National: Advocacy groups ‘concerned’ about federal proposal to override state AI regulations | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

A provision included in a House committee budget bill this week would prohibit states from enforcing their own laws and regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence systems over the next decade. The provision, which is included in a broader, budget reconciliation bill pushed ahead by House Republicans of the Energy and Commerce Committee and advanced by a vote on Wednesday, would prohibit states and local governments cities from passing new laws or enforcing existing laws that regulate AI models or systems, until 2035. If enacted, the bill would put a moratorium on laws such as Colorado’s landmark comprehensive AI legislation, and California’s laws addressing harms caused by AI deepfakes. Many state AI laws are aimed at promoting transparency, protecting creative rights and mitigating harms that could be caused by invasions of privacy. Read Article

Opinion: The End of Rule of Law in America | J. Michael Luttig/The Atlantic

Thus far, Trump’s presidency has been a reign of lawless aggression by a tyrannical wannabe king, a rampage of presidential lawlessness in which Trump has proudly wielded the powers of the office and the federal government to persecute his enemies, while at the same time pardoning, glorifying, and favoring his political allies and friends—among them those who attacked the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection that Trump fomented on January 6, 2021. The president’s utter contempt for the Constitution and laws of the United States has been on spectacular display since Inauguration Day. For the almost 250 years since the founding of this nation, America has been the beacon of freedom to the world because of its democracy and rule of law. Our system of checks and balances has been strained before, but democracy—government by the people—and the rule of law have always won the day. Until now, that is. America will never again be that same beacon to the world, because the president of the United States has subverted America’s democracy and corrupted its rule of law. Read Article

California: ‘Sketchy:’ Shasta County’s newly appointed elections chief’s work history questioned | Damon Arthur/ Redding Record Searchlight

For the second year in a row, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors has appointed someone with no elections oversight experience to be the county registrar of voters and whose work history has raised questions. The top candidate also says he wrote a computer program that allows votes to be secretly altered. Clint Curtis, who was passed over for the job last year, was appointed by the board on Tuesday, May 13. Curtis, 66, of Titusville, Florida, will be the county’s third registrar of voters in two years. Read Article

Colorado Attorney General says Trump administration cannot free former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters | Anthony Cotton/Colorado Public Radio

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said Wednesday that the federal government has no standing to free former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters from jail. “We have our own system,” Weiser said in an interview with Colorado Matters. “This is what our constitution calls federalism. We enforce our criminal laws and the federal government can’t hijack that system. They have to honor it. We are a separate sovereign.” Peters was found guilty last August by a jury of Mesa County residents on seven counts, including four felonies, after she helped facilitate unauthorized access to county voting equipment that she was supposed to safeguard in search of voter fraud. She was sentenced to nine years in prison. Read Article

Georgia: Federal court might revive lawsuit claiming mass challenges violate Voting Rights Act | Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder

A three-judge federal court panel spent an hour in a downtown Atlanta courthouse Tuesday hearing arguments from attorneys about whether a conservative Texas organization’s mass voting challenges during a 2021 runoff violated the federal Voting Rights Act by intimidating minority voters. Plaintiff Fair Fight Action, founded by Stacey Abrams, argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that U.S. District Court Judge Steve C. Jones erred in ruling last year that True the Vote’s challenge to 365,000 Georgia voters’ eligibility did not constitute intimidation prior to historic Democratic Senate victories in Georgia when Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff prevailed in the Jan. 5, 2021 runoff. At least one of the judges expressed skepticism about the soundness of the lower court ruling. Mass voter challenges have been a mainstay in Georgia since the 2020 presidential election, when Democrat Joe Biden narrowly defeated Republican Donald Trump by about 12,000 votes in the state. Read Article

North Carolina: Will a disputed Supreme Court race push defeated candidates to contest results? | Sam Levine/The Guardian

A disputed North Carolina state supreme court race that took nearly six months to resolve revealed a playbook for future candidates who lose elections to retroactively challenge votes, observers warn, but its ultimate resolution sent a signal that federal courts are unlikely to support an effort to overturn the results of an election. Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes last November out of about 5.5m cast. But for months afterwards, Griffin waged an aggressive legal fight to get 65,000 votes thrown out after the election, even though those voters followed all of the rules election officials had set in advance. The effort was largely seen as a long shot until the North Carolina court of appeals accepted the challenge and said more than 60,000 voters had to prove their eligibility, months after the election, or have their votes thrown out. The Republican-controlled North Carolina supreme court significantly narrowed the number of people who had to prove their eligibility, but still left the door open to more than 1,000 votes being tossed. Read Article

Oklahoma Proposes Teaching 2020 Election ‘Discrepancies’ in U.S. History | Sarah Mervosh/The New York Times

High school students in Oklahoma would be asked to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election as part of U.S. history classes, according to new social studies standards recently approved by the Oklahoma Board of Education. The proposed standards seem to echo President Trump’s false claims about his 2020 defeat. They ask students to examine factors such as “the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states” and “the security risks of mail-in balloting.” They now head to the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, which could take up the issue before its term ends in late May, or punt the issue to the governor’s desk. Read Article

 

Pennsylvania Democrats pass sweeping election overhaul through the House, but skip GOP-priority voter ID | Carter Walker and Stephen Caruso/Spotlight PA and Votebeat

A sweeping bill to overhaul the commonwealth’s election laws has passed the Pennsylvania House. Its changes would include creating in-person early voting, giving counties more time to process mail ballots, and requiring counties to use mail ballot drop boxes. But it doesn’t include one provision that will likely be important to its prospects: a voter ID requirement, something that Republicans, who control the state Senate, have always seen as crucial to any election law deal. State House leaders in both parties have lately said they are open to a voter ID requirement after years of partisan fights. The chamber even advanced a standalone bill, sponsored by two swing-district lawmakers, that would create a lenient voter ID requirement for all in-person voters. Read Article

Texas Legislature approves bill to ease polling place requirements for countywide voting | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Both chambers of the Texas Legislature have passed a bill intended to roll back a 2023 law that required certain counties to drastically increase the number of polling locations — even in areas where buildings were scarce and funding wasn’t available to fully equip them. The bill is now headed to the governor’s desk and set to become law. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican, championed the bill, and it was supported by the Texas Association of Election Officials and the Texas Association of County and District Clerks. Read Article

Wisconsin election officials seek repeal of law that can risk ballot secrecy | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

When the clerk of Rock County, Wisconsin, gets a public-records request for images of election ballots, much of it is easy to fulfill. For most municipalities in the county, it’s just a matter of uploading a photo of the ballot that’s already captured when it gets tabulated. But for two of the county’s largest cities — Janesville and Beloit — it’s a lot more complicated, and time-consuming, because of a state law governing places that use a central counting facility for their absentee ballots. For those ballots, Clerk Lisa Tollefson must redact the unique identifying numbers that the law requires poll workers to write on each one. Otherwise, the number could be used to connect the ballots to the voters who cast them. And because the numbers don’t appear in the same place on each ballot, Tollefson must click through the ballot images one at a time to locate and blot out the number before releasing the images. Read Article

Wyoming Secretary of state says state needs to move toward banning electronic voting equipment | Jasmine Hall/The Jackson Hole News & Guide

After walking into a room filled with Lander and Riverton residents wearing “HANDS OFF MY VOTE” and “We trust our election machines” stickers on Thursday, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray said the state needs to move forward with legislation banning electronic voting equipment. House Bill 215 seeks to switch Wyoming over to an entirely hand-counting system, as does Senate File 184. Rep. Scott Smith, R-Lingle, sponsored HB 215 during the 2025 legislative session, but the bill died early in the lawmaking process. Gray put it on a long list of bills from the past session that he would like the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee to take up this year. The committee held its first gathering to prepare for the 2026 session on Thursday in Lander. The room was packed for the first six hours of the meeting when an election equipment demonstration was put on by clerks and the Secretary of State’s Office laid out its priorities. Read Article

National: Department of Justice Won’t Appeal Judge’s Order Against Trump’s Anti-Voting Decree | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

The Department of Justice (DOJ) does not plan to appeal a judge’s order blocking President Donald Trump from adding a proof of citizenship requirement on a federal registration form, according to a court filing made Monday by plaintiffs in the case. A federal judge last month issued a preliminary injunction against portions of the anti-voting executive order Trump issued earlier this year. The judge in part halted the president’s order that the Election Assistance Commission require eligible voters to show proof of citizenship if they attempt to register or update registration information using the National Mail Voter Registration Form. In a filing Monday, parties challenging Trump’s order said the Justice Department signaled that they will not appeal the judge’s order and agreed to allow the lawsuit to head to summary judgment. Read Article

Opinion: America Needs More Judges Like Judge Myers | Richard L. Hasen/The Atlantic

When judges act as partisan hacks, it is important to condemn their conduct. Last month, four Republican justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court blessed the antidemocratic attempt by the fellow Republican judge Jefferson Griffin to subvert the outcome of the November 2024 election for a seat on that same court by throwing out ballots of some North Carolina voters who had followed all the rules. But just as important is lauding the Republican judges who stand up against election subversion, including the Trump-appointed federal district-court judge Richard E. Myers, who ruled earlier this week that Griffin’s gambit violated the U.S. Constitution. Today, just two days after that decision, Griffin conceded defeat to Justice Allison Riggs. If the United States is going to resist attacks on free and fair elections, principled judges on the right remain indispensable. Read Article

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Announces Voting Fraud Charges | Edgar Sandoval/The New York Times

A half-dozen people, including a county judge, two City Council members and a former county election administrator, were indicted in Texas on Wednesday for “vote harvesting” and tampering with evidence, elevating Attorney General Ken Paxton’s charges of voter fraud by mostly Latino Democrats to a criminal level. The charges surprised Latino voting rights activists, who had insisted that a series of law enforcement raids on political operatives and voting organizers, some who were in their 70s and 80s, appeared to have been political. The raids last August by Mr. Paxton’s office were part of a sprawling voter fraud inquiry in Latino enclaves near San Antonio and in South Texas, conducted by Mr. Paxton’s “election integrity unit.” Read Article

National: Trump proposes closing CISA disinformation offices | Miranda Nazzaro/The Hill

President Trump proposed shuttering the disinformation offices and programs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), alleging in the White House budget request that they contributed to the censorship of the president and his supporters. CISA, formed in 2018 during the first Trump administration, is tasked with securing the nation’s infrastructure, including election voting systems. It is housed under the Department of Homeland Security. The proposal calls for slashing the agency’s budget by about $491 million. This would be a nearly 16 percent reduction in funding from what the agency received last year. It currently has a budget of about $3 billion. Read Article

National: Justice Department will prioritize Trump’s elections order, memo says | Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

The Justice Department unit that ensures compliance with voting rights laws will switch its focus to investigating voter fraud and ensuring elections are not marred by “suspicion,” according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press. The new mission statement for the voting section makes a passing reference to the historic Voting Rights Act, but no mention of typical enforcement of the provision through protecting people’s right to cast ballots or ensuring that lines for legislative maps do not divide voters by race. Instead, it redefines the unit’s mission around conspiracy theories pushed by Republican President Donald Trump to explain away his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s attorney general at the time, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in that election. Repeated recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss, including some led by Republicans, affirmed Biden’s win and found the election was run properly. Trump and his supporters also lost dozens of court cases trying to overturn the election results. Read Article

National: States Are Tightening Rules for Getting Citizen-Led Proposals on the Ballot | Emily Cochrane/The New York Times

After a wave of successful citizen-led efforts to expand abortion rights via ballot measures, some state legislatures are making it harder for members of the public to put such measures before voters. Florida, which late last week became the latest state to enact stricter rules around the process, is already facing a lawsuit over whether imposing more restrictions on the ballot initiative process is constitutional. The suit was brought by a group, Florida Decides Healthcare, that is trying to get a proposal on next year’s ballot to expand Medicaid in the state. The group, which faces a February deadline to collect nearly 900,000 signatures from residents supportive of the plan, said that the new law was making signature-gatherers nervous. Read Article

Opinion | Trump’s Third-Term Jokes Deserve a Serious Response | The New York Times

When Republicans took control of Congress in 1947, they were still angry that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had won a fourth term in 1944, and they set out to pass a constitutional amendment to limit future presidents to two terms. John Jennings, Republican of Tennessee, stood on the House floor and said a 22nd Amendment was necessary to prevent a dictator from taking over the country. “Without such a limit on the number of terms a man may serve in the presidency, the time may come when a man of vaulting ambition becomes president,” Mr. Jennings said on Feb. 6, 1947. Such a man, backed by a “subservient Congress” and a compliant Supreme Court, could “sweep aside and overthrow the safeguards of the Constitution,” he said. Without such a law, a president could use the office’s great powers to tilt the political system in his favor and win repeated re-election. Eventually, that president could come to resemble a king, effectively unbound by the Constitution’s checks and balances. Read Article

American Samoans in Alaska, misinformed by election officials, now face prosecution | Victoria Petersen/The Alaska Current

When Tupe Smith heard a knock at her door on Nov. 30, 2023, she thought it was her mother-in-law coming to see her grandkids. Instead, two Alaska State Troopers stood outside. They arrested her in front of her children — and in front of the small town where she had lived and worked since 2017. “This was the lowest point of my life,” Smith said in a prepared statement. “I never thought I would go through something like this.” Smith was born in American Samoa, a United States territory, and moved to Whittier, Alaska, to be closer to family. A regular volunteer at Whittier’s only public school — where nearly half of the students are Samoan — Smith was encouraged by teachers and community members to run for the local school board. In 2023, she was elected with 96% of the vote. Read Article

Arizona Secretary of State seeks legal guidance as counties chart their own path on voter registration glitch  Mary Jo Pitzl/Arizona Republic

To ensure equal treatment of all voters, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is seeking legal guidance on how to address more than 200,000 voters whose registrations do not meet the state’s citizenship requirements. Fontes wrote in a May 7 letter to Attorney General Kris Mayes that county recorders, who handle voter registrations, have approached the issue differently. He’s seeking uniform guidance in order to avoid potential lawsuits challenging election outcomes. Read Article

Colorado: Trump calls for former county clerk Tina Peters to be released from prison | Katie Langford/The Denver Post

President Donald Trump on Monday called for former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to be released from prison, where she is serving a nine-year sentence for a voting data scheme related to the 2020 presidential election. Peters is a “political prisoner” and “hostage,” Trump said in a Monday night post on Truth Social, describing her case as “communist persecution by the radical left Democrats.” Peters’ case was prosecuted by a Republican district attorney and she was convicted of several felonies related to unauthorized access to state voting machines, including giving a security badge to a man associated with MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell so the man could access Mesa County’s election system in an unsuccessful search for voter fraud. Read Article

Michigan Department of State says subpoenas for election training materials violate the law | Anna Liz Nichols/Michigan Advance

In response to Michigan House Republicans issuing subpoenas for copies of election-related training materials, the Michigan Department of State is asking lawmakers to narrow their request in the interest of election security. Members of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas last month ordering Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to turn over educational and training documents used in preparing clerks and poll workers to oversee elections, which Benson’s office said Wednesday would be a violation of the law. The subpoena is the latest maneuver in a months-long effort by House Republicans to obtain copies of training materials, beginning with Rep. Rachelle Smit (R-Martin) requesting them late last year, before she became chair of the House Election Integrity Committee. Read Article

North Carolina: New Republican majority on elections board replaces the executive director | Lynn Booner/NC Newsline

The new Republican majority on the state Board of Elections in its first meeting voted to replace elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell with Sam Hayes, general counsel to House Speaker Destin Hall. This is the first state elections board with members appointed by the state Auditor. In the past, a majority of the election board’s members were of the same political party as the governor. After Democrat Josh Stein won the governorship last year, the Republican legislative supermajority passed a law stripping governors of their power to appoint members. That lead to the new majority-Republican elections board. Read Article

North Carolina: Republican concedes long-unsettled Supreme Court election to Democratic incumbent | Gary D. Robertson/Associated Press

The Republican challenger for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat conceded last November’s election on Wednesday to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs, two days after a federal judge ruled that potentially thousands of disputed ballots challenged by Jefferson Griffin must remain in the final tally. In a statement provided by his campaign, Griffin said he would not appeal Monday’s decision by U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who also ordered that the State Board of Elections certify results that after two previous recounts showed Riggs is the winner by 734 votes from over 5.5 million ballots cast in the race. Griffin’s decision sets the stage for Riggs to be officially elected to an eight-year term as an associate justice in the nation’s ninth-largest state. Read Article

Oregon’s access to federal election security funds at risk | Anastasia Mason/Salem Statesman Journal

Oregon could lose out on $272,727 in election security funding from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission following updated requirements that states agree to follow an executive order from President Donald Trump on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Secretary of State Tobias Read said he has not yet decided whether he will sign the agreement. “We really can’t make a decision until we know more, because the Trump administration has not done a good job of writing these requirements in a way that’s understandable,” Read told the Statesman Journal. “It’s not clear what they mean by ‘DEI,’ for example.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: Why election policy is still one of Harrisburg’s thorniest issues | Stephen Caruso and Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

For two decades, disputes over voter identification have sunk attempts to rewrite Pennsylvania’s badly outdated election law. But in recent years, prominent Democrats have offered tentative support for stricter rules. In March, state House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), a longtime opponent, publicly said she is open to expanding voter ID requirements as long as they don’t make it harder for people to vote. That’s a position echoed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. In theory, Democratic support for a GOP priority should make it easier for Pennsylvania’s divided legislature to reach a deal that brings the state’s Election Code into the 21st century. The reality is much more complicated. Read Article

Texas House OKs bill allowing election judges to carry guns | Stephen Simpson/The Texas Tribune

Texas House lawmakers debated gun rights and voter protections Wednesday afternoon related to a bill that would allow election judges to carry a weapon inside a polling place at any time. House Bill 1128, by Rep. Carrie Isaac, R-Dripping Springs, allows an election judge, early voting clerk, or deputy early voting clerk who is serving as an election judge to carry a concealed handgun at an early voting or Election Day polling place as a means of protection for themselves and others. House lawmakers passed the bill 85 to 57 on Thursday, advancing it to the Senate. This bill would codify a decision made by Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2018, where he ruled that since district judges can carry firearms to polling places and election judges had been given the authority of district judges, they should also be able to. ​​Paxton’s opinion explains why a court would take his side in the decision, but it was not legally binding. Read Article

Wisconsin towns want to appoint election clerks instead of electing them | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

A couple of years ago, Lorraine Beyersdorff was ready to retire from her job as clerk of the Town of Texas, Wisconsin, after 34 years of service. “I will not run again,” she said in a community Facebook post in late 2022. “Nomination papers can be circulated for signatures beginning December 1st. If interested, call me for more information.” About a dozen people thanked her for a job well done. But no one filed nomination papers. Nobody called. And because of a quirk in Wisconsin law, no one from outside of the 1,600-person town could take the job. State law requires all elected town clerks — and the appointees that replace clerks departing mid-term — to live in the town where they serve. Beyersdorff, 73, knew there was another option: The town could switch from electing its clerk to appointing one. That would allow officials to consider candidates from outside the town’s borders. Read Article

National: House appropriators have reservations — or worse — about proposed CISA cuts | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

House appropriators on Tuesday challenged proposed budget cuts for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, with Democrats saying the Trump administration was disturbingly moving money away from the agency and a key Republican saying he needed to see justifications for the reductions. The Trump administration has proposed cutting CISA funding by $491 million, and some members of a House Appropriations subcommittee raised doubts about that idea during testimony from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Specific details for those budget cuts weren’t released in the so-called “skinny budget” last week. Homeland Security subcommittee chair Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said that at a time when leading Hill voices and others are saying China is getting the better of the United States in cyberspace and as CISA personnel cuts are already underway, appropriators need more information on the budget proposal. Read Article

National: As of Today, the FEC Can’t Enforce Campaign Finance Laws — and That’s Only One of Its Problems | Daniel I. Weiner/Brennan Center for Justice

Starting today, the bipartisan Federal Election Commission won’t be able to do its job. That’s because the independent agency, which oversees money in campaigns for federal office, will no longer have the minimum four required members to do most business. The loss of quorum is due to the resignation of a Republican appointee, coupled with President Trump’s unprecedented move in February to fire a Democratic appointee. Such a shortfall has only happened three other times in the FEC’s 50-year history, including twice during Trump’s first term. Read Article