Colorado elections manager in voting machine tampering trial felt ‘sick’ seeing passwords online | Amanda Pampuro/Courthouse News

Before a jury on Thursday, Colorado’s voting systems manager recalled feeling sick when he first saw Mesa County’s voting machine passwords posted online in August 2021. Prosecutors called Jessi Romero, voting systems manager for the Colorado secretary of state, as a witness in their case against Tina Peters, Mesa County’s former clerk and recorder now on trial for charges related to helping leak voting machine data in 2021. Prosecutors say that in May 2021, Peters instructed her deputy clerk to turn off security cameras and arranged for an associate to observe and photograph the voting machine trusted build, an update process conducted in person since the machines can’t connect to the Internet. Peters then reportedly sent data and passwords to a Florida-based company for analysis and allowed them to be posted on the social media site Telegram by Ron Watkins, a key player in the QAnon conspiracy movement. Read Article

Georgia: Presidential election audit based on ballot images on hold amid company’s protest | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The idea was to triple-check this year’s presidential election results by uploading images of every ballot cast in Georgia, scanning them with text-recognition software and creating an independent vote count. Lawmakers budgeted $5 million for the concept that would verify the results generated by the state’s Dominion Voting Systems equipment, an extra step beyond an existing hand-count audit of a statistical sample of ballots. But the recount-by-software plan is now stalled because of a protest by a company that wasn’t chosen to receive the state’s contract. It’s unclear whether the dispute will be resolved in time for November’s election. Read Article

Idaho: Will a Transparency Tool Diffuse Election Skepticism? | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology

An Idaho county has built a new tool that allows the public to see cast vote records online. Ada County, Idaho, partnered with civic software company Civera on the tool, which it used for the first time during its May elections, publishing ballot images alongside corresponding cast vote records to show how the tabulator machine electronically recorded the selections. The county has so far used the tool to publish information from prior elections going back to 2022, the earliest for which it still has the data. Now, with the tool up and running, other counties around the country are reportedly in talks to adopt it, too. The tool, Ballot Verifier, allows anyone to access ballot images and cast vote record for free. It also offers infographics of election results, search functionality for specific races and the ability to download results. Read Article

Kansas stops enforcing a law against impersonating election officials | John Hanna/Associated Press

Kansas is no longer enforcing a 3-year-old law making it a felony to impersonate election officials as it faces a legal challenge from critics who argue that the law has hindered efforts to register new voters. Attorneys for the state and groups suing over the law agreed on stopping its enforcement, and District Judge Teresa Watson in Shawnee County, home to the state capital of Topeka, issued an order earlier this week ratifying their agreement. Her order will remain in effect at least until another court hearing after the November election. The law made “falsely representing” an elections official punishable by up to 13 months in prison for a first-time offender, though two years’ probation would have been the most likely sentence. The crime includes causing someone to believe another person is an election official. The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted the law in 2021 by overriding a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Read Article

Michigan faces a shortage of local clerk candidates, raising alarms about how elections will be run | Jon King/Michigan Advance

They are the administrators of democracy, making sure that elections are free, fair and efficient. They maintain the records of local government and are responsible for public access to those records, including births, deaths and the marriages in between.  And yet, nearly 10% of the 1,240 township clerk positions that are up for election this year in Michigan have no candidates willing to step up and fill them. That’s according to Canton Township Clerk Michael Siegrist, who also serves as second vice president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks (MAMC). In a social media post this month, Siegrist pointed to the situation as one that’s not been experienced before. “What if I told you that 118 townships have nobody running for Clerk this year. We’ve never seen anything like this in history. 9.5% of all clerk races this year will have NOBODY elected,” he said, before posing a series of questions. “Why doesn’t anyone want to do this job? How does a state deal with such a massive labor shortage? Who will run elections in these communities?” Read Article

Michigan has fix in place after brief outage in early-voter check-in system | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

An overloaded server briefly brought Michigan’s voter check-in system to a crawl Saturday morning, a hiccup on the first day of early in-person voting in the state primary that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says she is “confident” won’t happen again. The error was the result of other applications running on the same server that also hosted the state’s electronic poll books, Benson said during a news conference Monday. When voting started, those hundreds of poll book connections plus those other applications “caused a spike in activity” that tied up the servers and forced clerks around the state to temporarily switch to paper voter records. The Secretary of State’s Office worked with the Department of Technology, Management and Budget to discuss a solution that prioritizes early voting over other applications and protects access to the servers, Benson said. Read Article

Ohio law violates rights of voters with disabilities, judge says | Haley BeMiller/Columbus Dispatch

Ohio’s election law violates the rights of people with disabilities who rely on caregivers or family members to return their absentee ballots, a federal judge ruled Monday. The decision came down in a lawsuit that challenged a rule allowing only certain family members to help relatives who are hospitalized or homebound because of an illness or disability. While the list includes spouses, parents, siblings and grandparents, the state does not allow grandchildren or caretakers to handle another person’s absentee ballot. U.S. District Judge Bridget Meehan Brennan said that violates the federal Voting Rights Act, which allows voters with disabilities to get help from anyone except their employer or union representative. Her decision means Ohio’s law can no longer be enforced. Read Article

Pennsylvania’s long-running dispute over dates on mail-in voting ballots is back in the courts | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

A technical requirement that Pennsylvania voters write accurate dates on the exterior envelope of mail-in ballots was again the subject of a court proceeding on Thursday as advocates argued the mandate unfairly leads to otherwise valid votes being thrown out. A five-judge Commonwealth Court panel heard about two hours of argument in a case that was filed in May, even though the date requirement has been upheld both by the state Supreme Court and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case was brought by the Black Political Empowerment Project, Common Cause and allied advocacy groups against the secretary of state and the elections boards in Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh. They argued that enforcing the date requirement infringes upon voting rights and that none of the prior cases on the topic directly ruled whether it runs afoul of the state constitution’s Free and Equal Elections Clause. Read Article

Pennsylvania presidential election results could again take days to count | Colby Itkowitz and Derek Hawkins/The Washington Post

mail-in ballots, his lead shrunk and then disappeared. By Saturday, Joe Biden was the clear winner of Pennsylvania — and with it, the presidency. The protracted counting process left a days-long vacuum that Trump filled with demands to stop counting the ballots while he was still ahead, declaring victory in Pennsylvania and building the false narrative that the mail-in votes were fraudulent. It became a core part of the false narrative that helped propel Trump’s “Stop the Steal” crusade and spurred election denialism among his allies and supporters that has continued to this day. The delay was caused by a quirk of Pennsylvania’s election law, which forbids the opening of mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on the day of the election. Read Article

Wisconsin judge refuses GOP request to pause absentee voting ruling sought by disabled people | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

A judge refused Thursday to put on hold his ruling that allows disabled people in Wisconsin to be emailed absentee ballots at home in November’s presidential election in the closely watched battleground state. Republicans asked the judge to not enforce his ruling while their appeal is pending. But Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell on Thursday rejected their arguments, saying putting his ruling on hold “would inflict significant harm on both the disability rights advocates and the public interest.” It will now be up to the state appeals court to decide whether to pause the ruling that opens up a new way for an unknown number of disabled voters to cast their ballots in swing state Wisconsin before the Nov. 5 election. Read Article

Arizona ruling makes voter registration harder without proof of citizenship | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona residents who try to register to vote with the widely used state form will have their registration rejected unless they provide proof of U.S. citizenship, under a temporary ruling Thursday from a federal appeals court. Previously, residents without citizenship documents would have been allowed to use the state form, which almost all Arizonans use, to get registered, but they could vote only in federal elections — for U.S. House, Senate and president. That’s because Arizona law requires voters to provide proof of citizenship to register, whereas federal law requires only an attestation that a voter is a citizen, but not documentation proving it. Under a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the state must permit voters who registered without citizenship proof to cast ballots in federal elections, so Arizona has maintained separate rolls of so-called federal-only voters. Read Article

Colorado official faces trial following ‘Big Lie’ election conspiracies | Amanda Pampuro/Courthouse News Service

A faithful Republican living on Colorado’s conservative western slope, Tina Peters watched the 2020 presidential results with concern. Still, as the duly elected clerk and recorder for Mesa County, Peters was confident in the integrity of the election she had overseen. After all, nearly two-thirds of local voters backed then-President Donald Trump that November, also helping to lift Lauren Boebert into Congress. Fast forward five months later, to April 2021, and Grand Junction voters overwhelmingly rejected the most conservative city council candidates. Belief in the “Big Lie” about a stolen 2020 election had become a litmus test for Republican Party loyalty — and Peters began to question whether she could really trust the Dominion voting machines in her county. She voiced her concerns to Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, but they went ignored. Read Article

National: Election workers prepare for violence with guns and PPE | Charlotte McDonald-Gibson/The Times

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has highlighted the growing danger faced by public figures across the United States and experts are warning that, unless politicians dial down the divisive rhetoric, more violence is likely. Politicians, state legislators, election workers, school board officials and local prosecutors are increasingly targeted with death threats, harassment and other abuse as the political atmosphere before the election on November 5 becomes more tense. This is forcing local officials to take extraordinary measures to keep themselves and their staff safe. At her office in Douglas County, Nevada, Amy Burgans, the county clerk treasurer, has stockpiled personal protective equipment to keep election workers safe from ballots spiked with drugs. She has nasal spray on her desk to reverse overdoses in case any fentanyl gets through, and has organised training on how to deal with active shooters. She also carries a personal firearm. Read Article

CISA publishes resilience-planning playbook for critical infrastructure | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday published a supplemental manual to its infrastructure resilience planning framework, which provides guidance on how local governments and the private sector can work together to improve the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure. The new playbook includes processes and table top exercises to help public and private sectors minimize the impact of cyberattacks on their communities, reduce the risk of disruption to critical services and keep system restoration costs low. It also outlines key actions for resilience planning, such as establishing incident-response groups, identifying critical infrastructure and those that dependent on it, creating mitigation strategies and integrating solutions into existing protocols. Read Article

National: Conservative groups are pushing to clean voter rolls. Others see an effort to sow election distrust | Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Conservative groups are systematically attempting to challenge the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations across the country before the presidential election. The strategy is part of a wider effort raising questions about the integrity of this year’s election as former President Donald Trump repeatedly claims without evidence that his opponents are trying to cheat. The voter roll tactics include mass door-knocking campaigns, using special software designed to identify voters whose eligibility could be challenged and a crush of lawsuits. Read Article

National: How mapping tech is revolutionizing election administration | Chris Teale/Route Fifty

When St. Louis County, Missouri, kicked off its redistricting process after the 2010 Census, local officials used colored pencils on transparent paper to redraw their legislative boundaries and reflect population shifts. Ten years later, following the 2020 Census, officials in Missouri’s most populous county had traded in their pencils and paper for geographic information system mapping. St. Louis County, despite delays wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, had automated the process and used GIS to redraw the lines with the updated residency data. The result was more accurate and transparent maps. The story was similar in Orange County, California, which used to use “reams of paper” in its redistricting process, according to Matt Eimers, GIS supervisor at the Orange County Registrar of Voters. Officials there would have to compare their hand-drawn maps against paper records, which was a laborious process. Read Article

National: CISA bolsters security of US election infrastructure with new OpSec guide | Liam Garman/Cyber Daily

The six-page guide highlights the potential security risks menacing the upcoming US elections and provides actionable insights into how election officials can effectively manage them, from securing online infrastructure to protecting voter information. The document also includes insight into how the US’ adversaries collect private information and officials can find themselves on the radar of overseas threat actors, before laying out actionable steps for the creation of OpSec policies. “CISA provides various training programs for election workers, including secure practices, incident response planning, and de-escalation techniques,” Cait Conley, CISA special adviser to the director for election security, said. “This guide is another excellent resource CISA provides the public with to keep our elections safe and secure.” Read Article

National: Deployable voting machines for overseas troops move closer to reality | Jonathan Snyder/Stars and Stripes

Deployable electronic voting machines are now fully functional and could be used in a pilot election as soon as next year, the president of a nonprofit technology firm said this week.“We now have a fully functional prototype and are a few weeks away from wrapping up our report to [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency],” Ben Adida, executive director of VotingWorks and the technical lead on the project, told Stars and Stripes by email Monday.VotingWorks unveiled an early-stage version of its deployable voting machine in February at the National Association of State Election Directors conference in Washington, D.C. The machine aims to allow service members around the world, even at remote locations, to transmit a signed, encrypted digital ballot to their home precinct for tallying on Election Day. Read Article

National: Conservative activists find errors in software they hoped would root out voter fraud | Jane C. Timm/NBC

After months of testing, some conservative activists are finding that the vigilante computer programs they’d hoped would give them the ability to root out redundancies and fraud in the country’s voter rolls aren’t very reliable. Last year, those activists excitedly embraced EagleAI and similar programs that promised to help them look through voter rolls across the country in search of outdated or fraudulent voter registrations, even as experts warned about the programs’ limitations. The country’s voter rolls are designed for registration, not removal. Few people think to cancel old voter registrations when they move, which can lead to messy voter rolls as election officials must wait years to remove outdated registrations under federal law. Read Article

National: US intel reveals Russia plans to meddle in 2024 election | Ariana Baio/The Independent

Russia will attempt to influence the 2024 US presidential election using familiar tactics like spreading misinformation online to subvert the public’s faith in the democratic election process, according to intelligence officials. On Tuesday, officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters that Russia is using covert social media tactics like targeting voter groups in swing states with bot farms. The goal, they said, is to drive a larger rift in domestic political ideology, promote mistrust in the electoral system and sway public opinion in favor of a certain candidate. “We haven’t observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections,” a senior official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Though officials did not name a particular candidate, investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election found that their strategies were aimed at helping Donald Trump. Read Article

Arizona: How GOP lawmakers pressured counties on hand-counting ballots | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Republican lawmakers in Arizona privately pressured county leaders across the state to count ballots by hand instead of using machines, according to previously unreported text messages. The messages, obtained by Votebeat through public record requests, are a window into how state lawmakers are trying to leverage relationships with Republican county supervisors — who decide how to count ballots in their counties — to promote a practice that state officials have repeatedly said would be illegal. And it highlights how lawmakers have turned to counties to try to change how ballots are counted, after failing to change state laws. Read Article

Colorado: Federal judge rejects voter intimidation lawsuit midway through trial | Seth Klamann/The Denver Post

A federal judge in Denver ruled against the plaintiffs in a voter intimidation lawsuit Thursday, ending a trial early after finding the organizations behind the suit hadn’t presented sufficient evidence against a group of Donald Trump supporters. U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney issued her ruling Thursday morning. The trial had started Monday, more than two years after the lawsuit was filed by a trio of voting and civil rights organizations, including the local chapters of the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, against the U.S. Election Integrity Plan. That group, made up of supporters of the Republican former president and tied to prominent and discredited election conspiracy theorists, had been accused of questioning residents of high-density areas and places where ethnic and racial minorities live about their votes. Read Article

Georgia: Critics charge GOP election board members violated state laws in rushed meeting | Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder

The three GOP members of the Georgia State Election Board convened an emergency meeting Friday to press forward with several new election rules in a rush to have new procedures in place for the November election, sparking accusations of state open meetings law violations. A couple hundred people packed inside a state Capitol room for the impromptu hearing where Democratic party members and progressive voting rights advocates shouted “shame” and waved signs reading “this meeting is illegal” as GOP board members Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King conducted an “emergency meeting” scheduled about 24 hours prior. Jeffares and King, the two newest members of the election board, threatened to remove disruptive individuals from a meeting, which would culminate in the adoption of two new election rules and the threat of legal action for violating open meetings rules. Read Article

Michigan: Trump campaign sues Gretchen Whitmer to block veteran voter registration sites | Griffin Eckstein/Salon

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has filed a lawsuit against Michigan officials, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, to block a directive to designate Veterans Affairs offices and other public facilities as voter registration sites. Per the lawsuit, filed Monday, the Trump campaign seeks a “permanent injunction barring the state … from designating any VRAs [voter registration agencies] without express authorization from the Michigan Legislature.” The directive — which would have instituted registration offices in Michigan Veterans Affairs, Worker’s Disability Compensation Agency and U.S. Small Business Administration offices — would have enabled Michiganders to check, update, and join the voter rolls more easily. Read Article

Nevada: Federal judge dismisses Republican challenge over counting of post-Election Day mail ballots | Gabe Stern/Associated Press

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by national and state Republicans that sought to bar Nevada from counting mail ballots received after Election Day. A state law passed by Democrats in 2021 allows election officials to tally ballots received by 5 p.m. on the fourth day after Election Day, as long as the envelopes are postmarked before the end of Election Day. The judge rejected Republicans’ assertions that this was unconstitutional and violated federal law, as well as their claim that the rule gave Democrats an unfair electoral advantage and diluted the power of Republicans votes. Read Article

Nevada: Washoe County Commission reverses course, acknowledges election certification mandatory | April Corbin Girnus /Nevada Current

Two of the three Washoe County commissioners who refused to certify the results of two primary election recounts reversed course Tuesday, acknowledging that certification is mandatory and that delaying the process could potentially subject them to criminal prosecution. The Washoe County Commission, in a 4-1 vote, certified the results of the two primary election recounts, which resulted in only minor changes to total vote counts. Commissioners had rejected certification 3-2 on July 9, though they had approved the original canvas of the election 3-2 earlier in June. Commissioner Clara Andriola — who voted to certify the original results, then voted against certifying the recount, then asked that the board reconsider that vote — said in prepared remarks that the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office had provided “clarifying direction on the nature of our duties to canvas the election returns.” She also acknowledged that the secretary of state and attorney general had quickly petitioned the Nevada Supreme Court to intervene and force certification. Read Article

Ohio voter advocates warn group is making troubling challenges, ask Secretary of State to guide counties | Susan Tebben/Ohio Capital Journal

Voting rights advocacy organizations are calling on the Ohio Secretary of State to create consistency within the county boards of elections when it comes to voter registration challenges. The urgency comes in particular because of one group, the Ohio Election Integrity Network, which advocates say has been approaching multiple Ohio counties with lists of hundreds of voters they say are ineligible to vote in Ohio and should be removed from rolls. The way in which they are approaching county boards goes against the existing process of maintaining voting rolls, elections advocates say. “Really all of it is centered around poking holes in the election systems and the processes we’ve been using,” said Kelly Dufour, voting and elections manager for Common Cause Ohio. Read Article

Pennsylvania directs counties to print full year on mail ballot envelopes | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The Pennsylvania Department of State is hoping another change to mail ballot return envelopes will eliminate the chance of ballots being rejected this November because of voters failing to write in the year completely. In a directive earlier this month, the Department of State told counties that they should now preprint ballot return envelopes with the full, four-digit year in the date field, leaving voters to fill in just the month and day alongside their signature. “We conducted an analysis after this election of why ballots were rejected,” said Al Schmidt, secretary of the commonwealth. “We didn’t see a significant number of ballots missing the full year, but there were some, and every vote is precious in every election.” It’s the second modification to the envelopes since the 2023 municipal elections, as state officials try to cut down on the number of ballots rejected for lacking a properly filled out date and resolve differing interpretations among counties on whether to count these ballots. The move will also eliminate a risk of lawsuits in November over whether incomplete-year ballots should be accepted or rejected. Read Article

Wisconsin: Appeals court makes it harder to disqualify absentee ballots | Todd Richmond/Associated Press

Absentee ballots still count in Wisconsin even if voters’ witnesses fail to give election clerks their full address, a state appeals court has ruled. The decision Thursday by the 4th District Court of Appeals is expected to expand the number of absentee ballots that will be counted in the battleground state with yet another tight presidential race looming in November. Each of the last two presidential elections in Wisconsin was decided by fewer than 23,000 votes. Polls show another close race this year between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Biden campaign officials have said winning the so-called blue wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin offers the president the clearest path to victory. Read Article

Wisconsin rules on ballot drop boxes create opening for election challenges | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Voters using Wisconsin’s newly legalized drop boxes may return only their own ballots, except in special cases, according to new guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. That means even a voter dropping off a spouse’s ballot along with their own could be considered as having cast a ballot improperly. The rule could be difficult for municipal clerks to enforce. But it leaves an opening for potential challenges from conservative election activists, who are already preparing to act on suspicions that Democratic voters will abuse the boxes to commit fraud. Allegations of drop box misuse could also spur legal challenges to election results, experts say. In the run-up to this year’s elections, local officials are dealing with heavy scrutiny from election observers seeking to challenge absentee ballots, and Republicans have sought to increase the number of people monitoring drop boxes. Read Article