Florida: Mail ballots of minority, young voters initially rejected at higher rate, study shows | Lawrence Mower/Miami Herald

Mail ballots submitted by minority voters and young people were initially rejected at a higher rate than other groups in Florida’s 2020 presidential election, but most were able to resolve the errors, a new study by University of Florida professor Dan Smith found. The ballots of younger voters were more than three times as likely as older voters to be initially rejected for signature issues, such as not including a signature on the outside of their ballot or the signature not matching the one on file with the county elections supervisor, according to the study. And the ballots of racial and ethnic minority voters who voted by mail were over 60% more likely than white voters to be initially rejected. The rejection rates were inconsistent across the state’s 67 counties, however, indicating that the problems were not necessarily the fault of the voters. “Why were these ballots cast by younger voters or Black and Hispanic voters being flagged for rejection at a much higher rate?” Smith wondered. “What is going on in that process?” The study, which Smith performed on behalf of the voting rights group All Voting is Local, looked at the 4.6 million vote-by-mail ballots received by county elections officials by the Nov. 3, 2020, deadline.

Full Article: Study: Ballots of minority, young voters rejected at high rate | Miami Herald

Georgia: Trump asked election investigator to find the ‘right answer’ | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Donald Trump asked Georgia’s lead elections investigator to uncover evidence of wrongdoing during an investigation of absentee ballot voter signatures in December that later found no fraud, according to audio of a phone call made public Wednesday. Trump told Frances Watson, chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, that he hoped her investigation would help show that he had won reelection in the presidential race. Recounts and audits of election results found that Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump by about 12,000 votes in Georgia. Channel 2 Action News and The Wall Street Journal first reported the six-minute recording of the call from Dec. 23, the day after Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, made a surprise visit to Georgia to observe the investigation. “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,” Trump told Watson. The release of the call comes as a Fulton County grand jury this month is reviewing whether Trump committed election fraud in Georgia. Trump called Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, urging him to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s win. The December investigation of 15,000 absentee ballot envelopes in Cobb County didn’t reveal a single fraudulent ballot.

Full Article: Trump called Georgia investigator during audit of absentee ballots

Louisiana Secretary of State withdraws RFP for electronic voting machines after complaints made against Dominion | Zach Parker/Ouachita Citizen

Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin ditched his request for proposals to replace 10,000 aging electronic voting machines last week in the face of mounting protest about how his office was handling the request. In January, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin asked the Office of State Procurement to issue a request for proposals, or RFP. The contract could be worth some $100 million. Since then, the state received complaints the RFP was drafted to favor Dominion Voting Systems, a Denver, Colorado voting machine vendor that became the target of national headlines alleging the company’s machines switched votes from former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden last November. The company has denied the allegations. “I am in complete support of Secretary of State Ardoin’s decision to withdraw the current procurement process for new voting machines in Louisiana,” said state Senate President Page Cortez. “I believe this will bring an opportunity for full transparency on the purchasing process and election systems for all levels of government.” In a Feb. 26 letter to the state, a law firm representing Election Systems & Software LLC, a Omaha, Nebraska voting machine vendor, protested Ardoin’s RFP, suggesting only Dominion could meet the RFP’s demands. Hart InterCivic, an Austin, Texas election equipment vendor, objected to the RFP on Feb. 12. “This RFP seeks to replace the current system with a system virtually identical to the current system—a self-contained electronic voting system but adding only a specific type of paper backup,” stated the ES&S letter. “Dominion, the incumbent, is the only election system vendor that provides a product that fully meets all of the RFP criteria.

Full Article: Ardoin withdraws RFP for electronic voting machines after complaints made against Dominion | Local/State Headlines | hannapub.com

Massachusetts post-election audit found few tabulation errors | Statehouse News | Chris Van Buskirk/Berkshire Eagle

A post-election audit of randomly selected precincts in Massachusetts found minimal errors in ballot counting during the 2020 presidential election, offering more evidence to contrast with allegations of widespread fraud stemming from the use of mail-in voting. Massachusetts, like the rest of the country, embarked on a massive mail-in voting experiment to boost turnout for the presidential election amid the worst public health crises in modern history. The results: a record 76 percent of registered voters casting ballots during the last presidential election cycle. Municipalities are advocating for the extension of the measures through June as over 250 towns have scheduled elections between April 1 and June 30. The House and Senate are advancing a voting reform extension bill, with the Senate unamimously approving its version on Thursday. In the lead up to the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump and many of his political allies denounced mail-in voting, baselessly alleging a nationwide conspiracy of fraud “specifically focused on big cities, and specifically focused on, as you would imagine, big cities controlled by Democrats,” said Rudy Guiliani, the former lawyer for Trump. “How come every time they count Mail-In ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?” Trump tweeted a day after the Nov. 3 election. All told, 41 percent of Massachusetts residents who voted in the general election opted to use mail-in voting and another 23 percent voted early in-person, according to Secretary of State William Galvin’s office.

Full Article: Mass. post-election audit found few tabulation errors | Statehouse News | berkshireeagle.com

Nevada: State proposes new system to potentially speed up voter verification during elections | Jannelle Calderon/Nevada Independent

The secretary of state’s office wants to transition from a county-led to a state-led top-down voter registration system that could speed up the time-consuming process of verifying that people who take advantage of a new same-day voter registration law haven’t already voted in the same election. The elections division has requested from the Legislature $1.5 million to start the process, although officials say the new system likely won’t be up and running for a few years – possibly even after the 2024 election. The agency’s push for a new top-down approach began about a year before the 2020 election, but it became evident after the November election just how inefficient the current bottom-up system can be. Nevada was the subject of jokes nationally because it took several days to count and clear tens of thousands of provisional ballots (those set aside to allow for verification of a voters’ eligibility), making it difficult to quickly project the winner of the presidential race. Currently, each of the state’s 17 counties control and maintain their own voter registration databases, while the secretary of state’s office maintains yet another voter registration database consisting of all records compiled from each of the counties and updated daily. Details of the budget request were publicly discussed during a joint budget hearing last month. A top-down voter registration system would provide a centralized statewide database and election management system with real-time voter information. Election officials say it would make fixing errors, checking for duplicate registrations and verifying voter eligibility faster and “seamless.”

Full Article: State proposes new system to potentially speed up voter verification during elections

New Hampsire House Election Law Committee approves detailed forensic audit of Windham election results | John DiStaso/WMUR

The House Election Law Committee on Wednesday approved and sent to the full House legislation outlining a full, detailed forensic audit by a team of experts of the Nov. 3 election results in the town of Windham. The panel on a 20-0 vote signed off on a completely rewritten Senate Bill 43. Responding to pleas from Windham residents, and supported by Secretary of State William Gardner, the bill now direct the performance of an audit of the ballot counting machines and their memory cards and the hand tabulations of ballot for the election in the southern New Hampshire community. The bill calls for the formation of a “forensic election audit team” of three people – one designated by the town, one designated jointly by the secretary of state and attorney general and one person selected jointly the other entities. These may well be national experts. It is the latest development to address a controversy that arose after a recount of the Rockingham District 7 House seat showed four of eight candidates each receiving an additional 300 votes and three others with much smaller increases more typical of a recount, while the candidate who requested the recount, Democrat Kristi St. Laurent, losing 99 votes. St. Laurent appealed to the Ballot Law Commission, which upheld the results of the recount in certifying the four people seated by the House, but requested an investigation by the attorney general’s office, which has now been undertaken.

Full Article: House Election Law Committee approves detailed forensic audit of Windham election results

New Jersey: Already stressed election officials urge caution in rush to early voting | Michelle Brunetti Post/Press of Atlantic City

Election officials are warning that the stress put on them by the state’s first mostly vote-by-mail elections in 2020 has taken a toll on their staffs that will make it more difficult to quickly handle another first for the state — early voting. “Please understand unequivocally that we support early voting and believe in improving New Jersey’s elections,” the executive committee of the New Jersey Association of Election Officials said in a letter sent Tuesday to Tahesha Way, New Jersey’s secretary of state, who oversees elections. “Our growing concern, however, is in the rapid pace of new legislation introduction (and eventual laws) and the limited timeframe to review, recommend amendments and implement the new laws,” said the letter. “It has become a challenge to address our current responsibilities and simultaneously plan for changes in uncertified technology we have not tested in real time.” The Legislature is expected to soon finalize passage of an early-voting bill, and Gov. Phil Murphy is expected to sign it. It would require in-person early voting by machine be available 10 days ahead of the November general election. A version of the bill has passed both houses, but a final version must be voted on again in the Senate after changes in the Assembly. The earliest that vote could happen is March 25 under the current Legislative calendar.

Full Article: Already stressed NJ election officials urge caution in rush to early voting | Govt-and-politics | pressofatlanticcity.com

Ohio: Stark County commissioners reject Dominion voting machine purchase | Robert Wang/The Canton Repository

The Stark County commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday afternoon to reject funding the purchase of 1,450 new Dominion touch-screen voting machines. Commissioners Bill Smith, Richard Regula and Janet Weir Creighton, all Republicans, voted against accepting a recommendation by the Stark County Board of Elections to fund the purchase. None of them commented during the teleconference meeting. All of them said from December to February that dozens to hundreds of Trump’s supporters in Stark County contacted the commissioners, who have to approve all major spending by the county, urging them to block or scrutinize the purchase more closely. Then-President Donald Trump and his allies have alleged without credible evidence that the Dominion voting machines were hacked or counted votes inaccurately and contributed to him losing the election. While the resolution the commissioners voted down said Dominion had a “potential cloud” over its “long-term viability” apparently due to the unsubstantiated allegations, the resolution avoided delving into those allegations and instead raised questions about whether Dominion’s price quote was superior to competitors. The resolution said, the commissioner have “to conduct the business of the county with due diligence when spending (citizen’s) hard-earned money, without rubber-stamping recommendations that come before it, and to seriously investigate the cost, trustworthiness, long-term viability, and other aspects of any voting system to be purchased to ensure Stark county is obtaining the best value.” On Wednesday, county’s budget director, Chris Nichols, said that cost figures provided by the Board of Elections did not give a full picture of the price quotes for voting equipment by Dominion and its competitor Elections Systems & Software. The Board of Elections said ES&S voting machines would cost the county $2.02 million more than Dominion’s, mainly due to a $1.7 million trade-in credit Dominion was offering. The county cost would be $1.48 million for Dominion and $3.5 million for ES&S.  But Nichols said the Board of Elections’ numbers did not include the cost of maintenance, support and software licensing over 10 years. “I was unable to get my numbers to match up,” Nichols said.

Full Article: Stark County commissioners reject Dominion voting machine purchase

Texas ballot paper trail bill advances to elections committee | KTRE

A bill requiring electronic voting machines to produce a traceable paper ballot has moved forward to its committee assignment. Filed by Rep. James White (R-Woodville) in February, H.B. 1708 advanced to the Elections committee on Wednesday. If passed as-is, White’s bill would require the disclosure of ownership interest with voting devices. Now, the legislator has filed a measure to require a paper record after voting on electronic machines. “There are times when we have very hotly-contested elections, and they come out very close results,” White said. “That’s not a problem. Instead of just hitting a button and having some program just spit out the same data, we want to be able to have, throughout the state, paper ballots; a paper trail.” House Bill 1708 authored by District 19 State House Representative James White (R) calls for a voter-verifiable paper record from electronic voting machines. “When our laws allow for candidates to call for recounts, there’s something to recount,” White said. “There’s a paper ballot trail where our county clerks and other stakeholders can do a recount.”

Full Article: Rep. White’s ballot paper trail bill advances to elections committee

Wisconsin Republicans Renew Attack On Election Grants Funded By Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg | Shawn Johnson/Wisconsin Public Radio

A Republican attorney who tried unsuccessfully to overturn the results of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election told GOP lawmakers Wednesday that newly released emails showed a group with ties to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had too much influence over the voting process in Green Bay last year. While the latest development sparked calls for investigations from GOP lawmakers, Democrats accused Republicans of revisiting a debunked conspiracy theory by rehashing a failed court case involving an election they already lost. Green Bay was one of several Wisconsin cities that received grant money in 2020 from a group called the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), an organization funded by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. In July, Wisconsin’s five largest cities — Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine — announced they would share $6.3 million in CTCL grant funding to help run the election during the pandemic. CTCL said it awarded grants to a total of 221 counties, cities, towns and villages in Wisconsin as part of more than 2,500 election grants handed out nationwide. Erick Kaardal, an attorney for the conservative Thomas More Society and a former secretary and treasurer for the Republican Party of Minnesota, filed two lawsuits challenging the grants on behalf of a group called the Wisconsin Voters Alliance. Kaardal lost both cases, one in state court and one in federal court. He also filed and lost similar lawsuits in other swing states. The Wisconsin grants received renewed attention this week when emails uncovered through an open records request showed former Green Bay municipal Clerk Kris Teske raised issues with the funding, suggesting that a private contractor hired by the city was making decisions that should be her responsibility.

Full Article: Republicans Renew Attack On Election Grants Funded By Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg | Wisconsin Public Radio

Europe: Cyber-Attacks a Growing Threat to Unprepared Balkan States | Milica Stojanovic, Bojan Stojkovski, Samir Kajosevic, Nermina Kuloglija and Fatjona Mejdini/Balkan Insight

It wasn’t voting irregularities or the counting of postal ballots that delayed the results of last year’s parliamentary election in North Macedonia, but an audacious denial-of-service, DDoS, attack on the website of the country’s election commission. Eight months on, however, the perpetrator or perpetrators behind the most serious cyber attack in the history of North…

Norway’s parliament hit by new hack attack | Reuters

Hackers have infiltrated the Norwegian Parliament’s computer systems and extracted data, officials said on Wednesday, just six months after a previous cyber attack was made public. The attack by unknown hackers was linked to a “vulnerability” in Microsoft’s Exchange software, the parliament said, adding that this was an “international problem”. The latest attack was more severe than last year’s, parliament President Tone Wilhelmsen Troen told a news conference. “This is an attack on our democracy,” she said. “The severity is underscored by the fact that this is happening in the run-up to a parliamentary election and as parliament is handling a pandemic.” An investigation of what information had been extracted was ongoing, she added. The previous attack, made public in September, was launched by Russia, Norwegian foreign minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said the following month, an accusation Moscow denies.

Full Article: Norway’s parliament hit by new hack attack | Reuters

National: Biden signs executive order promoting voting rights on 56th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ | Felicia Sonmez and  Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

President Biden on Sunday signed an executive order aimed at promoting voting rights amid a push by Republican-led state legislatures to roll back voting access in the wake of former president Donald Trump’s 2020 loss and his baseless effort to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections. The order comes on the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the day that state troopers violently beat hundreds of marchers, including John Lewis, the late civil rights icon who served as a Democratic congressman from Georgia, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. “Today, on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, I am signing an executive order to make it easier for eligible voters to register to vote and improve access to voting,” Biden said Sunday in a videotaped address to the Martin and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast. “Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have that vote counted. If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let the people vote.” The order directs federal agencies to develop a strategic plan for promoting voter registration and participation, including potentially applying to be a state-designated voter registration agency and providing recommendations on leave for federal employees to vote or to serve as poll workers.

Full Article: Biden signs executive order promoting voting rights on 56th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ – The Washington Post

Voting Machine Hashcode Testing: Unsurprisingly insecure, and surprisingly insecure | Andrew Appel and Susan Greenhalgh/Freedom to Tinker

The accuracy of a voting machine is dependent on the software that runs it. If that software is corrupted or hacked, it can misreport the votes.  There is a common assumption that we can check the legitimacy of the software that is installed by checking a “hash code” and comparing it to the hash code of the authorized software.  In practice the scheme is supposed to work like this:  Software provided by the voting-machine vendor examines all the installed software in the voting machine, to make sure it’s the right stuff. There are some flaws in this concept:  it’s hard to find “all the installed software in the voting machine,” because modern computers have many layers underneath what you examine.  But mainly, if a hacker can corrupt the vote-tallying software, perhaps they can corrupt the hash-generating function as well, so that whenever you ask the checker “does the voting machine have the right software installed,” it will say, “Yes, boss.”  Or, if the hasher is designed not to say “yes” or “no,” but to report the hash of what’s installed, it can simply report the hash of what’s supposed to be there, not what’s actually there. For that reason, election security experts never put much reliance in this hash-code idea; instead they insist that you can’t fully trust what software is installed, so you must achieve election integrity by doing recounts or risk-limiting audits of the paper ballots. But you might have thought that the hash-code could at least help protect against accidental, nonmalicious errors in configuration.  You would be wrong.  It turns out that ES&S has bugs in their hash-code checker:  if the “reference hashcode” is completely missing, then it’ll say “yes, boss, everything is fine” instead of reporting an error.  It’s simultaneously shocking and unsurprising that ES&S’s hashcode checker could contain such a blunder and that it would go unnoticed by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s federal certification process. It’s unsurprising because testing naturally tends to focus on “does the system work right when used as intended?”  Using the system in unintended ways (which is what hackers would do) is not something anyone will notice.

Full Article: Voting Machine Hashcode Testing: Unsurprisingly insecure, and surprisingly insecure

National: Voting Rights or the Filibuster? | David Leonhardt/The New York Times

It’s shaping up to be the most significant question about the new Democratic Senate: If forced to choose between the protection of voting rights and the protection of the filibuster, what will Democrats do? They are now almost certain to face that decision. Republican legislators in dozens of states are trying to make voting more difficult, mostly because they believe that lower voter turnout helps their party win elections. (They say it’s to stop voter fraud, but widespread fraud doesn’t exist.) The Supreme Court, with six Republican appointees among the nine justices, has generally allowed those restrictions to stand. “I don’t say this lightly,” Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, recently wrote. “We are witnessing the greatest roll back of voting rights in this country since the Jim Crow era.” The only meaningful way for Democrats to respond is through federal legislation, like the voting-rights bill that the House passed on Wednesday. Among other things, it would require states to register many eligible voters automatically; allow others to register on Election Day; hold at least 15 days of early voting; expand voting by mail; and allow people with completed criminal sentences to vote. The bill also requires more disclosure of campaign donations and restricts partisan gerrymandering. But the bill seems to have no chance of winning the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome a filibuster. The Senate is divided 50-50 between the two parties (including two independents, who usually vote with Democrats). The bill will pass only if all 50 Senate Democrats agree to scrap or alter the filibuster, as they have the power to do.

Full Article: Voting Rights or the Filibuster? – The New York Times

National: Taking names: Rep. Lofgren catalogs GOP colleagues’ election claims with a view toward discipline | Dareh Gregorian, Haley Talbot and Alex Moe/NBC

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has released a detailed examination of the social media accounts of Republican House members who voted to overturn the 2020 election results to analyze what role they might have played in inciting the deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “Like former President [Donald] Trump, any elected member of Congress who aided and abetted the insurrection or incited the attack seriously threatened our democratic government,” Lofgren wrote in the prologue to her 1,939 page “social media review.” “They would have betrayed their oath of office and would be implicated in the same constitutional provision cited in the article of impeachment” against Trump following the Capitol riot, she continued. The congresswoman, who was one of the House managers in Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial last year, suggested that Congress could act against such members. That Constitution “prohibits any person who has previously taken an oath as a member of Congress to support the Constitution but subsequently engaged in insurrection or rebellion from serving in Congress,” she wrote, referring to a section of the 14th Amendment.

Full Article: Taking names: Dem Rep. Lofgren catalogs GOP colleagues’ election claims with a view toward discipline

National: More hackers jump to take advantage of a widespread Microsoft security flaw | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

Government officials and cybersecurity experts are scrambling to stem the damage from a security flaw in Microsoft Exchange that has allowed hackers to infiltrate the servers of at least 30,000 U.S. organizations. The growing number of hackers taking advantage has just made that task much more difficult. Since Microsoft and cybersecurity firm Volexity first attributed the breach to Halfnium, a group of hackers they tied to China, cybersecurity researchers say there are more groups getting in on the action. “It’s a frenzy,” says Steven Adair, president of Volexity, which first discovered the problem. Adair described the race to take advantage of the tens of thousands of servers that have not yet been secured as “a golden opportunity.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: More hackers jump to take advantage of a widespread Microsoft security flaw – The Washington Post

National: America’s Patchwork of Election Laws Under Scrutiny | Rob Garver/VoA News

The Democrat-led U.S. House of Representatives this week passed a bill that would greatly expand access to voting in federal elections. Even though Senate passage is highly unlikely, Democrats are underscoring their commitment to making voting easier at a time when Republicans seek to limit voting access in many states. The bill was labeled House Resolution 1 in order to signal its importance to Democrats’ agenda, and it passed with no Republican support. Also known as the For the People Act, it would force sweeping changes to state election laws, with the aim of making it easier for eligible voters to cast a ballot. Among other things, H.R. 1 would create an automatic voter registration system and limit the ability of state officials to purge voters from the system. It would also require states to make early voting available and block limits on mail-in voting. In addition, it would require that congressional districts be drawn by non-partisan commissions to prevent state legislatures from drawing districts that unfairly disadvantage one party, a practice known as gerrymandering. Beyond measures aimed specifically at access to the ballot, the bill would attempt to reduce the power of big-money donors to influence elections by requiring politically active organizations to disclose the sources of their funding and by creating a federal system of matching grants that would allow lawmakers to campaign without relying on high-dollar donations. It would also strengthen ethics enforcement and election oversight.

Full Article: America’s Patchwork of Election Laws Under Scrutiny | Voice of America – English

National: Federal officials scramble to assess widening Microsoft Exchange Server fallout | Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop

The fallout from critical Microsoft software bugs exploited by suspected Chinese hackers deepened on Saturday as incident responders warned that state and local organizations across the U.S. could be exposed to the vulnerabilities. Federal officials rushed to get a better sense of the potential impact of the hacking amid multiple media reports that tens of thousands of organizations could be affected by vulnerabilities as other hacking groups, in addition to the alleged Chinese, moved to exploit bugs in widely used Microsoft technology. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency held phone briefings with state and local officials Friday and Saturday to assess the scope of the compromises, and the White House National Security Council urged vulnerable organizations to “take immediate measures” to determine if they were affected.  Two DHS officials said the agency was still gathering data on how many organizations might be breached. The malicious activity amounts to the second major set of cyber incidents facing the Biden administration, which is already coping with a suspected Russian hacking campaign that has exploited software made by federal contractor SolarWinds and other vendors.

Full Article: Federal officials scramble to assess widening Microsoft Exchange Server fallout

National: Supreme Court delivers final blow to Trump’s last election challenge | Chris Riotta/The Independent

The Supreme Court has tossed out former President Donald Trump’s last remaining challenge to the 2020 election after he lied about the results of the nationwide vote and urged states to wipe out thousands of ballots while promoting false claims of fraud. The court without comment rejected Mr Trump’s appeal, which challenged thousands of absentee ballots filed in Wisconsin, an election battleground that the former president lost by more than 20,000 votes.´It was the last of three petitions filed at the Supreme Court near the end of his presidency that the justices declined to take up. The court turned away Mr Trump’s other two appeals, including a second Wisconsin challenge and one relating to voting in Pennsylvania, another pivotal state he lost, last week. Lower courts previously had ruled against Mr Trump in those three cases. It already was clear that the high court, which includes three justices appointed by Mr Trump, had no intention to intervene in the cases and others filed by his allies because it did not act before Congress certified Mr Biden’s victory on January 6. 

Full Article: Supreme Court delivers final blow to Trump’s last election challenge | The Independent

National: New Executive Order Requires Pentagon to Track Military Absentee Ballots | Patricia Kime/Military.com

A new executive order signed by President Joe Biden and designed to expand voting rights requires the Pentagon to better track absentee and military ballots from overseas. Biden’s order, issued Sunday, comes as a voter rights and campaign finance bill passed the House last week in a 220-210 vote, with no support from Republicans. The legislation, H.R. 1, the “For The People Act,” faces obstacles in the Senate, where Republicans must join Democrats for legislation to be approved. Biden has urged the Senate to approve the legislation but used his authority as president to direct federal agencies to create strategies for promoting voter participation, including encouraging — via the agencies’ websites and social media accounts — people to register to vote. The order also calls for revamping the government’s voting information website, Vote.gov, within 200 days. For military personnel stationed around the world, the Defense Department will be required to work with the State Department, Military Postal Service Agency and the U.S. Postal Service to establish an “end-to-end tracking system” for all absentee ballots cast by military personnel and Americans living overseas.

Full Article: New Executive Order Requires Pentagon to Track Military Absentee Ballots | Military.com

Editorial: There Are Two Competing Narratives About The 2020 Election | Steve Schneider/Democracy Chronicles

There are two competing narratives about the 2020 election — it was rigged and it was the most secure election ever. Both can’t be correct unless all of our presidential elections have been rigged to varying degrees. This reality tells me that one of the two assertions is closer to the truth than the other but still misses the mark. So I set out to fill in the gap. I went online to do some reading. I also contacted a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that is at the forefront of creating a modern, more secure voting machine system to replace obsolete software dating back to the time Bill Clinton was president. We need more information, I think, because many Americans, for reasons sound and not-so-sound, doubt the credibility of vote counts and election results. To start with, I wanted to learn the meaning of the phrase “the most secure election in American history”. A founder and Chief Operating Officer of OSET Institute gave me a detailed answer in an email. Gregory Miller helped start OSET in November 2006 to create an open-source voting machine system that manufacturers and voting jurisdictions can use to replace obsolete digital machines across the country. I am reprinting his answer in full because it clarifies what the government meant when it said the 2020 election was the most secure in American history. I have put in bold portions of the statement that seem significant and new to me.

Full Article: There Are Two Competing Narratives About The 2020 Election

Editorial: Why Judges, Not Lawmakers, Should Rule on Disputed Elections | Kevin Johnson/Governing

Disregard for the judgments of courts is a sure sign that democracy is in trouble. Donald Trump’s machinations after the Nov. 3 election centered, fundamentally, on overturning the many court rulings rejecting his claims of fraud. Channeling fomented partisan anger, Trump and his allies sought to replace the verdict of the judiciary with populist resolutions in Congress and state legislatures. Before our democracy is so tested by fire again, we must reinforce the primacy of the judiciary as the institution best positioned to judge contested elections. That requires pushing back on proposals to increase state legislatures’ role in such disputes and amending the federal Electoral Count Act to remove congressional discretion in the counting of presidential electoral votes. Judicial supervision of contested elections has become the norm in most democracies around the world. An outlier in this area as in so many, the U.S. allows a considerable role for legislatures. The Constitution, for example, makes the House and Senate “the Judge of the Elections … of its own Members.” North Carolina provides for its Legislature to intervene in a contested presidential election to name electors if disputes are unresolved within 35 days of the vote. Georgia’s GOP has proposed similar ideas, and Arizona’s Legislature is considering a bill giving itself even greater control over contested presidential elections.

Full Article: Why Judges, Not Lawmakers, Should Rule on Disputed Elections

Editorial: What Went Right in the 2020 Election | Shira Ovide/The New York Times

A lot went wrong after the 2020 election in the United States. But here’s one thing that went right during it: A risk everyone worried about — foreign election interference — mostly failed. That showed what is possible when government officials and technology companies are laser focused on a problem, effectively coordinate and learn from their past mistakes. But the false narrative that the election was stolen, culminating in a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, also pointed to the limits of those efforts. The Russians or the Chinese didn’t delegitimize our election. We did it to ourselves. Today, I want to explore the glass half-full view. The largely averted threat of foreign election meddling was a success that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Full Article: What Went Right in the 2020 Election – The New York Times

Arizona Senate moves to restrict early voting | Howard Fischer/Arizona Capitol Times

Republican senators are moving on two fronts to erect new hurdles in the path of those who want to vote early. On a party-line vote, GOP senators on Monday decided to scrap existing laws which determine the validity of early ballots based solely on county election workers matching their signatures on the envelopes with what’s on file. Instead, they would need to provide an affidavit with their date of birth and the number of a state driver’s license, identification card or tribal enrollment card. No such identification? Voters would have to send a copy of any other federal state or locally issued ID card. And if they don’t have that? The proposal by Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, gets more complicated. First, there’s the need for someone’s voter registration number. “Raise your hand if you know your voter registration number,” said Sen. Sean Bowie, D-Tempe. But that isn’t enough. Then they have to enclose an actual physical copy of something with their actual address like a utility bill, vehicle registration form, property tax statement or a bank statement dated within the past 90 days. Monday’s vote on SB1713 is just part of the GOP plan to make it more difficult to cast an early ballot.

Full Article: Senate moves to restrict early voting – Arizona Capitol Times

Georgia Republicans Take Aim at Role of Black Churches in Elections | Nick Corasaniti and Jim Rutenberg/The New York Times

Sundays are always special at the St. Philip Monumental A.M.E. church. But in October, the pews are often more packed, the sermon a bit more urgent and the congregation more animated, and eager for what will follow: piling into church vans and buses — though some prefer to walk — and heading to the polls. Voting after Sunday church services, known colloquially as “souls to the polls,” is a tradition in Black communities across the country, and Pastor Bernard Clarke, a minister since 1991, has marshaled the effort at St. Philip for five years. His sermons on those Sundays, he said, deliver a message of fellowship, responsibility and reverence. “It is an opportunity for us to show our voting rights privilege as well as to fulfill what we know that people have died for, and people have fought for,” Mr. Clarke said. Now, Georgia Republicans are proposing new restrictions on weekend voting that could severely curtail one of the Black church’s central roles in civic engagement and elections. Stung by losses in the presidential race and two Senate contests, the state party is moving quickly to push through these limits and a raft of other measures aimed directly at suppressing the Black turnout that helped Democrats prevail in the critical battleground state. “The only reason you have these bills is because they lost,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who oversees all 534 A.M.E. churches in Georgia. “What makes it even more troubling than that is there is no other way you can describe this other than racism, and we just need to call it what it is.’’

Full Article: In Georgia, Republicans Take Aim at Role of Black Churches in Elections – The New York Times

Georgia Senate votes to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting | Mark Niesse and David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia Senate passed a bill Monday to roll back no-excuse absentee voting and require more voter ID, which would create new obstacles for voters after Republicans lost elections for president and the U.S. Senate. The legislation would reduce the availability of absentee voting, restricting it to those who are at least 65 years old, have a physical disability or are out of town. In addition, Georgians would need to provide a driver’s license number, state ID number or other identification. The Senate approved the bill on a party-line 29-20 vote, a one-vote majority of the chamber’s 56 senators required by the Georgia Constitution for legislation to pass. Democrats unified against the voting limitations over three hours of passionate debate, saying the restrictions would especially harm Black voters after struggles for ballot access during the civil rights movement. Four Republican senators excused themselves, along with Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, the Senate’s presiding officer who opposed the bill but doesn’t get a vote. The bill now advances to the state House of Representatives.

Full Article: Restrictions on absentee voting pass Georgia Senate

Iowa Governor signs law shortening early voting, hours on Election Day | Stephen Gruber-Miller/Des Moines Register

Four months after Iowans voted in record numbers, Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed legislation cutting the state’s early voting period and closing the polls an hour earlier on Election Day. The Iowa Legislature approved the measure and sent it to Reynolds’ desk late last month. Every Republican present for debate in the House and Senate voted for the legislation. Every Democrat voted against it. Reynolds, a Republican, signed the law Tuesday. Iowa is among a national wave of Republican-led states whose leaders have expressed concerns about the integrity of the 2020 elections, taking the lead from former President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed the election was stolen from him. States such as Florida and Georgia have undertaken high-profile efforts to limit absentee voting after the practice surged in 2020. While there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Iowa or nationally, Republicans have described the state’s legislation as an election integrity measure and said it will bring uniformity across Iowa’s 99 counties. Democrats say the law will suppress votes and does nothing to improve election security. 

Full Article: Gov. Reynolds signs law shortening early voting, hours on Election Day

Kentucky Election Reform Effort Gets Bipartisan Backing | Ryland Barton/NPR

In states like Georgia and Arizona, there are fierce partisan battles going on right now over voting proposals. But in Kentucky’s Republican-led legislature, a bill to boost voter access and election security has gotten widespread support from both parties. The legislation is now at the Senate, after passing the House 93-4 late last month. The proposal would preserve some of the policies Kentucky implemented last year to ensure voter access during the coronavirus pandemic, including a short period during which people can vote early, and allowing people to “cure” mail-in ballots that were improperly signed. But it also includes election integrity measures typically favored by Republicans, like a ban on so-called ballot harvesting and making it easier to remove people who have moved out of Kentucky from the state’s voter rolls.

Full Article: Kentucky Election Reform Effort Gets Bipartisan Backing : NPR