigration activists and election “watchdog” activists recruiting volunteers and seeking restrictions on voting. For national audiences, it has been invoked by right-wing provocateurs and broadcast by Russian trolls seeking to influence U.S. elections. President Trump falsely claimed that millions of immigrants living in the country illegally voted in 2016 and, separately, that hundreds of buses carried voters across state lines to cast ballots in the New Hampshire election. In that same election year, the fable of the traveling voters appeared in Arizona, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. One account described voters only as Black and said they were driven into Alabama to cast ballots in a special election. The vast majority of the stories targeted Latinos, and often in derogatory terms. In those ways, they are not unlike other bald fictions used in U.S. history to justify voting restrictions against immigrating Catholics, Irish and Chinese people, freed Black Americans and others. In the 1800s, for instance, arrivals from Ireland were accused of registering to vote as they stepped off the boat.

Full Article: A racist myth of immigrants voting fuels claims of fraud – Los Angeles Times

National: Political campaigns worry they’re next for ransomware hits | Julia Manchester and Maggie Miller/The Hill

Political campaigns are ramping up their protections, worrying the next in a rising number of ransomware attacks could target them. Cyber criminals have gone after an ever-increasing number of targets, from Colonial Pipeline to JBS USA. And political campaigns are painfully familiar with risks after the 2016 attacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC). “I…

National: William Barr calls Trump’s election fraud claims: ‘bullshit’ in new book | Mychael Schnell/The Hill

Former Attorney General William Barr reportedly called former President Trump’s false claims of election fraud “bullshit,” according to a new book on the final days of the Trump administration. The revelation comes from the book “Betrayal,” authored by ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl. The book is set to be released in November. The Atlantic published an excerpt from the book on Sunday, providing key details of Barr’s relationship with Trump in the waning days of the administration and a peek into the then-attorney general’s thoughts on Trump’s repeated and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. “My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr told Karl in an interview, referring to why he decided to give prosecutors approval to probe the fraud allegations and why he opened his own unofficial inquiry into the claims. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit,” Barr added. The former attorney general also said that allegations that voting machines across the country were rigged to switch votes from President Biden to Trump were not true. “We realized from the beginning it was just bullshit,” Barr told Karl.

Full Article: William Barr calls Trump’s election fraud claims: ‘bulls—‘ in new book | TheHill