National: Election officials like Tina Peters are a more pressing threat to elections than theoretical voting machine hacks | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

An important lesson became clear last week after a Colorado jury convicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters of helping conspiracy theorists to breach her county’s voting system in 2021. At the same time the trial was wrapping up, some tech whizzes were gathered in Las Vegas at DEF CON, the annual event where white-hat hackers try to break into all kinds of computer systems, from banking to aerospace, in search of security vulnerabilities. But the real, pressing security issues are not the things DEF CON uncovers, but rather the more boring things: chain-of-custody procedures, appropriate training, and adequate oversight. Which brings us to convicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, an actual threat to elections systems. “This case was a simple case centered around the use of deceit to commit a fraud,” Robert Shapiro, a special deputy district attorney for Colorado’s 21st Judicial District, told the jury during closing arguments in Peters’ trial Monday. “It’s not about computers. It’s not about election records. It’s about using deceit to trick and manipulate others, specifically public servants who were simply trying to do their job.” Read Article

Editorial: Republicans’ New, Dangerous Idea for Breaking the Election | Bob Bauer/The Atlantic

Only months before November’s elections, the Republican National Committee has launched a new legal attack on the rules that govern federal elections. Supported by 24 states, the RNC is seeking, on an emergency basis, a Supreme Court ruling that the United States Congress lacks the constitutional authority to regulate presidential elections—congressional elections, yes, but not elections held to select presidents. The petitioners’ immediate goal is to allow the state of Arizona to impose a “proof of citizenship” requirement as a condition of a person’s right to vote for president. If they are to succeed, the Court will have to suddenly, with mere weeks left before people start voting, abandon or explain away a decision it rendered in 2013—that Congress has the power to establish rules for voter registration in presidential elections. But even if the suit fails, it risks achieving some success in sowing doubt about the integrity of elections, highlighting claims of illegal voting by immigrants, and laying a foundation for post-election allegations of fraud and related legal challenges. Read Article

Alabama law makes offering, receiving compensation to gather mail ballots a felony | UPI

Voters in Alabama may face up to 20 years in prison for offering or receiving compensation for assistance turning in a mail-in ballot, according to a new state law. SB1 makes it a Class B felony to pay or give a gift to a third party to order or deliver an absentee ballot. A Class B felony is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $30,000 fine. Likewise, it is a Class C felony for a third party — with some exceptions — to accept payment or gifts for these purposes. The maximum penalty for this is 10 years in prison. Read Article

Florida: VR Systems takes ‘full responsibility’ for election websites crashing | Ana Goñi-Lessan/Tallahassee Democrat

Election supervisor websites crashed in multiple Florida counties on Tuesday after the company that supports the sites said they suffered “extraordinary stress.” “We believe the logging that was enabled as a security measure was at the root of the issues that our customers experienced,” VR Systems, the Tallahassee-based elections software company, said on Tuesday evening. Leon, Palm Beach, Manatee, Sarasota and Broward and other counties’ websites were experiencing technical issues, could not be accessed or were timing out. Almost an hour after polls closed, Lake and Palm Beach still did not have results pages. In an updated statement released Wednesday afternoon, VR Systems said the glitches affected every clients’ website that they host, and they “take full responsibility.” It is not yet known how many Florida counties were affected and what time all the issues were resolved. Read Article

Georgia board rejects widespread use of paper ballots for November election | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The State Election Board on Monday rejected calls to implement widespread use of paper ballots filled out by hand in the November election. Election integrity advocates asked the board to authorize the statewide use of hand-marked paper ballots, citing concerns about the security of Georgia’s Dominion Voting System machines. “I’m just asking you to move to secure our voting system before the most important election in my lifetime,” longtime tea party activist Debbie Dooley, who proposed one of the rules, told the board. But the board unanimously rejected two similar rules calling for the use of hand-marked paper ballots. Among other things, board members said they lack the authority to implement sweeping changes to the way Georgians cast their ballots. Read Article

Michigan: In small towns, even GOP clerks are targets of election conspiracies | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

Deep in the thumb of Michigan’s mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula, Republican election officials are outcasts in their rural communities. Michigan cities already were familiar with the consequences of election conspiracy theories. In 2020, Republicans flooded Detroit’s ballot counting center looking for fraud. Democratic and Republican election officials faced an onslaught of threats. And conservative activists attempted to tamper with election equipment. But the clerks who serve tiny conservative townships around Lake Huron never thought the hatred would be directed toward them. “I’m telling you — I’ve heard about everything I could hear,” said Theresa Mazure, the clerk for the 700 residents of Hume Township in Huron County. “I just shake my head. And when you try to explain, all I hear is, ‘Well, that’s just the Democrats talking.’ No, it’s the democratic process.” Read Article

Nevada Supreme Court declines to wade into flap over certification of election results, for now | Scott Sonner and Gabe Stern/Associated Press

Nevada’s Supreme Court declined Tuesday to wade into an electoral controversy despite pleas from the state’s top election official and attorney general after one county initially voted against certifying recount results from the June primary. The Democratic officials wanted the justices to make clear that counties have no legal authority to refuse to certify election results. The high court said in a ruling that the matter was moot since the Washoe County Commission’s original 3-2 vote against certification was later nullified when it re-voted the following week to certify the results. Read Article

New York’s early mail-in voting law upheld by top court | Dan Clark/Times-Union

New York’s highest court upheld a law Tuesday that allows ballots to be mailed in during the early voting period ahead of an election, soundly rejecting arguments from Republicans that the statute violates the state constitution.The ruling means the mail-in voting option will be allowed in this November’s election and future elections in New York unless the law faces another legal challenge. “While some want to put up roadblocks and stifle New Yorkers’ ability to exercise their constitutional right to vote, I will always stand up and protect this basic, yet essential, freedom,” said state Attorney General Letitia James, whose office defended the state in the case. Read Article

Pennsylvania Judge Rules Butler County Voters Cannot Cure ‘Naked’ Mail-in Ballots | Rachel Selzer/Democracy Docket

As a result of a ruling issued last Friday by a Pennsylvania judge, Butler County voters will not be able to cure defective mail-in ballots that are missing inner secrecy envelopes — also known as “naked ballots.” The ruling, which is expected to be appealed, upholds a prior decision from the Butler County Board of Elections refusing to allow two voters to cure their “naked” mail-in ballots cast in the state’s 2024 primary election. “It is the voter’s burden to ensure they have completed the steps necessary for their mail-in ballot to be included in the tabulation,” last week’s order reads. The judge added that it is the task of the Pennsylvania Legislature, not the court, to implement a new set of curing procedures to remedy defective mail-in ballots. Read Article

Five of Pennsylvania’s ‘fake electors’ from 2020 are back on Trump’s 2024 slate | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Five Pennsylvania Republicans who joined an alternate slate of electors for Donald Trump in 2020 will again serve as presidential electors in this year’s contest. William “Bill” Bachenberg, Bernadette Comfort, Ash Khare, Patricia Poprik, and Andrew Reilly are included on a list of electors submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of State by the GOP. Those electors, along with 15 others, drew criticism after submitting their names as electors for Pennsylvania in December 2020 and casting votes for then-President Trump, even though Joe Biden won the state’s popular vote. But unlike similar groups of alternate or “fake” electors in other swing states in 2020, the Pennsylvania slate avoided legal repercussions because of a caveat they included in the certificate documenting their vote. Read Article

Vermont: Software glitch leads Secretary of State’s Office to postpone certifying primary elections results | Sarah Mearhoff/VTDigger

For the second primary election cycle in a row, the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office has delayed the certification of statewide election results due to a software glitch. Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas had been scheduled to join political party leaders Tuesday morning to certify statewide election results after last week’s primary election — generally a formality which takes place after every statewide election, and is typically a sleepy affair. But after a delayed start, Vermont’s chief elections operator announced that the certification process would have to wait another day. According to the Secretary of State’s Office, the issue is limited to the office’s software, which generates summary reports on election results. In a Tuesday afternoon press release, the office clarified that generating election results reports “is separate and distinct from the official counting of ballots and the local certification of results by town and city clerks” — a process in which Copeland Hanzas is fully confident. Read Article

Wisconsin towns pass poll worker protections after state kills bill | Andrew Bahl/The Cap Times

In the small towns of Armstrong Creek and Caswell in rural Forest County, municipal clerk Tamaney “Sam” Augustin has only a small group of poll workers — and the ones she does have, she wants to keep safe. That’s why she insisted on making changes at one of the polling places in the two towns, which combined have fewer than 500 residents. When she took over as clerk in 2019, she told workers to move things around to position themselves near a door, fearing they would otherwise be unable to escape if an armed person came into the room. “You don’t want to think that something like that’s going to happen, but you have to be prepared,” Augustin said. “And what better way to disrupt elections and everything than to go into a small, rural area and do it, because that could put a whole new wrinkle into everything.” Read Article

The Wyoming GOP alleges the state’s voting equipment is not accurate. How so and is it fixable? | Kamila Kudelska/Wyoming Public Media

It’s standard practice for voting equipment to be tested before an election. This year was no different. About two weeks before the primary all 23 county clerks in the state went ahead and tested their voting equipment. But this time at least three counties’ results were not in accordance with a line in the Wyoming Election Code, according to the Wyoming GOP. They provided evidence for Goshen, Laramie and Albany Counties, but claim other counties also were in violation. To understand why this line is so important, I called Pamela Smith,the president and CEO of Verified Voting, an organization that promotes responsible use of technology in elections. Smith is aware of this law and said it’s actually really important. “The important thing is that when you’re testing [voting equipment], you need to be sure that it’s correctly capturing votes. So when you prepare to test it, having different numbers of votes for a particular candidate that you insert and then expect to find in the results will tell you that,” Smith explained. Smith pointed to an incident in Pennsylvania last year as an example. It was a judicial retention question whether voters wanted to keep multiple judges. “The way the question was worded, you could say yes to the first one, yes to the second one. You could say no to the first one, no to the second one,” she said. “ [Election officials] tested for those kinds of answers, but they failed to test for what would happen if someone said yes to one and no to the other. As a consequence, there was a mis-programming that wasn’t caught.” Read Article

National: Elections Officials Battle a Deluge of Disinformation | Tiffany Hsu/The New York Times

Tate Fall is overwhelmed. When she signed on to be director of elections in Cobb County, Ga., last year, she knew she’d be registering voters and recruiting poll workers, maybe fixing up voting machines. She didn’t expect the unending flood of disinformation — or at least, she wasn’t prepared for how much it would overtake her job. She has had election deniers shout at her at public meetings, fielded weekend calls from politicians panicked about a newly circulating falsehood, and even reviewed conspiracy theories circulating on Nextdoor forums that might worsen skepticism among distrustful constituents already doubtful that the democratic system is reliable and secure. And that was before the election went sideways. Read Article

National: FBI probing alleged Iran hack attempts targeting Trump, Biden camps | Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, Isaac Arnsdorf and Shane Harris/The Washington Post

The FBI is investigating suspected hacking attempts by Iran targeting both a Trump associate and advisers to the Biden-Harris campaign, according to people familiar with the matter, as the agency formally acknowledged Monday it has opened a high-stakes national security investigation months before Election Day. Three staffers on the Biden-Harris campaign received spear phishing emails that were designed to appear legitimate but could give an intruder access to the recipients’ communications, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation. So far, investigators have not found evidence that those hacking attempts were successful, these people said. The FBI began the investigation in June, suspecting Iran was behind the attempts to steal data from two U.S. presidential campaigns. Agents contacted Google, among other companies, to discuss what appeared to be a phishing effort targeting people associated with the Biden campaign, these people said. Read Article

National: Google says Iranian efforts to hack US presidential campaigns are ongoing and wide-ranging | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

Google said Wednesday that an alleged Iranian hacking operation aimed at US presidential campaigns is ongoing and more wide-ranging than previously known as the hackers continue to target the email accounts of current US officials and people associated with Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. In May and June, a hacking group linked with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted the personal email accounts of about a dozen people associated with Biden and Trump, including current government officials, Google researchers said in a blog post. And even today, Google is seeing unsuccessful attempts by the Iranian hackers to log into the accounts of people associated with Biden, Harris, Trump and both presidential campaigns. Read Article

National: The nation’s best hackers found vulnerabilities in voting machines — but no time to fix them | Maggie Miller/Politico

Some of the best hackers in the world gathered in Las Vegas over the weekend to try to break into voting machines that will be used in this year’s election — all with an eye to helping officials identify and fix vulnerabilities. The problem? Their findings will likely come too late to make any fixes before Nov. 5. In one sense, it’s the normal course of events: Every August, hackers at the DEF CON conference find security gaps in voting equipment, and every year the long and complex process of fixing them means nothing is implemented until the next electoral cycle. But Election Day security is under particular scrutiny in 2024. That’s both because of increasing worries that foreign adversaries will figure out how to breach machines, and because President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud in 2020 undermined confidence in the vote among his supporters. Read Article

National: Researchers race to document voting machine vulnerabilities ahead of November | David DiMolfetta,/Nextgov/FCW

One peek inside the Voting Village at the DEF CON hacker conference would lead the average person to believe they had entered a sterile operating room meant only for computers. At tables placed throughout the space, voting equipment and other machine parts lie exposed like patients awaiting surgery, surrounded by tech specialists taking notes and wielding diagnostic tools as they peer into the circuit boards, microchips and wires underpinning the pivotal instrument that will enable Americans to cast their votes in this November’s election. In one back corner, Will Baggett is one of several performing his own digital surgery. He images a single tabulation device, used in counties across the U.S. to tally up votes that are brought in from a separate machine, which only enables voters to cast their ballots. To the left, he examines a newer generation machine that allows voters to pick their candidate while the device internally tabulates the totals. Read Article

National: Ahead of election, Senate Dem0crats urge DOJ to hike poll-worker protections | Benjamin S. Weiss/Courthouse News Service

In the lead-up to November’s presidential election, a group of Senate Democrats on Monday asked the Justice Department to double down on efforts to investigate and counter threats against poll workers and local election officials. In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, lawmakers led by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Senator Peter Welch and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin sounded the alarm about what they call an ongoing barrage of abusive conduct towards people tasked with overseeing U.S. elections. “Our election officials and workers are public servants working on the frontlines of our democracy to make sure that every vote is counted,” the lawmakers wrote. Growing numbers of local election officials have reported experiencing threats, harassment or other abuse. In a survey published in May by the Brennan Center for Justice, around 38% of responding officials said they’d been the target of such conduct. Read Article

National: Supreme Court Drawn Into Fight on Timing of Election Law Changes | Zoe Tillman/Bloomberg News

The US Supreme Court is weighing how close to elections judges can change voting rules, with the potential to affect legal fights unfolding across the county less than three months before the presidential contest. In Arizona — a battleground for Donald Trump as he tries to reclaim the White House — the Republican National Committee has asked the justices to restore a state law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote after it was blocked by an appeals court. The case is the latest test of a nearly 20-year-old ruling that cautioned against last-minute federal court action that causes “voter confusion.” Any action by the justices could give judges handling fights over state voting practices fresh guidance about how to account for proximity to the Nov. 5 election, when voters will choose the next US president and federal lawmakers. The RNC asked for a decision by Aug. 22. The court ordered responses by Friday. Read Article

Arizona: Disruptions as counties certify primary election may signal what’s to come in November | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Voting in Arizona’s July 30 primary went smoothly around the state, with no major technical or logistical issues, according to observers from both major political parties, elected officials, and candidates. But there were disruptions Monday in two of the state’s largest counties, as their boards of supervisors moved to certify the results. In Pinal, Republican supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh voted “aye under duress” to certify the results, later explaining that he felt forced to do so even though he doesn’t believe the results were accurate, including in the sheriff’s race, which he lost by a 2-to-1 margin. And in Maricopa, the epicenter of election conspiracy theories since 2020, residents yelled at the supervisors from the podium during the public comment period, with one saying she had more faith in Russia’s elections because “Maricopa is a joke.” The Republican-led boards in both counties ultimately voted unanimously to certify the results, but the disruptions may be a sign of what is to come in November. Read Article

Arkansas: DMV software error could block some voters from the polls without correction | George Fabe Russell/Fort Smith Southwest Times Record

About 49,000 Arkansas voters who updated their voter registrations at the Department of Motor Vehicles earlier this year may be registered under the wrong address because of a software error. The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration has said that it will send out letters to all those who might have been affected, though not everyone who updated their address during the window when the software issues happened will see problems with their registration. In Arkansas, voters making changes to their address at the DMV can update their voter registration information at the same time. From January to late March, software errors in the system used to communicate that information to county clerks led some people’s registration to be incorrectly updated. Read Article

Colorado: Former Pro-Trump County Clerk Is Found Guilty of Tampering With Voting Machines | Alan Feuer and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, was convicted on Monday of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald J. Trump. After nearly five hours of deliberations, a jury in Grand Junction found Ms. Peters guilty of seven criminal charges connected to her efforts to breach a machine manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. The jury determined that Ms. Peters had helped an outsider gain unauthorized access to the machine in May 2021 and obtain information that was later made public at a conspiratorial event held to undermine trust in Trump’s defeat to Biden. Ms. Peters is set to be sentenced on Oct. 3 and could face multiple years in prison. Read Article

Georgia Secretary of State blasts proposed rule requiring hand count of ballots at polling places | Kate Brumback/Associated Press

Georgia’s secretary of state on Thursday came out against election rule changes pending before the State Election Board, specifically rejecting a proposal to count ballots by hand at polling places on election night. At a meeting in July, the board advanced a proposal that would require three separate poll workers to count ballots at voting precincts on election night to make sure they match the number of ballots recorded by voting machines. That proposal has been posted for public comment and the board is set to vote Monday whether to adopt it. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, called that effort “misguided,” saying it would delay the reporting of election results and introduce risks to chain of custody procedures. Read Article

Kentucky: Data stolen in Jefferson County cyberattack includes election info, employee reviews | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

Officials in the Jefferson County Clerk’s office in Kentucky this week confirmed that sensitive data such as personnel files, Social Security numbers and election administration information may have been compromised in a cyberattack last month. On Monday, RansomHub, a ransomware group responsible for the July cyberattack on the Florida Health Department, listed Jefferson County as a victim on its ransomware data leak site and claimed responsibility for the cyberattack. The group claims it exfiltrated 47 gigabytes of data from the county, a trove that might include ballot data and voter records going back as far as 2008. On a leak site, RansomHub’s countdown clock points to Saturday as the deadline for payment. A ransom amount isn’t listed, and the county clerk’s office declined to confirm whether it had received a ransom demand. Read Article

Michigan: Big wins for GOP candidates who spread election falsehoods | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

A self-proclaimed “constitutional sheriff,” a township clerk facing felony charges, and a county clerk candidate who wants to “hand count every ballot cast at the end of each voting day” sailed through their Republican primaries Tuesday, earning themselves spots on November’s ballot and likely victory. The results are a sign that many local voters in more conservative areas of Michigan don’t consider it disqualifying for local elected officials to spread conspiracy theories or interfere with elections to advance the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump. In Barry County, north of Kalamazoo, incumbent Sheriff Dar Leaf handily beat three GOP challengers. In Macomb County, Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot did the same. Victoria Bishop, a clerk candidate in Antrim County, claimed victory in a five-way GOP race with about 37% of the vote. Read Article

Nevada rolls out new voter database in an effort to boost voter trust ahead of election | Yvette Fernandez/Nevada Public Radio

The 2020 election denial claims led to widespread questions about election security. Since then, states such as Nevada are taking steps to make sure voters know what is being done to protect the balloting. The most important effort is educating voters about voting procedures and safety measures in place to protect the integrity of the voting process, according to Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar. At an August bipartisan town hall in Las Vegas, Aguilar said the state will implement a new system this month, aimed at streamlining the process by combining every county’s information into one statewide system. Read Article

Texas Rangers find no evidence of efforts to sway 2022 election results in Harris County | Joshua Fechter/The Texas Tribune

Investigators with the Texas Rangers and the Harris County District Attorney’s office found no evidence of attempts to sway the county’s November 2022 election, officials said Tuesday. Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans have heavily criticized Harris County officials for how the state’s most populous county ran that election. Some polling locations saw shortages of paper ballots and malfunctioning voting equipment. Some locations opened later in the day, resulting in longer wait times for voters. Those irregularities drove more than 20 local Republican candidates to contest the election results — and Republican lawmakers in the Texas Legislature to force the county to dissolve its elections administration office. Read Article

Virginia Governor codifies election security measures that were already in place | Elizabeth Beyer/Staunton News Leader

In a largely symbolic move, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order on Wednesday to codify “election security measures” with the aim of protecting “legal voters and accurate counts” ahead of November’s hotly contested presidential election. Youngkin’s Executive Order 35 codifies the use of paper ballots in Virginia’s elections and ensures “non-citizens” are disqualified from voting. Those election security mechanisms are already in place in the commonwealth, however. Read Article

Wisconsin: Ballot drop boxes prove popular as they return to some cities for the primary | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

They opened to fanfare, and closed on or just before election day, having fulfilled their purpose. Absentee ballot drop boxes were back in Wisconsin for the first time in over two years, and everything seemed to go just fine. For Tuesday’s primary, voters in many Wisconsin municipalities had their first opportunity in several elections to return their ballots to a drop box. That could have been at one of the 14 drop boxes in Madison, one of the 13 locations in Milwaukee, the red drop box outside of Racine’s City Hall, or one of the other drop boxes located in places from Onalaska to Rhinelander. Many municipalities that used to have drop boxes didn’t reopen them for this election for various reasons, from a rusted drop box lock to a lack of time — the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s July 5 decision unbanning them came less than six weeks before the primary. Many of those cities plan to have drop boxes available in November, though. Read Article