Author Archives: Warren Stewart

National: With Recounts, States Mix Civics, Spectator Sport and a Bit of Tedium | Sara Randazzo and Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

By the time Travis Weipert reported to the office Nov. 4, he knew his work as steward of the elections in Johnson County, Iowa, was far from over. The two candidates vying for the local congressional seat in the previous day’s election were separated by less than a percentage point. A recount, he sensed, was inevitable. “We knew to buckle up for a long ride,” Mr. Weipert said. After ping-ponging for a few days, the districtwide results showed Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks ahead of Rita Hart, the Democratic candidate, by 47 votes out of more than 394,400 cast. Ms. Hart called for a recount Nov. 12, kicking off a process that is still under way and that Iowa hadn’t undertaken for a race of this scale in more than a century. By Friday, Ms. Miller-Meeks’s lead had narrowed to just eight votes. This year’s drawn-out election cycle, spurred in part by the rise of mail-in ballots cast during the coronavirus pandemic, has been even longer in states where initial tallies showed races ending in razor-thin margins. Recounts in Iowa, Wisconsin, Georgia and elsewhere have involved legions of local election officials and volunteer election workers, who must follow exacting and at times arcane methods designed to ensure every vote gets counted properly. They are counting ballots in tight races up and down the ballot, not just for president. For the public and the candidates, the recounts become part civics lesson, part spectator sport.

Full Article: With Recounts, States Mix Civics, Spectator Sport and a Bit of Tedium - WSJ

National: Krebs says allegations of foreign interference in 2020 election ‘farcical’  | Martin Gstalter/The Hill

Full Article: Krebs says allegations of foreign interference in 2020 election 'farcical'  | TheHill

National: Election Security After 2020: Big Questions Lie Ahead | Philip Ewing/NPR

The 2020 elections ran well and were largely free from foreign interference, U.S. officials say. That doesn't mean the story is over. Improving elections practices is a "race without a finish line," as Pennsylvania's secretary of state told NPR in 2019, and big questions remain about what's to become of the fast maturing but still partly formed discipline of election security. A range of pending decisions, moves and countermoves now stands between governments, voters and their ballots in upcoming races, meaning the environment likely will continue to evolve even as the big players — the United States, Russia, China and others — likely stay the same. Here are some of the unresolved issues as the clock begins to tick toward Americans voting again in large numbers, including in important U.S. Senate runoff elections early next year in Georgia.

Full Article: Election Security After 2020: Big Questions Lie Ahead : NPR

National: Footsoldiers of democracy, election officials became targets of rage | Story Hinckley/CSMonitor

Gerald Lawrence takes copious notes as public comments submitted to the Delaware County Board of Elections in Pennsylvania are read out loud. Some are congratulatory, thanking Mr. Lawrence and his colleagues for running a safe and secure election during a pandemic. The vast majority, however, are not. A voter named Richard tells the board he believes there was serious fraud. Greg and Renee claim their votes weren’t counted. “Delaware County deserves a free and fair election, and I, for one, have zero confidence that this was the case,” asserts a voter named Robert. “Please do not certify this election.” Mr. Lawrence patiently addresses the accusations one by one, trying his best to assure his constituents that claims of widespread fraud simply aren’t valid. Typically, these certification meetings last 20 minutes and are unremarkable, sparsely attended affairs. Monday’s event was unlike anything Mr. Lawrence has experienced in his more than 15 years on the board. Streamed live on YouTube, it took nearly three hours. “It’s gratifying to see so many people have a passionate interest in the political process and democracy this year,” says Mr. Lawrence. “But it’s disheartening that some in the community circulate misinformation in an attempt to mislead people.”

Full Article: Election officials faced long hours, then a tide of threats and abuse - CSMonitor.com

Kentucky: ‘Good, Honest, Capable, and Willing People:’ A Take on Election Administrators Goes Viral | Kate Elizabeth Queram/Route Fifty

With a background in election administration—first as the director of elections in Louisville, Kentucky and now working at a company that helps to make elections more accessible to people with disabilities—James Young is accustomed to fielding questions about voting. But the inquiries he got about this year’s election were different. In the days following the Nov. 3 contest, all of the questions—from friends, professional acquaintances and family members—focused on the same topic: whether the election had been rigged to ensure that President Donald Trump would lose to Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who prevailed in the race and is now the president-elect. “I had a very, very close, personal friend who is a registered Republican—as am I—send me a conspiracy theory suggesting that election administrators were knowingly coordinating to prevent Donald Trump from winning re-election,” said Young, who is now a regional sales manager for the company Inclusion Solutions. “Of course," he added, "I realized there was nothing that was going to change this person’s mind, and after I again reiterated my work with these individuals that he was suggesting had the fix in, he asked, ‘Well, whose side are you on?’”

Full Article: 'Good, Honest, Capable, and Willing People:' A Take on Election Administrators Goes Viral - Route Fifty

Pennsylvania: Trump’s Battle to Undermine the Vote | Eliza Griswold/The New Yorker

Since November 3rd, Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative from Philadelphia, has received a stream of threatening text messages and e-mails from voters. “You must not certify the fraudulent results of this election until all LEGAL ballots are counted,” Steven P. wrote to Kenyatta. “If you do, I will work tirelessly to make sure you are not reelected.” Kenyatta has also received death threats; the most disturbing, sent from an e-mail account registered in his own name, was laden with expletives and included the words, “How much death? So much death!” Kenyatta, who is thirty, with a baby face, believes that the threats are a by-product of a near-constant campaign waged by Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues to undermine the results of a free and fair election. “There is a contingent of Republicans who are afraid of Trump,” he told me. “Others really believe him.” In recent weeks, Trump has claimed baselessly that he lost the Presidential election because of widespread voter fraud, and has launched lawsuits in key states to try to get ballots invalidated. He has also pressured Republican state legislatures to intervene on his behalf. In Pennsylvania, this legislative threat has taken different forms, but all have originated in the State Government Committee, a Republican-led group that focusses on oversight. Kenyatta is in the committee’s Democratic minority, and is one of its most vocal members. Before the election, it put forward a resolution to establish an Election Integrity Committee, tasked with investigating potential election irregularities, and to grant the panel the power to summon election officials and impound ballot boxes. The effort seemed designed to drum up claims of voter fraud to support Trump in the case, then theoretical, that he refused to concede. It also seemed intended to stall the count: by some interpretations of the state’s constitution, if the governor is not able to certify the vote before December 8th, the Republican legislature could appoint its own electors. Kenyatta argued so vociferously against the resolution that the previous chair of the committee threatened to call security and have him removed. After Kenyatta and others exposed the effort, several Republicans, worried about their Election Day prospects, withdrew their support, and the committee was forced to scuttle it.

Full Article: Trump’s Battle to Undermine the Vote in Pennsylvania | The New Yorker

How Government Officials Delivered a Disaster-Free Election | Carl Smith/Governing

The 2020 general election was an epic test of election official fortitude. Added to the usual complexities of planning and executing a national election was responsibility for the very lives of voters during a pandemic that has claimed twice as many American lives as two years of fighting in World War I. As they prepared, election officials were on constant watch for potential cyberattacks and foreign disinformation designed to disrupt their operations and American democracy itself. This work was further complicated by a campaign undertaken by President Trump, who vigorously used the power of his office, social media and campaign rallies to cast doubt on their plans and to undermine confidence in the election process. Despite all, they prevailed. Election Day disasters that had been imagined as real possibilities did not materialize. A statement released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called the election “the most secure in American history.” Wendy Underhill, director of elections and redistricting and the National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL), isn’t surprised. “These are people who, when you give them a job, they say, ‘Let me make a list. Let me make a plan. Now I'm going to execute it,’” she says. “Worrying about the political universe floating about them is not on that list.”

Full Article: How Government Officials Delivered a Disaster-Free Election

National: Foreign observers shocked by chaos over U.S. election | Carol Morello/The Washington Post

Full Article: Foreign observers shocked by chaos over U.S. election - The Washington Post

National: How Trump’s legal battles to overturn the election undermine the Black vote | Janell Ross and Janelle Griffith/NBC

For the Rev. Steve Bland, the day’s agenda was dominated by one thing. He drove about 90 miles west from Detroit, where he is the senior pastor of the Liberty Temple Baptist Church, to Lansing, Michigan. With several members of the state’s Interfaith Council, Bland stood on the steps of the Capitol complex where the Michigan Board of Canvassers would vote on whether to certify the November general election ballot counts. The group prayed that the board’s four members — including two Republicans — would reject the baseless claims made by President Donald Trump and his allies that something was wrong with the ballots cast in Detroit and other cities around the country with large Black populations. Bland, president of the region’s Council of Baptist Pastors, and other clergy took turns praying that voters in Detroit, where half of that state’s Black population resides, would see their legal rights stand. “What we are seeing, in this press of activities here in Michigan and around the country,” Bland said as he drove toward Lansing, “what we have witnessed is a fight to remain in the grips of total white domination or to accept that Black voters and the ballots they cast are every bit as essential and definitive in what this country can and should be as anyone else’s. Anything less is not a democracy but it would be sadly very consistent with the pattern of American history.”

Full Article: How Trump's legal battles to overturn the election undermine the Black vote

National: Trump’s assault on the election could leave a lasting mark on American democracy | Toluse Olorunnipa, Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Rosalind S. Helderman/The Washington Post

Full Article: Trump's assault on the election could leave a lasting mark on American democracy - The Washington Post

National: As States Certify Election Results, An Extraordinary Election Ends | Pam Fessler/NPR

Signs of a tattered, but resilient, voting system were on full display this week, as one of the most contentious elections in U.S. history rolled toward completion. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina put the final stamp of approval on their official vote counts, as workers re-tallied millions of ballots in Georgia and Wisconsin to assure the Trump campaign that the initial count was accurate. Courts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere reviewed and almost uniformly, rejected legal challenges for lack of merit. The 2020 election was extraordinary in so many ways. A pandemic forced election workers to shift their attention from guarding against Russian phishing attacks to acquiring adequate supplies of hand sanitizers and printing millions of mail-in ballots. But more extraordinary were the unrelenting attacks on the legitimacy of the system, primarily by President Trump and his allies, and the resulting decline in public trust. The depth of these partisan divisions was reflected in almost every action taken to resolve the disputed outcome. In Luzerne County, Pa. — where earlier news that a few Trump ballots had been discarded by a temp worker was widely, and inaccurately, touted by the President as Exhibit A of a system riddled with fraud — the election board voted on Monday to certify that Trump had indeed won the county over Joe Biden. But, in a sign of the times, the board split 3-2 along party lines.

Full Article: As States Certify Election Results, An Extraordinary Election Ends : NPR