Colorado voting machines not connected to the internet | Sara Wilson/Colorado Newsline

Most counties in Colorado have upgraded their voting systems equipment since 2020 to models that physically cannot connect to the internet, and those that rely on older machines are statutorily required to disable any wireless capability. Election officials say that even the older models do not create a vulnerability in the voting system, as some conservative politicians and activists claim. “This is a known thing amongst the counties and amongst the Secretary of State’s office — that the (wireless) card was physically present, and so that there’s a couple of steps that were taken to ensure that it wasn’t activated or present,” Boulder Clerk and Recorder Molly Fitzpatrick, a Democrat, said. Read Article

Georgia judge blocks rule requiring counties to hand-count Election Day ballots | Adam Edelman/NBC

A Georgia judge on Tuesday blocked a new rule from the state’s election board that would have required counties to count ballots cast on Election Day by hand, a provision critics had said would cause delays and disruptions in reporting results in the battleground state. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his decision that the rule would be implemented too close to the election and that it would cause “administrative chaos” given the limited time available to train poll workers. “[T]he public interest is not disserved by pressing pause here. This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy,” he wrote. Read Article

Georgia: County election board members must certify election results, a judge rules | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Certifying elections is a required duty of county election boards in Georgia, and they’re not allowed to refuse to finalize results based on suspicions of miscounts or fraud, a Fulton County judge ruled Tuesday. Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney rejected claims brought by Fulton County election board member Julie Adams, who voted against certifying this spring’s presidential primary. McBurney ruled that Georgia law requires certification and county election boards don’t have any discretion not to do so. “If election superintendents were, as plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so — because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud — refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” McBurney wrote. “Our Constitution and our election code do not allow for that to happen.” Read Article

Michigan judge says RNC suit challenging overseas voters could ‘disenfranchise an entire group of citizens’ | Josh Gerstein/Politico

A Michigan judge suggested Thursday that Republicans waited too long to file a suit challenging the right of some U.S. citizens who live abroad to vote in the swing state. During an hourlong hearing in Detroit, Judge Sima Patel said that delay and the proximity to the election were the “biggest hurdle” facing a suit the Republican National Committee and the Michigan Republican Party filed Oct. 8 to disqualify voters who registered in the state as the spouses or dependents of U.S. citizens living overseas. A Michigan law and guidance from Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson allow a spouse or dependent accompanying a Michigan resident overseas to cast a ballot in Michigan, as long as they aren’t registered elsewhere in the U.S. Read Article

As North Carolina begins voting, hurricane devastation complicates casting ballots | Gabe Gutierrez and Bianca Seward/NBC

The violent water smashed into the fellowship hall, pushing a propane tank through a wall, encasing the structure in mud and devastating the church in this mountain community just over a month before the hotly contested presidential race draws to a close. “This is a flood like we’ve never had,” said Larry Jones, a deacon at Minneapolis Baptist Church, one of the polling places in rural Avery County ravaged by the remnants of Hurricane Helene last month. The site is one of several in the county unable to open in time for the election. Three days after the storm, Jones and his wife managed to hike up to his elderly mother-in-law’s house by wading through mud up to their knees. The roads and bridges were blocked. He made it to his church a few days later and has been organizing volunteer efforts ever since. Read Article

Ohio election administrators say their workers are overworked, underpaid, and strained by attacks | Susan Tebben/Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio’s local election workers are overworked, underpaid and strained by conspiratorial attacks, and the state could be doing more to leave politics out of the election process, according to a voting rights group who talked with local election administrators. All Voting is Local Ohio partnered with research firm Public Circle, LLC, to study the evolution of the work election administrators at the local level do as they prepare for another highly-contested election. “Today, these professionals are straining under the weight of back-to-back statewide special elections and rhetorical attacks on their trustworthiness, character and patriotism,” the report stated. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Election officials brace for misinformation, lawsuits | Katie Bernard, Julia Terruso and Jeremy Roebuck/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Elections officials across Pennsylvania are hopeful the 2024 presidential race won’t be a repeat of the chaos of 2020 — marked by a days-long wait for results, a deluge of misinformation, and baseless court challenges that dragged on for weeks. But even as they say they’re better prepared this year to handle the problems from four years ago, many are bracing for another tight race that could breed new areas of confusion and uncertainty amid an intensifying culture of election denialism if the nation once again waits on Pennsylvania to know who the next president will be. “The longer it takes to decide who the winner is, the more opportunity there is for unrest,” said Neil Makhija, chair of the Montgomery County Election Board. Read Article

Texas lawmakers signal push to require proof of citizenship from voters though instances of non-citizens voting are rare | Natalia Contreras and Vianna Davila/Votebeat

Texas lawmakers Wednesday signaled plans to consider a new law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, though even one of the strongest supporters of such legislation acknowledged instances of noncitizens voting are rare. An investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Votebeat published this week found the governor’s figure was likely inflated and, in some cases, wrong. The secretary of state’s office confirmed the news organization’s reporting during the hearing Wednesday after state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat, cited the article’s findings and pressed Christina Adkins, the state elections division director. The news organizations found that between September 2021 and August 2024, counties removed 581 people from the rolls on the grounds that they were noncitizens, according to a report the secretary of state gave Abbott. Read Article

Virginia: Waynesboro election officials sue to require hand-count of ballots | Laura Vozzella/The Washington Post

Top Republican election officials in rural Waynesboro, Va., say they will refuse to certify the results of the Nov. 5 presidential election unless the city’s ballots are counted by hand, alleging in a lawsuit that voting machines could be secretly programmed to rig the outcome. Two members of the three-seat Board of Elections in Waynesboro, a small, red-leaning Shenandoah Valley city about 30 miles west of Charlottesville, contend in the suit that tallying ballots by machine amounts to counting them “in secret” — something prohibited by the state constitution. Read Article

Wisconsin: Voting rights groups seek investigation into intimidating text message | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

Voting rights advocates on Tuesday asked state and federal authorities to investigate anonymous text messages apparently targeting young Wisconsin voters, warning them not to vote in a state where they are ineligible. Free Speech for People, on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, made the request to the U.S. Department of Justice as well as the Wisconsin Department of Justice. The letter says that “thousands of young voters across Wisconsin” received the text message last week, including staff members at the League of Women Voters and students at the University of Wisconsin. The text in question cites Wisconsin state law prohibiting voting in more than one place and says that violating the law can result in fines of up to $10,000 and 3.5 years in prison. “Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible,” the text said. Read Article

National: Not everything will run perfectly on Election Day but US elections are remarkably reliable | Gary Fields/Associated Press

On Election Day, some voting lines will likely be long and some precincts may run out of ballots. An election office website could go down temporarily and ballot-counting machines will jam. Or people who help run elections might just act like the humans they are, forgetting their key to a local polling place so it has to open later than scheduled. These kinds of glitches have occurred throughout the history of U.S. elections. Yet election workers across America have consistently pulled off presidential elections and accurately tallied the results — and there’s no reason to believe this year will be any different. Elections are a foundation of democracy. They also are human exercises that, despite all the laws and rules governing how they should run, can sometimes appear to be messy. They’re conducted by election officials and volunteers in thousands of jurisdictions across the United States, from tiny townships to sprawling urban counties with more voters than some states have people. Read Article

National: New wave of GOP lawsuits targets overseas ballots in key swing states | Adam Edelman/NBC

Republicans have filed lawsuits over the past week in three pivotal battleground states seeking to challenge the legitimacy of some ballots cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, including military members, arguing that some votes are particularly prone to fraud. Election officials in those states — Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — and nonpartisan voting experts strongly defended the previously uncontroversial overseas voting rules, arguing that the suits amounted to efforts to further lay the groundwork to question the veracity of the election results next month. The Republican National Committee last week sued election officials in North Carolina and Michigan in state courts, alleging they had on their books unlawful rules that extended overseas voting eligibility to people whose residency in those states had not been verified. Read Article

Georgia: Republican-led group sues to block rule requiring hand count of ballots | Jeff Amy and Kate Brumback/Associated Press

A Republican-led group is challenging Georgia’s new requirement that poll workers count the total number of ballots by hand, saying it’s another example of the State Election Board overstepping its legal authority. Eternal Vigilance Action amended its existing lawsuit on Wednesday to also challenge that rule adopted Friday by the board. The group, founded and led by former state Rep. Scot Turner, a Republican, was already suing the board over rules that it earlier adopted on certifying votes, a step that finalizes results. One of those rules provides for an undefined “reasonable inquiry” before county election officials certify while another allows county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.” Read Article

National: Voting Wars Open a New Front: Which Mail Ballots Should Count? | Michael Wines/The New York Times

As Pennsylvania voters begin casting perhaps two million-plus mail ballots, Democrats and Republicans are in furious legal combat over a once-overlooked aspect of voting remotely: which ballots are counted, which are rejected as defective and which ones voters are allowed to correct. Simple math explains why. In the 2020 presidential contest, Pennsylvania election officials rejected more than 34,000 mail ballots. In a tight 2024 election in the most coveted swing state, even a fraction of that many rejections could spell the difference between victory and defeat — not just in the presidential race, but also in any number of others. What’s true in Pennsylvania is true, to varying degrees, in other battleground states. Michigan rejected more than 20,000 mail ballots in 2020 and even more in 2022; Arizona turned down 7,700; Nevada 5,600; and Wisconsin about 3,000. Read Article

National: Election conspiracy theories fueled a push to hand-count votes, but doing so is risky and slow | Christine Fernando/Associated Press

Four years of Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election have kindled growing suspicion of voting machines among conspiracy theorists. One of their solutions is to replace the tabulators that count every vote with people who will do that by hand. Controversies over the issue have flared periodically in pockets of the country before the 2024 presidential election even though research has shown that hand-counting is more prone to error, costlier and likely to delay results. The few counties that have attempted the massive task have found the process more time-consuming, expensive and inaccurate than expected. Read Article

National: Election officials who back Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ stir concern in swing states | Joseph Tanfani and Nathan Layne/Reuters

In Michigan’s Macomb County, the Republican head of the board that will certify November’s election results called on former U.S. President Donald Trump to fight to stay in power after his election loss in 2020. In North Carolina’s Henderson County, a Republican election board member emailed legislators in August to claim, without evidence, that Democrats were flooding the state with illegal votes. And in Pennsylvania, considered a must win for both Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, Republican officials in six counties have voted against certifying results since 2020. Four years after Trump tried to overturn his election loss, his false conspiracy theories about voter fraud have become an article of faith among many Republican members of local election boards that certify results. Their rise raises the chances that pro-Trump officials in multiple jurisdictions will be able to delay or sow doubt over the Nov. 5 presidential election if Trump loses. Read Article

National: Election offices are preparing for a smooth voting process — and angry voters | /Derek B. JohnsonCyberScoop

Roughly a month out from Election Day, officials from across the country said they remain focused on carrying out a smooth voting process while bracing for the possibility that their offices could be overwhelmed by angry voters and false claims of election fraud. Speaking at a gathering in Washington D.C. hosted by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, a bipartisan group of election officials said that while they remain steadfastly confident in the integrity of past elections, they have had to put in place a host of new procedures over the past few years specifically to deal with claims of election malfeasance and fraud from local voters convinced by false claims of vote rigging by Republican candidate Donald Trump and his allies. Read Article

National: Russia, China and Iran Intend to Stoke False Election Claims, Officials Warn | Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

Foreign efforts to undermine American democracy will continue after Election Day, U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday, with covert influence campaigns focused on questioning the validity of election results after polls close. Adversaries believe that the possibility of a close presidential race and contested control of the Senate and House of Representatives offer opportunities to undermine trust in the election’s integrity, the officials said as part of an update one month before the vote. The officials said they were worried about foreign adversaries amplifying domestic concerns about voting irregularities, as well as manufacturing their own allegations. After the 2020 vote, Donald J. Trump’s campaign made false allegations about voting irregularities, and he and his supporters have already advanced similar claims ahead of this year’s vote, many of them echoed by Russian state media or Kremlin-friendly organizations. Read Article

National: How China is using X to influence local elections in 2024 campaign | Jeremy B. Merrill , Aaron Schaffer and Naomi Nix/The Washington Post

China is increasingly targeting downballot elections in America, according to a Washington Post analysis and senior U.S. intelligence officials, using fake accounts on social media to spread divisive and sometimes explicitly antisemitic claims and conspiracy theories about politicians — part of an effort to inflame tensions in the country just one month before the 2024 election. One covert influence operation has focused on Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), who is running to retain his House seat. A China-linked account on X called Moore “a Jewish dog” and claimed he won his primary because of “the bloody Jewish consortium,” among other derogatory tropes, according to a Post analysis of thousands of posts on X, of which about 75 concerned Moore. Moore, who recently backed new sanctions on Chinese officials, is not Jewish. Read Article

Arizona: Pinal County’s $150,000 audit confirms that its primary election was accurate and secure | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Pinal County spent at least $150,000 on an independent audit of its primary election after a losing candidate claimed fraud, a county spokesperson said Thursday, and the audit came back completely clean. The county’s supervisors, all Republicans, commissioned the audit in August to prove that the election was fair after one of them, Kevin Cavanaugh, blamed his loss in the sheriff’s race on malfeasance and voted to certify the results “under duress.” Brett Johnson of Snell & Wilmer, the law firm hired to lead the audit, presented the findings at a public meeting Wednesday afternoon, saying that the firm and the three technical experts hired to conduct the audit found no evidence of fraud or data manipulation. Read Article

California: How an ultra-right majority in Shasta County picked a novice to run its elections |  | The Guardian

When Shasta county had to search for a new official to oversee its elections earlier this year, there was an obvious candidate. Her name was Joanna Francescut, and she had been the assistant elections clerk and registrar of voters in this remote region in California’s far north. Francescut had worked in elections for more than 16 years, oversaw the office of the county clerk and registrar of voters for months after her boss went on leave, and was endorsed by elections officials and prominent area Republicans alike. Instead, the ultra-conservative majority on Shasta county’s board of supervisors in June selected Tom Toller, a former prosecutor who had never worked in elections and vowed to change the office culture, improve public confidence, and “clean up” voter rolls. Read Article

Colorado judge who sentenced Tina Peters to prison receives threats | Amy Beth Hanson/Associated Press

A rural Colorado county courthouse beefed up security Friday after threats were made against staff and a judge who sentenced former county clerk Tina Peters to nearly nine years behind bars and admonished her for her role in a data breach scheme catalyzed by the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Courthouse staff in Grand Junction, Colorado, received multiple threats that were being vetted by law enforcement while extra security was provided, said spokesperson Wendy Likes with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office. She did not say how many threats were made or how they were received. She also declined to describe the extra security. Read Article

Florida: Hurricanes force changes to election procedures | David A. Lieb and Brendan Farrington/Associated Press

With Florida still recovering from Hurricane Helene, some state and local officials are bracing for more disruptions from Hurricane Milton that could affect how people vote in the general election. Gov. Ron DeSantis already has granted counties hardest hit by Helene greater flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing polling sites for in-person voting. Further changes might be necessary after Hurricane Milton. “It’s possible mail ballots could get lost, either getting to the voter or being returned by the voter. They could be damaged, especially if there are high winds and waters,” said David Becker, executive director of The Center for Election Innovation and Research. In such cases, voters can request a replacement mailed ballot or still vote in person. Read Article

Georgia: Judge dismisses Republican lawsuit alleging voting machine vulnerabilities | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A judge threw out a DeKalb County Republican Party lawsuit Friday that claimed Georgia’s voting system was made vulnerable by the public disclosure of security features and computer code. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee dismissed the case because Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger complied with state law when he certified the Dominion voting system as “safe and practicable” before it went into use in 2020. “Although applicant may firmly believe that the secretary’s current processes are ‘nonsensical’ and ‘appalling,’ and good-faith concerns over how to better secure our elections should be taken seriously, this matter is currently one that must be deferred to the policymaking branches,” McAfee wrote in the dismissal. Read Article

Michigan: ‘What the hell’: Sheriffs dive into presidential race | Craig Mauger and Melissa Nann Burke/The Detroit News

Some Michigan sheriffs in charge of enforcing the law in their counties have gotten heavily involved this year in a heated presidential race, drawing criticism from opponents who argue the politicking — often done in uniform — has gone too far. From both sides of the aisle, sheriffs, elected on a partisan basis in Michigan, have been attempting to navigate a challenging political climate. Some have exercised their freedom to endorse candidates, while one sheriff used government resources for a campaign event to make a political contribution that’s now under investigation over its legality. Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy, a Republican, used his government email account in August to help organize a campaign event for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump that took place inside a sheriff’s department garage. Read Article

North Carolina: How Helene Has Upended Election Plans | Eduardo Medina and Mark Barrett/The New York Times

For decades, the North Fork Voting House has served as the official polling place for nearly 600 residents in the small mountain community of Creston, N.C. The tiny cinder block building was recently updated with a freshly painted white door, handmade curtains for the voting booths and a new metal roof. But the voting house was one of several structures destroyed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene late last month, uprooted by the epic flooding and mudslides that swept through western North Carolina. By the time the floodwaters subsided, the new metal roof was wrapped around a tree in a precinct worker’s yard. “You just think, ‘Really, something else?’” said Devon Houck, the director of the Ashe County Board of Elections. “There is already a lot of scrutiny, a lot of eyes watching North Carolina because of its swing state status, and now this.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: Republicans challenge legitimacy of overseas votes, including military | Colby Itkowitz and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

Republican congressmen from Pennsylvania have filed a federal lawsuit seeking stricter scrutiny of votes cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, reflecting a new GOP strategy to challenge the eligibility of a group of voters that includes overseas military personnel. The lawmakers claim in the suit, which was filed this week, that because local election officials in Pennsylvania are not required to verify the identity or eligibility of voters who register overseas, those ballots are vulnerable to fraud. They have asked a federal judge to require officials to set aside completed ballots and not count them until voter eligibility can be determined. The lawsuit is notable for targeting a group of voters long thought to favor Republicans because of the prevalence of military personnel stationed overseas, but that is now seen as more evenly divided or even leaning Democratic. The suit adds to a long list of Republican-backed litigation around the country with just weeks to go before the Nov. 5 election, with much of it aimed at disqualifying mail-in votes or removing ineligible voters from rolls. Read Article

West Virginia Republicans, Democrats Clash Over 2024 Legitimacy – Already | Crystal Hill/Democracy Docket

A proposal from five West Virginia Republicans urging the state not to recognize an “illegitimate presidential election” died quickly after it was introduced during a special legislative session. But not before a group of Democrats countered with their own proposal, requesting that the Legislature affirm a “free and fair” election. The session ended this week with no action on either resolution. But for some West Virginians, the brief episode reflects how the rural state’s Legislature, once majority-Democrat in a solidly blue state, has shifted further right over the past decade, especially since the rise of former President Donald Trump. Read Article

Wisconsin: Federal judge orders Rusk County town to bring back voting machines for voters with disabilities in future elections | Rich Kremer/WPR

A federal judge has ordered the Rusk County Town of Thornapple to resume using electronic voting machines after the town’s board switched to hand-counting paper ballots in two elections this year. The order says the town violated federal law aimed at making voting easier for people with disabilities. A preliminary injunction issued Friday by Chief U.S. District Judge James Peterson for Wisconsin’s Western District, states that the town’s clerk and three-member board of supervisors violated the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, by failing to provide at least one “voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities” at its single polling place in the April 2 and Aug. 13 elections. According to court documents, the town’s former clerk Suzanne Pinnow cited “the controversial nature of electronic voting machines” during a June 2023 town board meeting as part of the justification for moving to hand-counted, paper ballots. Read Article

Wyoming: Gillette Hand-Count Ballot Test Shows It Would Take Hundreds Of Counters, Cost Up To $1.3M | Leo Wolfson/Cowboy State Daily

A movement for hand counting election ballots in Wyoming has been gaining steam but faces many logistical hurdles if it’s ever required by law. A hand count election test conducted in Gillette last weekend showed that it could take hundreds of volunteers and cost as much as $1.3 million to make full hand counting of ballots work in Campbell County alone with an expectancy of getting results within a day of an election. Gillette resident Patricia Junek, a hand count supporter who helped facilitate the Campbell County test, said although she thought the test was “very successful” and proved hand counting could easily be done in Wyoming, it also showed a lot of volunteers would need to be recruited to make it happen. “We would need a substantial amount of people to count ballots,” Junek said. Read Article