Wisconsin Elections Commission seeks answers on uncounted Madison ballots | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously authorized an investigation Thursday into Madison’s mishandling of nearly 200 absentee ballots from the November 2024 election that were never counted. It’s the first such investigation that the bipartisan commission has authorized since becoming an agency in 2016. The review will allow the agency to probe whether Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl violated the law or abused her discretion. Read Article

National: Why Democrats’ Version of ‘Stop the Steal’ Isn’t Taking Off | Stuart A. Thompson, Kaleigh Rogers and Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

The 2024 presidential election has set off a new wave of election denialism online — only this time, it is coming from voters on the left. Much as many supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump did after the 2020 election, some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris are demanding recounts in key states in a bid to verify or even overturn the result. They are scrutinizing election results for signs of tampering, questioning whether election machines flipped votes and wondering whether digital technology could have injected fake votes. Read Article

National: 13 accused of being ‘fake electors’ cast Electoral College votes for Trump | Oren Oppenheim, Brittany Shepherd, Laura Romero, and Peter Charalambous/ABC

More than a dozen Republican officials accused of signing false certifications claiming Donald Trump had won their states’ electoral votes in the 2020 election served as electors Tuesday, this time casting real votes for the president-elect. Thirteen alleged “fake electors” cast Electoral College votes in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Michigan despite some of the officials still facing criminal charges from the last election. All have pleaded not guilty. Read Article

National: The 2024 election increased public trust in elections, but is it only temporary? | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

The presidential election this year had a quick and decisive result. In its wake, survey after survey is finding that a majority of the public believes the election was fair and the results are accurate. The polling is finding a significant uptick in Republicans’ belief in the results, which is driving the increase. A majority of the public asserting they have faith in elections is, by any measure, good news. But after the past few years, it’s also fair to ask whether the results would be different if Donald Trump had lost the presidential election — and whether that faith will hold when elections turn out differently. It’s too early to answer the second question with any degree of certainty. But at a summit on elections held by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C. earlier this month, election officials said they continue to worry — about whether the public will continue to believe in elections, about what comes next, about their own personal safety. Read Article

National: Trump Has Little Power to Make Drastic Voting Changes | Joshua A. Douglas/Washington Monthly

Donald Trump has bold ideas for changing our elections. While most of his proposals would make our voting rules worse, there’s a silver lining. Given the decentralized nature of our election system, he has little official power to implement the new rules he supports. At an event on December 7, Trump stated, “We want to have paper ballots, one-day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship.” This statement echoed one of the priorities he listed on his campaign website: “Secure our elections, including same day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship.” But as president, Trump does not have the authority to administer elections. The U.S. Constitution says that state legislatures determine the “times, places, and manner of holding elections” for Congress, though Congress can step in to “make or alter” those rules. The Constitution gives the president no power over voting beyond signing or vetoing congressional laws. States scrupulously guard their constitutional authority to regulate elections, often opposing federal statutes that dictate rules for administering elections. Read Article

National: States Must Take the Lead on Election Security | Derek Tisler/Brennan Center for Justice

American elections face increasingly complex cyber and physical security threats from foreign adversaries, emerging technology, and escalating risks of political violence. Fortifying election systems against these threats is essential. Historically, state and local governments have been responsible for ensuring the integrity of our electoral system, and that remains true. Decentralized election administration has been a significant source of strength for election security. But over the past decade, federal support has increased as Congress and federal agencies provided state and local officials with funding and expertise and facilitated information sharing on the threat landscape. As security threats continue to evolve and with election officials now operating as frontline national security figures, that support has helped make U.S. election systems more resilient than ever. Read Articled

National: The Top Cybersecurity Agency in the US Is Bracing for Donald Trump | Eric Geller/WIRED

Donald Trump helped create the US government’s cybersecurity agency during his first term as president. Six years later, employees of that agency are afraid of what he’ll do with it once he retakes office. Trump’s alliances with libertarian-minded billionaires like Elon Musk and his promises to cut government spending and corporate oversight have alarmed staffers at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the component of the Department of Homeland Security that defends US government computer systems from hackers and helps state and local governments, private companies, and nonprofit groups protect themselves. CISA, which the Trump administration and Congress created in 2018 by reorganizing an existing DHS wing, became a target of right-wing vitriol after its Trump-appointed director rebuffed the president’s election conspiracy theories in 2020 (prompting Trump to fire him) and after it worked with tech companies to combat online misinformation during the 2022 election. Read Article

National: ‘Not the AI election’: Why artificial intelligence did not define the 2024 campaign | Loreben Tuquero/PolitiFact

Days after New Hampshire voters received a robocall with an artificially generated voice that resembled President Joe Biden’s, the Federal Communications Commission banned using AI-generated voices in robocalls. It was a flashpoint. The 2024 election would be the first to unfold amid wide public access to AI generators, which let people create images, audio and video — some for nefarious purposes. But the anticipated avalanche of AI-driven misinformation never materialized. As Election Day came and went, viral misinformation played a starring role, misleading about vote counting, mail-in ballots and voting machines. But this chicanery leaned largely on old, familiar techniques, including text-based social media claims and video or out-of-context images. Read Article

Arizona Judge blocks new election rules, including on certifying results | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes exceeded his authority in several instances when making changes to the state’s election manual last year, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday. The state will now be blocked from enforcing these particular rules, including one that would have allowed the secretary of state to finalize statewide election results without the results of a county, if the county failed to certify its results by the deadline. That rule had already been suspended by a federal judge in a separate case challenging Fontes’ manual. That challenge was filed in July in federal court by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. Read Article

Georgia appeals court strips DA Fani Willis of case that charged Donald Trump with election interference | Tamar Hallerman and Bill Rankin/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office should be disqualified from the 2020 election interference case, a bombshell decision that upends the last remaining criminal case against incoming President Donald Trump. In a 2-1 opinion, the court concluded that Willis’ onetime romantic relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade merited her dismissal from the case. “After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” Judge Trenton Brown wrote for the majority. He was joined by Judge Todd Markle. A third judge, Benjamin Land, issued a strongly worded dissent. Read Article

Michigan Senate votes forward proposed penalties for spreading false election information | Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance

Late in the evening on Thursday, members of the Michigan Senate voted along party lines to advance a bill creating fines for intentionally making a false statement about Michigan elections. Senate Bill 707 specifies individuals who knowingly misrepresent the time, place or manner of an election; the qualifications or restrictions on voter eligibility; criminal penalties associated with voting in an election; an individuals’ voter registration status or eligibility would be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 for each violation. The bill clarifies that an individual has intentionally and knowingly made a false statement or representation if they know it is false and make the statement with the intent to hinder or prevent another individual from voting in an election. Read Article

New Jersey: New plan to boost voter turnout: send mail voting applications as 18th birthday gift | Nikita Biryukov/New Jersey Monitor

A Senate panel approved legislation that would require the state to send a vote-by-mail application to New Jersey residents upon their 18th birthday in what the bill’s sponsor said is a bid to boost turnout. The legislation, which passed the Senate’s state government committee in a 3-0 vote Monday, would require county clerks send mail ballots to registered voters when they reach the age of majority. “Only 65% of eligible New Jerseyans cast a ballot in this year’s election, marking the lowest turnout for a presidential race in state history,” said Sen. Jim Beach (D-Camden), the bill’s sponsor and the committee’s chairman. “One way to improve voter participation is to increase accessibility for young voters, many of whom are away at school during general elections.” Read Article

North Carolina: Republican Appeals Court Judge Griffin asks State Supreme Court to intervene in his challenge of 60,000 ballots | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

Republican Jefferson Griffin is asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to intervene in his effort to challenge over 60,000 ballots cast in his race for the high court. The State Board of Elections dismissed Griffin’s ballot protests, but has not taken a final step of certifying the election. Griffin now asks the court, which has a 5 to 2 Republican majority, to prohibit the board from certifying the election and to throw out the challenged ballots. Read Article

Ohio GOP stoked fears of non-citizen voting. In reality, it’s rare | Julie Carr Smith/Associated Press

Before the November presidential election, Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general announced investigations into potential voter fraud that included people suspected of casting ballots even though they were not U.S. citizens. It coincided with a national Republican messaging strategy warning that potentially thousands of ineligible voters would be voting. “The right to vote is sacred,” Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said in a statement at the time. “If you’re not a U.S. citizen, it’s illegal to vote -– whether you thought you were allowed to or not. You will be held accountable.” In the end, their efforts led to just a handful of cases. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Five years after changes in election laws, workers still waiting for small fixes to big problems | Tom Shortell/Lehigh Valley News

Pennsylvania’s 2024 election operated like a well-oiled machine this year with no major delays or snafus, but Lehigh County’s top election official warned there’s still trouble under the hood. For years, state and county officials have requested tweaks to Pennsylvania’s election code: more time to pre-canvass mail-in ballots and an earlier voter registration deadline. Other requests, such as a more robust form of early, in-person voting, have cropped up since. But thanks in part to political gridlock and the politicization of elections, none of the changes have gone on the books. Read Article

Texas GOP wants to require citizenship proof from voters | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Republicans are making a big push for legislation requiring Texans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, and key lawmakers are signaling that they’ll make it a priority next year. The push is part of a national effort by the GOP and conservative allies who assert that such legislation is needed to stop noncitizens from illegally casting ballots, even though such cases are already very rare. Read Article

Wisconsin Assembly Republicans pushing voter ID amendment, pre-election ballot processing | Adam Kelnhofer and Mitchell Schmidt/Wisconsin State Journal

Amending the state Constitution to require an ID to vote and passing a bill to allow clerks to start processing absentee ballots before election night are among Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ top priorities for this legislative session, Vos said Wednesday. Vos told the Wisconsin State Journal he wants the Legislature to move swiftly and approve the voter ID proposal at the beginning of the session so it can go before voters in the April election, which includes a high-profile race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Liberals currently have a 4-3 majority on the court, but that could change depending on who wins this spring. Read Article

National: Collaboration was key to nation’s most ‘cyber-secure’ election to date | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

It’s been a little over a month since 2024’s general election, and directors at the nonprofit Center for Internet Security told StateScoop that it was collaboration between local election officials and law enforcement agencies that allowed for the most “cyber-secure” election to date. Leaders at CIS, which operates the federally funded Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said that while there were threats reported on Election Day — including cyberattack attempts, text message disinformation campaigns and bomb threats — none succeeded in seriously impacting voting operations. While CIS’s Albert network monitoring sensors and its Malicious Domain Blocking and Reporting technologies helped thwart these attempts, the directors said collaboration among CIS, law enforcement and election officials leading up to Election Day were perhaps most critical. Read Article

North Carolina GOP Grabs Control of  Election Boards, Rushing to Negate November Losses | Alex Burness/Bolts

Around 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon, the North Carolina State Board of Elections rejected a bid by Republican Jefferson Griffin to toss about 60,000 votes cast in a state supreme court race he narrowly lost. Griffin had filed six different protests and on all but one the board voted on party lines: Its three Democratic members sided against him, outvoting the two Republican members. “The importance of people being able to vote and not be disenfranchised is extraordinarily important,” Alan Hirsch, the Democratic chair of the state elections board, said Wednesday as the board shot down Griffin’s bid. “It’s a fundamental constitutional right. It’s what makes our democracy run.” Read Article

National: Prosecutors in Three States Press Ahead with Election Interference Cases | Danny Hakim and Dan Simmons/The New York Times

In a flurry of moves on Thursday, state prosecutors made clear that they are pressing forward with criminal cases against Donald J. Trump and his allies related to interference in the 2020 election. In Wisconsin, three of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s former advisers, who are facing numerous felony charges, appeared before a judge for the first time. In Nevada, the state attorney general, Aaron D. Ford, filed new charges in an effort to revive a case against six Republicans who acted as fake electors for Mr. Trump in 2020, in spite of his loss at the polls there. Read Article

National: Election confidence jumps among Trump voters after his win | Miles Parks/NPR

New data shows that the vast majority of Americans felt this year’s general election was administered well, a stark contrast to perceptions in 2020 and a reflection of how Republican voters specifically have come around on election security in a year when their preferred presidential candidate won. Almost 9 in 10 U.S. voters felt the November election was run very well or somewhat well, according to data out Wednesday from the Pew Research Center, which surveyed people’s opinions starting a week after voting ended. That number is about 30 percentage points higher than it was at a similar point in 2020. The increase in voting confidence was driven exclusively by Republican voters. Read Article

National: Some states are working to undermine 2024 Election results | Gary Fields/Associated Press

While the election was over a month ago, voters in some parts of the country are discovering that having their say at the ballot box is not necessarily the final word. Lawmakers in several states have already initiated or indicated plans to alter or nullify certain results. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are moving to undercut the authority of the incoming Democratic governor, Republicans in Missouri are taking initial steps to reverse voter-approved abortion protections, and Democrats in Massachusetts are watering down an attempt by voters to hold the Legislature more accountable. The actions following the Nov. 5 election continue a pattern that has accelerated in recent years and has been characterized by critics as undemocratic. Read Article

National: ‘Polarization’ is Merriam-Webster’s 2024 word of the year | Anna Furman/Associated Press

The results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election rattled the country and sent shockwaves across the world — or were cause for celebration, depending on who you ask. Is it any surprise then that the Merriam-Webster word of the year is “polarization”? “Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.” The election was so divisive, many American voters went to the polls with a feeling that the opposing candidate was an existential threat to the nation. According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, about 8 in 10 Kamala Harris voters were very or somewhat concerned that Donald Trump’s views — but not Harris’ — were too extreme, while about 7 in 10 Trump voters felt the same way about Harris — but not Trump. Read Article

How Arizona can get election results faster | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Four days after the election, with several congressional and state contests yet to be called, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen declared that it had “taken too much time” to count ballots. So Petersen made a promise to voters: He would reintroduce bills in the upcoming legislative session “to get election results, night of.” It was perfectly normal to not yet have final results at that point. In fact, it has sometimes taken as long as two weeks to finish counting ballots in the state, a timeline similar to that of other states that are friendly to voting by mail, such as California and Utah. But as national attention on Arizona, a swing state where contests can be close, has ramped up, pressure has mounted to count faster. And as unexpected delays sprang up across the state this year, including in rural counties that typically count quickly, the longer timeline fueled consternation among candidates and voters waiting for final results. Read Article

Colorado: Investigation finds election equipment passwords were posted accidentally, but safeguards also lacking | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

A law firm has concluded that the online posting of passwords for Colorado’s election machines happened inadvertently, but did violate some policies. The Secretary of State’s office hired the Denver-based firm Baird Quinn LLC to investigate after the security breach came to light this fall. In her 19-page report, attorney Beth Quinn wrote that the incident was preceded by a unique set of circumstances that would have been difficult to anticipate. According to the investigation, the employee who originally created the hidden tab of passwords had no expectation the spreadsheet, which also listed technical information about the state’s voting equipment, would ever be posted online. And she had left the office by the time other staff decided to put the document on the department website, in a bid to increase transparency. Read Article

Georgia laws impacting homeless voters, creating election boards to take effect in 2025 | Maya Homan/Savannah Morning News

As the 2024 election season comes to a close, state lawmakers across Georgia are turning their attention to the start of a new biennium, which will begin during the 2025 legislative session on Jan. 13. The upcoming session may include continued focus on elections, as the State Election Board seeks clarity from the legislature on proposed rule changes introduced ahead of the Nov. 5 general election. Election bills passed in 2024 alone have already changed the way ballots cast across the state are collected, tallied and audited. Some election bills that were passed during the most recent legislative session, including HB 974 and HB 1207, have already gone into effect, but others are set to begin in the new year. Read Article

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate puts election changes at top of legislative priorities | Brianne Pfannenstie and Marissa Payne/Des Moines Register

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate will be pushing state legislators to adopt election law changes next year to help standardize recount procedures and better maintain the state’s voter rolls. He said he plans to push legislation that would create consistency across the state in how counties approach election recounts. He also wants to give larger counties bigger recount boards to help manage the workload. Many of those inconsistencies became apparent during a 2020 congressional recount which found Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks ahead by just six votes, Pate said. He’s since tried to promote legislation, but it’s failed to advance through the Republican-controlled Legislature. Read Article

Michigan looks to strengthen petition-gathering laws after 2022 gubernatorial debacle | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Democrats in the Michigan Legislature are attempting to pass a slew of bills to revamp the regulations around how signatures are gathered and verified on petitions to get statewide candidates and issues on the ballot. The legislation aims to avert the type of fiasco seen in 2022, when five Republican gubernatorial candidates and several judicial candidates were kept off the ballot because of thousands of fraudulent signatures on their nominating petitions. The bills would disincentivize paid signature gatherers — called circulators — from collecting fake signatures or those obtained by lying about the issue on the petition. Michigan has relatively few restrictions on those who collect signatures, a necessary task for candidates to get on the ballot and a hallmark of any public space during an election year. If enacted, the legislation could reshape how signature collection takes place by changing how circulators are paid and how those signatures are processed. Read Article

Nevada attorney general revives 2020 fake electors case | Rio Yamat/Associated Press

A slate of six Nevada Republicans have again been charged with submitting a bogus certificate to Congress that declared Donald Trump the winner of the presidential battleground’s 2020 election. Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford announced Thursday that the state’s fake electors case had been revived in Carson City, the capital, where he filed a new complaint this week charging the defendants with “uttering a forged instrument,” a felony. The original indictment was dismissed earlier this year after a state judge ruled that Clark County, the state’s most populous county and home to Las Vegas, was the wrong venue for the case. Read Article

North Carolina G.O.P. Wants to Disqualify 60,000 Ballots in Race Was Decided by 734 Votes | Michael Wines/The New York Times

From voter ID laws to district map-drawing to judges redeciding cases, North Carolina has long been a laboratory of sorts in ways to amass political power. In recent years, Republicans in particular have changed both state laws and election rules to hamstring Democrats’ influence. Now, one of the closest statewide elections in North Carolina history is offering a vivid example of the maneuvering in play to gain an upper hand. A lengthy recount of more than 5.5 million ballots from the November election that ended last week showed that an incumbent Democrat on North Carolina’s state Supreme Court, Allison Riggs, held a 734-vote edge over Jefferson G. Griffin, a Republican judge on the state Court of Appeals. REead Article