Wisconsin’s top election official heads off Republican attempt to oust her | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

What happened? The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled last week that the state’s chief election official, Meagan Wolfe, can stay in her job even though her term has expired, heading off a yearslong effort by some Republicans to oust her. The court found that although Wolfe’s term expired in 2023, the Wisconsin Elections Commission had no duty to reappoint or replace her, because her position isn’t vacant. What’s the dispute? Wolfe became the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s administrator in 2018 after working for the agency and its predecessor in other roles, and has been a holdover appointee since the summer of 2023. She is considered one of the most respected — and scrutinized — election officials nationwide, but she became a Republican target after President Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in the 2020 election and took heat for the commission’s decisions in administering that election. Read Article

Wyoming: Bill requiring voters to use a pen-and-paper ballot passes House | Hannah Shields/Wyoming Tribune Eagle

Laramie County voters have used touch-screen voting machines in their local elections for years, but a bill passed by the Wyoming House of Representatives on Friday would require voters to use a paper ballot. House 245, “Pen and paper ballots,” requires all county clerks to set the default voting method to paper ballots, with an exception provided to voters who have a disability. Laramie County is the only one of Wyoming’s 23 counties to use touch-screen voting machines. Rep. Christopher Knapp, R-Gillette, the sponsor of the bill, said the state needs to have uniform election laws across all 23 counties. Secretary of State Chuck Gray previously expressed support for Knapp’s bill during a House Appropriations Committee meeting, saying he found Laramie County’s elections “unsatisfying.” Read Article

National: State and local governments should prepare for changes to CISA, cyber experts say | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

Cybersecurity experts told StateScoop that state and local governments should brace themselves for changes to the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency under Kristi Noem, former governor of South Dakota, who was sworn in last weekend as the 8th secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Pamela Smith, CEO of Verified Voting, an organization that studies how technology impacts the administration of U.S. elections, said the loss of verified information monitoring may impact election security, which is managed by local government agencies. “CISA has a coordinating function. Their ability to monitor for mis- and disinformation campaigns that may be coming from outside the country, is probably greater than other agencies,” Smith told StateScoop in a recent interview. “It puts more pressure on the entities that have to deal with this, the election officials themselves, to monitor and quickly provide information.” Read Article

National: Attorney General Bondi ends FBI effort to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics | Ken Dilanian/NBC

In a little-noticed directive on her first day in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a halt to a years-old federal law enforcement effort to combat secret influence campaigns by China, Russia and other adversaries that try to curry favor and sow chaos in American politics. Buried on the fourth page of one of 14 policy memos Bondi issued Wednesday, the order disbands the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and pares back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite years of warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies that foreign malign influence operations involving disinformation were a growing and dangerous threat. Read Article

National: Federal Election Commission Chair Says Trump Has Moved to Fire Her | Chris Cameron/The New York Times

Ellen L. Weintraub, the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, said on Thursday that President Trump had moved to fire her. Ms. Weintraub, who has served as a Democratic commissioner on the bipartisan panel since 2002, posted a short letter signed by Mr. Trump on social media that said she was “hereby removed” from the commission effective immediately. She said in an interview that she did not see the president’s move as legally valid, and that she was considering her options on how to respond. “There’s a perfectly legal way for him to replace me,” Ms. Weintraub said on Thursday evening. “But just flat-out firing me, that is not it.” Read Article

National: Alarmed by Chinese hacks, Republicans mute attacks on cybersecurity agency | Joseph Menn/The Washington Post

President Donald Trump named the first director of the new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2018 and fired him two years later, after he declared that Trump’s loss in the 2020 election wasn’t down to fraud. Ever since, Republicans have targeted the top U.S. cyberdefense agency for downgrades or deep cuts. In November, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who now leads the Senate committee overseeing CISA, even mused about killing it altogether. But with Trump back in office, the direst fates appear off the table. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, who oversees the agency, and other Republicans now say they see an essential mission in CISA protecting critical infrastructure from mounting ransomware and nation-state hacking attacks, especially those from the Chinese military and spies. Read Article

National: DOJ disbands foreign influence task force, limits scope of FARA prosecutions  | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

One of the first acts taken by Pam Bondi after being sworn in as attorney general was to disband an FBI task force that countered the influence of adversarial foreign governments on American politics. In a memo issued Wednesday, Bondi wrote that the Department of Justice would be shifting resources in its National Security Division, including disbanding the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, “to free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.” Bondi’s memo also states that the Department of Justice will now only refer criminal charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act if they “alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.” Read Article

National: Key Trump Cabinet members refuse to acknowledge Trump lost in 2020 | Patrick Marley and Colby Itkowitz/The Washington Post

Two of President Donald Trump’s top law enforcement nominees have been taking a new tack when talking about the 2020 presidential election: They’re not claiming Trump won that year, but they’re not saying he lost, either. Joe Biden was “duly sworn in” after the 2020 election, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, told senators at her confirmation hearing. “President Joe Biden’s election was certified, he was sworn in, and he served as the president of the United States,” Kash Patel, who has been tapped to lead the FBI, said at his confirmation hearing. Neither would say that Biden defeated Trump, despite dozens of court rulings that upheld the results. Read Article

National: CISA staffers offered deferred resignations with just hours to decide | Jenna McLaughlin/NPR

Employees at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, were initially excluded from broader government offers to take deferred resignation offers, in part due to their role in national security and defending critical infrastructure. However, on Wednesday, some CISA staffers were given the offer and just hours to decide whether to accept it, according to three sources who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity. Read Article

Opinion: Memory-Holing Jan. 6: What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish? | Alec MacGillis/ProPublica

On Jan. 10, the U.S. Department of Justice released a 123-page report on the 1921 racial massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which claimed several hundred lives and left the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in smoldering ruins. Only two weeks later, the department took a strikingly different action regarding the historical record of a violent riot: It removed from its website the searchable database of all cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol that were prosecuted by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. These jarringly discordant actions were, of course, separated by a transfer of power: the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who swiftly moved to issue pardons, commute prison sentences and request case dismissals for all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes on Jan. 6, including seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers. Read Article

Arizona election officials struggle to resolve proof-of-citizenship mixup | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Because of a 20-year-old government foul-up, about 200,000 Arizona voters will need to come up with proof of their citizenship soon in order to protect their full voting rights, and they might not even know about it yet. County officials waited six months for the Secretary of State’s Office to give them the final list of affected voters who need to be contacted, and clear legal guidance on how to do that so voters are treated fairly across the state. After all, in a few counties, the next elections are coming up in March or May. Read Article

Florida: Election supervisors say poll workers need to be shielded from harassment, threats | John Kennedy/Tallahassee Democrat

Following another bitterly contested campaign season, Florida election supervisors are renewing their call for more protections for poll workers harassed, threatened and insulted by a conspiracy-minded voting public. Supervisors presented a package of recommended changes Tuesday to the Senate Ethics & Elections Committee, topped by a request to exempt from public records the home addresses of election workers. Lake County Elections Supervisor Alan Hays, a former Republican state senator, told the panel that in his GOP-dominated county, his staff has been regularly subject to abuse from the public. Read Article

Georgia secretary of state wants easier access to immigration data to verify voter citizenship | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday asked the Department of Homeland Security to allow states and local election officials to use federal immigration data to conduct voter citizenship verification. In a letter addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Raffensperger requested that state and local governments be allowed access to data from the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program, a service administered by DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that allows government agencies to check DHS’s immigration records, for a fee, to verify the citizenship or immigration status of applicants seeking benefits or licenses. Read Article

Michigan’s elections committee to be led by former clerk who believes 2020 was stolen | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

State Rep. Rachelle Smit, a former local clerk who believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Donald Trump, will run the Michigan House’s committee on elections under the new GOP leadership. Smit, a Republican from Martin, was named the chair of the House’s Election Integrity Committee, as it has now been renamed. Her claims that the 2020 election was stolen have been roundly debunked but won her an endorsement from President Donald Trump, who praised her as someone “who knows our Elections are not secure, and that there was rampant Voter Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.” Read Article

Nebraska: The GOP keeps failing to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state. Now it might ask voters to do it | Margery A. Beck/Associated Press

For decades Republicans in GOP-dominated Nebraska have tried and failed to upend the state’s unusual method of splitting its presidential electoral votes by congressional district. Now, with yet another winner-take-all bill likely to fail, they are proposing to put it to a vote of the people. The proposed referendum is billed as a backup plan to the winner-take-all measure, introduced at the request of Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, which appears to have little chance of surviving a promised filibuster. If it fails, Sen. Myron Dorn says he’ll seek to pull the referendum measure from committee in the hopes that voters will approve the change in the 2026 general election. Read Article

North Carolina: Federal Ruling Says State Courts Should Decide Election Case | Eduardo Medina/The New York Times

A federal appeals court said on Tuesday that the legal battle in North Carolina over a State Supreme Court seat should be decided in state court. The opinion from a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dealt a major blow to the Democratic incumbent, Allison Riggs, who narrowly won the seat in November but whose Republican challenger is seeking to flip the result. Justice Riggs had sought to have the issue resolved in federal court. Tuesday’s ruling means that her colleagues on the State Supreme Court, which has a 5-to-2 Republican majority, may end up settling the dispute. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Fixing mail ballots cuts rejections. Not all counties allow it. | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

Counties that allow mail voters to fix errors that could otherwise get their ballots disqualified rejected fewer ballots during the 2024 general election, a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis has found. Overall, just 0.57% of mail ballots statewide were rejected due to voter errors, such as an improper date, a missing signature on the return envelope, or failure to use the ballot secrecy envelope. That’s less than half the rejection rates of 1.22% in the primary election and 1.31% in the 2022 general election. However, according to the analysis, the rate was even lower in counties that allow voters to fix, or “cure,” their mail ballots — just 0.49% in those counties were rejected for technical deficiencies on average, compared with 0.59% in counties where curing isn’t allowed. The numbers mean 17% fewer voters had their ballots rejected in the curing counties. Read Article

Texas supporters of countywide voting on election day fight efforts to end it | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

More than a dozen Texas counties are fighting a push by some Republican state lawmakers to get rid of a program that allows voters to cast their ballots at any county polling location on Election Day, arguing that the option saves taxpayers millions of dollars and makes voting more convenient. County officials say it should be up to local leaders and election officials who best understand the needs of their communities to decide whether to offer countywide voting on Election Day. Two bills have been filed to get rid of the option, which is allowed in 99 counties encompassing more than 80% of the state’s voters. Eliminating it would mean counties would almost certainly have to open, equip and staff more neighborhood voting sites, since Election Day voters would be able to vote only at their assigned precinct. In some counties, available facilities are also difficult to find. Read Article

Utah: The end of voting by mail? Lawmakers advance two controversial election reform bills. | Emily Anderson Stern/The Salt Lake Tribune

Two controversial election reform bills crammed into one committee hearing — one that would effectively end the universal option to vote by mail in Utah and another removing the state from an organization meant to enable voter roll cleanup — passed Tuesday amid concerns from local elections officials and voting rights groups. The most consequential of the bills, HB300 from Rep. Jefferson Burton, R-Salem, would require that ballots mailed to voters be returned in person unless voters apply in person ahead of the election to submit their vote through the mail. Voting rights groups warn that if the bill becomes law, it would put in place significant hurdles for Utahns to participate in elections — especially for those who are low-income or who have disabilities. Read Article

Washington: Months after Vancouver ballot drop box is set ablaze, state’s election security funds are set to expire | Daniel Walters/The Oregonian

Three months after attacks on absentee ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington, the arsonist has not been caught. And Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey has scrambled to find ways to upgrade security for Clark County’s ballot boxes, including outfitting them with new security cameras and fire suppression systems. Yet the state funding that counties have been using to upgrade ballot box security is set to expire, meaning election offices may soon have even fewer options to bolster security to prevent future attacks. Read Article

Wisconsin: Republicans raise questions about proposed election observer rules | Rich Kremer/WPR

Republican state lawmakers raised questions Tuesday about a 12-page rule proposal aimed at clarifying what Wisconsin election observers can and can’t do at polling places. The Wisconsin Elections Commission, which drafted the rule, says the package is needed because state law is vague on questions ranging from how close observers can stand to what documents they can look at. Election observers are individuals who oversee voters and local officials during the election process at polling places and central count locations in large cities where absentee ballots are processed. Read Article

Wyoming: Bills To Ban Voting Machines Killed In Committee | Leo Wolfson/Cowboy State Daily

Two separate committees in the Wyoming Legislature voted down matching bills on Wednesday night that would have banned all voting machines and required hand count elections in Wyoming. The House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee voted the bill down 8-1 while the same Senate committee did not take a vote on a matching bill at all. House Corporations Chair Rep. Chris Knapp, R-Gillette, said even had they advanced House Bill 215 on Wednesday, he did not believe that it would have gone any farther than that when considering the high quantity of bills the House is considering right now. Read Article

Wyoming: County clerks, national experts oppose electronic election equipment ban | Jasmine Hall/Jackson Hole News & Guide

Two bills that would ban electronic voting equipment and force the entire state to hand count ballots are working their way through the Legislature. The legislation faces scrutiny from national election experts and Wyoming’s county clerks, but has garnered support from those who question the security of electronic tabulators. Mark Lindeman, policy and strategic director for Verified Voting, said the state couldn’t get “more extreme than banning tabulators.” Wyoming is nearly singular in its anxiety. The only similar legislation Lindeman has seen introduced in a state Legislature is in North Dakota, which would require a software system that is not possible to implement. He compared an attempt to restrict electronic election equipment to banning cars and forcing people to walk everywhere — because of the risks of driving. “It’s a tremendous training problem, recruitment problem, coordination problem,” he said about hand counting. “It’s one problem after another.” His group wants to see a post-election audit to ensure tabulators are performing the way they’re supposed to instead, but a bill that would have allowed for hand counting audits died. Read Article

Voting rights groups are concerned about priorities shifting under Trump’s Justice Department | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The Justice Department appears poised to take a very different approach to investigating voting and elections. Conservative calls to overhaul the department by removing career employees, increasing federal voter fraud cases and investigating the 2020 election are raising concerns among voting rights groups about the future of the agency under Pam Bondi, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump who will face a confirmation vote later this week. Bondi supported Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 Pennsylvania election results, has reiterated his false claims about his loss that year and during her Senate confirmation hearing refused to directly state that former President Joe Biden won, saying only that she accepted the results. She pledged to remain independent. Read Article

Internet voting proposed for overseas voters from Georgia, but experts warn of perils | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Internet voting could be introduced in Georgia for voters who are members of the military or living overseas, an idea fraught with election security risks. Georgia’s election directors association this week proposed that the state Legislature study electronic voting during the 2025 session as a way to help international voters return their ballots in time. While voting over the internet would bring speed and convenience to citizens living abroad, critics and some experts say it introduces the danger of vote tampering if ballots are transmitted wirelessly. “It’s unsafe and unsecure,” said C.Jay Coles of Verified Voting, an organization that focuses on election technology. “It could be a completely different ballot that shows up at the election office, marked completely differently than the voter intended. It’s not far off to think that could happen.” Read Article

National: Job satisfaction among election administrators continues to sink, survey shows | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

The vast majority of America’s local election administrators would not encourage their children to do the same job, and a shrinking share of them say they would be proud to tell others about their work. The findings come from a survey conducted every federal election year by the Elections & Voting Information Center, an academic research group. While it contains small bright spots — election administrators largely find the job personally rewarding, for example — the number willing to encourage their children to follow in their footsteps has decreased by nearly half in the past two election cycles. In 2020, 41% said they would do so. In 2024, that number dropped to 22%. Read Article

National: Trump’s quick executive actions could redefine who counts in our democracy | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

The tense final days of President Joe Biden’s administration and the frenetic early hours of President Donald Trump’s second term muddied the waters on critical issues that could reshape our democracy. First, Biden. News of his final days in office centered on his use of presidential pardon power and his announcement that he considered the Equal Rights Amendment to have been ratified by the states, a legally controversial opinion that still requires more steps before it goes into effect. Then Trump came into office, and immediately raised his own set of constitutional questions. He issued sweeping pardons to people charged or convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He also rescinded a raft of Biden’s executive orders, including one related to the census, signaling that he may revisit an abortive effort from his first term to alter the scope of the decennial count. Read Article

National: Trump’s perceived enemies brace for retribution with plans, dark humor | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez , Sarah Ellison , Patrick Marley and Holly Bailey/The Washington Post

Sitting in front of a fireplace on New Year’s Eve, a battleground state official asked a relative to consider a grave question before they kicked off their celebrations. Would she be willing, the official asked, to take care of her child if authorities or allies of President Donald Trump detained her? “You can’t be serious,” the family member responded. The official wished she wasn’t. But, like others around the country who have crossed Trump, she was preparing for dire scenarios. She was meeting with a private lawyer and security officers and was visiting a shooting range so she could begin carrying a firearm should Trump’s supporters take matters into their own hands. She had already lined up rides home from school for her child. Read Article

National: No, Trump can’t cancel the 2028 election. But he could still weaken democracy. – Nathaniel Rakich/538/ABC

Political scientists who have studied the erosion of democracy in other countries emphasize that it’s a gradual, even subtle process that often leaves the trappings of democracy in place. In fact, those experts say, U.S. democracy was already eroded under Trump’s first term — and the most serious danger is that his second will see more of the same. Let’s get one thing out of the way: No, Trump cannot run for a third term or cancel the 2028 election. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” and even if Trump tries to defy that, he would almost certainly be universally rebuffed by the courts and election officials. Read Article

National: US cybersecurity agency’s future role in elections remains murky under the Trump administration | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The nation’s cybersecurity agency has played a critical role in helping states shore up the defenses of their voting systems, but its election mission appears uncertain amid sustained criticism from Republicans and key figures in the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has not named a new head of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and for the first time since it was formed, there are no plans for anyone in its leadership to address the main annual gathering of the nation’s secretaries of state, which was being held this week in Washington. On Thursday, a panel on cyberthreats included an update from an FBI official who said the threats remained consistent. Read Article