Wisconsin: Conspiracy theorists again seize on Milwaukee election error | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

In the early morning following Election Day in 2020, Claire Woodall, then Milwaukee’s elections chief, mistakenly left behind a USB stick carrying vote totals at the city’s central absentee ballot counting facility. Election conspiracy theorists quickly seized on the mistake, accusing Woodall of rigging the election. Their claims were baseless, but the mistake increased scrutiny on the city’s election staff and led Woodall to create a checklist to make sure workers at central count didn’t overlook any critical steps in the future. This year, despite the checklist, Milwaukee election staff at central count made another procedural mistake — and once again left the door open to conspiracy theorists. Somebody — city officials haven’t said who — overlooked the second step outlined on the checklist and failed to lock and seal the hatch covers on the facility’s 13 tabulators before workers began tabulating ballots. For hours, while counting proceeded, the machines’ on-off switches and USB ports were left exposed. Read Article

Wisconsin Supreme Court hears case over fate of elections chief Wolfe | Jessie Opoien/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The state Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in a case that will determine whether Republican lawmakers can remove or replace Wisconsin’s top elections official as she remains in the post beyond the expiration of her term. Dane County Circuit Judge Ann Peacock ruled in January that Senate Republicans do not have the authority to remove or replace Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe — a decision legislative Republicans appealed and brought to the state’s high court. Peacock ruled Wolfe legally retains her position beyond an expired term because of a 2022 ruling that allowed Frederick Prehn, a holdover from Republican former Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, to remain on the state’s Natural Resources Board nearly two years after his term ended. Read Article

National: Certifying this year’s presidential results begins quietly, in contrast to the 2020 election | Christina A. Cassidy and Ali Swenson/Associated Press

Local officials are beginning to certify the results of this year’s presidential election in a process that, so far, has been playing out quietly, in stark contrast to the tumultuous certification period four years ago that followed then-President Donald Trump’s loss. Georgia was the first of the presidential battleground states to start certifying, with local election boards voting throughout the day Tuesday. As counties certified their results without controversy, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hailed Georgia’s election as “free, fair and fast.” Trump won Georgia and the six other presidential battleground states, after losing six of them to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. County certification meetings are scheduled later in the week in several other swing states — Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Read Article

National: Election officials knock down Starlink vote rigging conspiracy theories | Melissa Goldin/Associated Press

“It is not possible that Starlink was used to hack or change the outcome of the US presidential election,” David Becker, founder and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation and Research, wrote in an email. “This, quite simply, did not happen, and could not happen, thanks to the security measures we have in place, and these conspiracy theories echo other disinformation we’ve heard over the past several years.” Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, agreed that the idea that Starlink was used to rig the election is absurd. “While Starlink provided connectivity in a number of jurisdictions for electronic poll books (EPBs) in this election, neither Starlink nor other types of communication networks play any role in counting votes,” she wrote in an email. “Our elections produce huge quantities of physical evidence. A satellite system like Starlink cannot steal that.” Read Article

National: As Trump Refers to Third Term, Democrat Wants to Leave No Constitutional Loophole | Annie Karni/The New York Times

When President-elect Donald J. Trump met with House Republicans on Wednesday morning, he suggested he might need their help to try to circumvent the Constitution and run for a third term in the future — a comment that was met with laughter by his friendly audience. “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out,’ ” Mr. Trump told Republicans, who appeared to take it as a joke. One Democrat is moving quickly to make sure that cannot happen. Representative Dan Goldman of New York plans on Thursday to introduce a resolution clarifying that the Constitution’s two-term limit for presidents applies even if the terms are not consecutive. It asserts that the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which states that a person who has been elected president twice cannot run again, “applies to two terms in the aggregate” and leaves no loophole. In other words, Mr. Trump — who served from 2017 to 2021 and is slated to assume the presidency again in January — could not seek another term in the future. Read Article

National: 2020’s debunked election fraud claims are coming back due to Trump’s 2024 victory | Shannon Bond/NPR

Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory is fueling claims of fraud on both sides of the political divide. His right-wing supporters claim the outcome vindicates their debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. To a smaller degree, those on the left are circulating their own baseless claims casting doubt on this year’s results. The narrative twist emerging in the wake of Election Day shows how the movement is continuing to sow doubt about the voting process even after their preferred candidate won. The new claims center on comparing popular vote totals in 2020 and 2024: Four years ago, Joe Biden received around 81 million votes; as of Friday afternoon Vice President Harris’ total stood at 69 million, according to the Associated Press. Election deniers have framed the difference as “missing” Democratic ballots that validate their suspicions about cheating in 2020. Read Article

National: Partnerships Helped Secure Election Day Against New Threats | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology

Election Day saw officials fend off threats that ranged from familiar cyber attacks to a new trend: fake bomb threats. But cybersecurity tools, long-running preparations and new collaborations helped thwart attempts to disrupt the vote. In the end, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly expressed confidence in how election processes ran, saying there was “no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.” Indeed, there was a wide range of threats this year, everything from threats of physical violence against poll workers, to cyber attacks targeting election infrastructure, to foreign government-linked deepfakes, said John Cohen, executive director of the Center for Internet Security (CIS)’s Program for Countering Hybrid Threats. Read Article

National: Primary reform and ranked choice voting had a rough election | Ashley Lopez/NPR

Statewide efforts to adopt open and nonpartisan primaries, as well as ranked choice voting, failed in this year’s election, delivering a stinging setback to the election reform movement. The measures sought to reduce political polarization in U.S. politics. And while an overwhelming share of Americans say they are unhappy with the country’s democratic systems, these initiatives were voted down in states across the country this week. Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota had ballot measures that would have replaced party primaries with nonpartisan contests and/or created a ranked choice voting system in their elections. A majority of those measures sought to implement both. Read Article

Arizona Supreme Court rejects request to extend ballot curing deadline | Coleby Phillips/Arizona Republic

As ballot results continued to trickle in after Election Day, concerns over vote count delays and ballot signature issues led voter rights groups to file an emergency petition to the Arizona Supreme Court. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Campaign Legal Center on Saturday requested a four-day extension for voters to “cure” their ballot beyond the original 5 p.m. Sunday deadline, arguing that “tens of thousands of Arizonans stand to be disenfranchised without any notice, let alone an opportunity to take action to ensure their ballots are counted.” In the petition, ACLU and CLC claimed that thousands of mail-in ballots in Arizona wouldn’t be processed until after the deadline, meaning some voters wouldn’t know if their ballot had an issue until it was too late to cure it. Read Article

Colorado: Denver DA investigates Secretary of State election system password breach | Sam Tabachnik/The Denver Post

The Denver district attorney has launched an investigation into how a spreadsheet of voting system passwords ended up on the Colorado secretary of state’s website earlier this year. The DA’s office on Monday would not divulge additional details of the probe beyond confirming an open investigation. On Oct. 29, Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced that a spreadsheet posted publicly on her office’s website for several months “improperly included” a hidden tab that displayed passwords protecting Colorado voting machines in many counties. The office categorized the breach as accidental. Griswold is not the focus or target of the DA’s investigation, according to an email obtained by The Denver Post that was sent by Beth McCann, the district attorney, to the office. Read Article

Georgia: Dice roll kicks off randomized ballot audit of presidential election | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A roll of the dice Thursday at the Georgia State Capitol started a statewide audit of the presidential election, a human review of paper ballots to check results counted by computers. One by one, election workers and volunteers tossed 10-sided dice onto a table to create a random 20-digit number. That random number was then fed into a computer to pick sample ballots to be reviewed in each of Georgia’s 159 counties over the next few days. The hand-reviewed count will be compared with the machine count to verify the outcome was correct. Read Article

Michigan: Here’s how initial unofficial election results got messed up for 5 counties | Paul Egan/Detroit Free Press

County clerks would like Michigan voters to know that unofficial election results are just that — unofficial and potentially subject to change. Errors in the initial results the state posted from Kent, Kalamazoo, Leelanau, Calhoun and Allegan counties threw off totals by close to 50,000 votes. That’s less than 1% of the more than 5.5 million ballots cast statewide, but the updated unofficial numbers will likely change the anticipated outcome of a statewide race for the MSU Board of Trustees and potentially impact one state House race and at least one local race. Clerks stress that in cases where initial posted results were incomplete, the actual results — and therefore the actual outcomes of races — never changed. The votes were in those cases correctly tabulated. Where mistakes happened, they say, is in how the initial results were reported, with some results from some precincts being initially omitted from what counties and/or the state posted online. Any such errors in unofficial numbers would have been caught in the canvassing of the results, which in many counties is still underway, but in fact were caught before the canvasses even began, clerks say. Read Article/a>

Minnesota: More than half of county election offices receive bomb threats since Nov. 8 | Elliot Hughes/The Minnesota Star Tribune

Election offices in more than half of Minnesota’s counties have been targeted with emailed bomb threats since Nov. 8, the Secretary of State’s Office said Tuesday. The threats come as election workers are still in the process of verifying the results of the 2024 election. In a statement, Secretary of State Steve Simon said his office is coordinating with local, state and federal partners to “ensure that our election officials can complete this important work and that those responsible for these threats are held accountable.” “Threats of violence against election workers, aimed at disrupting our democracy, are absolutely unacceptable,” he said. Read Article

Nevada breaks signature curing record; 9,000 ballots tossed because of invalid signatures | Eric Neugeboren/The Nevada Independent

Nevada broke its record for signature cures completed of mail ballots, as well as for votes that were not counted because of ineligible signatures in this month’s election. The signatures on more than 23,000 mail ballots were successfully cured in this month’s election — meaning election officials confirmed an eligible voter was linked to a ballot with a signature not matching the one in the state’s voter file, and the issue was resolved. Meanwhile more than 9,000 mail ballots had inadequate signatures and will not be counted. The total number of amended signatures exceeded the combined cures completed in 2020 and 2022, the only other general elections with widespread mail voting. In all, about 1.5 million votes were cast in the general election. The votes that were not counted mostly came from registered nonpartisans, while about 40 percent of the successfully-cured ballots were from Democrats and about a quarter coming from Republicans. Read Article

New Mexico secretary of state says she’s experiencing harassment after the election | Morgan Lee/Associated Press

New Mexico’s top elections regulator said Tuesday that she has been the target of harassing and threatening comments on social media after affirming President-elect Donald Trump’s national election victory in an attempt to halt conspiracy theories. New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver shared her concerns as she briefed a legislative panel about administration of the general election and progress toward certifying the vote tally amid a surge in same-day voter registration. She said she plans to contact law enforcement about the threats. “I am currently experiencing threats, harassment — from even some members of this committee — online,” said Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat who has been subject repeatedly to threats in the past. “And I want to say that thankfully we have a law in place that protects me from this behavior.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: How Casey-McCormick Senate recount will work | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The race for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania is officially heading to a recount. On Wednesday, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt ordered Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to conduct a recount under a provision of the state election code that requires one when the margin of a statewide race is within 0.5%. With Republican Dave McCormick receiving 3,380,310 votes to incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s 3,350,972 votes as of noon Wednesday, the two candidates were separated by just 0.43%. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Small ballot errors, security procedures led to Election Day mishap in Cambria County | David Hurst/The Tribune-Democrat

Set between blocks of computer “timing” code, seven tiny numbers line the left-hand margin of the Election Day ballots that Cambria County eventually started scanning to add up results Nov. 5. They were identical to the precinct “test ballots” the county tested in early October, Cambria County Solicitor Ron Repak Jr. said. The ones that failed to scan Election Day morning were missing those numbers. Cambria County officials acknowledged their own security procedure likely prevented the issue from being flagged sooner. After running their test ballots through the scanning machines in early October, election officials sealed up the electronic scanning devices to prevent anyone from tampering with the machines. The official Election Day ballots that arrived afterward – believed to be identical – sat untested in the weeks prior to Nov. 5, Repak and Cambria County President Commissioner Scott Hunt said. Read Article

Virginia: Waynesboro Board of Elections certifies 2024 general election | Lyra Bordelon/Staunton News Leader

The board met Tuesday in Waynesboro City Council chambers, a small audience ready to watch them certify the results of the 2024 general election. It was the first time the board has met in council chambers, as election results are typically certified at a poorly attended meeting in the registrar’s office down the street. “This is the first time we’re doing this in a public setting,” said Waynesboro Board of Elections Chair Curtis Lilly. The crowd could have been much larger if not for a recent court ruling. Waynesboro Circuit Court Judge Paul Dryer, after a hearing on the legal battles over certification, ruled Lilly and Vice Chair Scott Mares must certify the election. Read Article

Wisconsin Supreme Court case could decide fate of state’s top election official | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

A lawsuit that could determine whether Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe can keep her job is coming before the state Supreme Court on Monday. The case focuses on the legality of appointees staying on after their terms expire, rather than any matter of her performance as the state’s top election official. Republicans began targeting Wolfe, a nonpartisan appointee, after Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in the 2020 election. Since then, she has endured criticism from Trump supporters for several decisions that the election commission made, as well as for some memos she sent to clerks who run local elections. As Wolfe’s term expired in the summer 2023, the election commission deadlocked on her reappointment. Shortly after, the Republican-controlled state Senate voted to fire her in a move that it later said was only symbolic, but that triggered a protracted fight. Read Article

Wyoming: Canvassing Board Certifies Election Despite Weston County Miscount | Leo Wolfson/Cowboy State Daily

Although there were few surprises in the results of Wyoming’s general election last week, Secretary of State Chuck Gray claimed at the Wyoming State Canvassing Board meeting on Wednesday that “a number of issues” popped up on election night. The most significant occurred in Weston County, where incorrect ballots were inadvertently used in an election machine, leading to a 1,236-vote disparity in the House District 1 race where state Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, was running unopposed. A few Weston County residents like Newcastle Mayor Pam Gualtieri requested that the state Canvassing Board delay certifying the results of the general election because of what happened in the miscount. Gualtieri said she’s talked to a few local residents that were elected but aren’t sure if they should take office because of what happened. Read Article

National: After a bruising 4 years, a hope for normalcy in American elections | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

America’s voting system was under siege for four years. Former President Donald Trump’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election exposed the people who operate our elections to threats and harassment in the run-up to this one. They fortified their offices against potential violence, adjusted to last-minute, politically driven changes in election laws, and fought a relentless stream of lies and disinformation. Going into Election Day, officials and pro-democracy advocates braced for the worst. What a difference a day — and a result — makes. Aside from a few hiccups, the U.S. voting process went smoothly this year. The winner of the presidential election was declared early the next morning, few people claimed widespread voter fraud, and the losing candidate conceded defeat. Read Article

National: How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts | Steven Lee Myers and Julian E. Barnes/The New York Times

In the final days before Tuesday’s vote, Russia abandoned any pretense that it was not trying to interfere in the American presidential election. The Kremlin’s information warriors not only produced a late wave of fabricated videos that targeted the electoral process and the Democratic presidential ticket but also no longer bothered to hide their role in producing them. What impact Russia’s information campaign had on the outcome of this year’s race, if any, remains uncertain. There is no doubt, though, that it reflected an increasingly brazen effort by the Kremlin, one that has left the American government with little to do to except to rebut the falsehoods as they gain popularity. Read Article

National: Election day ends with reports of vote counting tech challenges, text scams in several states | Sophia Fox-Sowell and Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

As the 2024 Election Day winds down, several states have reported challenges such as issues with the tech powering absentee ballot counting, text message-based disinformation campaigns, printer issues and more physical security threats. During the Election Protection Coalition’s second online media briefing Tuesday, representatives from the nonpartisan voting rights organization told reporters that states in the Midwest were facing technical difficulties and legal impairments in counting absentee ballots. Read Article

National: This Time, Few Complaints If Any Around Election Management | Carl Smith/Governing

Tuesday’s elections saw near-record turnout. Nonetheless, despite the controversies that surround voting and election administration in this era, the voting process was smooth for millions of people across the country. This outcome was the result of years of work, a multifaceted response to distrust and harassment of election officials that reached unprecedented levels during the 2020 election and have been kept alive since then by repeated claims that the contest had been “stolen.” “This election was stress tested like never before,” says Cara Ong Whaley, director of election protection at Issue One, a bipartisan group that promotes sound election management. “It held strong because of the dedication, professionalism and resilience of election officials and their staff, and that is worth celebrating.” Read Article

National: Voting tech isn’t perfect, but so far it’s holding up | Cath Virginia/The Verge

The technology that powers Election Day has hit some expected hiccups, but as of early afternoon on Tuesday, nonpartisan groups say that the voting system is mostly holding up. Where it has faltered, they stress, there are robust backup plans that will ensure voters can still cast their ballots and that their votes will be counted. “Like any type of technology, equipment can sometimes fail, but what’s important are the resilience processes in place to keep voters voting in real time,” says Pamela Smith, president and CEO of the nonprofit Verified Voting. Smith says there have been some reports of polling places where voting machines were down and voters were told to come back later. She says voters should not need to make a second trip to the polls in this sort of situation — they’re entitled to request a paper emergency ballot (distinct from a provisional ballot) to fill out and cast their vote. Read Article

National: Trump reverted to familiar playbook, sowing doubts about the voting until results showed him winning | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

President-elect Donald Trump and his Republican allies had spent months seeding doubt in the integrity of American voting systems and priming supporters to expect a 2024 election riddled with massive and inevitable fraud. The former president continued laying that groundwork even during a mostly smooth day of voting Tuesday, making unsubstantiated claims related to Philadelphia and Detroit and highlighting concerns about election operations in Milwaukee. Yet Trump’s grim warnings abruptly ended in the later hours of the evening as early returns began tipping in his favor. During his election night speech, the president-elect touted a “magnificent victory” as he claimed ownership for the favorable results and expressed love for the same states he’d questioned hours earlier. Read Article

National: Republican election denial claims take a hiatus with Trump’s victory | Amy Gardner , Colby Itkowitz , Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

A remarkable thing happened Tuesday night on an “election integrity” discussion page on the social media platform X, as it became clear that former president Donald Trump was headed to a decisive victory against Vice President Kamala Harris. It got quiet. Created by X owner Elon Musk’s America PAC, the page had provided a platform viewed by millions of users for rapid-fire updates about power outages causing poll closures, Russia-linked bomb threats and unsubstantiated accusations that run-of-the mill voting problems were the work of devious Democrats trying to steal the election. Around midnight, however, interest in the forum plummeted. With Trump winning back the White House, the urgency to investigate wrongdoing subsided. In its place came a spike of self-congratulation as those who believe Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was riddled with fraud took credit for preventing similar corruption this year. Read Article

National: Bomb threats sully otherwise uneventful voting across the country on Election Day | Carrie Levine andJessica Huseman/Votebeat

Election Day was relatively tame around the country, though it was marred by a string of bomb threats against polling places in swing states that law enforcement officials linked to Russia. The threats forced some temporary evacuations and extensions of polling place hours. Election officials, braced for disruptions and, forewarned by intelligence officials that foreign adversaries would attempt to create problems, responded quickly to reassure voters and minimize interruptions to voting. In Georgia, Secretary Brad Raffensperger said “noncredible” bomb threats targeted polling places in the Democratic strongholds of Fulton, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties, forcing an extension of hours at multiple voting sites. In Arizona, a threat forced the evacuation of the election office in La Paz County and targeted polling places in Navajo County. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said voters were safe. “No one is under threat as we know it right now,” Fontes said at a press conference. There were also bomb threats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Read Article

Arizona: Pinal County takes 24 hours to release Election Day results | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

In the early morning hours after Election Day, shortly after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had claimed victory, thousands of ballots from polling places were still piled up high in this town’s elections building, waiting to be tallied. This was the moment, Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis later recalled, that she realized her staff needed to start taking breaks. She began to tell some of the workers who were feeding paper ballots into tabulation machines to find a spot in the building to take a short nap, or to go get some food. She realized, in other words, that it was going to be a while until they were done counting Election Day ballots, and they weren’t going home until they did. Pinal County, the fast-growing neighbor of Maricopa County, ultimately took more than 24 hours to count all the ballots cast at polling places. Read Article

Arkansas: Independence County voters approve paper ballot ordinance in Independence County | Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Advocate

Independence County voters Tuesday night approved an ordinance that will require elections be conducted with hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots. According to complete but unofficial results, 8,309 county residents voted for the ordinance and 5,184 voted against it. Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative (AVII) CEO Conrad Reynolds has long supported a shift from using electronic voting machines to only using paper ballots, and said Tuesday’s results showed voters “have spoken loud and clear” on the matter. Reynolds called on state leaders “to heed the will of the people” in a press release. Read Article