National: After big hack of U.S. government, Biden enlists ‘world class’ cybersecurity team | Christopher Bing and Joseph Menn/Reuters

President Joe Biden is hiring a group of national security veterans with deep cyber expertise, drawing praise from former defense officials and investigators as the U.S. government works to recover from one of the biggest hacks of its agencies attributed to Russian spies. “It is great to see the priority that the new administration is giving to cyber,” said Suzanne Spaulding, director of the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cybersecurity was demoted as a policy field under the Trump administration. It discontinued the Cybersecurity Coordinator position at the White House, shrunk the State Department’s cyber diplomacy wing, and fired federal cybersecurity leader Chris Krebs in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s Nov. 3 election defeat. Disclosed in December, the hack struck eight federal agencies and numerous companies, including software provider SolarWinds Corp. U.S. intelligence agencies publicly attributed it to Russian state actors. Moscow has denied involvement in the hack. Under a recent law, Biden must open a cyber-focused office reporting to a new National Cyber Director, who will coordinate the federal government’s vast cyber capabilities, said Mark Montgomery, a former congressional staffer who helped design the role.

Full Article: After big hack of U.S. government, Biden enlists ‘world class’ cybersecurity team | Reuters

National: Republicans plan voting overhauls after Biden’s win | Reid Wilson/The Hill

Republican state legislators are advancing a rush of new bills aimed at limiting voting access, and especially access to voting by mail, in the wake of President Biden’s victory last year in the highest-turnout election in American history. The proposals come after months of pressure from former President Trump, who with the help of Republican allies spread false claims and conspiracy theories related to the election, including that widespread voter fraud cost him a victory. In many states, Republicans have used those claims to cite unspecified concerns about the integrity of their own elections, despite elections officials who show proof that counts were fair and accurate. Democrats and voting rights advocates counter that the proposals are thinly veiled attempts to restrict access to the polls.  “In the last 10 years, we have seen some politicians try to enact changes to the rules of the game so that some people can participate and some people can’t,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “Rather than competing for voters, there are some politicians that instead would prefer to lock people out of the process.” In some states, the new bills would roll back emergency voting provisions put in place during the pandemic. In others, the proposals go so far as to repeal long-standing practices implemented more than a decade ago with bipartisan support.

Full Article: Republicans plan voting overhauls after Biden’s win | TheHill

National: State Republicans push new voting restrictions after Trump’s loss | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Republican legislators across the country are preparing a slew of new voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat. Georgia will be the focal point of the GOP push to change state election laws, after Democrats narrowly took both Senate seats there and President Joe Biden carried the state by an even smaller margin. But state Republicans in deep-red states and battlegrounds alike are citing Trump’s meritless claims of voter fraud in 2020 — and the declining trust in election integrity Trump helped drive — as an excuse to tighten access to the polls. Some Republican officials have been blunt about their motivations: They don’t believe they can win unless the rules change. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning,” Alice O’Lenick, a Republican on the Gwinnett County, Ga., board of elections in suburban Atlanta, told the Gwinnett Daily Post last week. She has since resisted calls to resign. The chair of the Texas Republican Party has called on the legislature there to make “election integrity” the top legislative priority in 2021, calling, among other things, for a reduction in the number of days of early voting. Jason Miller, a top Trump adviser, told the conservative site Just The News that Trump plans to remain involved in “voting integrity” efforts, keeping the issue at the top of Republicans’ minds. And VoteRiders, a nonprofit group that helps prospective voters get an ID if they need one to cast a ballot, said it is expecting a serious push for new voter ID laws in at least five states, while North Carolina could potentially implement new voter ID policies that have been held up in court.

Full Article: State Republicans push new voting restrictions after Trump’s loss – POLITICO

Georgia pays $30,000 to settle lawsuit over Crosscheck purge program | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia secretary of state’s office paid $30,000 to resolve a lawsuit over the state’s role in Crosscheck, a defunct program for canceling voter registrations. The settlement ended the lawsuit, but the plaintiffs didn’t get what they had sought: records showing that Gov. Brian Kemp, when he was secretary of state, had used Crosscheck to cancel Georgia voters. Though Georgia election officials contributed voter information to other states that participated in Crosscheck, they said they never used it on their own voters. They said the cancellations of 534,000 Georgia voter registrations in 2017 and 287,000 registrations in 2019 were done separately from Crosscheck. The settlement was obtained Friday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through the Georgia Open Records Act. The Crosscheck program, which ended in 2019, collected voter registration lists from Georgia and other states to identify potentially invalid and duplicative registrations. Voting rights groups have criticized Crosscheck for inaccuracies that erroneously flagged legitimate voters. Greg Palast, a journalist who filed the lawsuit against Kemp, said it verified that Georgia participated in the effort to remove voters in dozens of states. Crosscheck was led by then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and Georgia enrolled in the program from 2013 to 2017.

Full Article: Georgia pays $30,000 to settle lawsuit over Crosscheck purge program

Georgia: Bartow County Election Workers Complete Audit Of Jan. 5 Runoff | Christopher Alston/WABE

Bartow County election officials released a report Thursday from a voluntary audit confirming the results of Georgia’s Jan. 5 Senate runoffs. The audit found an 89-vote discrepancy from the original tally, a 0.2% difference, which Bartow election supervisor Joseph Kirk attributed to human error in the counting process. Candidates can request a recount in Georgia if the margin of victory is less than half a percent – Sen. Jon Ossoff won his race by 1.2%, and Sen. Raphael Warnock won by 2%. Even though the Senate races were close, neither was close enough to require a recount, but in the report, Kirk said they decided to perform the audit to discredit the “mountain of misinformation” that was spread leading up to the election. In particular, Kirk was trying to dispel rumors that the Dominion voting machines used for the first time this election cycle were subject to hacking or malfunction. “Rather than engage in speculation on whether or not the system changed votes after they were cast (it didn’t) or whether it was connected to the internet (it wasn’t), we choose to respond with the simple fact that we know every voter’s vote was accurately counted in Bartow County because we checked – one ballot at a time,” Kirk wrote in the report. Party monitors were present to observe the audit, and the monitors chose which of the Senate races was going to be audited by flipping a coin.

Full Article: Bartow County Election Workers Complete Audit Of Jan. 5 Runoff | 90.1 FM WABE

Iowa: Democrats Weigh Whether State Keeps 1st Presidential Contest | Clay Masters/NPR

While it’s only 2021, a major question facing Democrats this year and next will be what to do about the presidential nominating calendar and whether Iowa, in particular, should retain its prized place at the front of the calendar in 2024. Iowa’s decades-long lock on the nominating process has been under threat since last year’s disastrous caucus, when results were delayed for days due in part to a faulty smartphone app that was supposed to make things easier for precinct captains when they reported results. Ultimately, The Associated Press never declared a winner in the contest because of problems with the vote count, which was administered by the Iowa Democratic Party. Iowa’s voters are also older, more rural and more white than many other states so it’s seen as increasingly out of step with the Democratic mainstream, which increasingly relies on voters of color and young people for its support. President Biden’s newly installed pick to lead the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison of South Carolina, will get a chance to shake up the calendar by appointing members to the party’s rules and bylaws committee. Unlike past presidents, Biden didn’t win in Iowa (he came in fourth, after former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) and owes no political debt to the complex caucus process. “I think on its merits that the Iowa caucus falls short of the values that we espouse as Democrats,” Julian Castro said. Castro served as housing and urban development secretary under President Barack Obama and ran for president himself in 2020.

Full Article: Democrats Weigh Whether Iowa Keeps 1st Presidential Contest : NPR

Montana GOP considers ending Election-Day voter registration | Arren Kimbreil-Sannit/Missoula Current

Legislative Republicans debuted the first of their “election integrity” proposals Friday with a bill to end Election-Day voter registration in Montana, which has been on the books since 2005. The bill’s sponsor, Florence Republican Sharon Greef, said it’s a necessary solution to the long lines and hours-long waits on voting day in the last and prior elections — and something that could reduce the burden on the county offices that oversee polling places. “One of our biggest problems is trying to run an election in a decent way that is organized when you still have people coming in to register to vote (on Election Day),” said Doug Ellis, the top elections official (as well as clerk, recorder, treasurer and superintendent) in Broadwater County, in support of the measure. But several opponents of the bill testified Thursday that the solution to administrative burden at the county elections level isn’t to restrict voting, especially if it means cutting off late registration the Friday before election day, as Greef is proposing.

Full Article: Montana GOP considers ending Election-Day voter registration ~ Missoula Current

New Jersey: Historic audit of mail-in election is complete. The results are promising, officials say. | Steve Strunsky/NJ.com

Mariel Hufnagel said she asked for a recount after losing her bid for Eatontown Borough Council by just 10 votes in November not because she suspected foul play. Rather, the Democratic challenger said it was because the margin was simply too thin to risk letting what could have been a few chance counting errors defy the will of the people, particularly in an unprecedented election conducted almost entirely via mail-in balloting in response to the coronavirus pandemic. As it turned out, the recount only confirmed Hufnagel’s defeat. But she accepted the results, after the accuracy of the initial machine tally of the race’s 6,500 mailed-in paper ballots was largely borne out by a recounting of the ballots by hand. And although she was disappointed, her faith in the electoral process was unshaken. “I believe that our democracy has checks and balances in place, such as a recount, exactly for situations like this,” Hufnagel wrote in an email. “I am sure if the situation was flipped, the Republicans would do the same.” More than 6.2 million paper ballots were sent to registered voters for Nov. 3 races ranging from school board to president, and 4.4 million were returned and counted.

Full Article: Historic audit of N.J. mail-in election is complete. The results are promising, officials say. – nj.com

New York: Brindisi, Tenney campaigns lay out arguments on what ballots to count | Steve Howe/Utica Observer-Dispatch

The legal teams for both candidates in the race for New York’s 22nd Congressional District are preparing for final oral arguments in state Supreme Court on Friday.  Those preparations were detailed in legal briefs filed Wednesday, which provide depth and legal backing to arguments already presented during the ballot-by-ballot judicial review by state Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte. Republican Claudia Tenney of New Hartford leads Democrat Anthony Brindisi of Utica by 29 votes in the latest unofficial results. The race is a rematch of the 2018 election, which Brindisi won by less than 4,500 votes.  An order from DelConte on Wednesday will require the Oneida County Board of Elections to correct errors in its canvass of affidavit ballots connected to 2,418 unprocessed online voter registration forms. The error correction and update tallies from Oneida County are due Wednesday, Jan. 27.  On Thursday, Brindisi’s legal team reiterated its stance the court is limited to only reviewing the contested affidavit ballots based on registration and requested a stay on the order to canvass all of the affidavit ballots again. The Brindisi campaign objected to 60 affidavit ballots on the basis of registration, which were described as mostly young people and Democrats during court proceedings.  

Full Article: Brindisi Tenney NY22: Candidates lay out final legal arguments

South Dakota Senate stops online voter registration bill | Local Abby Wargel/Capital Journal

South Dakota Republican Secretary of State Steve Barnett on Friday testified that Senate Bill 24 would “create a system that provides South Dakotans with a useful tool” in terms of allowing online voter registration. However, the GOP-dominated Senate State Affairs Committee put a quick halt to the effort, passing an amendment to the original legislation that makes it so voters it would allow voters to change their address online, but not register to vote. Ultimately, Senate Bill 24, which had been intended to create an online voter registration interface allowing voters to register online, passed the committee with the amendment. Senate Minority Leader Troy Heinert, D-Mission, said this “completely guts” the original bill. Currently, South Dakota is one of only 10 states that does not allow voter registration to occur online. There were multiple testimonies from the bill’s supporters, among them Barnett, while no one testified against the bill. However, Senate Majority Whip Jim Bolin, R-Canton, proposed an amendment that would only allow voters to change their address online, but not register to vote.

Full Article: S.D. Senate stops online voter registration bill | Local News Stories | capjournal.com

Pennsylvania Lawmaker Played Key Role in Trump’s Plot to Oust Acting Attorney General | Katie Benner and Catie Edmondson/The New York Times

When Representative Scott Perry joined his colleagues in a monthslong campaign to undermine the results of the presidential election, promoting “Stop the Steal” events and supporting an attempt to overturn millions of legally cast votes, he often took a back seat to higher-profile loyalists in President Donald J. Trump’s orbit. But Mr. Perry, an outspoken Pennsylvania Republican, played a significant role in the crisis that played out at the top of the Justice Department this month, when Mr. Trump considered firing the acting attorney general and backed down only after top department officials threatened to resign en masse. It was Mr. Perry, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, who first made Mr. Trump aware that a relatively obscure Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, the acting chief of the civil division, was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s view that the election had been stolen, according to former administration officials who spoke with Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump. Mr. Perry introduced the president to Mr. Clark, whose openness to conspiracy theories about election fraud presented Mr. Trump with a welcome change from the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, who stood by the results of the election and had repeatedly resisted the president’s efforts to undo them. Mr. Perry’s previously unreported role, and the quiet discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark that followed, underlined how much the former president was willing to use the government to subvert the election, turning to more junior and relatively unknown figures for help as ranking Republicans and cabinet members rebuffed him.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Lawmaker Played Key Role in Trump’s Plot to Oust Acting Attorney General – The New York Times

Virginia Senate eases absentee voting requirements; House bans firearms at voting locations | yler Arnold/The Center Square

The Virginia Senate and House passed election-related bills Monday, including legislation that makes voting absentee easier. The Senate voted 21-19 to pass Senate Bill 1097, which would remove the requirement that all absentee ballots be filled out in the presence of a witness. The law currently requires a witness signature for an absentee ballot to be valid, although that requirement was temporarily halted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill would eliminate the requirement permanently. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, received substantial support from Democrats who argued it would make voting easier and more accessible. Republicans warned it could compromise election security. House Bill 2081, which passed along a similar partisan divide in the House, would prohibit the possession of firearms on or near voting locations. The bill, sponsored by Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria, passed the chamber in a 53-47 vote. The legislation would prohibit possession of a firearm within 40 feet of any buildings used as a polling location. It would be applicable one hour before the building is being used for that purpose until one hour after. Violations would result in a Class 1 misdemeanor. Law enforcement officers and licensed armed security officers employed at the building would be exempt from the requirement. Any person whose private property falls within 40 feet of a polling place also would be exempt while occupying that property.

Full Article: Virginia Senate eases absentee voting requirements; House bans firearms at voting locations | State | insidenova.com

Washington: ‘I refuse to live in fear’: Secretary of State Kim Wyman reflects on threats and rebuilding trust in elections | Orion Donovan-Smith/The Spokesman-Review

On the morning of Jan. 6, Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman was texting with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. The Republican Spokane congresswoman planned to object to the certification of Electoral College results that would make President Joe Biden’s victory official. She told Wyman, a fellow Republican and the state’s top election official, she had concerns because of the tens of millions of Americans who believe there was widespread fraud in November’s election. Wyman, who had spent months responding to misinformation about the election, offered to address whatever concerns McMorris Rodgers had and told her to reach out. But before they could talk – and while two-thirds of House Republicans prepared to object to the election results – thousands of former President Donald Trump’s supporters marched from a rally outside the White House, where Trump repeated his baseless claim that the election was rigged, and stormed the Capitol. The violence, which left five people dead and dozens of police officers injured, was the culmination of a monthslong campaign by Trump and his allies to sow distrust in the U.S. voting system and eventually claim the election was stolen from him through a vast conspiracy. GOP lawmakers, cowed by Trump’s threats to unseat disloyal Republicans, largely gave credence to his election-rigging claims even as they outperformed expectations in their own races. As the rioters ransacked the Capitol, McMorris Rodgers had a change of heart and announced she would no longer object to the mostly symbolic count of Electoral College results. She was one of just two House Republicans to change course while the majority of GOP lawmakers heeded Trump’s demand to be “tough” and contest the results.

Full Article: ‘I refuse to live in fear’: Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman reflects on threats and rebuilding trust in elections | The Spokesman-Review

Wisconsin: In ‘thousands of complaints’ about election, few that could be substantiated | Chris Rickert and Riley Vetterkind/Wisconsin State Journal

In December, with then-President Donald Trump continuing to falsely claim that massive fraud and other voting irregularities had denied him a second term, top Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature said they were reviewing “thousands of complaints” about the Nov. 3 election. There were indeed thousands of complaints in the emails sent between Nov. 3 and Dec. 8 to lawmakers investigating the election. The majority of them, however, were mass-generated form letters making nonspecific claims about alleged irregularities, a right-wing fraud-finding effort and a clip from Fox’s Sean Hannity show. Others implored Republican lawmakers to overturn an election they were convinced was rigged, even though local, state and national officials have confirmed its integrity. The Wisconsin State Journal was able to identify just 28 allegations of election fraud or other irregularities that were specific enough to attempt to verify, but could only partially substantiate one, involving 42 votes. Interviews with dozens of prosecutors, election officials and people who lodged complaints made clear that most, if not all, of the allegations could be chalked up to hearsay or minor administrative errors. Republican Rep. Ron Tusler said the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, which he chaired last session, has so far been able to substantiate only one case of potential voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election: A Cedarburg woman was charged in November after she allegedly submitted an absentee ballot for her dead partner.

Full Article: In ‘thousands of complaints’ about Wisconsin election, few that could be substantiated | Wisconsin Elections | madison.com

Enduring Lessons From Securing the Election | Dennis Fisher/Decipher

In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Chris Krebs had a problem. Actually, he had a few, but the biggest one was getting election officials on the state and local level to take the security threat to the integrity of the election seriously. As director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the time, Krebs was heading up the effort to assess the security and resilience of the nation’s election infrastructure and look for the kind of soft spots that malicious actors–foreign or domestic–might target. The concern wasn’t so much that actors would go after the electronic voting machines, but rather the computers used to tabulate the votes and the networks on which they sit. Attackers from China, Russia, and other countries whose interests don’t necessarily align with the United States have demonstrated the willingness and ability to penetrate government and private sector networks and remain inside for long periods of time. CISA officials and their colleagues at the FBI and other agencies warned state and local officials about the seriousness of the threat, but the message wasn’t getting through for some reason. Perhaps the spectre of state-sponsored hackers from halfway around the world was too abstract, or maybe there were too many other things to worry about, but the reality of the threats wasn’t landing. So Krebs changed tactics. “You can talk about Russia and China and Iran all day long and when security teams aren’t seeing these actors walking into their environments waving flags, because they’re patient it’s hard to make the sell,” Krebs said during a keynote at the SANS Institute Cyber Threat Intelligence Summit Thursday. “What we were seeing do the most damage was ransomware actors conducting functionally catastrophic attacks. We made a hard pivot from talking about China and Russia to talking about ransomware, and we saw a shift as the light went on that it wasn’t just about state actors, it was about disruptive non-state actors. And to me that was one of the biggest advances we made.”

Full Article: Enduring Lessons From Securing the Election | Decipher

Editorial: Election law can’t protect democracy if our representatives are lawless | Richard L. Hasen/Los Angeles Times

Does the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection demonstrate that the problems with the legitimacy of American elections exceed the capacity of election law to fix them? Those of us in the field of election law were no more surprised that President Trump would threaten the peaceful transition of power if he lost the 2020 elections than epidemiologists were surprised by the deadly spread of COVID-19 in a country without a plan for containment. Last April, a multidisciplinary committee at UC Irvine issued a report on how to ensure a legitimate and fair election in 2020. It opened with the observation that “Americans can no longer take for granted that election losers will concede a closely fought election after election authorities (or courts) have declared a winner.” The report recommended expanding opportunities for early in-person and mail-in balloting; educating the media and its consumers that election results would likely be “too early to call” on election night; and encouraging social media companies to remove unsupported allegations of voter fraud and to direct people instead to reliable sources of information, such as election officials. The UC Irvine committee was not alone in its concerns; other groups focused on questions such as the potential for political actors to manipulate the arcane 1887 Electoral Count Act dictating how Congress counts electoral college votes from the states. The election itself was a surprising success. Turnout hit record levels. Voter disenfranchisement was rare, widespread voter fraud did not materialize and the election was well-administered except in some isolated pockets. And yet millions of Americans believe the election was stolen.

Full Article: Op-Ed: Election law can’t protect democracy if our representatives are lawless – Los Angeles Times

National: Senate Democrats seek momentum for voting, political money overhaul | Kate Ackley/Roll Call

Senate Democrats, on the cusp of holding the slimmest possible majority in the chamber, signaled Tuesday a symbolic first order of business: a major overhaul of the nation’s voting, campaign finance and ethics laws. The measure, dubbed HR 1 in the House and now christened in the Senate as S 1 to signify that it is a top priority, died in the GOP-controlled Senate last Congress. It could see the same fate again in the 117th Congress unless Democrats remove the 60-vote threshold to end filibusters on legislation, a change the party’s base eagerly wants but remains in doubt. Advocates pushing for the overhaul said they were mobilizing anew to build public support in both chambers. House Democrats expect to take up the measure as soon as this month or next, congressional aides said, as it closely tracks the same bill in the last Congress. Congressional Democrats, as well as representatives of outside groups pushing for passage of the package, said the overhaul would help shore up voters’ confidence in a democracy damaged by a violent attempted insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and after four years of corruption scandals and flouting of ethics norms during Donald Trump’s presidency. “I think that every American has received a message that the integrity of our elections is incredibly important, and so in terms of accountability for the events of this past year, there’s probably nothing more important than passing the For the People Act,” said Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley. But he would not predict what the party will do about the filibuster. “It’s too soon to say how we’ll pursue this,” he said. The bill would create nationwide automatic voter registration and require paper ballots in all jurisdictions. It would set up a 6-to-1 optional public financing system to pay for congressional campaigns and tighten disclosure rules for political groups and super PACs that spend money to influence elections.

Full Article: Democrats seek momentum for voting, political money overhaul – Roll Call

National: U.S. intelligence head who warned of foreign election threats steps down Matthew Choi/Politico

U.S. counterintelligence chief William Evanina stepped down from his position Wednesday, ending a decades-long career in the intelligence community combating leaks and raising the alarm about foreign election interference. “I am honored and humbled to have been surrounded by amazing, dedicated, and vigilent professionals serving around the nation, and the globe, protecting our great nation. I want to especially thank the women and men of NCSC, and the Intelligence Community, for being the best in the world,” he said in a LinkedIn post announcing his retirement Thursday. Evanina left his position after six years as director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and more than two decades at the FBI. Toward the end of his career, in the final year of President Donald Trump’s term, Evanina was charged with overseeing briefings on foreign threats to election security. It was a politically precarious spot, with Trump and his Republican allies often brushing off Russian election interference and steering attention toward China and Iran. Congressional Democrats in turn expressed discontent with Evanina, portraying him as blanching the Russian election threat in a summary on the issue they said was so vague it was “almost meaningless”. But Evanina’s decades-long career helped him dodge the partisan frays of the Trump era, and he had been celebrated by colleagues and members of both parties as effective and aggressive. A former senior FBI official who worked closely with Evanina called him the “Dr. Fauci of the counterintelligence community” in a comment to POLITICO last summer.

Full Article: U.S. intelligence head who warned of foreign election threats steps down – POLITICO

National: Senate Democrats file ethics complaint against Hawley, Cruz over election challenge | Marianne Levine/Politico

A group of Senate Democrats filed an ethics complaint Thursday against GOP Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, over their Jan. 6 efforts to object to the 2020 presidential election results. “By proceeding with their objections to the electors after the violent attack, Senators Cruz and Hawley lent legitimacy to the mob’s cause and made future violence more likely,” the senators wrote in a letter to incoming Senate Ethics panel Chair Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Vice Chair James Lankford (R-Okla.). The letter, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), requests that the panel investigate several issues, including whether Cruz (R-Texas) and Hawley (R-Mo) encouraged the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol; whether they coordinated with organizers of the pro-Trump rally immediately before the riot; whether they received donations from any organizations or donors that also funded the rally; and whether the senators “engaged in criminal conduct or unethical or improper behavior.” Hawley, in a statement, described the complaint as “a flagrant abuse of the Senate ethics process and a flagrant attempt to exact partisan revenge” and said Democrats appeared “intent on weaponizing every tool at their disposal.” A spokesperson for Cruz said in a statement that “it is unfortunate that some congressional Democrats are disregarding President Biden’s call for unity and are instead playing political games by filing frivolous ethics complaints against their colleagues.” Both senators have denied allegations that they incited the Jan. 6 insurrection, which led to the death of five people, and condemned the violence. But in Thursday’s letter, the Democratic senators argue that by announcing they would challenge the election results, Hawley and Cruz gave credibility to former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

Full Article: Senate Democrats file ethics complaint against Hawley, Cruz over election challenge – POLITICO

National: How Gerrymandering Will Protect Republicans Who Challenged the Election | Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio comes from a duck-shaped district that stretches across parts of 14 counties and five media markets and would take nearly three hours to drive end to end. Designed after the 2010 census by Ohio Republicans intent on keeping Mr. Jordan, then a three-term congressman, safely in office, the district has produced the desired result. He has won each of his last five elections by at least 22 percentage points. The outlines of Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District have left Mr. Jordan, like scores of other congressional and state lawmakers, accountable only to his party’s electorate in Republican primaries. That phenomenon encouraged the Republican Party’s fealty to President Trump as he pushed his baseless claims of election fraud. That unwavering loyalty was evident on Jan. 6, when Mr. Jordan and 138 other House Republicans voted against certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential election. Their decision, just hours after a violent mob had stormed the Capitol, has repelled many of the party’s corporate benefactors, exposed a fissure with the Senate Republican leadership and tarred an element of the party as insurrectionists. But while Mr. Trump faces an impeachment trial and potential criminal charges for his role in inciting the rioting, it is unlikely that Mr. Jordan and his compatriots will face any reckoning at the ballot box.

Full Article: How Gerrymandering Will Protect Republicans Who Challenged the Election – The New York Times

Arizona: Maricopa County to turn over election ballot info to lawmakers | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

Facing a contempt vote in the Senate and a possible adverse court ruling, Senate President Karen Fann said Maricopa County supervisors agreed Wednesday to give lawmakers pretty much everything they are demanding in election materials and access to voting equipment. Fann said the deal guarantees that the Senate Judiciary Committee will get copies of every ballot cast in the Nov. 3 general election. While the subpoena asked for the original ballots, Fann told Capitol Media Services this will suffice. “We don’t want to break any rules,” she said. Fann said the duplicates will allow for a full audit of the returns, comparing the duplicate paper ballots with the official machine tally. Potentially more significant, the deal, as outlined by Fann, gives the Senate access to the equipment used by Maricopa County to perform a “logic and accuracy” test on a random sample of tabulation machines as well as a review of the “source codes.” And there will be access to desktop servers and routers as needed by an auditor. In a prepared statement, Jack Sellers, who chairs the supervisors, did not dispute the points made by Fann. But he said the county and the Senate are “working toward an agreement which delivers some of the requested documents and information while protecting voter privacy and the integrity of election equiptment.”

Full Article: Maricopa County to turn over election ballot info to Arizona lawmakers | Local news | tucson.com

Georgia: ‘Kraken’ back on its leash: Election lawsuit withdrawn | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The “kraken” is back on its leash and licking its wounds. After vowing to “unleash the kraken” — a mythical beast — on alleged election fraud and to overturn the presidential election in Georgia, attorney Sidney Powell quietly withdrew the lawsuit Tuesday. The move came a day before Joe Biden will be sworn in as the nation’s next president. Powell, once a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team, filed the lawsuit in November in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. Like other lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results, Powell’s made numerous unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud. Among other things, she falsely claimed the company that provided Georgia’s new election equipment has ties to Venezuela and could have altered results. Like the others, Powell’s lawsuit went nowhere in court. In December a U.S. district judge dismissed the case. She then appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But the case ran into more trouble. Last week the appeals court notified Powell that she had not been admitted to practice law in the 11th Circuit. The court told Powell that, unless she applied to be admitted, her motions would be stricken and treated as if they had never been filed. Powell voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit Tuesday. But it’s not the end of her legal issues. Earlier this month, Dominion Voting Systems, the company that provided Georgia’s machines, filed a lawsuit against Powell in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The lawsuit says Powell’s “viral disinformation campaign” has harmed its business. Dominion is seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.

Full Article: ‘Kraken’ back on its leash: Georgia election lawsuit withdrawn

Georgia: Audit of Senate run-off votes finds similar results in test of voting system | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

One county’s audit of Georgia’s voting system found just a five-vote difference between machine and hand totals in one of this month’s U.S. Senate runoff elections, according to findings released Thursday. The manual review of 43,000 ballots cast in Bartow County should give voters confidence in the outcome of the race between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican David Perdue, county Elections Supervisor Joseph Kirk said. “We know every voter’s vote was accurately counted in Bartow County because we checked — one ballot at a time,” Kirk wrote in an audit report. “Now that every vote cast in the state is recorded on a paper ballot, we can give our communities certainty and confidence that their votes were accurately recorded.” Kirk conducted his county’s audit the same way as a statewide review of the presidential election in November. After the Senate runoffs, which Ossoff won across Georgia by 1.2%, Kirk decided to do another hand tally to counter “a mountain of misinformation” about the state’s election equipment manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. Twenty-four workers conducted the audit over 9 1/2 hours last week, at a cost to the county of about $3,000. The audit found a total of 89 votes that were different from the original count, usually caused by human errors when sorting ballots into piles of 10 each. Because those votes were distributed among both candidates, the overall count was only five votes off from official results, with Ossoff losing four votes and Perdue gaining one. The audit doesn’t change the official results in Bartow, a mostly Republican county northwest of Atlanta where Perdue received 32,239 votes to Ossoff’s 10,735.

Full Article: Georgia county’s election audit validated results of Georgia Senate runoff race

Hawaii: Commission sees election success in all-mail balloting | Nancy Cook Lauer/West Hawaii Today

Despite a 2020 general election when some Oahu polls closed almost four hours late and some Hilo voters spent three hours in line, the state Elections Commission is sending the Legislature a rosy review in its required biennial evaluation of the conduct of the election. At a meeting Thursday via Zoom, the commission, already 20 days late in submitting its report, voted to send a report that doesn’t include concerns raised by citizens and groups submitting comments at a meeting last month. The report, under state law, is required to include findings and recommendations from the biennial evaluation. “I’d like to get this report in,” said Chairman Scotty Anderson. “Yeah, we had a few problems, but it was mostly a smooth election.” Commissioner Lillian Koller pushed for a delay until comments could be evaluated and included. “I don’t see any way we as a commission can conclude our report to the Legislature without including the concerns that were raised,” Koller said. “The purpose in our report to the Legislature is not to gush with enthusiasm over a job well done. Our job is to identify what concerns have been expressed within our jurisdiction so the Legislature can take action.”

Full Article: Commission sees election success in all-mail balloting | West Hawaii Today

Indiana lawmakers call for commission on election integrity | Indiana | Margaret Menge/The Center Square

Two Indiana legislators have introduced a bill calling for the formation of a Commission on Election Integrity that would review the security of all voting machines used in the state and consider whether election laws should be changed to increase confidence in the vote. Reps. Curt Nisly, R-Milford, and John Jacob, R-Indianapolis, introduced the bill in the Indiana House of Representatives to form a nine-person bipartisan commission to make recommendations dealing with voting machines, the handling of voter data, voter rolls and relationships between election officials and voting machine vendors. The commission would be tasked with finding outside experts to assess the security of all voting machines and also look at whether absentee voting laws should be tightened, with fewer reasons for voting absentee allowed and early voting possibly curbed. Other provisions of the bill include having the commission look at requiring that any absentee, provisional and military ballots that are not counted in the presence of observers from both political parties and all candidates be excluded from vote totals, and requiring that counties do risk-limiting audits before certification of an election, with paper ballots hand-counted in at least 10% of precincts, as a check against the machine totals. Unlike some other states, Indiana doesn’t currently require risk-limiting audits. County clerks may order hand recounts when questions arise, but in most elections they rely solely on machine tallies. Voting systems certified for use in the state include those made by: Dominion, ES&S, Hart InterCivic, MicroVote and Unisyn. The machines are tested and recommended for certification by VSTOP, the Voting Systems Technical Oversight Program at Ball State University, run by a computer science professor and a criminal justice professor.

Full Article: Indiana lawmakers call for commission on election integrity | Indiana | thecentersquare.com

Iowa: Miller-Meeks Files Motion To Dismiss Hart’s Election Challenge Before U.S. House | Kate Payne/Iowa Public Radio

Republican Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks filed a motion Thursday asking the U.S. House to dismiss a challenge brought by her opponent, former Democratic state Sen. Rita Hart, who is disputing her six-vote margin in the November election. Miller-Meeks’ legal team argues the contest should be dismissed because Hart didn’t first make her case in state court.Miller-Meeks’ filing Thursday marks the next step in an appeals process before the Committee on House Administration, which will determine whether to dismiss the case or allow it to proceed. Ultimately, following a recommendation the committee, the full House could decide by simple majority vote who should have the seat. Miller-Meeks has labeled Hart’s challenge before the Democratically-controlled chamber as a “political” process, rather than a legal one. In November, state officials certified Miller-Meeks as the winner, following a districtwide recount requested by Hart. The final official tally of votes was 196,964 to 196,958, making the contest the closest federal race in the country during the 2020 cycle. In the motion filed Thursday, Miller-Meeks’ legal team argues that “more than a century” of precedent has established that contestants should exhaust all legal remedies at the state level before appealing to Congress. “Time and time again they have dismissed election contests where the contestant has failed to take advantage of mechanisms under state law to raise these issues,” said Alan Ostergren, an attorney for Miller-Meeks and a former Muscatine County Attorney. “That is by far the most important point that we raise in our motion, that because Rita Hart did not take advantage of the provisions available to her under Iowa law, that…the contest must be dismissed.”

Full Article: Miller-Meeks Files Motion To Dismiss Hart’s Election Challenge Before U.S. House | Iowa Public Radio

Michigan Governor appoints new member to elections board after GOP wanted replacement | Dave Boucher/Detroit Free Press

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has appointed a new Republican to a key state elections panel after the state party sought to replace a member who voted in favor of certifying the state’s election results. Tony Daunt will replace Aaron Van Langevelde on the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, Whitmer said in an announcement Tuesday morning. Daunt is the executive director of the Michigan Freedom Fund, a conservative organization with ties to the DeVos family that organized some of the protests in the spring where marchers objected to the governor’s COVID-19 executive orders. He previously worked for Gov. Rick Snyder and the Michigan Republican Party.  “I appreciate the nomination from (Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox) and the appointment by Governor Whitmer,” Daunt said in a statement issued through the fund. “The Board of State Canvassers requires leaders willing to follow the rule of law and to provide honest leadership, and I am honored to be entrusted with this position. Aaron Van Langevelde served with honor and integrity, and the entire state owes him a debt of gratitude. Our republic depends on fair and secure elections and I’m committed to upholding those values.”

Full Article: Tony Daunt appointed to Michigan Board of State Canvassers

Minnesota Democrats unveil bill to expand voter access | Mohamed Ibrahim/Associated Press

Minnesota Democrats are aiming to expand election protections and access to the ballot box after an election that featured disinformation and doubt about the results. The bill, with voting rights lawyer and freshman Democrat Rep. Emma Greenman of Minneapolis as chief author, has a host of measures aimed at increasing voter access. The bill includes restoring the right to vote to convicted felons after being released from prison, mailing absentee ballots to voters and boosting the number of ballot drop boxes statewide, among other measures. The legislation would protect election officials from harassment and intimidation, and increase transparency in campaign spending by requiring outside groups to disclose donors. It would also permanently remove the requirement that mail-in ballots be signed by a witness — a measure approved by a judge as part of an agreement last year by Secretary of State Steve Simon to resolve a lawsuit brought by citizens concerned about voting during the pandemic. The legislation has no Republican co-authors; A GOP majority in the Senate lists election integrity — not access — as a priority this legislative session. Those efforts include a bill that would require voters to provide photo identification to register to vote and cast a ballot while reinstating the witness requirement. The bill would establish a free voter identification card for those who lack government-issued photo ID.

Full Article: Minnesota Democrats unveil bill to expand voter access – StarTribune.com

New York: Judge orders Oneida County to review 1,000+ rejected ballots in Brindisi-Tenney race | Patrick Lohmann/Syracuse Post-Standard

State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte has ordered the Oneida County Board of Elections to go through more than 1,000 ballots in the 22nd Congressional District race, more than 70 days after the election was held. It’s the latest turn and the latest delay in the last undecided Congressional race in the country. It’s an incredibly close race: Republican Claudia Tenney is ahead of Democrat Anthony Brindisi by 29 votes of 311,695 votes cast for the two candidates. It comes after the discovery two weeks ago that Oneida County’s elections board failed to process 2,418 voter registration forms from voters who applied on time via the Department of Motor Vehicles. Those voters would have been told they weren’t registered when they arrived at the polling place. Hundreds of them likely walked away without voting, and many others went on to file affidavit ballots that were also not counted. There are 1,028 rejected affidavit ballots in Oneida County that could be from voters who applied on time via the DMV, according to DelConte’s ruling. He’s ordered the county elections staff to review all of them to determine how many fit in that category.

Full Article: Judge orders Oneida County to review 1,000+ rejected ballots in Brindisi-Tenney race – syracuse.com

Pennsylvania Republicans spent $1 million in tax dollars on 2020 election lawsuits to suppress voters | Charles Davis/Business Insider

Pennsylvania Republicans spent more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars on litigation aimed at making it more difficult to vote ahead of the 2020 election, according to documents obtained by the news organization PA Spotlight. Over $650,000 went to the same law firm that tried and failed to place Kanye West on the ballot in another swing state. In a post on Thursday, PA Spotlight revealed that the Pennsylvania Senate Republican Caucus, which controls the commonwealth’s upper chamber, spent a total of $1,042,200 in the runup to November trying to restrict methods of voting. In particular, the state GOP sought to overturn key provisions of Act 77, a law passed in 2019 – with unanimous support from Senate Republicans – that allowed voters to request mail-in ballots for any reason. At the time, the Pennsylvania state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman called the legislation “the most historic reform bill we’ve done.” But as time went on, Republicans began to see the measure as a boon to their political opponents, with Democratic voters far more likely to vote by mail during the pandemic. The Senate GOP also sought to prevent those ballots from being placed in secure drop boxes and to throw out millions of mail-in votes altogether, an effort rejected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. According to PA Spotlight, money on such litigation went to two firms, the bulk of it going to Holtzman, Vogel, Josefiak, and Torchinksy, founded by a former lawyer for the Republican National Committee. That firm also tried to place Kanye West on the ballot in Wisconsin. Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxell, and Hippell also received just under $385,000 in tax collars for election work in Pennsylvania. Lawrence Tabas, chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, is a partner at the firm, PA Spotlight reported.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Republicans spent $1 million in tax dollars on 2020 election lawsuits to suppress voters | Business Insider India