Warren Stewart – Page 162 – The Voting News

The U.S. Supreme Court closed the books on Pennsylvania’s 2020 election Monday, rejecting an appeal of a Republican congressional candidate’s unsuccessful challenge of the state’s mail-ballot deadlines. The case was the last of a torrent of litigation challenging the administration of Pennsylvania’s election, which drew intense scrutiny and several appeals to the Supreme Court. But the court repeatedly declined to intervene in the Pennsylvania cases, even as some conservative justices signaled potential interest. On Monday — five months and 16 days after Election Day, and three months into Biden’s presidency — the court vacated the previous judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, returned the case to the circuit court, and instructed it to dismiss the case as moot. No justices were listed as dissenting from the decision. The ruling means the state can count about 10,000 mail ballots that had arrived after Election Day. They were far too few to change President Joe Biden’s 81,000-vote victory in Pennsylvania but those votes hadn’t been included in the state’s certified vote count, leaving thousands of voters technically without a voice in the election. The Pennsylvania Department of State is now “reviewing the options” for those ballots, a spokesperson said Monday. The case resolved Monday, Bognet v. Degraffenreid, was one of several focused on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling that extended mail-ballot deadlines until three days after Election Day. That ruling was meant to address concerns that mail delivery delays would prevent votes from arriving on time.

Full Article: U.S. Supreme Court dismisses the last challenge over Pennsylvania’s 2020 election

Puerto Rico deserves to be a state. Will Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva help make it happen? | Matt Helder and José A. Cabrera/AZCentral

Puerto Ricans headed to the polls in November, just like every other American. But rather than Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, headlining the ballot was a simple question: Should Puerto Rico be admitted as a state? Yes or no. That’s because unlike every other American, Puerto Ricans are denied the right to vote for president, for U.S. senators and for voting members of the House of Representatives. While previous referendums in 2012 and 2017 demonstrated that Puerto Rico preferred statehood to varying degrees, the 2020 result conclusively showed that a majority of voters want statehood. In addition to the 53% of Puerto Rican voters who said “yes” to statehood, they also elected a second consecutive pro-statehood governor and reelected their pro-statehood congresswoman, Rep. Jenniffer González-Colón, to carry their message to Washington, D.C.

Full Article: Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva is key to Puerto Rico becoming a state

In Texas, GOP voting bills zero in on Democratic Houston | Paul J. Weber/Associated Press

The nation’s next big voting battle underway in Texas would outlaw 24-hour polling places, drive-thru voting and make it a crime for elections officials to mail unsolicited absentee ballot applications. Put another way: Everything Houston — the state’s biggest Democratic stronghold — did to expand ballot access last year, when the threat of the coronavirus made voting in-person more hazardous. Amid a GOP-led campaign to tighten voting laws, Republican lawmakers in in Texas have been unusually explicit in zeroing in on Houston and surrounding Harris County as they push to tighten the state’s voting laws. One of the country’s largest and most racially diverse counties, Harris rolled out new ways to vote in 2020 on a scale like nowhere else in Texas. Although there is no evidence of fraud resulting from votes cast from cars or in the dead of night, Republicans are determined to prevent it from happening again. The effort is one of the clearest examples of how the GOP’s nationwide campaign to tighten voting laws can target Democrats, even as they insist the measures are not partisan. With Americans increasingly sorted into liberal urban areas and conservative rural ones, geography can be an effective proxy for partisanship. Proposals tailored to cities or that take population into account are bound to have a greater impact on Democratic voters. That’s likely the case in Georgia, where a new voting law prescribes the number absentee ballot drop boxes per county and uses a formula based on the number of registered voters or early voting sites. Election officials in the Atlanta area have said the change will slash the number of drop boxes available to their voters when compared to 2020 levels.

Full Article: In Texas, GOP voting bills zero in on Democratic Houston

Editorial: The Big Lie – If voter fraud is an epidemic, why can’t Texas find it? | Houston Chronicle

We dare you. Name a state official anywhere in this nation who yearns to snuff out voter fraud more than the steadfast soldiers of election security here in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott, in his feverish clairvoyance, declared voter fraud an “epidemic” way back in 2005, when he was still attorney general, and launched a unit to root it out. His successor, Ken Paxton, beefed up his election integrity unit last year, with prosecutors toiling more than 22,000 hours on the taxpayers’ dime hunting for polling improprieties. In November, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick topped them all by dangling a $1 million bounty, payable from his own campaign account, to anyone who came forward with information leading to a voter fraud conviction. So, if voter fraud is the scourge of our democracy, if it’s capable of stealing a presidential election, as some claim, if it’s widespread enough to qualify for “emergency” status in the state Legislature to ratchet up voting restrictions, then surely, the proof of its magnitude lies in Texas. Indeed it does. After 15 years of looking for election fraud among the 94 million votes cast in Texas elections since 2005, the Texas Attorney General’s office has dutifully prosecuted all of 155 people. Add to that 19 cases cataloged by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which include federal and county prosecutions, and you get a grand total of 174. That’s not a typo. It’s not 174,000 or 17,400 or even 1,740.

Full Article: Editorial: The Big Lie – If voter fraud is an epidemic, why can’t Texas find it?

National: U.S. to Sanction Russia, Expel Diplomats Over Alleged Election Interference, Hacking | Michael R. Gordon, Dustin Volz and Vivian Salama/Wall Street Journal

The Biden administration will impose a range of retaliatory measures against Russia on Thursday in response to Moscow’s alleged election interference, a widespread hacking campaign and other malign activity, according to people familiar with the matter. Using a new executive order, the measure will expand the existing prohibitions on U.S. banks trading in Russian government debt, two of the people said. Previous prohibitions targeting portions of Russian sovereign debt shook Russia’s markets and added to its economic woes. That order prohibits U.S. financial institutions from buying new bonds directly from Russia’s central bank, finance ministry and the country’s massive sovereign-wealth fund after June 14. Among other measures, 10 Russian diplomats will be expelled, including some due to allegations that Russia offered to pay bounties to militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. military service members, the people said. Sanctions will be imposed for Russia’s cyber intrusions, election meddling and occupation of Crimea.

Full Article: U.S. to Sanction Russia, Expel Diplomats Over Alleged Election Interference, Hacking – WSJ

Georgia’s Voting Law Will Make Elections Easier to Hack | Lawrence Norden and Gowri Ramachandran/Slate

When Gov. Brian Kemp signed Georgia’s new restrictive voting provisions into law, he claimed the controversial changes—including making it harder to request mail ballots and use drop boxes—are necessary to improve election security. These bills, of course, spring from the Big Lie about our elections, but there is another irony here. Much of the “election integrity” legislation in Georgia and around the country would actually weaken our election systems and reduce their capacity to recover from a technological problem, whether a malfunction or an attack. During the 2020 election, the increased variety in voting methods and the longer time frame for voting meant that, in many states, election officials were handling smaller groups of voters and ballots at once than they were in past elections. If a technological problem arose, the reduced crowds made it easier to diagnose and solve the problem and get voters voting again. For example, during early voting in 2020, Georgia’s statewide voter registration database was having trouble handling the logins of election staff across the state. The problem caused extremely long lines. Georgia officials weren’t able to fix it immediately, but within a few days the issue was addressed, lines improved, and voters who might have not been able to stand in long lines because of work or other obligations still had opportunities to cast their ballot. If there had only been one or two days for in-person voting, those voters might not have had another chance. And the lines would have been even longer, with many more voters showing up to cast their ballot at once. Many of the so-called election integrity bills would reduce the availability of ballot drop boxes—one bill in Florida would eliminate them entirely. During the 2020 election, drop boxes were a convenient voting option for many people who might have been concerned about the reliability of the post office: Voters could drop their absentee ballot into a nearby box instead of showing up to polling places on Election Day. This helped reduce the lines at polling places for those voters who preferred or needed the in-person option instead. Drop boxes helped all voters—absentee and in-person—by making sure they didn’t all show up to the polling place on Election Day, which would have made it harder for poll workers to deal with inevitable technical problems or cyberattacks. Even if fears of delays with the postal system subside in the future, cyberattacks or staffing cuts could result in slow mail service, or election officials could have trouble processing ballot requests quickly, leading to delays in voters receiving their ballots in time to mail them back. Drop boxes will help ensure the resiliency of the system.

Full Article: Restrictive voting laws don’t enhance election security. They threaten it.

National: Hundreds of corporations, business leaders, celebs sign statement against voting restrictions | Hannah Miao/CNBC

Hundreds of corporations, executives and celebrities released a statement Wednesday in opposition to “any discriminatory legislation or measures” that would restrict ballot access. Signatories include corporations such as Amazon, BlackRock and General Motors and individuals such as Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and music star Ariana Grande. The statement is the latest and largest showing of corporate backlash to GOP-backed election bills in state legislatures across the country that civil rights advocates say will make it harder for minorities to vote. Ken Chenault, former American Express CEO, and Ken Frazier, chief executive of Merck, organized the statement, according to The New York Times, which first reported on the statement. The statement appeared in print advertisements Wednesday in the Times and The Washington Post. American Airlines, Apple, Bank of America, Cisco, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Starbucks, Target, Twitter and Vanguard were among dozens of corporate names to sign the statement.

Full Article: Corporations, business leaders, celebrities sign statement against voting restrictions

National: Smartmatic Responds To Fox News Defense In $2.7 Billion Defamation Lawsuit | Ted Johnson/Deadline

Smartmatic said that Fox News cannot get a “Get Out Of Jail Free Card” to escape a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit, in which the company says that the network ruined its reputation when on-air personalities spread conspiracy theories and falsehoods about its role in the 2020 presidential election. “The Fox Defendants solicited and published calculated falsehoods about Smartmatic,” the company’s legal team said in a brief filed late on Monday in New York Supreme Court (read it here). “They enjoy no protection or immunity pursuant to the First Amendment or New York law.” Fox News and three on-air personalities, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, are seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, which Smartmatic filed in Feburary. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who represented the Trump campaign and appeared numerous times on Fox News shows, also were named as defendants. Smartmatic and another voting systems company, Dominion, became the source of false claims that they played a role in rigging the results of the election in favor of Joe Biden. Dominion sued Fox News last month. In their brief, Smartmatic’s lawyers wrote that the Fox anchors “were not innocent bystanders and the disinformation generated during their interviews was no accident.”

Full Article: Smartmatic Responds To Fox News Defense In $2.7 Billion Defamation Lawsuit – Deadline

National: Research undercuts idea that changes to absentee voting in 2020 benefited Democrats | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

President Donald Trump’s dishonest explanation of his 2020 election loss has evolved slightly over time. He was assiduous (a generous way of saying obsessive) about claiming even before Election Day that expanded access to absentee voting posed a risk to him given that mailed ballots were rife with fraud. They were not, despite Trump’s insistences. A conservative organization’s database of purported fraud cases includes only one example of criminal charges centered on fraud in the general election last year: a case in which a father signed his daughter’s ballot while she was at college. The utter lack of credible evidence of fraud prompted Republicans broadly and Trump eventually to shift their complaints to center on how absentee ballot access was increased, conflating their claims that changing those rules violated the Constitution with broad, necessarily vague claims that something, somewhere went wrong, costing the incumbent a second term. For decades, Republicans have used similarly nebulous allegations of fraud to advocate for changing voting rules in ways that tend to disproportionately disadvantage Democratic voters. At times they have been explicit in trying to lock out more Democrats. In the current moment, though, the offered arguments are different, using the same vagueness that Trump is using to rationalize losing to provide their own rationalizations for changes to existing laws. Often, those are framed as being necessary to prevent purported “fraud”; at other times, the changes are instead offered as a way to address “concerns” voters have about election security, concerns Republicans and Trump themselves amplified. It’s become something of a legislative protection racket: claim that there’s a threat and then offer to address the threat. The result? Changes to laws that add restrictions to the ability to vote, particularly by mail.

Full Article: Research undercuts idea that changes to absentee voting in 2020 benefited Democrats – The Washington Post

National: Biden’s Choice for Civil Rights Post Has Worked to Defend Voting Rights | Katie Benner/The New York Times

When Alabama’s Shelby County sued nearly a decade ago to strike down key pieces of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights lawyer named Kristen Clarke helped to argue that the entire law should be upheld. A district court agreed, reaffirming that local governments with a history of discriminatory voting practices needed federal permission to change their voting laws. Though the Supreme Court ultimately overturned the lower-court ruling, the case helped establish Ms. Clarke as one of the nation’s foremost advocates for voting rights protections. Nominated by President Biden to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, she would if confirmed be likely to play a key role on the issue for the administration, which has made defense of voting rights a priority as states including Georgia work to enact laws that restrict access to the ballot box. Mr. Biden called Georgia’s recently passed legislation “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” and he and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland have said that the government must preserve the right to vote. “I will follow their lead in ensuring that the Civil Rights Division, if I am confirmed, is using the tools in its arsenal — the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Citizens Voting Act — to ensure that eligible Americans have access to the ballot in our country,” Ms. Clarke said on Wednesday during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ms. Clarke, 46, who would be the first Senate-confirmed leader of the Civil Rights Division to be a woman of color, testified alongside Todd Kim, a Justice Department veteran and Mr. Biden’s choice to run its Environmental and Natural Resources Division. Mr. Kim told senators that protecting the nation’s “shared interest in the environment and our natural resources” was a calling.

Full Article: Biden’s Choice for Civil Rights Post Has Worked to Defend Voting Rights – The New York Times

Arizona: A cybersecurity expert who promoted claims of fraud in the 2020 election is leading the GOP-backed recount of millions of ballots | Rosalind S. Helderman/The Washington Post

Full Article: A cybersecurity expert who promoted claims of fraud in the 2020 election is leading the GOP-backed recount of millions of ballots in Arizona – The Washington Post

The nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, Ariz., last fall are currently packaged in 40 cardboard shrink-wrapped boxes and stacked on 45 pallets in a county facility in Phoenix known as “the vault,” due to its sophisticated security and special fire-suppression system. But on order of the Republican-led state Senate, the ballots and the county’s voting equipment are scheduled to be trucked away next week — handed over for a new recount and audit spurred by unsubstantiated claims that fraud or errors tainted President Biden’s win in Arizona’s largest county. The ballots will be scrutinized not by election officials, but by a group of private companies led by a private Florida-based firm, whose owner has promoted claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent and who has been cited as an expert by allies of former president Donald Trump seeking to cast doubt on the election in other parts of the country. Trump supporters, including a lawyer who volunteered with his post-election legal team, have been raising private dollars to supplement $150,000 in taxpayer money that has been earmarked to fund the Arizona recount.

Editorial: Arizona Senate is abusing its authority. End its election ‘audit’ now | Arizona Republic

Republicans in the Arizona Legislature have set aside dollars, hired consultants, procured the hardware and software to conduct what they call “an audit” of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County. What they don’t have is the moral authority to make it credible. Their conduct post-election has been so nakedly partisan that whatever their audit finds, its results will not be believed. They’ll be mocked and derided. State Senate Republicans insist they are not trying to reverse the election, but are rather trying to build greater trust in the system. But how can anyone trust them? They have overreached from the beginning, abusing their subpoena power to try to criminalize a dispute with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. County officials resisted their demands to hand over county tabulating machines and ballots. The system had already gone through rigorous testing, established by election law. And even the Republican governor of Arizona and the Democrat secretary of state affirmed the integrity of the election.

Full Article: Arizona Senate is abusing its authority. End its election ‘audit’ now

Colorado: Pueblo County clerk posts photos of 2020 ballots for election integrity | Sara Wilson/The Pueblo Chieftain

Pueblo County is posting images of most ballots from the 2020 general election online as a way for citizens to self-audit ballots to verify election results, following an election season rife with debunked claims of fraud in the voting process. “This year because of all of the disinformation — and I want to be specific, not misinformation but knowingly-told lies about the election — I made the decision that I wanted to put it all on my website,” Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz said. “I thought this was the perfect opportunity to show the integrity of our elections.” Ortiz, a Democrat elected to the clerk position in 2006, testified to the State Auditor’s Board in January that he would make ballot images available online. As of April 8, that promise is met. Puebloans can view the 89,155 vote records in two places: on a Google Drive that Ortiz set up or through a pilot program from Dominion Voting System, which requires an email registration. On the Dominion site, users can filter the ballots by precinct, district, electoral contest and whether or not the ballot was adjudicated. Those records show the original ballot and how the machine counted it so viewers can verify that if a voter bubbled in President Joe Biden’s name, the machine recorded it that way.

Full Article: Pueblo County clerk posts photos of 2020 ballots for election integrity

Georgia: Fulton County Elections will be more expensive, more complicated | Ben Brasch/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Having the eyes of the nation trained on you isn’t cheap. That’s why Fulton County spent a record-breaking $38.3 million to run the blockbuster 2020 election cycle. But officials expect elections costs to keep going up. To put the $38 million presidential pricetag into perspective: Fulton spent $9.9 million in 2016 and about $6.1 million in 2012. Compare the $11.1 million the county spent during the historic 2008 election to the $11.5 million the county plans to spend on the 2022 general election. Fulton elections head Richard Barron said Wednesday he expects it will cost $7.2 million to run this year’s municipal election, which includes the Atlanta mayoral contest. That doesn’t include the cost of a runoff. After a calamitous June primary — with some voters waiting hours in line, many because they never received mail-in ballots because Fulton’s system was overwhelmed — the county budgeted to administer the election.

Full Article: Fulton: Elections will be more expensive, more complicated

Georgia: Why Local Election Officials Take Issue With Many Parts Of New Law | Emma Hurt/Georgia Public Broadcasting

Three weeks after it was signed into law, local election officials in Georgia are still trying to understand all the implications of the state’s controversial election overhaul. In a series of interviews, election officials said that while the Republican-led measure has some good provisions, many felt sidelined as the legislation was being debated, and believe that parts of it will make Georgia elections more difficult and expensive. One provision that particularly worries many officials is a new ability for the State Election Board to take over a county’s election management. The law empowers the state panel to take over if, in at least two elections within two years, the board finds “nonfeasance, malfeasance, or gross negligence in the administration of the elections.” Tonnie Adams, chief registrar of Heard County on the Alabama state line, said this provision, coupled with another change — which replaces the secretary of state as board chair with an appointee of the General Assembly — are problematic. “The legislature now has three seats that they appoint on the State Election Board,” he said. “We thought that that was a gross overreach of power from one branch of government.” Joseph Kirk, Bartow County’s elections supervisor, also took issue with the hypothetical scenario. The legislature could effectively “replace a bipartisan board [of elections] with a single appointee that has complete control over that department,” Kirk said. “So a person could come in, and hire and fire and discipline as they see fit. And as I read this law, I’m really hoping they never need to go that route.”

Full Article: Why Local Election Officials In Georgia Take Issue With Many Parts Of New Law | Georgia Public Broadcasting

Illinois: Human error at fault for McHenry County election issues | Kelli Duncan/Daily Herald

McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio released a report Wednesday on the problems his office encountered in reporting the April 6 election results, which led to a countywide vote recount and ultimately changed the projected outcome of several school board races. Tirio presented the report at a meeting of McHenry County Board members Thursday morning and began by apologizing to residents. “I know they expected to have the results on election night, and I apologize that they were not entirely accurate,” he said. “A more sincere, heartfelt apology to the candidates that were negatively affected — those that thought they had won and found out the following day that they hadn’t.” The report gave a step-by-step look into how the clerk’s office was alerted of the issue — causing the votes for a several school board races and other down-ballot races to be misreported — and what officials did in the two days that followed. It also gets to the heart of what caused the erroneous reporting. Essentially, the file used to print ballots was an earlier version than the ballot design used to program the county’s vote counting machines, or “tabulators,” the report states. The newer version had additional information about the term duration for school board candidates. The change shifted the ballot’s text so it no longer matched with the “target areas” programmed into the county’s tabulators, which tell the machine where to look for votes, according to the report and comments made by Tirio.

Full Article: Report: Human error at fault for McHenry County election issues

As Michigan G.O.P. Plans Voting Limits, Top Corporations Fire a Warning Shot | Reid J. Epstein and Trip Gabriel/The New York Times

Source: As Michigan G.O.P. Plans Voting Limits, Top Corporations Fire a Warning Shot – The New York Times

At first glance, the partisan battle over voting rights in Michigan appears similar to that of many other states: The Republican-led Legislature, spurred by former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about election fraud, has introduced a rash of proposals to restrict voting access, angering Democrats, who are fighting back. But plenty of twists and turns are looming as Michigan’s State Senate prepares to hold hearings on a package of voting bills beginning Wednesday. Unlike Georgia, Florida and Texas, which have also moved to limit voting access, Michigan has a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who said last month she would veto any bill imposing new restrictions. But unlike in other states with divided governments, Michigan’s Constitution offers Republicans a rarely used option for circumventing Ms. Whitmer’s veto. Last month, the state’s Republican chairman told activists that he aimed to do just that — usher new voting restrictions into law using a voter-driven petition process that would bypass the governor’s veto pen. In response, Michigan Democrats and voting rights activists are contemplating a competing petition drive, while also scrambling to round up corporate opposition to the bills; they are hoping to avoid a replay of what happened in Georgia, where the state’s leading businesses didn’t weigh in against new voting rules until after they were signed into law. The maneuvering by both parties has turned Michigan into a test case of how states with divided government will deal with voting laws, and how Republicans in state legislatures are willing to use any administrative tool at their disposal to advance Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud and pursue measures that could disenfranchise many voters. The proposal puts new restrictions on how election officials can distribute absentee ballots and how voters can cast them, limiting the use of drop boxes, for example.

Mississippi Secretary of State defends own comment about ‘woke’ voters | Emily Wagster Pettus/Associated Press

Mississippi’s top elections official says he thinks people are doing a “hatchet job” on him over comments he made in a television interview about “woke” and “uninformed” voters on college campuses. Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican, said March 26 on WLOX-TV that he opposes any move by the federal government to set new rules about voter registration or mail-in voting. “Think about all these ‘woke’ college university students now who would automatically be registered to vote, whether they wanted to or not,” Watson said. “Again, if they didn’t know to opt out, they would be automatically registered to vote. And then they receive this mail-in ballot that they didn’t even know was coming because they didn’t know they registered to vote. You have an uninformed citizen who may not be prepared and ready to vote, automatically it’s forced on them, ‘Hey, go and make a choice.’ And our country’s going to pay for those choices.”

Full Article: Mississippi official defends own comment about ‘woke’ voters

New Jersey early voting to cost millions more than planned for? | Jeff Pillets/NJ Spotlight News

A comprehensive study of the cost of implementing New Jersey’s early voting law shows taxpayers will have to pony up $77 million — this year alone — just to pay for new voting machines and other essential hardware. That is almost four times the amount set aside in this year’s budget to finance the landmark law, and it does not include millions more needed for the hiring and training of poll workers, facility upgrades and a range of other ongoing expenses. “We’re very disappointed that the governor’s budget does not provide anywhere near enough money,” said John Donaddio, executive director of the New Jersey Association of Counties, which carried out the study and based its findings on data from all 21 counties. “We have no indication where the rest will come from.” Donaddio said his group is seeking to delay the start of early voting, set to begin statewide in October, and may also file a complaint with the state Council on Local Mandates. The council has constitutional authority to effectively nullify state laws or regulations it deems “unfunded mandates” on local governments or boards of education. The governor’s office referred questions to the Department of State, which oversees all elections and maintains the statewide voter registration system.

Full Article: Early NJ voting to cost millions more than planned for? | NJ Spotlight News

Pennsylvania State House committee hears suggestions on improving election laws, but will the Legislature listen? | Julian Routh/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Good government stakeholders and national advocacy groups told lawmakers in Harrisburg on Thursday that incremental changes to the election law can alleviate the burden on stressed-out county workers and make it easier for voters to participate in the process. Their testimony came as the House State Government Committee finished its series of election oversight hearings, intended to give members a firsthand look at what might be needed to tweak the election code in the coming months and years. As Democrats continued to express fears that the Republican-led committee and Legislature will use the hearings to justify a crackdown on voting accessibility and mail-in ballots, a majority of those who testified agreed that changes to the law should be procedural and bipartisan. “As has been noted repeatedly in these hearings, the vast majority of Pennsylvania election law is still from the 1930s,” Committee of Seventy President and CEO David Thornburgh said in written testimony to the committee. “Revamping the entire Election Code may not be possible at this juncture, but the General Assembly has yet another opportunity to substantially modernize Pennsylvania election procedures, maintain election integrity, and improve the customer service experience of eligible voters.” The biggest consensus appeared to be that county election officials need more time to pre-canvass and process the influx of mail-in ballots, something that counties have been calling for since well before last November’s general election.

Full Article: State House committee hears suggestions on improving Pa.’s election laws, but will the Legislature listen? | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Texas voting bills target Democratic strongholds, just like Georgia’s new laws | Jeremy Wallace/Houston Chronicle

After major corporations criticized Georgia for adopting voter restrictions in the wake of Democratic wins there, the spotlight is shifting to Texas as Republican lawmakers advance similar legislation. And just as Georgia Republicans sought to rein in Fulton County — a heavily Democratic county that includes the city of Atlanta — Texas Republicans are targeting large counties run by Democrats with measures that provide possible jail time for local officials who try to expand voting options or who promote voting by mail. That same push is happening in Arizona and Iowa, said Lawrence Norden, director of the Election Reform Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law. “All of these bills share a common purpose: to threaten the independence of election workers whose main job should be to ensure fair elections free from political or other interference,” Norden said. The Senate is particularly intent on preventing a repeat of 2020, when the interim Harris County clerk, Chris Hollins, promoted novel approaches such as 24-hour voting sites and drive-thru polling places as safe alternatives to indoor voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Democrat-leaning county saw historic turnout that helped Joe Biden come within 5.5 percentage points of the incumbent, Republican Donald Trump.

Full Article: Texas voting bills target Democratic strongholds, just like Georgia’s new laws

Texas: Kolkhorst’s bill requiring a paper trail for all elections systems passes unanimously | Victoria Advocate

The Texas Senate unanimously passed a bill authored by State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst to require a voter-verifiable paper audit trail for all elections systems, according to a Tuesday news release. Senate Bill 598 also prohibits any voting system from being connected to the internet and includes a risk limiting audit to ensure the accuracy of voting systems, according to the news release. The bill was passed in the Senate Monday. Texas will be considered to have one of the most accurate vote counting systems in the nation, said a news release from the state senator’s office. Texas is one of only three states that uses a paperless trail system in some areas. “In 2005, I filed one of the first bills calling for a paper ballot trail to combat election fraud,” said Kolkhorst, R-Brenham. “After many visits with so many concerned constituents and years of efforts I am glad to see this through. Elections are the bedrock of our republic and ensuring that our elections are conducted to the highest standards possible is a must.”

Full Article: Kolkhorst’s bill requiring a paper trail for all elections systems passes unanimously | Victoria | victoriaadvocate.com

Wisconsin Senate approves Republican election changes | Todd Richmond/Associated Press

Republicans who control the Wisconsin Senate moved Wednesday to change state elections based largely on false claims that the November election was tainted, passing bills that would make interfering with election observers a crime and barring polling officials from accepting private grants to aid with administration. The proposals are part of a larger package of GOP-authored measures addressing issues former President Donald Trump and his supporters raised following Joe Biden’s narrow win in the battleground state. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who has complained about Republican attempts to make absentee voting more difficult, is almost certain to veto every one of them. The bills the Senate passed Wednesday don’t make major changes to the absentee voting system. That legislation, which includes limiting access to drop boxes, has yet to come to the floor in the Senate or Assembly. The most prominent bill the Senate took up addresses Trump supporters’ claims that they weren’t given close enough access to watch Wisconsin’s presidential recount. Under the bill, observers would have to stand within 3 feet of tabulators during a recount. Any election official who intentionally obstructs an observer’s access would be guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months behind bars and a $1,000 fine. Democrats complained that the bill would allow observers to intimidate tabulators by literally hanging over their shoulders and create fear among tabulators that if they ask an observer for space they’ll be thrown in jail.

Full Article: Wisconsin Senate approves Republican election changes

National: Donations Surge for Republicans Who Challenged Election Results | Luke Broadwater, Catie Edmondson and Rachel Shorey/The New York Times

April 15, 2021

Republicans who were the most vocal in urging their followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6 to try to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s loss, pushing to overturn the election and stoking the grievances that prompted the deadly Capitol riot, have profited handsomely in its aftermath, according to new campaign data. Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, who led the challenges to President Biden’s victory in their chamber, each brought in more than $3 million in campaign donations in the three months that followed the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia who called the rampage a “1776 moment” and was later stripped of committee assignments for espousing bigoted conspiracy theories and endorsing political violence, raised $3.2 million — more than the individual campaign of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, and nearly every other member of House leadership. A New York Times analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission disclosures illustrates how the leaders of the effort to overturn Mr. Biden’s electoral victory have capitalized on the outrage of their supporters to collect huge sums of campaign cash. Far from being punished for encouraging the protest that turned lethal, they have thrived in a system that often rewards the loudest and most extreme voices, using the fury around the riot to build their political brands. The analysis examined the individual campaign accounts of lawmakers, not joint fund-raising committees or leadership political action committees. “The outrage machine is powerful at inducing political contributions,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida.

Full Article: Donations Surge for Republicans Who Challenged Election Results – The New York Times

National: How the corporate backlash to Georgia’s new voting law is shaping other fights around the country over access to the polls | Amy Gardner and Mike DeBonis/The Washington Post

Full Article: How the corporate backlash to Georgia’s new voting law is shaping other fights around the country over access to the polls – The Washington Post

Behind closed doors, aides to Georgia’s top Republicans and its leading business interests spent the final days of March hashing out new voting legislation in an effort to quell a growing outcry that GOP lawmakers were pushing measures that would severely curtail access to the polls. The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and representatives of major corporations, including Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, worked directly with legislative leaders and the office of Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to exclude some of the more controversial proposals, according to people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Republicans agreed to drop, for instance, language barring most Georgians from voting by mail and curtailing early voting on weekends. They even expanded early-voting hours in the final bill. The hope of Republicans involved, according to a half-dozen people familiar with the process, was to pull off a delicate political balancing act: satisfying voters who believe former president Donald Trump’s false claims that he lost the 2020 election because of rampant fraud — while heading off accusations of voter suppression from the left.

California’s elections official exodus | John Myers/Los Angeles Times

If all politics is truly local, it should be huge news when someone like Kammi Foote decides enough is enough. As the registrar of voters for Inyo County, Foote spent 14 years on democracy’s front lines in a job that is equal parts educator and administrator. California gives wide latitude to its 58 counties in how to run elections, and a corps of veteran registrars call the shots across the state. But something has changed. Registrars with decades of experience are calling it quits, stymied by the ever-growing list of election mandates that come without the funding to make them a reality — made worse by the personal and professional threats made by voters amped up on partisan rage and destructive conspiracy theories. Now, months before a likely recall election followed by the 2022 campaign season where political maps will be redrawn and voters will need help navigating the changes, California finds itself in the midst of an election officer exodus. Foote stepped down Friday as Inyo’s chief elections officer, the eighth registrar across California to resign since last November’s election. At least one more registrar is expected to resign in the coming weeks. Some have been on the job for almost three decades. “I think, if anything, it’s just a sense of being worn down and tired,” Foote said about her decision to leave. “In 2020, we found ourselves working seven days a week, months on end, under tremendous pressure.”

Full Article: Essential Politics: California’s elections official exodus – Los Angeles Times

National: GOP Undercuts Vote-Security Push by Going Light on the Security | Ryan Teague Beckwith/Bloomberg

Republican lawmakers in 47 states have proposed measures to tighten voting laws in the name of electoral integrity, but some of them omit steps that security experts say would do the most to protect elections from equipment malfunctions, fraud, hacking or terrorism. While state lawmakers are largely focused on limiting vote-by-mail, people who study and run elections say they should be considering steps such as automatically registering voters, expanding early voting, using ID numbers to verify mail-in ballots, distributing more ballot drop boxes and processing mail-in ballots before Election Day. “It’s unfortunate that so many administrative processes that really make elections go more smoothly and accurately have become so polarized on partisan lines,” said Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, a Republican. Georgia recently passed a controversial law that cuts voting days and limits ballot drop boxes, two steps voting rights experts say are counterproductive. But they also enacted a more generous voter ID requirement for mail-in ballots and sped up processing of ballots, two steps that experts recommend. Meanwhile, Republican-led Kentucky has expanded early voting and sped up ballot processing, while Maine sped up ballot processing. But dozens of other bills are still being actively considered that would limit early and mail-in voting or make other changes to election laws that experts say either won’t work or is unnecessary.

Full Article: GOP Undercuts Vote-Security Push by Going Light on the Security – Bloomberg

National: Corporate leaders plan new push on U.S. voting rights, will reconsider campaign donations | Jessica DiNapoli/Reuters

Most CEOs on a call to discuss a new push against U.S. state voting restrictions said in a poll they will reassess donating to candidates who fail to support voting rights, while many will consider holding back investments in states that restrict voting access, according to people familiar with the matter. Some business executives are putting together a new statement calling for the protection of U.S. voting rights, the latest corporate backlash against moves by Republican politicians to change election rules in Georgia and other states, the sources said. About 100 chief executive officers, investors, lawyers and corporate directors participated in a private Zoom call on Saturday organized by Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld to discuss a new response to Georgia’s election law and voting restrictions contemplated by other states such as Texas and Arizona, according to the sources. All CEOs who participated in a poll during the call agreed they will re-evaluate political donations to candidates based on their track records on voting rights, while 48% said they might reconsider or reduce investments in states that restrict access to voting. Some one-quarter of CEOs refrained from voting on several questions in the poll.

Full Article: Corporate leaders plan new push on U.S. voting rights, will reconsider campaign donations | Reuters

National: The great capitulation of Trump’s voter fraud crusade | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

The 2020 election is a case study in how unproved claims can be weaponized. For decades, former president Donald Trump’s party warned of significant voter fraud while successfully pushing policies such as voter ID. In 2016, Trump laid a predicate for contesting an election by suggesting there was massive fraud, even in an election he had won. By 2020, when Trump lost, it culminated in a huge portion of the electorate believing a “stolen election” theory for which there is vanishingly little actual evidence. Some have done more than raise questions, though. They, like Trump and often in search of his allies’ support, have alleged actual massive fraud. But now they’ve been asked to account for it. And crucially and increasingly, they have backed down. The most recent example came Friday night — a time routinely used to bury bad news. In a statement, former Trump lawyer Joe diGenova apologized to Christopher Krebs, a Trump administration official who had debunked Trump’s fraud claims and whose execution diGenova had endorsed. DiGenova had said Krebs “should be drawn and quartered” and “taken out at dawn and shot.” “On November 30, 2020, I appeared on the ‘Howie Carr Show.’ During the show, I made regrettable statements regarding Christopher Krebs, which many interpreted as a call for violence against him,” diGenova said. He added that “today I reiterate my public apology to Mr. Krebs and his family for any harm my words caused. Given today’s political climate, I should have more carefully expressed my criticism of Mr. Krebs, who was just doing his job.” DiGenova’s apology refers to a past apology made on Newsmax’s airwaves, but back then he went even further in downplaying his comments. He maintained at the time that it was a poorly chosen joke and said that he apologized “for any misunderstanding of my intentions.” The statement very notably comes months after Krebs announced in December that he was suing diGenova for defamation.

Full Article: The great capitulation of Trump’s voter fraud crusade – The Washington Post

National: Amid a Wave of Hacks, Biden Moves to Fill Key Cyber Posts | Dustin Volz/Wall Street Journal