Georgia: As Tensions Among Republicans Mount, Recount Proceeds Smoothly | Richard Fausset/The New York Times

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, on Monday accused fellow Republicans of trying to undermine the legitimacy of the state’s election in an effort to swing the results to President Trump, who narrowly lost the state to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and later demanded the hand recount. Election officials in Georgia also announced Monday evening that they had discovered 2,600 ballots in Floyd County that had not been previously reported to the state, a notable but overall minor hiccup in what they otherwise described as a smooth recounting of the nearly five million ballots cast by Georgia voters during the presidential election. The counting is expected to wrap up this week, and elections officials have reported few problems aside from the error in Floyd County, which is located in northwestern Georgia and voted heavily for Mr. Trump. Democrats said the recount had so far resulted in no substantive changes, at least none that would affect the lead currently enjoyed by Mr. Biden. “The Floyd County situation was unfortunate,” said Gabriel Sterling, an official with the office of Georgia’s secretary of state. However, he added, “The majority of the counties right now are finding zero deviations from the original number of ballots.”

Full Article: As Tensions Among Republicans Mount, Georgia’s Recount Proceeds Smoothly - The New York Times

Michigan Court of Appeals rejects appeal in lawsuit seeking to delay Wayne County election certification | Clara Hendrickson/Detroit Free Press

On Monday, the Michigan Court of Appeals rejected the request to reverse a Wayne County Circuit Court judge's Friday ruling allowing the Wayne County Board of Canvassers to complete the audit of the November election and certify the county's election results by the Nov. 17 deadline as required under state law. The lawsuit, filed by David Kallman on behalf of two Wayne County voters, asked the court to require an independent audit of the votes cast by Wayne County voters, separate from the one already being undertaken by the county's Board of Canvassers. The lawsuit also asked the court to void the Nov. 3 election and order a new one. President-elect Joe Biden won the county by a margin of nearly 323,000 votes. The lawsuit rested on allegations that local election officials oversaw a fraudulent election in Detroit, focusing their claims on events that took place at the TCF Center where Detroit's election workers counted absentee ballots cast by the city's voters. In his Friday opinion, Wayne County Circuit Chief Judge Timothy Kenny wrote that the account of Detroit's election process presented in the lawsuit was "incorrect and not credible" and denied the request to order an audit of the election.

Full Article: Court of Appeals won't delay Wayne County election certification

Michigan: When to Worry, When to Not, and the Takeaway from Antrim County | Cindy Cohn/Electronic Frontier Foundation

Everyone wants an election that is secure and reliable. With technology in the mix, making sure that the technology supports this is critical. EFF has long-warned against blindly adopting technologies that can be easily manipulated or fail without having systems in place to test, secure, and catch problems, including through risk limiting audits. At the same time, not every problem is worth pulling the fire alarm about—we have to look at the bigger story and context.  And we have to stand down when our worst fears turn out to be unfounded. A story out of Michigan last week in Antrim County provides a good opportunity to apply this. What seems to have happened is that a needed software update was not applied to a system that helps collect and report digital vote information—the county has paper ballots that are scanned—from the county. As a result, it appeared that 6,000 votes shifted from Republicans to Democrats in the unofficial reports. That is very worrisome. However, when the update was applied, the votes shifted back because the actual tabulation figures were correct. Of course there were paper ballots too, that would have been cross-checked under Michigan’s processes had this not been caught so early.  Our longtime election security friend and partner Professor Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan has a more technical rundown on his Twitter feed. This story should be one that takes what could have been a big worry and instead gives us cause for relief. Instead of just direct-recording electronic voting machines (DREs) and election systems that don’t have fail-safes for errors, Michigan had good error-checking, and the error was caught quickly. Even if it hadn’t been, it is very likely that it would have been caught later, as the results shifted from unofficial to official. And it wasn’t even a computer or software error; it was a human one. But, of course, systems should take steps to protect against errors by humans running them too.

Full Article: Election Security: When to Worry, When to Not, and the Takeaway from Antrim County, Michigan | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Nevada: Trump attacks Vegas-area certification of Biden election win | Ken Ritter/Associated Press

As officials in Nevada’s most populous counties certified results of the Nov. 3 election, President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday with a new attack on the vote that gave Democratic candidate Joe Biden a 33,596-vote statewide victory. The former vice president drew 50.06% of the vote and Trump 47.67% — a 2.39% difference — in results submitted for approval by commissioners in 17 counties including Clark, which encompasses Las Vegas, and Washoe, surrounding Reno. In the Las Vegas area, officials identified six people who voted twice, Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria told elected county commissioners. They urged Gloria to track Nevada Secretary of State investigations of those cases for possible prosecution. On a 6-1 vote, the commission accepted results of Gloria’s tally of 977,185 ballots cast in the Biden-Trump race. But the panel also took a first step toward a do-over in one commission district where a Democratic former Nevada secretary of state, Ross Miller, led Republican Las Vegas City Councilman Stavros Anthony by 10 votes after more than 153,000 ballots were counted. Gloria said election officials found 936 “discrepancies” among votes countywide — ranging from inadvertently canceled votes, reactivated voter cards and check-in errors at polling places.

Full Article: Trump attacks Vegas-area certification of Biden election win

North Carolina counties finalize elections just past deadline | Jordan Wilkie/Carolina Public Press

With good reason, counties can extend the time it takes them to finalize their election results. Seven counties met Monday, and two more will meet Tuesday to do just that. Two counties met to fix significant problems. Robeson County had previously failed to upload the votes from an early voting site, according to a press release by the N.C. State Board of Elections. Robeson County also needs to process 700 provisional ballots and 30 by-mail ballots. This will be the last large batch of ballots that could affect the outcome in the chief justice for North Carolina race. It is the closest statewide race and the only one left in question. At the moment, Republican candidate Paul Newby leads Democratic candidate Cheri Beasley by 231 votes. If Robeson is in line with the rest of the state, only about half of the provisional ballots will be approved, meaning Beasley would have to win about two-thirds of those votes to catch up. The county is expected to finalize its results Monday night. An error in Washington County significantly hurt Beasley, who had held a slight lead. Washington County is using an older voting system, called Unity from the election vendor Elections Systems and Software, which the county has had in place since 2006. The county had an unknown error with the Unity system in which the by-mail votes were counted twice, according to the county’s elections director, Dora Bell.

Full Article: NC counties finalize elections just past deadline - Carolina Public Press

Pennsylvania: Trump’s legal push to disrupt election results is on its last legs. What’s his campaign still fighting in court? | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

While Trump’s campaign continues to pursue legal challenges, there was no active case left with enough ballots in question to reverse Joe Biden’s 69,000-vote advantage in the state as of Monday afternoon. Trump campaign lawyers now say their goal isn’t to overturn Biden’s lead but to whittle his 1.01-point lead down to 0.5 points and trigger an automatic recount. And this week is likely to prove decisive in the one case on which the campaign has pinned its remaining hopes — a suit seeking a court order barring Pennsylvania from certifying its final vote tally. It’s worth noting again that despite the outsized rhetoric from the president and his allies about widespread and systemic voter fraud, none of the suits his campaign has filed so far has contained even one allegation — let alone evidence — of a single vote being deliberately cast illegally. What’s more, campaign lawyers, when pressed by Pennsylvania judges in court, have consistently acknowledged that they are not alleging voter fraud but are instead seeking to disqualify ballots submitted by lawful voters based on legal technicalities.

Full Article: Trump’s legal push to disrupt Pa.’s election results is on its last legs. What’s his campaign still fighting in court?

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign presses election cases as attorneys abandon key claims, courts deny legal challenges | Emily Previti/WHYY

Quairah Tucker votes in every election, but this year brought a lot of firsts. She’s one of millions of Pennsylvanians issued a mailed ballot. Since hers never arrived, Tucker was among more than 100,000 who voted provisionally at the polls. More than a week later, she received a letter in the mail, saying her ballot was being challenged. “When I was at the polling place, I thought that my vote counted,” Tucker said. “I didn’t expect to have to come in and fight for my rights, for my vote counting.” Tucker and more than 1,000 other Delaware County voters had their provisional ballots challenged by the Trump campaign for any number of reasons: signing in the wrong spot, using the wrong date, failing to seal the ballot envelope properly and so on. In Tucker’s case, she put her name in one spot, but not the other where voters are supposed to sign. “I filled out the ballot, like I was told to do. I was instructed to only fill out one box. And I guess that was not enough,” she said. The campaign has challenged thousands of provisional ballots in several majority-Democrat counties, including in Northampton, Montgomery, Chester and Allegheny. That’s in addition to its unresolved lawsuits in courts across the commonwealth. Plus, the petition before the U.S. Supreme Court initiated by Pennsylvania Republicans — which the Trump campaign has since joined — could invalidate about 10,000 ballots that arrived after polls closed on election night and before 5 p.m. on Nov. 6.

Full Article: Trump campaign presses election cases in Pennsylvania as attorneys abandon key claims, courts deny legal challenges - WHYY

Pennsylvania: 2nd Trump lawyer asks to pull out of case challenging election | Alex Hosenball/ABC

A second lawyer who was helping lead President Donald Trump's effort to contest the outcome of the 2020 election has asked to step aside, according to a new federal court filing. Republican attorney Linda A. Kerns submitted papers with the U.S. District Court Monday saying she had "reached a mutual agreement that Plaintiffs will be best served" if she withdrew. She was joined in the motion by two other attorneys -- colleagues who only recently signed on to the case with her. Kerns is a veteran of election law battles in Pennsylvania and has written publicly about her desire to see voter ID laws passed to prevent election fraud. She had served as the primary attorney on the central Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania challenging the election's outcome. It is not clear why she has asked to step aside. Over the weekend, the Trump campaign asked the court to sanction lawyers at a firm helping defend the state in the case, saying someone from the firm left a harassing message on Kerns' voicemail. Lawyers from Ohio firm of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur recently asked to withdraw from the federal lawsuit the Trump campaign filed in Pennsylvania to challenge the election results there.

Full Article: 2nd Trump lawyer asks to pull out of case challenging Pennsylvania election - ABC News

Virginia delays statewide certification of election results, citing Richmond office’s COVID outbreak | Andrew Cain/Richmond Times-Dispatch

The State Board of Elections on Monday delayed certification of Virginia’s election results until later this week, giving additional time to the Richmond voter registrar’s office, which is dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak. State elections officials said they had local certification in hand from Virginia’s other 132 cities and counties and they expect to certify the state results later this week. Chris Piper, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections, told the board that, “Overall, Virginia had an incredibly successful election” with no major issues reported on Election Day, which was Nov. 3. The meeting came as President Donald Trump continues to make unsubstantiated claims about widespread voter fraud in his loss to Joe Biden. Coming during the pandemic, Virginia’s election drew an unprecedented 2.8 million early voters, 1.8 million of them voting in person and 1 million through mailed ballots. Nearly 1.6 million people voted on Election Day. Virginia elections officials and legislators already are looking at potential changes to how registrars report results. Some Virginians were confused because Republicans dominated votes cast on Election Day, but Democrats pulled ahead in a number of contests late that night once localities reported votes cast in advance that skewed Democratic.

Full Article: Virginia delays statewide certification of election results, citing Richmond office's COVID outbreak | Govt-and-politics | richmond.com

Wisconsin: Trump campaign would have to pay nearly $8 million for recount | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

President Donald Trump's campaign would have to pay nearly $8 million to start a recount in Wisconsin, a state he narrowly lost two weeks ago. Trump will have to decide by Wednesday whether to carry through with the recount he has promised to pursue. If his campaign pays the $7.9 million cost up front, the recount will begin as soon as Thursday and be complete by Dec. 1, according to the state Elections Commission. Trump has been furiously fundraising for the Wisconsin recount and legal challenges in other states to try to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's victory. If he doesn't go ahead with the Wisconsin recount, he can use the money he's raised for other purposes, such as retiring his campaign debt. The price tag for the Wisconsin recount is nearly four times as much as a recount in 2016. That year, the campaign of Green Party candidate Jill Stein had to pay just over $2 million for the recount it had requested.

Full Article: Trump campaign would have to pay nearly $8 million for Wisconsin recount

Georgia: A laborious, costly and historic hand recount of presidential ballots begins | Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Reis Thebault/The Washington Post

The election workers sat two to a table, a stack of ballots off to the side. One auditor lifted a ballot, reviewed the selection for president, and handed it to the other to do the same before placing it in the right pile — TRUMP, BIDEN, JORGENSEN or WRITE-IN — or setting it aside for further review. The effort was part of a historic manual recount of presidential votes in Georgia, where hundreds, if not thousands, of workers in the state’s 159 counties on Friday began the tedious task of re-tallying each of the nearly 5 million votes cast and checking for any potential irregularities. The recount, the largest hand recount in U.S. history, was ordered by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in an effort to reassure the public about the outcome of the presidential election in his state, where President-elect Joe Biden was projected to win with a lead of about 14,000 votes over President Trump. Research shows that recounts do not typically change the results by enough votes to flip the outcome. Nevertheless, the narrow margin, the fact that Georgia historically has been a red state, and efforts by Trump and top GOP officials to cast doubt on Biden’s victory in the presidential contest have led to this extraordinary effort.

Full Article: In Georgia, a laborious, costly and historic hand recount of presidential ballots begins - The Washington Post

National: Trump Loses String of Election Lawsuits, Leaving Few Vehicles to Fight His Defeat | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

President Trump suffered multiple legal setbacks in three key swing states on Friday, choking off many of his last-ditch efforts to use the courts to delay or block President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. In quick succession, Mr. Trump was handed defeats in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan, where a state judge in Detroit rejected an unusual Republican attempt to halt the certification of the vote in Wayne County pending an audit of the count. The legal losses came as Mr. Biden was declared the victor in Georgia and a day after an agency in the president’s own Department of Homeland Security flatly contradicted him by declaring that the election “was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence” any voting systems malfunctioned. On Friday, 16 federal prosecutors who had been assigned to monitor the election also directly debunked claims of widespread fraud, saying in a letter to Attorney General William P. Barr that there was no evidence of substantial irregularities. In his first public remarks of the week, Mr. Trump ignored the developments during an appearance in the Rose Garden. But he showed a momentary crack in his previously relentless insistence that he would eventually be proclaimed the winner of the campaign, saying at one point, “Whatever happens in the future, who knows, which administration, I guess time will tell.”

Full Article: Trump Loses String of Election Results Lawsuits - The New York Times

National: Trump lost at the ballot box. His legal challenges aren’t going any better. | David A. Fahrenthold, Emma Brown and Hannah Knowles/The Washington Post

President Trump lost his reelection bid at the ballot box. But he said he could win it back in court. In five key states, Trump and his allies filed lawsuits that — according to Trump — would reveal widespread electoral fraud, undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, and give Trump another four years. “Biden did not win, he lost by a lot!” Trump tweeted. It’s not going well. Rather than revealing widespread — or even isolated — fraud, the effort by Trump’s legal team has so far done the opposite: It’s affirmed the integrity of the election that Trump lost. Nearly every GOP challenge has been tossed out. Not a single vote has been overturned. “The Trump legal team does not seem to have identified any kind of global litigation strategy that has any prospect of changing the outcome of the election, and all of the court filings to date underscore that — as do all of the court rulings that have been issued to date,” said Robert Kelner, a Republican lawyer who chairs the election and political law practice group at Covington & Burling, an international law firm based in Washington. Part of the problem is that Trump’s approach has been backward: Declare crimes first, then look for proof afterward. Again and again, the president or his allies said they’d found evidence that would stun the public and swing the election. But, when Trump and his team revealed that evidence, it often was far less than they had promised. A “dead” voter turned out to be alive. “Thousands” of problematic ballots turned out to be one. Election-changing problems turned out to involve a few dozen, or a few hundred, ballots.

Full Article: Trump lost at the ballot box. His legal challenges aren’t going any better. - The Washington Post

National: Behind Trump’s Yearslong Effort to Turn Losing Into Winning | Jim Rutenberg and Nick Cora/The New York Times

Obscured by the postelection noise over the president’s efforts to falsely portray the election system as “rigged” against him has been how much Mr. Trump and his allies did ahead of time to promote a baseless conspiracy devised to appeal to his most passionate supporters, providing him with the opportunity to make his historically anomalous bid to cling to power in the face of defeat. That bid is now in its last throes. Judges are dismissing the president’s lawsuits, as various bits of supposed evidence — an alleged box of illegal ballots that was in fact a case containing camera equipment and “dead voters” who are alive — unravel. And yet Mr. Trump has still not given up on seeding doubt about the election’s integrity as he seeks to stain Mr. Biden’s clear victory — by more than 5.5 million votes and also in the Electoral College — with false insinuations of illegitimacy. On Sunday alone, he posted more than two dozen election-related tweets, seeming to briefly acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory before declaring, “I concede NOTHING!” The roots of Mr. Trump’s approach date to before his election in 2016, and he advanced his plans throughout his term. But his strategy for casting doubt on the outcome of the 2020 campaign took shape in earnest when the coronavirus pandemic upended normal life and led states to promote voting by mail. From the start, the president saw mail-in ballots as a political threat that would appeal more to Democrats than to his followers. And so he and his allies sought to block moves to make absentee voting easier and to slow the counting of mail ballots. This allowed Mr. Trump to do two things: claim an early victory on election night and paint ballots that were counted later for his opponent as fraudulent.

Full Article: Behind Trump’s Yearslong Effort to Turn Losing Into Winning - The New York Times

National: Giuliani adds fuel to discredited theories about voting machines. | Zach Montague/The New York Times

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, continued on Saturday his effort to delegitimize votes cast through electronic voting machines, citing several conspiracies connected to the companies that make the machines and the software they run in a post on Twitter. Looking to sow doubt about the vote count in multiple swing states that were recently called for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Giuliani hinted support for a discredited theory that one of the companies that manufactures the voting machines used in some states, Smartmatic, is controlled by the billionaire philanthropist George Soros. “Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?” Mr. Giuliani wrote. “It will all come out.” Hours later, President Trump picked up a similar refrain, stating in a tweet that the election was “stolen” by “privately owned Radical Left company, Dominion,” without providing evidence or explaining why Dominion was distinct among the many other privately owned election system vendors that routinely administer elections in the United States. Speculation that Mr. Soros has any influence over Smartmatic or its operations has been thoroughly debunked, and he does not own the company. Mr. Soros’s distant connection to the company is through his association with Smartmatic’s chairman, Mark Malloch-Brown, who is on the board of Mr. Soros’s Open Society Foundation.

Full Article: Giuliani adds fuel to discredited theories about voting machines. - The New York Times

National: Judges appear increasingly frustrated with Trump’s legal claims about 2020 election | Matthew Mosk, Olivia Rubin and Alex Hosenball/ABC

The recent scene in Clark County, Nevada, has become increasingly common in courthouses around the country as President Donald Trump continues to push thinly supported allegations of election misconduct and fraud. When Republican lawyers in Nevada complained their observers were not close enough if they could not hear everything poll workers were saying, U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon pushed back. "At what point does this get ridiculous?" the exasperated judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama, asked before ruling against the Republicans. In court hearings and opinions around the country, judges are voicing similar frustrations with the Trump campaign's legal filings to a degree rarely seen in venues where political rhetoric is generally unwelcome, experts and courthouse veterans said. "Judge after judge after judge has asked, in essence, 'Where is the beef?'" said Karl Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia and a frequent Trump critic, in a call with reporters Friday. "We have seen numerous instances where affidavits have been filed … only to be immediately pulled back once tested in state and federal court," said Racine, whose own lawsuit against Trump in connection with the president’s Washington, D.C., hotel is on hold pending appeal. "I would not be surprised that if these baseless allegations continue, judges will begin to threaten and indeed issue sanctions."

Full Article: Judges appear increasingly frustrated with Trump's legal claims about 2020 election - ABC News

National: GOP leaders in 4 states quash dubious Trump bid on electors | Bob Christie and Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

Republican leaders in four critical states won by President-elect Joe Biden say they won’t participate in a legally dubious scheme to flip their state’s electors to vote for President Donald Trump. Their comments effectively shut down a half-baked plot some Republicans floated as a last chance to keep Trump in the White House. State GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all said they would not intervene in the selection of electors, who ultimately cast the votes that secure a candidate’s victory. Such a move would violate state law and a vote of the people, several noted. “I do not see, short of finding some type of fraud — which I haven’t heard of anything — I don’t see us in any serious way addressing a change in electors,” said Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s Republican House speaker, who says he’s been inundated with emails pleading for the legislature to intervene. “They are mandated by statute to choose according to the vote of the people.” The idea loosely involves GOP-controlled legislatures dismissing Biden’s popular vote wins in their states and opting to select Trump electors. While the endgame was unclear, it appeared to hinge on the expectation that a conservative-leaning Supreme Court would settle any dispute over the move.

Full Article: GOP leaders in 4 states quash dubious Trump bid on electors

Arizona: Trump campaign drops effort seeking review of ballots | Heather Neidig/The Hill

 

The Trump campaign dropped its lawsuit on Friday in Arizona seeking a review of ballots cast in the state's biggest county in the presidential race just hours after multiple outlets projected President-elect Joe Biden to carry the state. The campaign, which filed the complaint Saturday, said in a new filing that it would no longer seek a court order for a review of presidential votes over its allegation that poll workers had mishandled ballots rejected by tabulation machines. "Since the close of yesterday’s hearing, the tabulation of votes statewide has rendered unnecessary a judicial ruling as to the presidential electors," Trump campaign lawyers wrote Friday in the filing. In their lawsuit filed Saturday, President Trump's legal team alleged that voters had claimed they were pushed by poll workers to override tabulation machines' rejection of their ballots when irregularities were detected. They alleged that poll workers in Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix and the metro area, were telling voters that overriding the function would help ensure their votes were counted when it would actually reject the ballot without an opportunity for review. The lawsuit against Arizona's secretary of state had asked the Maricopa County Superior Court for an order to hold off on certifying the vote count until a hand review of the county's ballots could be conducted.

Full Article: Trump campaign drops effort seeking review of Arizona ballots | TheHill

Arizona Republican Party sues over use of vote centers for county election audit | Jeremy Duda/Arizona Mirror

The Arizona Republican Party is going to court to challenge a nearly decade-old provision in the secretary of state’s election procedures manual, which by statute has the force of law. Central to the complaint is that Maricopa County used the wrong method to determine which ballots to hand count for a post-election audit. State law requires counties to perform a hand count of ballots from 2% of precincts after every election to compare the results to those from the tabulation machines that the counties use to tally ballots. But the legislature in 2011 passed a law permitting counties to switch from precinct-based voting to vote centers where voters could go to cast a ballot, regardless of where they lived. The election procedures manual remedied the conflict between the two laws by allowing counties to substitute voting centers instead. The 2019 election procedures manual drafted by the office of Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, and approved by Gov. Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich, both Republicans, states, “In counties that utilize vote centers, each vote center is considered to be a precinct/polling location and the officer in charge of elections must conduct a hand count of regular ballots from at least 2% of the vote centers, or 2 vote centers, whichever is greater.” 

Full Article: AZGOP sues over use of vote centers for county election audit

Florida: Here’s how post-election audits work in Florida | Allison Ross/Tampa Bay Times

Most counties do a manual audit, in which elections workers hand count all the votes cast in up to 2 percent of the precincts for one randomly selected race. The numbers tallied by elections workers are then compared to the official results originally produced by the vote-counting machines. Ballots that were cast by mail, on Election Day, during early in-person voting and provisionally are all included in this audit, as are any ballots that came in from overseas voters. “It’s labor-intensive, but worth it, from my perspective,” said Brian Corley, supervisor of elections in Pasco County. He said these audits help give county residents confidence in the elections process, saying he’s found that residents like that he and his staff are physically touching and counting ballots to ensure the accuracy of machine counts. Julie Marcus, supervisor of elections in Pinellas County, said audits are the final step in making sure voting systems are accurate. She said Pinellas County “has had perfect audits since audits were implemented in 2008.”

Full Article: Here’s how post-election audits work in Florida

Georgia Recount Yields Few Changes in Vote Totals, Democrats Say | Bill Allison/Bloomberg

Georgia’s hand audit of ballots cast in the presidential election is proceeding rapidly with little change in the results so far, according to lawyers working for President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign. Some 48 of the state’s 159 counties have finished their examination of the ballots with either no change or minor shifts -- differences of fewer than five votes in some instances, they said. Four counties that have finished their retallies reported having no changes. Biden won the first count by over 14,000 votes. Election officials on Saturday started auditing almost 5 million ballots. “More Georgians voted for President-elect Biden than voted for President Trump,” said Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic lawyer who’s aiding the campaign. “There is nothing that the recount’s going to do to change that.” Because of the closeness of the result, less than 0.3 percentage points, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, ordered a statewide, hand recount of ballots. The process is due to be completed by Nov. 20 though a superior court judge could move the deadline if needed.

Full Article: Election 2020: Georgia Recount Yields Few Changes in Vote Totals, Democrats Say - Bloomberg

Georgia’s recount integrity faces attack: As Trump claims election fraud, election recount continues | Alan Judd/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

President Donald Trump and his allies spread false claims about Georgia’s election recount on Saturday, attacking a process conducted by members of the president’s own party at his request. Top Georgia Republicans, including Gov. Brian Kemp, declined to rebut Trump’s allegations. But other prominent Republicans, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, advanced Trump’s claims, and right-wing media outlets amplified the message. A commentator on the conservative website Newsmax described Georgia’s recount — a ballot-by-ballot review of nearly 5 million votes that entered its second day Saturday — as “a sham and a hoax and a fix.” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is Georgia’s chief election officer, acknowledged what he called “misinformation that has circulated in social media.” But in a statement released by his office, Raffensperger did not mention Trump by name. The attacks on the recount’s integrity came one day after national news organizations called Georgia in favor of President-elect Joe Biden. He beat Trump by 14,122 votes, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state since 1992. Raffensperger ordered the unprecedented recount a day after receiving a demand for a review from Trump’s campaign, although he said he made the decision on his own. No irregularities or significant tabulation errors emerged during the first two days of the recount, officials said Saturday. And even if the Georgia outcome were reversed, Biden still would have enough electoral votes from other states to capture the presidency.

Full Article: As Trump claims election fraud, Georgia election recount continues

Kentucky Weighs Changing System After Election Success | David Guiildford/Spectrum

During a pandemic, Kentucky facilitated record voter turnout — implementing methods foreign to the largely conservative state like excuse-free absentee voting and three weeks of open polls. Adams, the Commonwealth's Republican secretary of state, ruffled feathers among some in his party when he used legislatively gifted emergency executive powers to work with Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, on the plan for 2020's June primary and November General Election. As Adams begins to make plans for the future, what changes, if any, might he suggest to lawmakers for permanent change? "I certainly think that four things are strong in their ability to pass [through the legislature]," he said during a sit-down interview in his capitol office. "Early voting, for at least a few days, I don’t think we need three weeks of voting in every election, but a few days would really help working people get to the polls." The other three changes under Adams' consideration are keeping voting centers, or "hubs," within counties that offer each ballot type regardless of precinct; maintaining the online portal for voters to use for assistance and Adams to use to monitor needs and activity; and the process of curing ballots. Curing involves flagging absentee ballots that are submitted with errors, often in good faith, and contacting the voters-in-question to resolve the issues. With few people voting by mail in Kentucky before 2020, Adams said there was no curing procedure in place. Under the first year of its use, fewer than 1% of the 626,000 absentee ballots submitted statewide had to be discarded.

Full Article: After Election Success, Kentucky Weighs Changing System

Michigan: State senators want ‘audit’ of election before canvassing. That’s what canvassing is, Secretary of State says. | Carol Thompson/Lansing State Journal

Two state senators are asking the Secretary of State to "audit" the November election before certifying results, citing a handful of alleged improprieties, most of which have been debunked in the press. Sens. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, and Lana Theis, R-Brighton, made the request in a Friday letter to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. The Secretary of State's office is reviewing their request while the State Board of Canvassers meets to certify the election. The canvassing process itself is an audit, spokesperson Tracy Wimmer said. The state canvassers must convene by Nov. 23. In their letter, Barrett and Theis repeated claims raised by Michigan Republicans since the polls closed on Nov. 3. They pointed to an instance in Antrim County, where a clerk's failure to update software caused results to temporarily show Democrat Joe Biden in the lead. A University of Michigan voting security expert told the Detroit Free Press the mistake, which was corrected, was caused by an "unusual sequence of events very unlikely to affect any other jurisdictions," although many other jurisidictions use the same software.

Full Article: 2 state senators ask Michigan Secretary of State for election audit

Michigan: Pro-Trump forces spin legal wheels in challenging election results | Paul Egan Clara Hendrickson/Detroit Free Press

Lawsuits filed in the wrong courts. Naming the wrong defendants. Alleging facts with no connection to the defendants being sued. Forces backing Republican President Donald Trump have filed at least five lawsuits in state and federal courts in Michigan seeking to delay or stop the state's certification of 16 electoral votes for Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. With every Michigander's vote cast and counted in the presidential contest, showing Biden defeating Trump by close to 150,000 votes according to the unofficial tally, elections workers statewide are now undertaking the tedious process of officially certifying the vote and converting the state's popular vote into the state's Electoral College votes. That process relies on local and state election officials meeting a series of tight deadlines and fulfilling their legal duties. And derailing this process appears to be a goal the lawsuits all share. The suits could create significant complications if they produced court orders delaying certification of election results in key Michigan counties beyond Tuesday's deadline, or dragged out thecertification of statewide results beyond the Dec. 8 "safe harbor" date by which Congress is required to accept Michigan's electoral votes. But the suits have been marked by unusual legal missteps and repeated judicial setbacks. Some analysts say it is difficult to discern a coherent strategy, other than to seek to undermine overall confidence in the elections process.

Full Article: Pro-Trump forces remain hitless in Michigan election challenges

Nevada: Military voters fear they’re part of unsupported fraud claim | Michelle L. Price, ichael Balsamo and Anthony Izaguirre/Associated Press

Some military voters are concerned they have been thrust into the center of unsubstantiated fraud claims by President Donald Trump’s campaign that several thousand people may have improperly voted in Nevada. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election despite Trump’s claims. Election officials from both political parties have stated publicly that the election went well and international observers confirmed there were no serious irregularities that elected Democrat Joe Biden the next president. Still, lawyers from Trump’s campaign sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr alleging they had uncovered what they described as “criminal voter fraud” in Nevada. They said they had identified 3,062 people who “improperly” cast mail ballots in Clark County, a Democrat-heavy area that includes Las Vegas and about 75% of the state’s population. Those people were identified by “cross-referencing the names and addresses of voters with the National Change of Address database,” according to the letter. A copy of the letter provided to The Associated Press included a 62-page chart enumerating each voter but the listing did not include the name, address or party affiliation. Instead, it listed voters by the county, city, state and zip code they moved from, and the city, state and nine-digit zip code they moved to. The full nine-digit zip code can narrow an address down to a particular segment of a few blocks or even one side of a street, according to the U.S. Postal Service.

Full Article: Military voters fear they're part of unsupported fraud claim

North Carolina election recount possible in AG, chief justice races | Danielle Battaglia/Raleigh News & Observer

North Carolina could be headed toward recounts in two key races where candidates held narrow margins over their opponents. Since Nov. 3, the races between Cheri Beasley and Paul Newby for Supreme Court chief justice and Josh Stein and Jim O’Neill for attorney general have been too close to declare a winner. State law allows a candidate to request a recount in statewide races if they are trailing their opponent by less than 0.5% or 10,000 votes, whichever is less. The candidate must request the recount by Nov. 17, the second business day after the counties certify their election results, which was mostly taking place Friday. Beasley was leading her challenger by just 35 votes, well within those margins, as of 9 a.m. Sunday. But Stein led O’Neill by around 14,000 votes, making a recount look increasingly unlikely. Five counties still had not reported final vote totals.

Source: NC election recount possible in AG, chief justice races | Raleigh News & Observer

Oregon’s ousted elections director wanted to leave months before election | Steve Benham/KATU

Stephen Trout was unhappy in his job as Oregon’s director of elections and planned to leave it, but before he could quit on his own terms his boss, Oregon Secretary of State Bev Clarno, fired him. “I could tell this morning that you were unhappy,” Clarno wrote in a text message, obtained through a public records request, that informed Trout he no longer had a job. “I thank you for all you have done for SOS, and I wish you the best in your next endeavor.” The text message was sent at 4:08 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 5, just two days after this year’s general election. Workers at county elections offices throughout the state were still counting ballots and tabulating votes. But now, the last day for the director of the state’s elections division, housed in the secretary of state’s office, would be Nov. 6. Trout had wanted to leave his job since at least the spring of this year, an email obtained through a public records request revealed. In fact, he was interviewing for jobs and had also informed Clarno in an Oct. 27 email that he had told potential employers that he would be ready to work for them starting Tuesday, Dec. 15.

Full Article: Oregon's ousted elections director wanted to leave months before election | KATU

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign jettisons major parts of its legal challenge against election results | Jon Swaine and Elise Viebeck/The Washington Post

President Trump’s campaign on Sunday scrapped a major part of its federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania. Trump’s attorneys filed a revised version of the lawsuit, removing allegations that election officials violated the Trump campaign’s constitutional rights by limiting the ability of their observers to watch votes being counted. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal attorney, have said repeatedly that more than 600,000 votes in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should be invalidated because of this issue. Trump’s pared-down lawsuit now focuses on allegations that Republicans were illegally disadvantaged because some Democratic-leaning counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots. Counties have said this affected only a small number of votes. Cliff Levine, an attorney representing the Democratic Party in the case, said on Sunday evening that Trump’s move meant his lawsuit could not possibly change the result. “Now you’re only talking about a handful of ballots,” Levine said. “They would have absolutely no impact on the total count or on Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump.”

Full Article: Trump campaign jettisons major parts of its legal challenge against Pennsylvania’s election results - The Washington Post

Pennsylvania secretary of state will not order a recount | Tal Axelrod/The Hill

Pennsylvania’s top elections official confirmed Friday she will not be ordering a recount or recanvass of her state’s election results as Republicans rail against officials there over groundless voter fraud claims. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (D) said the races for president, state attorney general, auditor general and state treasurer will not face recounts or recanvasses after unofficial returns submitted by the state’s counties showed no statewide candidate lost by less 0.5 percent, the margin at which such recourses would be triggered. "We are extremely grateful to all 67 counties who have been working overtime and putting in an extraordinary effort to count every vote, with so far more than 6.8 million votes having been counted," Boockvar said in a statement. "The counties continue to adjudicate and count the approximately 100,000 provisional ballots issued to voters at the polls on Election Day, as well as the more than 28,000 military and overseas ballots that were cast in this election." With ballots still being cast, Biden currently holds a nearly 60,000-vote lead in the state, a margin that has mushroomed  since the state was called for him last weekend and could grow more.

Full Article: Pennsylvania secretary of state will not order a recount | TheHill