National: Spy chief sees 2020 election security as ‘number one goal’ | Lauren C. Williams/FCW

One of America’s top spies said that checking foreign interference in the November vote is a primary concern. “Our number one goal, our number one objective at the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command — a safe, secure and legitimate 2020 elections,” said Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads both agencies, during an Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) virtual event on July 20. Nakasone said the goal is to build on lessons learned from 2018 midterm elections for 2020 so the U.S. will, “know our adversaries better than they know themselves.” Nakasone said that to shore up election security efforts, NSA and CyberCom will look to “broaden partnerships” with academia, which have ongoing research efforts that look at social media and influence operations, and respond accordingly when adversaries attempt to interfere with elections. “2018 was a really remarkable year because at that point we had well-trained and well-led forces at U.S. Cyber Command and NSA come together with the right authorities and policies and also match with this idea of having an organizational construct,” Nakasone said.

National: Increase in mail-in ballots due to COVID has created greater election integrity, government official says | Catherine Sanz/ABC

The integrity of the 2020 election may be improved as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a leading cybersecurity expert. Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said Friday an increased reliance on mail-in and absentee ballots, which have a paper record associated with them, may be a blessing in disguise. Paper records, he said, are critical to election security because they lead to auditability. “Auditability is a key element of being able to determine the integrity of a vote,” Krebs said. “To roll it back, make sure you got the right results, and, more than anything proving, through a post-election audit process, that the votes cast are counted as cast.” Krebs spoke as part of an online forum on election security hosted by the Brookings Institution, a think-tank based in Washington, D.C. He said that in the 2016 election, around 82% of votes cast had a paper record associated with them. Looking ahead to Nov. 4, he said that figure may be over 92% due to the expected increase in COVID-related absentee ballots. “Again, the ability to conduct post-election audits is critical to establishing the integrity of the election,” he added.

National: The Essential and Enduring Strength of John Lewis | Jelani Cobb/The New Yorker

By the time John Lewis made his exit from this realm, on Friday, his life had been bound so tightly and for so long to the mythos of the movement for democracy in America that it was difficult to separate him from it. For this reason, a friend who texted me “John Lewis is gone, what are we going to do now?” was not only reacting to grief but expressing a real and common sentiment. Lewis, who spoke at the March on Washington, chaired the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and served seventeen terms in Congress, representing Georgia’s Fifth District, succumbed to pancreatic cancer, a ruthless and efficient plague whose diagnosis is fatal around ninety-five per cent of the time. When he revealed his condition, last December, hope persisted despite those odds, in part because, for many people, the thought of confronting the reactionary, racist, and antidemocratic realities of the Trump era without one of the nation’s most potent symbols of decency was too difficult to countenance. Those contrasts were not merely hypothetical. In 2017, when President Trump announced that he would attend the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Lewis said that he would not. The then White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, seemed to accuse Lewis of failing to show proper respect for the movement. Months earlier, Trump had attacked the Fifth District as “crime-infested” and suggested that the blame lay with Lewis. I wrote at the time that Trump’s disdain for Lewis betrayed a theme: having never grasped the concept of sacrifice, the President is contemptuous of people whose lives have been defined by it. No criticism that Lewis issued about Trump was as strong an indictment as the simple facts of his life: born to Alabama sharecroppers, stalwart of SNCC, leader, exemplar of humility.

National: John Lewis, front-line civil rights leader and eminence of Capitol Hill, dies at 80 | Laurence I. Barrett/The Washington Post

John Lewis, a civil rights leader who preached nonviolence while enduring beatings and jailings during seminal front-line confrontations of the 1960s and later spent more than three decades in Congress defending the crucial gains he had helped achieve for people of color, has died. He was 80. His death was announced in statements from his family and from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Advisers to senior Democratic leaders confirmed that he died July 17, but other details were not immediately available. Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, announced his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer on Dec. 29 and said he planned to continue working amid treatment. “I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life,” he said in a statement. “I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now.” His last public appearance came at Black Lives Matter Plaza with D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on June 7, two days after taping a virtual town hall online with former president Barack Obama. While Mr. Lewis was not a policy maven as a lawmaker, he served the role of conscience of the Democratic caucus on many matters. His reputation as keeper of the 1960s flame defined his career in Congress. When President George H.W. Bush vetoed a bill easing requirements to bring employment discrimination suits in 1990, Mr. Lewis rallied support for its revival. It became law as the Civil Rights Act of 1991. It took a dozen years, but in 2003 he won authorization for construction of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall.

Connecticut: Judge Refuses to Block Mailing of Absentee Ballots | Christine Stuart/Courthouse News

Four Republicans running for Congress chose the wrong venue to challenge Connecticut’s mailing of absentee ballots to all eligible voters, the chief of the state Supreme Court ruled Monday. While the candidates styled their complaint as an original jurisdiction proceeding in the state Supreme Court, counsel for the state emphasized in a motion to dismiss that the law permitting such challenges “applies only to elections, not primaries.” Chief Justice Richard Robinson tossed the case Monday afternoon shortly after holding remote arguments on the motion. With the Connecticut primary scheduled for Aug. 11, Secretary of State Denise Merrill is set to mail the absentee ballots on Tuesday, having already mailed applications to all 1.25 million of Connecticut’s registered voters. In a 1-page order, the chief wrote that an original proceeding under state law 9-323 “is not a proper vehicle to challenge a ruling of an election official with respect to a primary.”

District of Columbia: Elections Board Signs Off On Plan To Mail Ballots To Every Registered Voter For November Election | Martin Austermuhle/DCist

The D.C. Board of Elections has signed off on a plan to mail every registered voter in the city a ballot ahead of the November election. The three-person board unanimously approved the plan on Friday afternoon, responding to criticism over flaws in the execution of the June primary, when voters were asked to request absentee ballots. The plan for November also includes doubling the number of vote centers for early and day-of voting, from 20 during the primary to 40 for the general, and the placement of ballot drop-boxes across the city. Election officials say they have already started laying the groundwork for a much more robust vote-by-mail election in November. Instead of mailing and receiving ballots as it did for the June primary, the elections board expects to contract the massive logistical operation out to a dedicated mail house, as most states that run vote-by-mail already do. That would also improve the ability of voters to track ballots as they are mailed out and returned, one area where the board itself had significant problems during the June primary.

Florida: Vote-by-mail legal battle reaches settlement | Tampa Bay Times

On the eve of a trial slated to begin Monday, lawyers representing the state and plaintiffs in a legal battle over Florida’s vote-by-mail procedures have reached a settlement. Priorities USA, Dream Defenders and other plaintiffs have been seeking to expand the state’s vote-by-mail process, arguing that the COVID-19 pandemic will result in a record number of Floridians casting ballots from home to reduce chances of being infected with the highly contagious coronavirus. Among other things, the plaintiffs asked to extend a deadline for mail-in ballots to be returned. They also wanted free postage for the ballots and challenged a provision in Florida law restricting paid workers from collecting mail-in ballots. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle had set aside two weeks for a trial scheduled to start Monday. But on Sunday, plaintiffs and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration notified the court that they had reached a settlement.

Iowa: Secretary of State will mail ballot request forms ahead of November election | Stephen Gruber-Miller/Des Moines Register

Secretary of State Paul Pate will mail an absentee ballot request form to all active registered Iowa voters before the November general election after a panel of Iowa lawmakers granted his request to do so on Friday. Before Iowa’s June 2 primary, Pate, a Republican, mailed absentee ballot request forms to the state’s roughly 2 million registered voters. His actions were credited with contributing to Iowa’s record turnout in that election, when more than 531,000 Iowans cast ballots in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly 80% of Iowans who voted in the primary did so by mail. But last month, the Republican-controlled Iowa Legislature passed a law preventing him from doing the same thing in November without first getting approval from the Legislative Council. When the council, a 24-member body of legislative leaders that is controlled by Republicans, met Friday, it voted unanimously to grant Pate’s request. “I want Iowa voters and poll workers to be safe during this pandemic while we conduct a clean, fair and secure election. After consulting with all 99 county auditors, I believe the best way to accomplish that goal is by mailing an absentee ballot request form to every active registered voter in the state,” Pate said in a statement, noting that in-person voting will still be available.

Maryland: Governor defends Election Day plan against push for all mail-in voting | Ovetta Wiggins/The Washington Post

Gov. Larry Hogan on Monday defended his decision to hold a traditional election in November, despite growing concerns from voting rights advocates and election officials about the impact of his choice amid a global pandemic. Hogan (R) said he opted for a “normal” election instead of a “vote by mail only” because of the chaos that occurred during the June 2 primary, when the state mailed ballots to every voter and opened only a few polling sites in each jurisdiction. Far more voters than expected opted to cast their ballots in person, leading to huge lines and hours-long waits in many places. “I’m encouraging everyone to vote by mail instead of vote by mail only, which is what some of our Democratic colleagues are pushing for,” Hogan said during an appearance on the television show “The View,” where he explained his decision to open all polling sites in the state and mail absentee-ballot applications to every voter, rather than the ballots themselves. “In the primary we had, the State Board of Elections screwed up getting ballots out,” Hogan said. “They mailed the wrong ballots. They mailed Spanish ballots to English speakers. They sent things to the wrong districts. They got them out too late.” Democratic elected officials are calling on Hogan to mail ballots to every voter and offer limited in-person voting on Election Day, with more polling sites available than during the primary. Voting rights advocates have increasingly criticized Hogan’s decision not to limit polling sites or mail ballots to the entire electorate. Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) has urged Hogan to reverse his order, saying it could have “devastating consequences.”

Pennsylvania: Federal judge agrees to expedite Trump campaign’s lawsuit over vote-by-mail | Emily Previti/PA Post

A federal judge has agreed to fast track the lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s election campaign against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the commonwealth’s 67 county election boards over vote-by-mail procedures. U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan limited the scope of discovery, however, to the information counties and the Department of State already have assembled for a report on the June 2 primary that’s due to be submitted by August 1 to the state legislature. In his order issued Friday, Ranjan wrote he’s attempting to balance the need to expedite the case given that the election is only 15 weeks away with counties’ “competing obligations to administer the upcoming general election.” The judge scheduled arguments to begin Tuesday, Sept. 22 in Pittsburgh in the order; however, Ranjan will still consider motions to dismiss due next week.

Texas: In-person voting rules during pandemic challenged in lawsuit | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune

Opening a new front in the legal wars over voting during the coronavirus pandemic, two civil rights organizations and two Texas voters argue that the state’s rules for in-person voting won’t work this year and are asking a federal judge to require substantial changes. In a wide-ranging federal lawsuit filed Thursday in San Antonio, Mi Familia Vota, the Texas NAACP and the voters claim the state’s current polling place procedures — including rules for early voting, the likelihood of long lines and Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to not require voters to wear masks — place an unconstitutional burden on voters while the virus remains in circulation. That burden will be particularly high for Black and Latino voters whose communities have been disproportionately affected by the virus, the lawsuit argues. “The Texas 2020 elections will put voters at risk of transmitting or being infected with the coronavirus. But the risk will not be shared equally,” the lawsuit reads. “Some voters will be able to vote easily by mail. Others will not. Some will have easy access to early voting locations. Others will not. “And some will be able to vote quickly on Election Day by a hand-marked paper ballot handled by a single poll worker, or on a properly disinfected machine. Others will have to wait for hours at understaffed locations, without the option to vote on a hand-marked paper ballot, forced to vote on a machine used by dozens or hundreds of voters, which should, but might not, be properly disinfected after each use, much less protected from aerosolized particles from the last voter’s breathing in the same space.”

Vermont: Ballots to be shipped to voters to promote mail-in voting | Wilson Ring/Associated Press

The state of Vermont is going to send ballots to all active registered voters as a way to encourage voting in the November election while keeping people safe from the coronavirus pandemic, Vermont’s top election official said Monday. Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos on Monday issued the formal rules the state will follow when voting in the 2020 General Election. Condos said voting by mail is simple, safe, and secure. “When it comes to something as important as our elections, we must always plan for the worst,” Condos said. “Our state and national health experts have been very clear: There is no way to predict the status of the virus in November or in the weeks and months between now and election day.” The 2020 Statewide Elections Directive is a result of laws passed by the Legislature this year that allows mail-in voting during the November election as a way to encourage voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the directive, mail-in ballots will be sent to every active registered voter ahead of the election. Active registered voters are those who have not been issued a challenge by their local election board. Voters can return the ballot by mail, bring it to their town or city clerks, or cast that ballot at the polls on Election Day.

North Macedonia: Who hacked the website of North Macedonia’s state election commission on election day? | Valentina Dimitrievska/bne IntelliNews

The website of North Macedonia’s State Election Commission (SEC), or to be more exact the site’s election section, was targeted by hackers immediately after polls closed in the snap general election on July 15, leaving the question of who stands behind the attack? Even though the elections passed in a free and democratic manner and were among the most peaceful in the country so far, the denial-of-service (DDoS) attack left a big stain on the election — the first since the country changed its name to North Macedonia and become a Nato member. The election ended with a narrow lead for the ruling Social Democrats (SDSM) ahead of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE. Some VMRO-DPMNE supporters have already indicated they will not accept a new SDSM-led government. The SEC was hacked immediately after voting ended at 9pm on Wednesday. The election section then recovered for few minutes but the results disappeared again, preventing journalists and other interested people from monitoring the election results, which were announced with a huge delay a day after the election. At the same time as the SEC site was brought down, the local news aggregator Time.mk was also hacked, but it recovered more quickly. “We are under DDoS attack,” owner of Time.mk, Igor Trajkovski, said in a tweet at the time of the cyber attack. It was reported that Time.mk was attacked with more than 20mn IP addresses on July 15.

United Kingdom: ‘No One’ Protected British Democracy From Russia, U.K. Report Concludes | tephen Castle and Mark Landler/The New York Times

Russia has weaponized information as part of a broad and long-running effort to interfere in the British political system and sow discord, and those efforts were widely ignored by successive British governments, according to a long-awaited report released on Tuesday by the British Parliament. While the report examined Russia’s possible role in fomenting conflict surrounding some of the United Kingdom’s most divisive political battles in recent years — including the 2016 Brexit referendum that rejected membership of European Union and a 2014 referendum in which Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom — it did not draw conclusions on the success of those efforts. Instead, the authors of the report told British lawmakers that they could not speak to the effectiveness of the Russian influence campaign because the government had failed to even be alert to the threat despite years of mounting evidence. It raised a fundamental question: Who is protecting the country’s democratic system? “No one is,” was the answer given by the authors. “The government here has let us down,” Kevan Jones, a member of Parliament who served on the intelligence committee that released the report, said at a news conference.

National: How the Twitter Hack Revealed a Risky 2020 Election System | David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Over the past year government officials have raced to help states replace voting machines that leave no paper trail, and to harden vulnerable online voter registration systems that many fear Russia, or others, could hijack to trigger chaos on Election Day. But this week, the country got a startling vision of other perils in political disinformation — and how many other ways there may be to manipulate turnout, if not votes. The breach by a hacker or hackers who bored into the command center of Twitter on Wednesday — seizing control of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s and Barack Obama’s blue-checked accounts, among many others — served as a warning that some of the most critical infrastructure that could influence the election is not in the hands of government experts, and is far less protected than anyone assumed even a day ago. The hackers probably did the nation a favor. With a crude scheme to deceive users into thinking that Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama were asking them for donations in Bitcoin — which sent more than $120,000 flowing into their cryptocurrency wallets — they revealed how simple it may be to imitate the powerful and the trusted. Had saboteurs infiltrated Twitter on Nov. 3 instead of in the middle of July, with the goal of upending the election, the political fallout could have been quite different. False warnings of a coronavirus outbreak in key precincts in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania could have untold impact on a close vote in a battleground state. Deceptive tweets from political party accounts saying polling places were closed could sow confusion.

Editorials: America has to count on more than prayer in the case of close election | Edward Foley/The Hill

Many of us remember the 2000 election and the time of doubt between November and the concession of Al Gore after his Supreme Court defeat in December. None of us were alive for the even more controversial 1876 election. The results were unresolved for months until Congress declared Rutherford Hayes the winner only days before the inauguration. We all hope this year ends up nothing like either of those precedents. But there is an increasing chance that the results of the 2020 election could remain uncertain for weeks because of delays in counting mailed ballots in the midst of the coronavirus. What can our leaders in the government do now to avoid a bad repeat of those calamitous precedents? One answer is to say the prayer of election administrators that the results are a landslide. If the early returns are so lopsided that uncounted ballots will not make a difference in the end, the networks may be able to call an unofficial winner that night. However, realism forces us to recognize that the race could be close enough with the volume of uncounted ballots to prevent a typical Election Day call, with the race going into overtime. At that point the prayer for a landslide fails. What happens then? In this regard, it is worth comparing the 1884 election and 1916 election, on the one hand, with the 1876 election and 2000 election, on the other. No one thinks of 1884 and 1916 as years when the election for president was disputed, and that is the critical point. In both years, however, the results remained unsettled for two weeks, yet the losing side ultimately accepted the final count to be the official choice of the people.

National: Tens of thousands of mail ballots have been tossed out in this year’s primaries. What will happen in November? | lise Viebeck and Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post

More than 18,500 Floridians’ ballots were not counted during the March presidential primary after many arrived by mail after the deadline. In Nevada, about 6,700 ballots were rejected in June because election officials could not verify voters’ signatures. And during Pennsylvania’s primary last month, only state and court orders prevented tens of thousands of late-returned ballots from being disqualified. As a resurgence in coronavirus cases portends another possible flood of absentee voting this fall, the issue of rejected ballots has emerged as a serious concern around the country, including in presidential battleground states and those with races that will decide control of the House and Senate. While the number of rejected ballots in Florida and Nevada represents a fraction of those cast in their primaries, the unprecedented shift toward absentee voting during the coronavirus pandemic could make such margins potentially significant in the fall. In 2016, roughly 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin helped Donald Trump win the White House. The rejection of ballots because of mail delays, signature match problems and errors in completing and sealing the forms could end up disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of people, voting rights advocates warn. It could also fuel doubts about the integrity of the 2020 vote, which Trump has already claimed without evidence will be “the greatest Rigged Election in history.” The growing risks has party officials and voting rights activists on high alert, raising the stakes for dozens of ongoing legal battles over absentee voting rules and placing additional pressure on election officials, whose staffs and budgets are already stretched thin by the demands of administering the vote during a pandemic.

National: Congress To Hold Hearing On Remote Voting Technology, Blockchain Not Invited | Jason Brett/Forbes

On Friday, the House of Representatives will hold a virtual hearing titled, “Exploring the Feasibility and Security of Technology To Conduct Remote Voting In The House.” Unlike the discussion for how Americans would vote anonymously in a primary or general election, this hearing narrowly discusses how our elected representatives can safely vote on legislative bills from a location other than our nation’s Capitol. On May 15th, the House of Representatives broke with a tradition held for 231 years since 1789, when to cast a vote or fully participate in a hearing, lawmakers were required to be in person. The current notion of proxy voting, where if I lived in and represented Hawaii and you were representing Virginia, I could entrust you to vote for me so as not to make the long and less socially-distance choice of travel by plane. However, the House now explores taking this concept one step further, and while for many corporations the idea of remote working, when possible, is considered a given based on the current state of affairs in our country, the fully remote option clashes against the long-standing traditions of what it means to represent our country.

National: DNC’s email voting plan limits hacking risk but can’t eliminate it | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The Democratic National Committee’s virtual convention next month will mark a major test for whether Internet-based voting can be done safely and securely. The DNC, which is moving its convention online because of the coronavirus pandemic, released a plan Friday for delegates to vote by email for the Democratic presidential nominee and planks in the party’s platform. Internet voting presents far fewer risks in this case than it would during a regular election because delegates’ ballots aren’t secret. That means they can verify their votes weren’t altered either by hackers or technological snafus and correct any errors after the fact. There’s also no drama about the outcome of the most important vote because former vice president Joe Biden has basically already secured the Democratic nomination. But it still presents numerous opportunities for hackers from Russia or elsewhere to disrupt the voting process, sow confusion about results or use disinformation operations to spread conspiracy theories or gin up hostilities between rival camps supporting Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). And any disruption is likely to spark painful memories of 2016 when information Russia hacked and leaked from the DNC helped wreak havoc on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That means the DNC must be hyper-prepared to knock back any allegations of digital interference or rapidly respond to attacks even as it runs a convention unlike any in history.

National: What It’s Been Like to Vote in 2020 So Far | Evan Nicole Brown/The New York Times

Over the past five months, people have waited in all sorts of lines to vote: some bent around stuccoed store corners, some curving through city parks, others spaced six feet apart. On Tuesday, voters in Alabama, Texas and Maine went to the polls in primary and runoff contests for one of the final election days before Election Day on Nov. 3. The coronavirus crisis has upended every aspect of life in 2020, including how people vote. More than a dozen states postponed elections, some more than once, as they scrambled to figure out how to safely conduct voting in the midst of a pandemic. But even before the virus took hold in the United States, caucuses didn’t go according to plan, and high turnout meant long lines in some states on Super Tuesday. How much of a hassle it is to vote is generally a matter of design, not accident, according to Carol Anderson, the author of “One Person, No Vote” and a professor of African-American studies at Emory University. “Long lines are deliberate, because they deal with the allocation of resources,” Professor Anderson said. She said it’s frustrating to see long lines reported in the news media as evidence of voter enthusiasm: “What they really show is government ineptness. And oftentimes a deliberate deployment of not enough resources in minority communities.” Here is a look at what it was like to vote in 2020.

National: As Trump and Biden battle, election officials are running out of time, money for November | Pat Beall, Catharina Felke and Elizabeth Mulvey/USA Today

Heading into Georgia’s primary June 9, McDuffie County Elections Director Phyllis Brooks had no choice but to assemble a last-minute crew to count votes. Two of her three staffers were out with COVID-19. She had more than 2,500 absentee ballots to tally by hand. Brooks brought in a handful of county employees and hired teenagers to do the counting. There’s no money left in her election office budget. Not for poll workers. Not for extra hands to count what is likely to be a record number of mail-in ballots. Not even for stamps to send out the absentee ballots they expect to need. Sixteen weeks before the presidential election, Brooks and hundreds of other cash-strapped elections supervisors across the nation are waiting to see how much state and federal money will come their way. Experts said the coronavirus pandemic tacked on hundreds of millions of dollars in unexpected costs to this year’s election, and there are clear signs that an emergency federal infusion of $400 million made in March will fall far short of what’s needed.

National: Scattered problems with mail-in ballots this year signal potential November challenges for Postal Service | Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post

Postal workers found three tubs of uncounted absentee ballots the day after the Wisconsin primary. Some Ohioans did not receive their ballots in time for the election because of mail delays. And in Dallas, absentee ballots some voters sent to the county were returned just days before Election Day, with no explanation. Problems caused by a spike in absentee voting during this year’s primaries are serving as potential warning signs for the U.S. Postal Service, which is bracing for an expected onslaught of mail-in ballots this fall as states and cities push alternatives to in-person voting because of the pandemic. The concern extends to local elections offices that may be unaccustomed to aspects of the mail, such as the time it takes for parcels to reach their destinations and how to design their ballots to meet postal standards. So the Postal Service is regularly sending advice and checklists to thousands of elections officials. Local elections offices are hiring temporary workers to process absentee ballots, and some local elections boards are adding options for voters to do curbside drop-offs of their mail ballots on Election Day. The Postal Service is also recommending that voters request their ballots at least 15 days before Election Day and mail their completed ballots at least one week before the due date.

Editorials: Connecticut’s upcoming primary election should be audited. Will it really be? | Luther Weeks/CT Mirror

After every general election and primary, Connecticut law requires a post-election audit. Such audits are intended to provide justified confidence in our elections, that errors were not made, and that machines have not been hacked. However, unless something is done, this year the audits will be by far the weakest, least credible since audits were initiated with the adoption of optical scanners in 2007. Reasonably, in the COVID emergency, Gov. Ned Lamont and Secretary of the State Merrill have provided the opportunity for everyone to vote by absentee ballot in the primary. It is likely the General Assembly will do the same for the general election. Unfortunately, this will exacerbate preexisting gaps in our post-election audits. Congress and voters are concerned with the potential for hacking by foreign governments and insiders, others do not trust the integrity of mail-in voting. The Federal Government has provided billions for protecting elections, with Connecticut spending millions of that Federal money on cyber security and absentee ballot mailings. In contrast, past audits have cost less than $100,000 in a presidential year and this year are on course to be halved in cost and effort for a second time. In 2007 the General Assembly passed post-election audits that mandated auditing the counts in 10% of our polling place voting machines. The audits have proven useful in providing overall confidence and in identifying some flaws in the operation of those machines, uncovering persistent errors by officials, rather than computer errors, and exposing gaps in ballot security.

Florida: Democrats Go to Court to Compel Supervisors of Elections to Retain Electronic Ballot Images | Mitch Perry/Spectrum News

A group of Florida Democrats filed a lawsuit earlier this month, claiming that the supervisors of elections who are destroying electronic ballot images from vote scanning machines are in violation of state and federal law. Election law requires that supervisors of elections retain paper ballots for at least 22 months after an election, but approximately 40 of the 67 counties are not retaining their electronic ballots, according to the suit, which was filed on July 1 in the Second Judicial Circuit in Leon County.  “It’s the redundancy. Instead of just one set of paper ballots, you have a set of paper ballots and you have the ballot images,” says attorney Chris Sautter, representing the group AUDIT Elections USA, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of a number of Florida Democrats. Digital vote scanners are in use throughout Florida as the mechanism by which voters cast ballots and the ballots are tabulated. These digital vote scanning systems replaced optical scanners over the course of the past decade. They function by capturing an electronic image of each vote on each ballot. As ballots are fed through digital scanners, the scanners automatically create an electronic image of each ballot that is automatically stored as an electronic file.  In the 2018 general election in Florida, there were approximately 3,000 so-called “lost votes.” Sautter claims that those votes would have been counted if the ballot images were preserved, and thus there would have been a more accurate account.

Georgia: Fulton County reverses course on emailed absentee ballot applications | Mark Niesse Ben Brasch/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Election officials in Fulton County on Tuesday resumed accepting absentee ballot requests submitted by email, backtracking from a decision to require absentee applications by mail, fax or in person. The county’s reversal came quickly after complaints that its refusal to process emailed ballot requests would reduce voting access and violate Georgia voting laws. Fulton, the most populous county in the state, initially rejected emailed absentee ballot requests following struggles to manage a flood of applications before the June 9 primary election. Many voters in Fulton said they never received their absentee ballots, forcing them to wait in line for hours to vote in person during the coronavirus pandemic. Voters who emailed absentee ballot requests Monday and part of Tuesday received a response from Fulton asking them to instead send paper applications by mail. The county on Tuesday restarted processing absentee ballot requests for the Aug. 11 runoff, with some limits meant to avoid problems that surfaced before the primary. Only one absentee ballot application may be attached to each email. Absentee ballot applications submitted by email must be less than 5 megabytes in size, legible and in pdf or jpg file format.

Maine: Visually impaired voters sue state over lack of accessible absentee ballots | Megan Gray/Portland Press Herald

A group of voters has sued the state and several municipalities, arguing that the state violated federal law by not providing an electronic alternative to paper ballots for people who are visually impaired. State officials encouraged voters to use absentee ballots during this week’s primary to minimize the risk of people gathering at polling places and spreading COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Every polling place in Maine has an accessible voting machine for people with disabilities, but paper ballots are the only option for most people who want to vote absentee. Four voters from different Maine communities filed the lawsuit in federal court in Bangor on Tuesday. Disability Rights Maine is representing the plaintiffs, each of whom requested an electronic ballot to vote absentee but were denied. The suit names Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap and municipal clerks in Portland, Augusta, Bangor and Winslow. While the state allows a voter to receive assistance in reading or marking their absentee ballots, the plaintiffs argue that option compromises their ability to vote independently and privately.

Maryland: Board of Elections searching for new ballot printing vendor for November elections after problems in primary | Emily Opilo/Baltimore Sun

The Maryland Board of Elections is searching for a new ballot printing vendor ahead of the November election after numerous printing and mailing mistakes were reported during the June primary. The request for proposals, released Wednesday, seeks a vendor willing to print ballots upon request from voters — complying with Gov. Larry Hogan’s order for a mostly in-person election — but also leaves the door open for a vote-by-mail election, requesting pricing to print ballots for all 4 million voters in the state. Maryland is preparing to hold a traditional election despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Republican governor issued his order last week, calling for all polling locations to be open statewide as well as early voting locations. Registered voters will be mailed an application for an absentee ballot, but ballots will not be mailed to every voter. The format is a departure from the mostly mail-in election Hogan ordered for the June primary in an effort to limit the transmission of the coronavirus. The pandemic has killed more than 3,000 Marylanders since the spring, and new cases have been increasing in the past week — 756 new cases were reported Wednesday, the biggest single day increase since early June. Ballots were mailed to all active eligible voters across the state ahead of the June primary, and the majority of voters made use of them. About 97% of voters returned their ballots via mail or placed them in drop boxes spread throughout the state.

Editorials: Why is Maryland’s governor making mail-in voting harder in November? | The Washington Post

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised voters last month that they should seek alternatives to casting ballots in person this November, becoming just one more in a parade of health and voting experts warning about the risks of treating the coming presidential election like a normal one. The warnings are as much for state leaders, who bear responsibility both to preserve public health and to enable voting, as they are for voters themselves. And after a mixed bag of covid-era primary elections over the past few months, there are many lessons from hard-won experiences in places such as Wisconsin, Georgia and the District. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) seems not to have learned them. He presided over a largely mail-in primary election in his state last month that saw strong turnout based on extremely high levels of absentee voting — but that also encountered some problems. Absentee ballots failed to reach everyone who wanted one, and polling place closures caused lines for those who sought to vote in person. So Mr. Hogan decided on Wednesday to reverse course and treat the November vote like a more routine election. His reaction may cause more problems than it solves.

Massachusetts: Galvin moving forward with sending vote-by-mail applications after funding dispute is resolved | Chris Van Buskirk/The Boston Globe

The state’s top elections official is moving forward with sending out vote-by-mail ballot applications after the governor’s office agreed to advance funds included in a COVID-19 supplemental budget that is nearing final approval in the Legislature. Both branches still need to take their final votes on the bill before sending the appropriations bill to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk, but a spokesperson for Secretary of State William Galvin’s office confirmed to the News Service Tuesday that the administration provided funds and the secretary’s office spent them. The provision of the funds appears to have ended a week-long dispute over whether the secretary’s office could use federal funds through the CARES Act to cover postage costs associated with the massive mailing. “The mailing is in process now,” the spokesperson said when asked about when the applications would go out. Election reform advocates filed a lawsuit Monday in an attempt to force the secretary of state to comply with a July 15 deadline to send applications for mail-in primary ballots outlined in a new state law. Galvin previously said he could not send out the applications until the Legislature provided funding for postage and advocates pointed to nearly $8.2 million in CARES Act funding set aside for COVID-19 election-related costs.

Michigan: Court denies Michigan absentee ballots that come after election | David Eggert/Associated Press

The Michigan appeals court denied a request to require the counting of absentee ballots received after the time polls close on Election Day, ruling that the battleground state’s deadline remains intact despite voters’ approval of a constitutional amendment that expanded mail-in voting. The court, in a 2-1 decision released Wednesday, said it is up to lawmakers to change the deadline that has been in place for at least 91 years. The League of Women Voters of Michigan and three voters sued in May, seeking a declaration that absentee ballots be counted as long as they are mailed on or before Election Day and are received within six days of the election. The plaintiffs, who will appeal to the state Supreme Court, pointed to voters’ new constitutional rights to cast an absentee ballot without giving a reason 40 days before an election and to do it in person or by mail. They also noted fears of visiting polling places during the coronavirus pandemic. “We follow the view that courts should typically defer to the Legislature in making policy decisions,” Judge David Sawyer wrote, adding that organizers of the ballot drive did not include a deadline in the initiative.