National: Federal Judge, Warning of ‘Existential Threat’ to Democracy, Resigns | Mattathias Schwartz/The New York Times

A federal judge warned of an “existential threat to democracy” in a searing first-person essay published on Sunday, saying he had stepped down from the bench to speak out against President Trump. He accused Mr. Trump of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.” The judge, Mark L. Wolf, wrote in The Atlantic magazine that Mr. Trump’s actions were “contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench.” The publication of the essay by Judge Wolf, 78, came two days after an announcement by the Federal District Court for Massachusetts that he was leaving his post as a senior-status judge. Read Article/a>

 

National: The Supreme Court just took a scary case on Trump’s pet issue. He might not like the outcome. | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

President Donald Trump’s obsession with mail-in balloting reached the Supreme Court on Monday through a bonkers 5th Circuit opinion written by Trump appointee (and Trump Supreme Court auditioner) Andrew Oldham. Disagreeing with plain statutory text, statutory history, Supreme Court precedent, and the practice of many states, Judge Oldham’s opinion held that Mississippi violates federal law when it accepts ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive within five days of the election. If the Supreme Court upholds the 5th Circuit in Watson v. Republican National Committee, 29 states and the District of Columbia would have to change their laws to require receipt of virtually all ballots by Election Day, aside from a small class of ballots including those from military and overseas voters. Trump has railed against mail-in balloting for years as being rife with fraud, even though he regularly uses it to vote in Florida. He often calls for states to eliminate the practice, even though Republicans for years have used it without problem in states ranging from Arizona to Florida to Utah (which conducts almost all balloting by mail). He has issued an executive order telling the Department of Justice to pursue litigation against other states to push the argument in the 5th Circuit’s Watson decision and he has promised another executive order on mail-in balloting to come. Read Article

National: Lies, damned lies and AI: the newest way to influence elections may be here to stay | Adam Gabbatt/The Guardian

The New York City mayoral election may be remembered for the remarkable win of a young democratic socialist, but it was also marked by something that is likely to permeate future elections: the use of AI-generated campaign videos. Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Zohran Mamdani in last week’s election, took particular interest in sharing deepfake videos of his opponent, including one that sparked accusations of racism, in what is a developing area of electioneering. AI has been used by campaigns before, particularly in using algorithms to target certain voters, and even, in some cases, to write policy proposals. But as AI software develops, it is increasingly being used to produce sometimes misleading photos and videos. Read Article

Alaska: Will People Trust Voting by Phone? Anchorage Is Going to Find Out. | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The largest city in Alaska is about to undertake an experiment that feels both inevitable and impossibly futuristic in an era of pervasive mistrust toward elections: allowing all voters to cast ballots from their smartphones. Anchorage, home to about 240,000 registered voters, is starting small. Mail and in-person voting will still exist, but voters will also be able to open a link on their phones to cast a ballot in municipal races in April, when six city assembly seats and two school board seats are up for election. The change will not apply to higher-profile races later in the year for state legislature, governor and federal offices. But even at the local level, the trial run of phone voting — the first of its scale in the nation — could offer a blueprint for expanded use in future elections beyond Alaska.S Read Article

Arizona: Johnson to Seat Grijalva, Seven Weeks After She Was Elected | Anushka Patil/ The New York Times

Speaker Mike Johnson plans to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona as a member of Congress on Wednesday, according to his office, 50 days after her election, as the House returns from an extended recess. Ms. Grijalva, a Democrat, won a special election on Sept. 23 for the Arizona seat left vacant by the death of her father, Representative Raúl Grijalva. Mr. Johnson had since refused to seat her, despite several opportunities to do so, public pleas, a Democratic pressure campaign and, eventually, a federal lawsuit brought by Ms. Grijalva and the attorney general of Arizona that argued that Mr. Johnson had no authority to continue to stall. The delay prevented Ms. Grijalva from freely entering and moving about the Capitol complex, or having access to the budget or the materials she needed to do her job. As recently as Tuesday afternoon, she told NPR that she had not heard directly from Mr. Johnson’s office about the swearing-in and that she was “90 percent” confident it would happen at last. She said on social media on Monday that she was traveling to Washington after hearing from news reports and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, that she could soon be seated. Read Article

California: Republican challenge to voting map appears hamstrung by Supreme Court precedent | Edvard Pettersson/Courthouse News Service

The California Republican Party’s lawsuit to block the state’s new, voter-approved congressional district map may be doomed by the unwillingness of the the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority to get involved in partisan gerrymandering. In their complaint — filed the day after California voters approved Prop 50 and joined Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice — Republican politicians and voters argue that the state’s Democratic lawmakers engaged in unlawful racial gerrymandering to benefit Latino voters. “California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement announcing the Trump administration’s request to join the California lawsuit as a plaintiff. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.” Read Article

Georgia Settlement Forces Transparency from Election Deniers on State Election Board | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

Georgia’s election board has agreed to stop conducting its business in secret after a settlement with a government watchdog group. The deal represents a major win for transparency as Republican election deniers on the board ramp up efforts to restrict voting ahead of the 2026 elections. The State Election Board (SEB) ended a year-long lawsuit by American Oversight Wednesday after the group had exposed how board members used private emails and messaging apps to discuss election rules in violation of the state’s Open Records and Open Meetings Acts. Read Article

Michigan: Ballot custody questions complicate Hamtramck election | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Sometime in the hours after last week’s election in Hamtramck, officials who weren’t involved in elections walked into the city clerk’s office, a space that’s supposed to be a secure place to keep ballots. That revelation has thrown the outcome of the Michigan city’s entire election into doubt, including an exceedingly close mayoral race. A total of 37 absentee ballots were initially unaccounted for on election night but were later discovered in the clerk’s office, opened but not yet tabulated. But since those ballots were not secured and could have been accessed by others, it’s currently up in the air whether they will be included in the election’s final totals. Read Article

Montana: Thousands of ballots rejected due to new birth year law | Micah Drew/Daily Montanan

Voters who did not follow a new Montana law requiring electors write their birth year on the envelope of an absentee ballot had the chance to fix the issue if they responded to a call, mailed notice or email from their local election department, but thousands of ballots still ended up in the rejected pile when all the counting was finalized. According to the Secretary of State’s office, “only one percent” of ballots were rejected due to a missing or mismatched birth year. However, some counties had rejection rates significantly higher than one percent, and almost all large counties saw higher rates than previous elections. The Secretary of State’s office did not provide any aggregate data showing the statewide rejection rate, and did not respond to several questions from the Daily Montanan about the new process, including specifics about cases of potential fraud the office said were prevented due the new law. Read Article

North Carolina elections board reveals new partisan voice | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

A recent NC Board of Elections news release berating the head of the state Democratic Party took some observers by surprise. The public face of the agency has historically remained above the political fray, focusing on voting rules and routine business. That changed Saturday, Nov. 1, the final day of voting in the 2025 municipal elections. The online portal voters use to look at their sample ballots wasn’t working that day. North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton called out Republican state Auditor Dave Boliek, who was recently given a role in state elections. The election board’s news release didn’t explain what happened to the portal, but castigated Clayton for spreading misinformation about the problem. It also praised state elections director Sam Hayes, and blamed the former director and Democratic leaders for not updating aging software. Read Article

Pennsylvania’s Chester County seeks explanation for pollbook error as it checks provisional ballots | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania’s Chester County has reviewed more than two-thirds of the provisional ballots cast on Election Day, and confirmed that it has begun counting eligible ballots, though officials still cannot explain what caused a pollbook error that forced independent and third-party voters to use provisional ballots. County officials said they hope to have the answer by December, after an investigation by an outside firm. Pollbooks are the lists of registered voters that workers use to check in voters at the polling place. But pollbooks that Chester County distributed for Election Day omitted third-party and independent voters, forcing thousands of them to vote using provisional ballots. Provisional ballots require voters and election officials to take some additional steps, such as signing the envelope in the correct spot, or they will be rejected for technical reasons, and the ballots must undergo additional checks before they are counted. Read Article

Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down | Alex Nguyen and Eleanor Klibanoff/Texas Tribune

Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut them down. Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that the group had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.” This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into their voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut them down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House. Read Article

Wisconsin: Trump pardons Republicans named in efforts to overturn 2020, but state prosecutions aren’t affected | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

President Donald Trump has pardoned a handful of Wisconsin Republicans who participated in a scheme he created to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump pardoned most of the Republicans who signed paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump when former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, was elected in Wisconsin instead. He also included two attorneys with Wisconsin ties who are alleged to be the architects of the plan. The list posted by Trump’s pardon attorney late Sunday night, includes: Carol Brunner, Mary Buestrin, Darryl Carlson, Andrew Hitt, Kelly Ruh, Bob Spindell and Pam Travis. Read Article

Wyoming: Undeterred by tight timeline, lawmakers charge ahead with election reform | Maggie Mullen/WyoFile

Wyoming lawmakers will once again consider a slate of bills to remake the state’s election system when the Legislature convenes in February. In the legislative off-season, lawmakers in two committees voted to sponsor 14 bills tied to elections. The legislation ranges from restricting how ballots can be returned to county clerks, limiting acceptable voter identification, banning ballot drop boxes, mandating automatic hand recounts in certain instances and upping the campaign filing requirements for independent candidates. Most of the legislation comes from the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee, which held its last off-season meetings Monday and Tuesday in Cheyenne. Elections were the committee’s top priority ahead of the 2026 session. Read Article

Judge Permanently Bars Trump From Requiring Proof of Citizenship for Voter Registration | Zach Montague/The New York Times

A federal judge in Washington has permanently barred the Trump administration from requiring proof of citizenship on federal voter registration forms, a change dictated in an executive order President Trump signed in March. The ruling definitively halted the effort to compel the Elections Assistance Commission, an independent body, to adopt nationwide changes to voting procedures at a time when the president has also called for requiring voter identification in elections and ending mail-in voting. For months, voting rights groups have warned that those changes, in tandem with the deployment of the national guard to the streets of Democratic-led cities, resembled steps of a voter-suppression strategy. Read Article

Dems ‘Need the Votes’ of ‘Illegal Citizens,’ Top Federal Election Official Claims in Unhinged Rant | Zachary Roth/Democracy Docket

A top federal voting official is facing a call to step down after accusing Democrats of encouraging “open borders” and widespread voting by “illegal citizens,” because “they need the votes.” The outlandish conspiracy theory is common on the far right. But its embrace by Christy McCormick, a Republican member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), part of an unhinged public rant against Democrats, raises serious questions about her ability to help states administer fair and impartial elections, and to retain public trust. “They need the votes. They’re losing ground,” McCormick said Wednesday at a panel discussion on voting at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute (AFPI), when asked why she thinks the left opposes measures to tighten voting rules. Read Article

National: Threats against public servants increased over 35 times what they were a decade ago, according to new research | Natalie Alms/Nextgov

For three years, Teak Ty Brockbank posted threats across various social media platforms targeting election officials in Colorado and Arizona, threatening to kill top officials. Such violent threats against public servants have increased over the last decade — from just eight stories of such threats recorded in 2015 to 291 recorded in 2025, according to new research. The Public Service Alliance, a nonpartisan network, and the Impact Project, a nonpartisan data and research platform, released the dataset showing that escalation on Tuesday. An associated map lets viewers see incidents of public sector workers being harassed, stalked, doxxed, physically attacked and more. Public servants across the levels of government are being targeted, with elected officials, judges, election workers and law enforcement and military officials among those receiving the most threats, according to the dataset. Read Article

National: Congressional Budget Office hacked, China suspected in breach | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

The Congressional Budget Office has been hacked, potentially exposing its communications with the offices of lawmakers, according to an email sent to congressional staff this week and obtained by CNN. The email from the Senate sergeant at arms did not name a culprit, but a US official briefed on the hack told CNN on Thursday that Chinese state-backed hackers are suspected of being behind the breach. The email said the hacking incident was “ongoing” and that staffers should avoid clicking on links sent from CBO accounts because the accounts may still be compromised. CBO’s economists and analysts provide lawmakers with cost estimates and analysis of legislation in Congress. The office also does long-term projections for the US budget and analyzes the president’s budget — the type of information that could be of interest to foreign intelligence services keeping close tabs on US economic policy. Read Article

National: Five Ways Tuesday’s Results Will Affect Voting Rules and Democracy | Bolts

On Tuesday, mostly in the shadow of the Democratic Party’s headlining triumphs, were a series of state and local elections that carried high stakes for election law and voting rights. Conservatives failed to restrict mail-in voting in a state key to next year’s battle for the U.S. Senate. Voters in two states boosted Democrats’ mid-decade redistricting aspirations. And voters made sure that a plan to unwind one of the nation’s harshest felony disenfranchisement schemes can proceed. Here, we tour these results, and some others, from five states where the rules of elections were most prominently on the line—California, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Read Article

National: Is a Key Federal Elections Panel Doing Trump’s Bidding on Voting Machines? | Susan Greenhalgh/Democracy Docket

On the eve of the government shutdown, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) quietly posted a press release to its website. While the announcement didn’t spark much notice, it could result in severe consequences for future elections. And it’s causing concern that the commission — a bipartisan body whose mission is to help states administer elections more effectively — is taking its orders from President Donald Trump. That kind of partisanship and capitulation could pose a serious threat to the midterms. Read Article

 

National: Republicans Reprise Unfounded Claims of Widespread Election Interference | Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

As voters went to the polls, prominent conservatives latched onto glitches and other problems at polling stations to claim — without presenting evidence — that the results were being rigged. Election machines briefly went down in Cumberland County, N.J., a state where the governor’s race is seen as a bellwether of President Trump’s second term. The problem was quickly resolved and voting resumed, according to an election commission official reached by telephone. A series of bomb threats in the state — a reprise of threats in several states in last year’s presidential election — also turned out to be a hoax. Read Article

National: Trump escalates demands for 2020 election investigations and prosecutions | Isaac Arnsdorf , Patrick Marley and Perry Stein/The Washington Post

President Donald Trump is dialing up pressure on the Justice Department to freshly scrutinize ballots from the 2020 election, raising tensions with administration officials who think their time is better spent examining voter lists for future elections. In recent private meetings, public comments and social media posts, Trump has renewed demands that members of his administration find fraud in the five-year-old defeat that he never accepted. He recently hired at the White House a lawyer who worked on contesting the 2020 results. Administration officials and allies have asked to inspect voting equipment in Colorado and Missouri. Others are seeking mail ballots from Atlanta in 2020, when Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Georgia since 1992. Read Article

National: DHS Agreement Reveals Risks of Using Social Security Data for Voter Citizenship Checks | Jen Fifield/ProPublica

This year, when states began using an expanded Department of Homeland Security system to check their voter rolls for noncitizens, it was supposed to validate the Trump administration’s push to harness data from across federal agencies to expose illicit voting and stiffen immigration enforcement. DHS had recently incorporated confidential data from the Social Security Administration on hundreds of millions of additional people into the tool, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system. The added information allowed the system to perform bulk searches using Social Security numbers for the first time. The initial results, however, didn’t exactly back up President Donald Trump’s contention that noncitizen voting is widespread. Texas identified 2,724 “potential noncitizens” on its rolls, about 0.015% of the state’s 18 million registered voters. Louisiana found 390 among 2.8 million registered voters, a rate of about 0.014%. Read Article

Arizona: Judge won’t halt audit of Maricopa County voter registration system | Gary Grado/Votebeat

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Thursday rejected Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s request to halt an audit of the county’s voter registration system and election technology.Judge Scott Blaney wrote that he was initially concerned voters’ personal information would be at risk, but was “credibly informed” that the county and vendor had a comprehensive nondisclosure agreement and the vendor’s personnel had undergone background checks. Blaney also found “that the Recorder has not established that the Board’s actions with regard to the assessment violate any Arizona statute.”What’s the dispute? The emergency hearing over the audit of the voter registration system on Monday was one part of a larger legal fight between Heap and the county Board of Supervisors over how election duties and authority should be divided between them. Read Article

California Prop 50: Gavin Newsom Sued By Republicans 50 Hours After Election | Gabe Whisnant/Newsweek

California Republicans filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to block a newly approved U.S. House map that voters passed as Proposition 50 in Tuesday’s election. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, claims the new map illegally uses race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters and violates the Constitution’s equal protection and voting rights guarantees. The measure, backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, redraws congressional boundaries in ways analysts say could help Democrats flip as many as five House seats in next year’s midterm elections. Read Article

California is voting on redistricting. An election skeptic runs the process in one county | Dani Anguiano/The Guardian

When Clint Curtis was appointed to oversee voting in California’s Shasta county earlier this year, the Florida-based lawyer and election skeptic pledged to “fix” the voting process. Curtis had never before administered an election and didn’t live in this rural northern California region. But he was well-known to followers of the US election denialism movement, who believe the voting system is not secure and that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Curtis, a former congressional candidate, described himself as an expert in elections law and had long argued that voting machines could be hacked and that the government could manipulate the results of elections. The ultra-conservative majority on Shasta county’s board of supervisors was hopeful he could overhaul their elections and set an example for the rest of the US. Now, that vision is being put to the test. Read Article

Georgia: Trump justice department seeks 2020 election records from Fulton County | Sam Levine/The Guardian

The justice department on Thursday asked election officials in Fulton county, Georgia, to turn over records related to the 2020 election, a request that underscores how the administration is trying to revive one of the president’s biggest falsehoods about the election he lost five years ago. Investigators have cleared Fulton county of malfeasance in 2020. Nonetheless, a Republican majority on the board voted to reopen the investigation last year. On the night of the 2024 presidential election, the board voted to subpoena a slew of documents. This summer, the board passed a resolution asking the justice department to intervene and help them get the documents. The subpoenas issued last year seek records related to voter lists, chain of custody forms, ballot images, security seals and ballot scanner paperwork. Read Article

Michigan House committee targets foreign meddling in ballot measures, election oversight | Katherine Dailey/Michigan Advance

The Michigan House Election Integrity Committee debated three bills Tuesday related to foreign interference in state elections — in funding for ballot initiatives and election administration, and in the physical parts of election machines. Testimony on both bills related to funding centered on the ability of foreign citizens to donate to 501(c)(4) organizations, nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors — which can turn them into so-called “dark money” groups that donate to political activities without identifying where the money is coming from. Read Article

New Jersey polling places receive threats similar to ones that disrupted voting last year | Julie Carr Smyth/The Independent

Law enforcement and election officials in New Jersey acted swiftly Tuesday to secure polling places following a series of bomb threats later determined to be unfounded. Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way, who also serves as the state’s top election official, said the threats had been emailed to seven counties, including Passaic, a key swing county where the Department of Justice had sent election monitors. “Law enforcement has determined that there are no credible threats at this time,” Way said. “We are doing everything in our power to protect voters and poll workers and coordinate closely with state, local and federal partners to ensure a smooth and safe election.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: What happened with Chester County’s pollbook printing problem? | Carter Walker/Votebeat

An error that affected the ability of tens of thousands of Chester County voters to cast regular ballots on Election Day happened after county officials mistakenly failed to extract third party and unaffiliated voters from the state’s voter registration management database when creating a pollbook file for printing. State officials say the county only extracted Republican and Democrat voters when the county prepared its pollbooks, leaving out the third party and unaffiliated voters. Pollbooks are lists of registered voters that workers use to check them in at voting locations. “That is something that you sometimes see counties do, correctly, in a primary election,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said, referring to the fact that third party and unaffiliated voters can’t participate in Pennsylvania primaries. “It appears that Chester did that pollbook extract and only included major party voters.” Read Article