It started as one big, false claim — that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. But nearly a year later, the Big Lie is metastasizing, with Republicans throughout the country raising the specter of rigged elections in their own campaigns ahead of the midterms. The preemptive spin is everywhere. Last week it was Larry Elder in California, who — before getting trounced in the GOP’s failed effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom — posted a “Stop Fraud” page on his campaign website. Before that, at a rally in Virginia, state Sen. Amanda Chase introduced herself as a surrogate for gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin and told the crowd, “Because the Democrats like to cheat, you have to cast your vote before they do.” In Nevada, Adam Laxalt, the former state attorney general running to unseat Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, is already talking about filing lawsuits to “tighten up the election” — more than a year before votes are cast. And in Pennsylvania, former Rep. Lou Barletta, who is running for governor after losing a Senate race two years earlier, said he “had to consider” whether a Republican could ever win a race again in his state given the current administration of elections there. Trump may have started the election-truther movement. But what was once the province of an aggrieved former president has spread far beyond him, infecting elections at every level with vague, unspecified claims that future races are already rigged. It’s a fiction that’s poised to factor heavily in the midterm elections and in 2024 — providing Republican candidates with a rallying cry for the rank-and-file, and priming the electorate for future challenges to races the GOP may lose.
California: Is San Francisco’s elections director impeding voting machine progress? | Jeff Elder/The San Francisco Examiner
San Francisco has been locked into a monopolistic relationship with its voting machine vendor for years, preventing both competition and innovation, a grand jury and other experts have found. Yet this week The City’s top elections official pushed back on an offer of free help from a San Francisco nonprofit to explore new technology and bring much-needed competition. Longtime Elections Director John Arntz rebuffed the nonprofit, VotingWorks, at Wednesday’s Elections Commission meeting, saying, “We’re not looking to do a pilot program.” VotingWorks, a nonprofit that was developed in San Francisco’s Y Combinator startup incubator, has worked with the federal government’s main cybersecurity agency on election security projects, and is being used for elections in Mississippi, where the nonprofit journalism news agency ProPublica noted its “seamless performance.” Despite Arntz’s comments, records show that leaders including mayors and the president of the Board of Supervisors have called for voting machine pilot programs like this for a decade. In 2011, a city task force report on voting technology compiled for Mayor Ed Lee recommended a “policy of San Francisco to conduct pilot projects of alternative election technologies … such as using open source systems.” Full Article: Is San Francisco’s elections director impeding voting machine progress? - The San Francisco ExaminerGeorgia: Trump Committed ‘Multiple Crimes’ With Election Interference, Analysis Suggests | Jason Lemon/CNN
Former President Donald Trump appears to have committed "multiple crimes" in his effort to overturn the 2020 Georgia elections results, a new legal analysis suggests. In early January, The Washington Post reported leaked audio of a call between Trump and Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the former president urged the Republican official to "to find 11,780 votes" in his favor to overturn President Joe Biden's victory in the southern state. Trump made a similar effort to pressure Georgia's GOP Governor Brian Kemp to illegally block Biden's win. "We conclude that Trump's post-election conduct in Georgia leaves him at substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes," said the report released Friday by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. "These charges potentially include criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; intentional interference with performance of election duties; conspiracy to commit election fraud; criminal solicitation; and state RICO violations," the legal analysis explained. Full Article: Trump Committed 'Multiple Crimes' With Georgia Election Interference, Analysis SuggestsMichigan: GOP to massively step up 2022 poll watching, Mackinac conference told | Paul Egan/Detroit Free Press
The GOP will massively increase its poll watching and election litigation efforts in 2022 and beyond after so far failing to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election through a series of lawsuits and audits, a top Republican National Committee official said Friday. Josh Findlay, election integrity director for the RNC, said one problem with GOP operations in 2020 was that attorneys for former President Donald Trump and other conservative groups went to court too late. Going to court on Election Day is "not going to be effective," Findlay told attendees at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, held every other year on the northern Michigan island that can only be reached by ferry or private plane, and where motorized vehicles are generally banned. Findlay acknowledged another problem — one that both nonpartisan judges and Democrats said in response to allegations of voter fraud and irregularities put forward by Republican poll watchers in Detroit. There, large numbers of volunteers were recruited by the GOP, in many cases at the last minute, to go to the TCF Center in Detroit while absentee ballots were being counted after the Nov. 3 vote.
Full Article: GOP to massively step up 2022 poll watching, Mackinac conference toldNew Hampshire Attorney General and Secretary of State Offer Mixed Response to Windham Auditors’ Proposed Election Reforms | Casey McDermott/New Hampshire Public Radio
The team running the closely-watched audit of election irregularities in Windham's 2020 state representative race put forward a series of proposed reforms to help avoid the same problems in future elections. But the New Hampshire Attorney General and Secretary of State aren't on board with all of those changes. Top state election officials say some of the auditors’ suggestions would be too burdensome to implement and others might violate voters’ privacy. They outlined their responses to the audit in this report. One major disagreement revolves around flagging ballots that can't be properly read by the machines. New Hampshire doesn't have a system to let voters know if their ballot appears to have too many marks on it when it’s fed into a ballot counting machine at the polls on Election Day. Auditors say enabling this kind of “overvote notification” wouldn’t have prevented the issues in Windham, but it would have identified the problem much sooner. Through their investigation, auditors determined that Windham’s ballot counting devices miscalculated the vote totals in its state representative race by misinterpreting creases in folded absentee ballots as valid votes. Full Article: N.H. Attorney General and Secretary of State Offer Mixed Response to Windham Auditors' Proposed Election Reforms | New Hampshire Public RadioOhio: Judge dismisses key defendants in Stark County Dominion voting machine lawsuit | Robert Wang/The Canton Repository
A lawsuit by a Washington, D.C.-based group won't prevent Stark County from using Dominion voting machines for the Nov. 2 general election. Look Ahead America opted Wednesday not to appeal a key decision by Stark County Common Pleas Judge Taryn Heath. Her Aug. 20 ruling dismissed the county commissioners and Dominion Voting Systems as defendants from the case and killed any chance of immediately reversing the county's purchase of the voting machines. Originally in May, the group filed suit against the Stark County Board of Elections, alleging the board had met in illegal executive sessions to discuss the machine purchase. However, the Board of Elections is not the governing entity that authorized the purchase of the machines. That was the Stark County commissioners. With the commissioners and Dominion no longer parties to the suit, it was not legally possible for Look Ahead America to get a preliminary injunction to pause or reverse the purchase, said Assistant Stark County Prosecutor Lisa Nemes. Heath's magistrate, Kristen Moore, canceled a preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for Wednesday. She has set a phone conference for Monday for the parties to discuss what happens next.
Full Article: Look Ahead America lawsuit stymied in Stark voting machine lawsuitEditorial: The survival of U.S. democracy may hinge on this decision by Pennsylvania’s next governor | Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer
To millions of Americans, what just happened in Arizona’s largest county was a laughingstock, a bad joke that blew up in the face of Donald Trump and his cultists like some exploding cigar from a 1940s cartoon. A GOP-approved hijacking of voting records and machines from the 2020 election — do not dare call it an “audit” — conducted by a scammy-is-too-good-a-word contractor called the Cyber Ninjas that dragged on through much of 2021 ultimately claimed that any miscounted votes actually expanded President Biden’s win in Maricopa County. The cackling on left-leaning Twitter and MSNBC Friday night could be heard from Key West to Kalamazoo. But one man — a Michigan carpetbagger turned Arizona politico named Mark Finchem — had a very different interpretation of what the conspiracy-minded voting sleuths had uncovered with official Republican support. “I call for decertification of the Arizona election, arrest of those involved in tampering with election systems, and an audit of Pima County (in northern Arizona) as a next step,” Finchem tweeted Friday. The crazy part is that Finchem’s minority viewpoints on Donald Trump and his invisible claims of election fraud may matter a heck of a lot more than yours or mine come the 2024 vote counting. Last week, the disgraced 45th president (and would-be 47th) officially endorsed Finchem, now a state lawmaker, in his 2022 GOP primary bid to become Arizona’s next secretary of state. Trump’s imprimatur makes Finchem the instant primary favorite, in a midterm election in which both history and newfangled voter suppression favors Republicans. That means Finchem — not just a garden-variety Trumpist but a member of the extremist Oath Keepers who was on the Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6 insurrection — could be Arizona’s chief vote counter if and when the bleats of voter fraud and a stolen election again emerge from Mar-a-Lago in three years. Be very afraid.
Full Article: The survival of U.S. democracy may hinge on this decision by Pa.’s next governor | Will BunchTexas secretary of state’s office auditing four counties’ 2020 elections months after an official called the statewide process “smooth and secure” | Neelam Bohra/The Texas Tribune
The Texas secretary of state’s office announced late Thursday that it has begun a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 general election in four Texas counties: Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant. But the statement from that agency did not explain what prompted the move. There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Texas in 2020. And earlier this year, an official for the agency called the 2020 election in Texas “smooth and secure." Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the office, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The announcement came hours after Republican former President Donald Trump requested Gov. Greg Abbott add an election audit bill to this year’s third special session. While Trump lost his reelection bid, he did win in Texas. Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria characterized the audits as an attack on Texans' trust in elections. "While other people continue the political posturing and petty fights of the past, we will continue preparing for this November’s elections," she said in a statement. "We encourage Harris County residents to register to vote by the October 4 deadline."
Full Article: Texas secretary of state’s office auditing elections in four counties | The Texas TribuneTexas: Harris County leaders call state election audit a ‘sham’ and an assault on democracy to appease Trump | Zach Despart/Houston Chronicle
Harris County leaders on Friday blasted the Texas secretary of state’s decision to conduct a comprehensive “forensic audit” of the 2020 election in four counties, including Harris, as a political ploy to appease conspiracy theorists and former President Donald Trump. County Judge Lina Hidalgo accused Gov. Greg Abbott of trying to curry favor with the former president, who on Thursday called for an audit of the Texas results, despite comfortably carrying the state in his unsuccessful bid for re-election. She likened the effort to audits in Arizona and Pennsylvania, which have failed to find major errors in vote tallying. There is no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in Harris County’s 2020 election, where a record 1.7 million voters participated. “This does not deserve to be treated as a serious matter or serious audit,” Hidalgo said. “It is an irresponsible political trick. It is a sham. It is a cavalier and dangerous assault on voters and democracy.” Full Article: Hidalgo calls state election audit a 'sham' and an assault on democracy to appease TrumpWisconsin: Arizona review eyed by Republicans as a guide confirms Biden win | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Arizona election review some Wisconsin Republicans eyed as a guide to probe President Joe Biden's win in the Badger State has confirmed the president's victory, according to The Arizona Republic. Draft reports by The Cyber Ninjas, a group hired by the Arizona state Senate to recount votes and review the 2020 presidential election result in the state's largest county, show former President Donald Trump lost by a wider margin than Maricopa County's official election results. The Cyber Ninjas and their subcontractors were paid millions by nonprofits set up by prominent figures in the “Stop the Steal” movement and allies of Trump, but Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan had said that would not influence their work. According to The Arizona Republic, the draft reports minimize the ballot counts and election results and instead focus on issues that raise questions about the election process and voter integrity. Wisconsin taxpayers are paying former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman $680,000 to review the state's 2020 election using an office created by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.
Full Article: Arizona review eyed by Wisconsin Republicans as a guide confirms Biden winColorado: Mesa County Clerk Fights to Keep Her Job in New Court Filing | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio
Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, who is embroiled in an election security scandal, has denied wrongdoing and requested to remain in her role overseeing elections this fall. Her attorney said Peters was well within her legal right to share information about the county’s Dominion Voting Systems equipment with a non-employee during an annual system upgrade. Data from the machines were featured in screenshots shared by QAnon supporters and released by the right wing website Gateway Pundit, by those eager to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election. A court filing in response to an effort to remove Peters from overseeing elections in Mesa, said the leak of information was not Peters’ intent, but rather she was trying to preserve records and to better analyze how the state conducted system updates. “Unfortunately, there was an unauthorized release of information on one or more publicly available web sites,” said a filing in District Court in Mesa County from attorney Scott Gessler. In the filing, Gessler, a Republican and former Colorado secretary of state, said the decision by current Secretary of State Jena Griswold to file a lawsuit to remove Peters from overseeing this fall’s election as a result was “wholly disproportionate” and violates Colorado law, “which vests local control over elections in a locally-elected official.” Mesa county’s district attorney and the FBI are investigating allegations that Peters gave an unauthorized person access to the Dominion election management software and passwords, but no criminal charges have been filed against Peters or anyone else in the dispute. Full Article: Mesa County Clerk Fights to Keep Her Job in New Court Filing | Colorado Public RadioNational: Harassed and Harangued, Poll Workers Now Have a New Form of Defense | Michael Wines/The New York Times
It is perhaps a metaphor for the times that even the volunteer who checked you into the polls in November now has a legal defense committee. The Election Official Legal Defense Network, which made its public debut on Sept. 7, offers to represent more than just poll workers, of course. Formed to counter the waves of political pressure and public bullying that election workers have faced in the last year, the organization pledges free legal services to anyone involved in the voting process, from secretaries of state to local election officials and volunteers. The group already has received inquiries from several election officials, said David J. Becker, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, which oversees the project. Without getting into details, Mr. Becker said their queries were “related to issues like harassment and intimidation.” The network is the creation of two powerhouses in Republican and Democratic legal circles, Benjamin L. Ginsberg and Bob Bauer. In a Washington Post opinion piece this month, the two — Mr. Ginsberg was a premier G.O.P. lawyer for 38 years and Mr. Bauer was both a Democratic Party lawyer and White House counsel in the Obama administration — wrote that such attacks on people “overseeing the counting and casting of ballots on an independent, nonpartisan basis are destructive to our democracy.”
Full Article: Harassed and Harangued, Poll Workers Now Have a New Form of Defense - The New York TimesNational: Democrats push to shield election workers from violent threats | John Kruzel/The Hill
Democrats on Capitol Hill are renewing calls for legislation that would stiffen criminal penalties against those who threaten election administrators after unprecedented harassment aimed at workers during last year’s presidential contest. More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers, including from the key battleground states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are pushing the proposals, with some lawmakers warning that violence could erupt during upcoming elections without enhanced protections. “I hope that it does not come to that,” said Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.) of the prospect of violence against election workers. “But unless we do something about it, that’s the trendline. We saw what happened at the United States Capitol when no one took the proper steps to prevent that.” Nearly 1 in 6 local 2020 election workers received threats of violence, and almost 1 in 3 said they felt unsafe because of their job, according to an April survey by the Brennan Center for Justice. Some had their homes broken into, others fled with their families into hiding and some faced armed crowds outside their workplaces and homes. And now, more than 10 months after Election Day, threats persist. Full Article: Democrats push to shield election workers from violent threats | TheHillNational: ‘Incredibly dangerous’: Trump is trying to get Big Lie promoters chosen to run the 2024 election | Daniel Dale/CNN
Swing state by swing state, former President Donald Trump is trying to get people who tried to overturn the 2020 election chosen to be in charge of the 2024 election. Trump's Monday endorsement of state Rep. Mark Finchem for Arizona secretary of state is the latest in a series of announcements that has alarmed independent elections experts. Trump has now backed Republicans who supported his lies about the 2020 election for the job of top elections official in three crucial battlegrounds -- Arizona, Michigan and Georgia -- where the current elections chiefs opposed his efforts to reverse his 2020 defeat. If people who have sought to undermine the 2020 election are running things in 2024, when Trump might be a candidate again, experts and many Democrats fear that attempts to subvert the will of the voters stand a much greater chance of success. "It is incredibly dangerous to support people for office who do not accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election. It suggests that they might be willing to bend or break the rules when it comes to running elections and counting votes in the future," said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science and co-director of the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center at the University of California, Irvine. "Someone who claims falsely that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump lacks credibility and cannot be trusted to run a fair election." Finchem, who has also promoted QAnon conspiracy theories, has been an especially aggressive promoter of the lies that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and rife with "rampant" fraud. Finchem attended the January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington and was photographed outside the US Capitol that day (he denies any involvement in the riot there). And nearly eight months after President Joe Biden's inauguration, he continues to urge Arizona legislators to somehow overturn Biden's victory in the state.
National: Judge: Former EAC executive director Brian Newby violated law in voter form case | Roxana Hegeman/Associated Press
A former high-ranking election official violated federal law in 2016 when he granted requests by Kansas, Georgia and Alabama to modify the national voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship in those states, a federal judge ruled. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon threw out the contested decisions made by Brian Newby, then-executive director of the Election Assistance Commission, an independent federal agency, after finding on Thursday that Newby failed to determine whether the proposed requirements were necessary to register to vote. The long-delayed ruling by Leon has little practical effect since a federal appeals court had earlier granted a preliminary injunction in the case, blocking the enforcement of the requirement. In a separate case, the Kansas law requiring documentary proof of citizenship was found unconstitutional by a federal appeals court, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. Leon remanded the requests for the changes sought by Georgia and Alabama to the Election Assistance Commission to reconsider in a manner consistent with his ruling, should those state continue to seek the state-specific instructions to the form. A requirement that prospective voters provide documents — such as a birth certificate or U.S. passport — in order to register to vote has long been championed by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who led former President Donald Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission. Kobach was a leading source for Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally may have voted in the 2016 election.
Full Article: Judge: US election official violated law in voter form caseNational: Some Republicans Fear Tighter Election Rules Could Boomerang on the Party | Dante Chinni/Wall Street Journal
Since the 2020 election, Republicans in state legislatures have been tightening rules around voting and ballot security, passing more than 100 pieces of legislation in 24 states. Now some Republicans in Michigan, where they are weighing tightening voter rules, are pausing their efforts—in part because they believe some election-law changes could hurt their own party at the ballot box. This summer state Rep. Ann Bollin, the Republican who chairs the Michigan House Elections and Ethics Committee, said there was “not support” to make the absentee voting process more difficult. Ms. Bollin, herself a former township clerk, cited concerns from county clerks, including Republicans from largely conservative areas, who said the bills could have negative impacts on voter participation among voters of all stripes, Republicans as well as Democrats. The move has set off a fight within the state GOP over whether the new rules are necessary and whether they could actually hurt Republicans in the state. Other proposals have also been shelved for now. Michigan Republicans aren’t alone in their concerns. Party officials in a handful of other states voiced disapproval over the new proposals and laws. Full Article: Some Republicans Fear Tighter Election Rules Could Boomerang on the Party - WSJAlabama: MyPillow’s Mike Lindell to run ‘tests’ on voter list after meeting Merrill, Ivey – Howard Koplowitz/AL.com
MyPillow founder and Donald Trump adviser Mike Lindell plans to conduct “tests” on Alabama’s voter rolls after purchasing the list, said Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, who along with Gov. Kay Ivey met with Lindell on Friday. Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow who is Trump’s main attack dog in the former president’s battle contending the 2020 presidential election was stolen, is going to comb through the list of Alabama voters to determine whether the state has any ineligible people on it, including deceased residents. Merrill said he doesn’t expect Lindell to find evidence that Alabama’s voter list, which is available for purchase by anyone, is tainted. “We know we don’t put people on the voter rolls unless they’re qualified to be on the voter rolls,” the secretary of state told AL.com. Lindell, who set up the meeting with Merrill after attending Trump’s “Save America” rally in Cullman in late August, heaped praise on Alabama’s election procedures, ranging from the state’s voter ID law to how votes are tabulated in the state, according to Merrill. But Lindell “still believes there’s a potential to hack some equipment, even though we assured him none of our equipment is connected to the Internet,” the secretary of state said.
Full Article: MyPillow’s Mike Lindell to run ‘tests’ on Alabama voter list after meeting Merrill, Ivey - al.comAlaska election officials confident in Dominion voting equipment | Tim Rockey/Frontiersman
Early voting for the cities of Palmer, Houston and Wasilla begin Sept. 20. Without an acting city clerk, Palmer has hired veteran clerk Kristie Smithers to run the elections this year. “I was the city clerk of Wasilla for 18 years and then before that, I worked for the Mat-Su Borough as deputy clerk and so I have about 59 elections underneath my belt and I’m pretty familiar with it. We’ve done lots of special meetings, initiatives, referendums, and recall elections. I have seen pretty much everything that could happen with elections,” said Smithers. Smithers praised the work of interim clerk Jeanette Sinn and Nichole Degner in assisting her with election preparation. On Tuesday, Smithers detailed the entire voting process from the summer candidate filings through the election certifications in October. The city of Palmer’s two voting precincts will both be at the Mat-Su Borough Dorothy Swanda Jones building with one in the back of the Assembly chambers and the other in the Borough Gym. Smithers detailed the five separate types of ballots that can be cast by absentee, early voting, questioned ballots, special needs ballots and personal representative voting. “We also have questioned ballots and so those are the people that usually they’re just not on the register. Maybe it might be somebody that they think they live in the city and they don’t, they’re going to vote a questioned ballot and maybe they don’t have any ID,” said Smithers. “Every now and then there might be somebody that questions another person’s eligibility. In all of my years of doing elections I’ve had that one time and that was at the Mat-Su Borough so it was a long time ago.”
Full Article: Election officials confident in Dominion voting equipment | Local News Stories | frontiersman.com
The Arizona Election Audit Is Still Unraveling in Chaos | David A. Graham/The Atlantic
If you’ve forgotten about the Arizona “audit” of Maricopa County’s votes in the 2020 election, you can be forgiven. At times, it seems like the audits’ backers have forgotten about it too. Arizona state-Senate Republicans launched the process this spring as a response to false claims of election fraud spread by several of themselves, as well as former President Donald Trump. The Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm run by a “Stop the Steal” backer that has repeatedly declined to offer any evidence it is qualified for the job. The process was originally expected to conclude by May 14. This was a hard deadline, because the coliseum rented for the count was due to hold another event. But the count missed that deadline, and the process resumed later in May. May turned to June, and Donald Trump was reportedly telling people that he expected to be reinstated to the presidency in August, once the audit proved that fraud had tainted the election results. (Never mind that there remains no evidence of widespread fraud, and that there’s no mechanism for a former president to be reinstated mid-term.) By July, the due date was mid-August.
Full Article: The Arizona Election Audit Is Still Unraveling in Chaos - The AtlanticArizona: Cyber Ninjas, flouting court order, refuse to turn over public records to the Senate | Jeremy Duda/Arizona Mirror
Cyber Ninjas won’t hand over all of the documents that Senate President Karen Fann requested from the review it conducted of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, despite an order by the Arizona Court of Appeals that all such records be made public. Attorney Jack Wilenchik, who represents the Florida-based company that led the election review that Fann ordered, argued to the Senate’s lawyer that the staffing records and internal communications are not public records, and said Cyber Ninjas will not turn them over as the Senate president requested. The company will provide “full financial statements” about the audit, either as part of the report that will become public on Sept. 24, or shortly thereafter, Wilenchik wrote in an email to Senate attorney Kory Langhofer on Friday. And it will provide its communications with the Senate, which have not been made public, and any updated policies and procedures its subcontractors have used during the audit. But staffing records, as well as internal communications and communications with subcontractors, are private records, Wilenchik wrote. For example, Wilenchik said it would not be “practical, workable, fair or legal” for the company to be forced to turn over internal company emails about staffing and Cyber Ninjas’ performance of its contract with the Senate. “If the case were otherwise, then it would set an extremely unsettling precedent for all government contractors in this state and make it impossible for the State to do business,” Wilenchik wrote. Furthermore, Wilenchik said Fann’s request for all records that have “a substantial nexus to the audit” — a phrase that the Arizona Court of Appeals used to describe documents that the Senate must obtain and publicly release under the state’s public records law — is vague and difficult to define. Full Article: Cyber Ninjas, flouting court order, refuse to turn over public records to the SenateColorado: Cost of counting ballots multiple times could mount | Charles Ashby/Daily Sentinel
It will take weeks after the Nov. 2 election, and cost thousands of more dollars, before Mesa County elections officials will complete extra recounts and audits of ballots to ensure that the initial count is accurate, county officials were told Thursday. To help instill voter confidence in the county’s election system in the wake of local, state and federal investigations into possible wrongdoing by Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and some members of her staff, the county is implementing four steps to help verify results of the fall election. The first will be the normal process of running ballots through newly installed Dominion Voting System tabulation machines, which will provide immediate, albeit unofficial, results of the election on Election Day. Following that, the county plans to run the same ballots through Clear Ballot voting machines, and then do a hand count of them. The final step — other than the normal risk-limiting audit that is routinely done after any election — will be to place digital versions of those ballots online so anyone can do their own count.
Full Article: Cost of counting ballots multiple times could mount | Western Colorado | gjsentinel.com
Kansas to pay $1.4M in legal fees for Kris Kobach-backed lawsuit fail | Andrew Bahl/Topeka Capital-Journal
A federal judge approved a deal Wednesday that would see the state pay out over $1.4 million in legal fees to a group of attorneys, including the American Civil Liberties Union, stemming from a prolonged court fight over a controversial voting law favored by former Secretary of State Kris Kobach. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson signed off on the agreement, which is less than half of the $3.3 million initially requested by the groups. The parties reached an agreement on the matter and presented it to the judge Friday. The costs come from a five-year legal battle over legislation originally passed in 2011 and championed by Kobach, which required an individual present their birth certificate or passport in order to register to vote. The law was struck down by a federal judge in 2018 and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case last year. After its introduction, the requirement was blamed for the suspension of thousands of voter registration applications, as residents didn't necessarily have the right documents to prove their citizenship.
Full Article: Kansas to pay $1.4M in legal fees for Kris Kobach-backed lawsuit failNorth Dakota IT audit to include review of election tech | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop
The North Dakota State Auditor’s office this week launched an extensive review of many of the state’s IT assets, including the machines and electronic systems it uses to conduct elections. The process, State Auditor Joshua Gallion said in a press release, is designed to help the state government be “proactive in its defense against cyber threats.” The audit is part of IT assessments that North Dakota conducts every two years, costing about $450,000. Along with the election infrastructure, auditors will also look over the North Dakota Information Technology Department, particularly any systems related to the state’s unemployment insurance program and the 11-campus North Dakota University System. The audit will be the first extensive review of voting equipment North Dakota acquired in 2019. That year, Secretary of State Al Jaeger’s office purchased more than 900 new devices, including optical ballot scanners, devices for helping voters with disabilities to mark paper ballots and machines for counting absentee and mail ballots, though that inventory was not subject to the last biennial audit. Full Article: North Dakota IT audit to include review of election techPennsylvania Senate Democrats sue Republicans to block election review subpoena | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer
Democrats in the Pennsylvania Senate sued their Republican colleagues Friday evening to block them from subpoenaing voter records as part of a review of the 2020 election. The lawsuit argues that the Republican effort unconstitutionally tramples on the separation of powers by stepping on the courts’ power to investigate and rule on election disputes and on the executive branch’s power, given specifically to the state auditor general, to audit how elections are run. The lawsuit also contends that the subpoena violates state election law because it requests voters’ private information, including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Senate Democrats “ask this Court to prevent violation of the Pennsylvania Election Code and the Pennsylvania Constitution through [Republican lawmakers’] untimely election contest and to protect the rights of the approximately 6.9 million Pennsylvanians who cast votes in the 2020 General Election, including protection from the unlawful disclosure of their private information” in the state voter database, the suit reads.
Full Article: Pa. Senate Democrats sue Republicans to block election review subpoenaWisconsin Republican State Senator Kathy Bernier uses position to combat election misinformation | Riley Vetterkind/Wisconsin State Journal
After a year of relentless disinformation about the 2020 presidential election, Sen. Kathy Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls, has had enough. Earlier this month Bernier, who chairs the Senate’s elections committee, organized an informational session to explain how Wisconsin’s elections work. The hearing offered something rare in Wisconsin’s hyper-partisan political environment: a crash course in Wisconsin elections administration conducted by a nonpartisan panel of state and local election officials. Bernier at the outset barred attendees or participants from grandstanding. Several Republicans attended the hearing to ask questions, including Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, who has unsuccessfully tried to seize ballots and election materials from Milwaukee and Brown counties to aid in her own election investigation. Bernier’s hearing came in the wake of news that former conservative state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman — hired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to conduct a probe of the election — spent days at a conspiratorial election rally sponsored by MyPillow’s chief executive and traveled to Arizona to observe its flawed election review. His investigative team includes a former Trump campaign official, The Associated Press reported last week.
Full Article: Republican Sen. Kathy Bernier uses position to combat election misinformation | Local Government | madison.com