National: Democrats sue DOJ over midterm ballot seizure plans | Ryan Knappenberger/Courthouse News Service

The Democratic National Committee sued the Justice Department on Thursday over its refusal to turn over documents related to any plans to seize ballots, voting machines and other election materials within a month of any federal primary and general election during the midterms. The DNC filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, after the FBI declined to turn over such documents as requested in a Feb. 6, request brought in the wake of the FBI raid on the Fulton County election office on Jan. 28. “Following the seizure of archived ballots from Fulton County, Georgia — and seeking to ensure that the Trump administration does not attempt unprecedented abuses of criminal law enforcement tools to undermine upcoming elections — the Democratic National Committee sent requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act, to components of the Department of Justice concerning any planned seizure of ballots, voting machines and other voting systems components,” the DNC says in its complaint. Read Article

National: ‘I don’t trust you’:Tensions were high in an election security call for state leaders hosted by CISA | Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

Tensions between state election officials and the Trump administration are rising as we head into the heart of the midterm election season. Frustrations boiled over on Monday during a rare election security call hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for state officials. During the call, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes unloaded on the agency. CISA used to be a go-to shop for many states looking for help ensuring that their elections weren’t hacked, targeted, or undermined by cyberattacks or foreign interference. CISA provided states with classified security briefings on threats, helped ensure that state voting equipment wasn’t vulnerable to cyberattacks, and worked with election leaders to game out potential risks. All that changed when Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. The second Trump administration scaled back its support for states, cut back CISA staff, and launched an investigation of its former leader, whom Trump accused of disloyalty because he pushed back on the president’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. CISA has not had a permanent director since the start of Trump’s second term. Read Article

National: Experts slam Trump’s unusual new census report as a ‘hijack by the White House’ | Gabe Cohen and Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Former Census Bureau leaders, statisticians and voting-rights advocates are raising alarms about an unusual, unsigned new report posted on the agency’s website that claims tens of thousands of noncitizens voted in the 2020 presidential election. President Donald Trump touted the results Tuesday on Truth Social, saying the bureau had proved that more than 24,000 noncitizens illegally voted in 2020 after analyzing 128 million individual voter records. Even if the report is accurate, 24,000 votes would amount to less than 0.02% of the roughly 160 million ballots cast in 2020. Joe Biden won the national popular vote by more than 7 million votes. Read Article

National: Trump election demands spark suit over DHS anti-terrorism funding | Sarah D. Wire/USA Today

A group of prominent cities and counties are suing the Trump administration for withholding tens of millions of dollars in anti-terrorism funding unless states and local governments agree to change how they conduct elections. Harris County and El Paso County in Texas; Nashville, Tennessee, and Columbus, Ohio are participating in the suit. The lawsuit challenges the Federal Emergency Management Agency's June 2026 decision to hold back 20% or even all Homeland Security Grant Program grants unless the jurisdictions comply with five election administration orders. Read Article

National: How Trump Left America Vulnerable to Cyberattacks | Nick Miroff and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Atlantic

During her January 2025 confirmation hearing to be secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem was asked how she would strengthen the nation’s cyberdefenses. Noem told senators that she would make the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “smaller” and “more nimble.” President Trump had created CISA as a stand-alone agency within the Department of Homeland Security during his first term to give cybersecurity more institutional heft, and it had grown quickly with support from lawmakers of both parties. But after CISA declared the 2020 presidential election to be “the most secure in American history” and the agency’s director, Christopher Krebs, refused to back Trump’s claims that the vote had been stolen, Krebs became a target for the president’s fury and a seething grudge. During the DOGE fever of the first few months of Trump’s return, CISA’s budget was reduced and its staff cut by one-third. The agency hasn’t had a permanent, Senate-confirmed director since Trump retook office. In April, the White House proposed deeper cuts to CISA’s budget, but Republican lawmakers have raised concerns that critical U.S. infrastructure is already too vulnerable. Read Article

Alaska: DOJ issues grand jury subpoenas in probe of Dan J. Sullivan’s US Senate candidacy | Mark Sabbatini/Juneau Independent

With national media already focusing on Alaska’s U.S. Senate race during the state’s primary election on Tuesday, a new flurry of stories surfaced during the afternoon about the U.S. Department of Justice ​issuing grand jury subpoenas in its investigation of Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy. Sullivan, a retired Petersburg teacher, is running as a Republican against namesake incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. Republican party officials, as well as the Alaska Division of Elections, have accused Dan J. Sullivan of being a sham candidate trying to confuse voters. The subpoenas were first reported by NBC News, citing "a law enforcement official" and noting the issuance of them last week "to compel information from witnesses linked to the campaign of Dan J. Sullivan" has not been previously reported. Other news agencies including Reuters published subsequent reports, also citing unnamed sources. Read Article

Arizona: Over 1,300 mail ballots were undelivered in Navajo County. Data suggests that’s not unusual. | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

At least 50,000 mail ballots never made it to voters duriAt least 50,000 mail ballots never made it to voters during Arizona’s July 21 primary election. That number, based on information gathered by Votebeat from 11 of the state’s 15 counties, isn’t out of the ordinary. In fact, it appears roughly in line with that of prior major elections. About 71,000 mail ballots went undelivered statewide during the 2024 general election, according to data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission that represented all of the state’s counties. Every year, some ballots that are mailed out to voters are returned to election officials because the voter’s address is incorrect or the voter has a forwarding address on file. (In Arizona, ballots legally can’t be forwarded.) Read Article

California: Tina Peters, pro-Trump election denier, went to prison. Now, Shasta County might hire her | Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times

Tina Peters, the former Colorado elections official convicted of tampering with voting machines, was recently released early from prison amid a pressure campaign from President Trump. Now the top elections official in a conservative California county with a long history of voting controversies is seeking to hire her to help run elections there. Clint Curtis, the registrar of voters in Shasta County, said on a local radio show Sunday that he planned to hire Peters as the assistant registrar next month, just weeks ahead of the November election. Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, Colo., was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nine years behind bars for breaching her county’s voting machines as part of a scheme to show that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump — a claim that has been repeatedly debunked. Read Article

Georgia passed on election upgrades. A Princeton researcher exploited weaknesses in system. | Caleb Groves/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Using artificial intelligence to scan public databases, a Princeton University researcher has exploited a known weakness in Georgia’s voting system to identify, with fair certainty, how more than 2,200 people voted in Cherokee and Heard counties in the May primaries. Georgia election officials have known about the problem since 2022, but they have not updated the software for Georgia’s voting system since it was first purchased back in 2019. “Somehow, Georgia has not incorporated that sort of vulnerability patching into the maintenance of its election system,” said Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan who was one of the security researchers to first flag the issue in 2022. Read Article

Maryland preps for multibillion-dollar shortfalls, approves $109.4M voting machine buy | Gary Collins/The Baltimore Sun

Maryland is preparing to spend up to $109.4 million on a new statewide voting system, setting up a costly election overhaul that uses similar machines as the state continues to confront large structural budget gaps for the rest of the decade. This large-scale purchase would mark nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayer expenditures on state election equipment since 2002. The Maryland Board of Public Works approved the contract on July 22 with Omaha-based Election Systems & Software (ES&S). The initial award is approximately $84.9 million, with two two-year renewal options that could increase the total to roughly $109.4 million over nine years. The equipment is intended to be ready for the 2028 presidential election. Procurement documents reviewed by Spotlight on Maryland show eight vendors were solicited, four submitted proposals, and ES&S received the highest overall technical ranking from the evaluation committee in a unanimous final decision. Read Article

Minnesota: Mike Lindell says he’ll pay for recount in 45,000-vote primary loss | Walker Orenstein/The Minnesota Star Tribune

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell is challenging the results of the Minnesota Republican primary for governor and says he will pay for a recount despite losing by more than 45,000 votes. The recount is Lindell’s latest effort to cast doubt on the security of elections after he became one of the country’s most prominent supporters of President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Minnesota’s Secretary of State has not received an official request for a recount, said office spokesman Peter Bartz-Gallagher. Lindell would need to make that request, along with a bond, cash, or surety for the full estimated cost of $825,000 by Monday. Read Article

Nevada: Homeland Security Made a Big Claim About Noncitizen Voting. Now It Can’t Prove It. | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

A month after the Trump administration declared without evidence that thousands of noncitizens had illegally registered to vote in Nevada, officials with the Department of Homeland Security were unable to substantiate the claim. The administration claimed to have identified 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in four states, including an exact number of 15,903 in Nevada. But during a meeting last week with state election administrators, Homeland Security officials said they had identified just 185 potential noncitizens in the state so far, according to emails as well as recordings of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. The federal officials said they were still considering 14,000 names for further review, according to one of the emails. In the virtual meeting, federal officials told Nevada that the nearly 16,000 they had originally identified represented “the ceiling” of potential noncitizens. But the list the Homeland Security Department shared with Nevada is incomplete — it doesn’t even include names — and is nearly impossible to verify, according to files released by the secretary of state’s office. Nevada officials have requested more information, but the department has not yet offered it. Read Article

North Carolina Democratic Governor vetoes Republican-backed ‘anti-voter’ North Carolina elections bill | Christine Zhu/NC Newsline

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein vetoed a controversial elections law bill on Monday, saying the veto was necessary to defend voting rights. House Bill 958 includes provisions that would reduce early voting periods during primaries and special elections, require state Auditor Dave Boliek to conduct post-election audits of county election systems, and use federal databases with known problems to identify people who have died but remain on the voter rolls. “Our right to vote is precious. It’s the fundamental right that underpins every other right that we possess,” Stein said during a ceremony at the executive mansion, flanked by Democratic state lawmakers. “That’s why I will always protect you and your right to vote, and that’s why I am vetoing this anti-voter law today.” Read Article

Texas appeals court won’t block GOP-led county from changing voting maps after primary | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

A Texas appeals court Thursday denied an emergency effort to stop Galveston County from using new voting districts in the November election, allowing the GOP-led county’s post-primary map change to move forward for now as the general election approaches. The 14th Court of Appeals rejected a petition from pro-voting plaintiffs who asked the court to block Galveston County from implementing district boundaries adopted after the March 2026 primaries. The plaintiffs argued that county officials should not be allowed to hold primary elections under one set of district lines and then use different boundaries for the general election just months later. Read Article

Wisconsin’s Green and Winnebago counties faced election result system errors in the August midterm primaries | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Systems used to transmit unofficial election-night results broke down in Green and Winnebago counties during Wisconsin’s August primary, causing problems processing and posting results. The issues had no bearing on the official results that counties across the state are still certifying. But those breakdowns come as national experts have encouraged a move away from transmitting results over modems and toward physically delivering them. Many other states and election jurisdictions have shifted away from transmitting results by modem, but it remains common in Wisconsin. Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting, an elections technology organization, said election security is not only about preventing incorrect results or cyberattacks. It also means making sure the systems that election officials rely on are available and functioning when they need them. A breakdown in transmitting unofficial results may not change the outcome of an election, she said, but it can still disrupt election-night operations and consume significant staff time. “It matters because it’s a time suck for the county, and everybody trying to deal with it,” she said.Read Article

National: Voting machines have real security issues. Researchers worry they could be weaponized by election deniers. | Dana Nickel/Politico

Last spring, the Trump administration asked a small cybersecurity firm based in Virginia to scrutinize electronic voting systems the federal government had seized from Puerto Rico. The task before the company, Mojave Research, was nominally simple: to determine whether the machines had any major security flaws that could have affected the results of the 2024 presidential election. The company ultimately discovered numerous security gaps in these machines, made by election giant Dominion Voting Systems, including weak or recycled passwords used across networks and other vulnerabilities that had previously been identified but remained unpatched. But according to Jason Wareham — the chief executive of Mojave Research who presented the findings of this investigation for the first time publicly last Friday at the DEF CON cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas — they had no reason to suspect that these security issues had any material impact on the results of the election. Read Article

National: Judge halts Trump order to expand Postal Service role in elections | Michael Casey and Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled against President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to create a federal voter list and directly involve the U.S. Postal Service in election operations in a way that would limit mail voting. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani had already halted the order Trump signed in March, his second one attempting to set national election rules. On June 25, she sided with Democratic state attorneys general in granting summary judgment, preventing the core parts of Trump’s order from taking effect. Tuesday’s ruling creates another legal hurdle for the Trump administration to overcome should it get the initial injunction lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court. “That it is now less than 90 days before the November 3, 2026 midterm elections underscores the critical need for an injunction to prevent Defendants from changing election rules on the eve of the election,” she wrote. Read Article

National: No more ‘hypothetical situations’: States move to fortify elections against Trump | Kevin Hardy/Stateline

State Democratic officials are preparing for chaos at the polls this November, as President Donald Trump casts doubt on election security and pushes for more federal involvement in local voting. “We’re no longer talking about hypothetical situations,” said Nick Brown, Washington state’s Democratic attorney general, noting the president’s push to nationalize election administration and to question the integrity of upcoming elections. Brown is among the many Democratic state officials raising alarms over how Trump may seek to interfere with or challenge the results of November’s midterms. At stake is not only whether Republicans will maintain their grip on Congress, but also the control of state legislatures across the country. Democratic gains at either the state or national levels could provide a new check on Trump, who has sought to significantly expand executive power in his second term. Read Article

National: What happens if election deniers run elections? | Zack Beauchamp/Vox

Tom Tiffany, the new Republican nominee for governor in Wisconsin, is not just a passive supporter of President Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 presidential election. He is an active promoter of them. In December 2020, when he was a member of Congress, he signed on to a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate Joe Biden's victory. On January 6, 2021, he voted against certifying the results in Pennsylvania and Texas just hours after rioters threatened to kill his colleagues. He has stated he would have overturned Wisconsin's results too, and just this year endorsed an FBI investigation into the state's elections. And though the national climate in 2026 favors Democrats, Wisconsin is a closely divided state: Tiffany could beat the odds and win the general. There is, in short, a very real chance that someone who doesn't believe American elections are legitimate may soon be supervising them in one of the 2028 presidential cycle's most important swing states. Read Article

National: Voting machine researchers say federal work abruptly ended after Trump ally pushed back on their findings | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

After spending roughly six weeks analyzing Dominion voting systems used in Puerto Rico’s 2024 elections, Mojave Research came back to the Trump administration with findings that startled its researchers. The systems contained at least a dozen high- or critical-severity software vulnerabilities. Passwords were reused, firewalls were disabled and basic cryptographic protections were poorly implemented. And in Puerto Rico, active cellular hardware modems opened additional pathways into underlying software that was thought to be isolated. But the small cybersecurity firm found no evidence that any of those weaknesses had actually been exploited, or that votes had been changed. The company still wanted more time to be certain. Federal officials initially seemed willing to give them considerably more of it. The company was asked to grow the team working on the effort from roughly 10 people to about 60, according to CEO Jason Wareham. Read Article

National: Top Democrats simulate election threats as Trump continues assault on voting | George Chidi/The Guardian

In a Washington DC conference room last month, some of the most senior Democrats in the US Senate gathered to plan for a prospect that only recently would have felt more akin to science fiction: they started to wargame democracy. Chuck Schumer, the US Senate minority leader, and senators including Alex Padilla, Adam Schiff, Mark Warner, Elissa Slotkin and Raphael Warnock were among those in the room as a team of legal experts offered scenarios. The first: realistic deepfake videos, created with artificial intelligence, showing “evidence” of widespread election fraud, spreading through social media a few weeks before voting begins. Forensic experts discredit the videos quickly as synthetic in the given scenario, but rightwing media – and the US president – amplify the claims, nonetheless. Election workers begin receiving death threats. Armed men start appearing at polls. If you’re a Democratic senator, what would you do? Read Article

National: How the DMV Became Ground Zero in the Election Integrity Fight | Louise Radnofsky, Eliza Collins, Joseph De Avila and Corinne Ramey/Wall Street Journal

In President Trump’s prime-time address last month declaring U.S. elections vulnerable, his centerpiece claim was that more than 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote. A day later, the Department of Homeland Security said the striking number covered just four states. New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill already knew her state had a problem but nothing of that scale. The day before Trump’s speech, the Democrat learned from her state attorney general’s office that under the previous governor, the state had accidentally put thousands of noncitizens on its voter rolls. Even worse, hundreds of them appeared to have cast ballots. The governor and her advisers quickly realized they needed to acknowledge the errors. On July 21, Sherrill said 6,600 noncitizens had been added to New Jersey’s voter rolls from June 2023 to June 2024, blaming a software glitch at the motor vehicle commission, which automatically registers eligible people to vote. While applying for a driver’s license, these people selected “no” when asked if they were U.S. citizens, Sherrill said, but “the system registered them anyway.” Read Article

National: Trump loses 21 straight court battles for state voter rolls as midterms near | Luc Cohen/Reuters

The Trump administration's streak of courtroom defeats in its effort to obtain state voter rolls reached 21 this year when a judge ruled this week that states are not required to share the records with the federal government. With President Donald Trump's Republicans defending slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, ​his administration has mounted an aggressive effort to expand federal oversight of elections ahead of the November 3 midterms. A Reuters investigation found that just 129 people have been prosecuted for noncitizen voting since a law criminalizing it was passed in 1996, and that most of those cases stemmed from voter confusion or miscommunication with election officials rather than any conspiracy. Read Article

National: How a Counterintelligence Inquiry Into Trump’s Russia Ties Was Derailed | Michael S. Schmidt/The New York Times

For the last year, the Trump administration’s efforts to seek retribution against intelligence officials and F.B.I. agents who investigated Russia’s 2016 election meddling have been spearheaded by federal prosecutors in South Florida trying to build a criminal case. But in recent weeks, the White House has added a dimension to its push to rewrite the history of the Russia investigation, releasing a trove of previously classified F.B.I. memos that it says back up President Trump’s claims that a so-called deep state was out to get him. There is little new of substance in the documents, and nothing that fundamentally undercuts the F.B.I.’s rationale for pursuing the Russia investigation. But the material does shed new light on an often overlooked aspect of the swirl of events surrounding Mr. Trump in his first months in office in 2017: the bureau’s remarkable decision to open a separate counterintelligence investigation into the president of the United States, and how that inquiry was sidetracked before it had much of a chance to get going. Mr. Trump has always dismissed as baseless smears suggestions that he was a Russian asset or had extensive financial ties to Russia. And no publicly known investigation into Mr. Trump ever demonstrated that he was acting at the behest of the Russians. Read Article

Opinion: Election security, or the engineering of distrust? | Ervin Hoskins/The Journal-Courier

By turning voting machines, classified intelligence, and alleged foreign interference into political theater, the Trump administration is preparing voters to distrust an election that has not yet taken place. Donald Trump has never treated elections simply as contests to be won or lost. He treats them as tests of legitimacy whose results are valid only when they confirm his political authority. His planned national address on the “integrity” of voting machines therefore should not be dismissed as another attempt to relitigate the 2020 election. It may represent something more consequential: an effort to establish, before the 2026 midterms, a rationale for challenging any result unfavorable to Republicans. The issue is not whether election systems should be protected. They should. Foreign governments have sought to influence American voters, spread disinformation, and deepen existing political divisions. Voting equipment, like every form of critical infrastructure, also requires testing, oversight, and investment. Read Article

Alaska continues criminal prosecution of nine American Samoan residents despite landmark U.S. Supreme Court citizenship ruling | Jonson Kuhn/KTUU

The State of Alaska is doubling down on its criminal prosecution of nine American Samoan residents in Whittier, opposing a motion to dismiss that argues a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling makes them U.S. citizens. The development comes as members of the Pese family remain caught in the state’s slow-moving legal system. A discovery hearing for Michael Pese — who filed the initial motion to dismiss in Anchorage Superior Court — was scheduled for this week, though representation for the family said they expect little progress as these hearings have repeatedly been rescheduled. In a court filing on Aug. 4, state prosecutors formally opposed Pese’s motion to dismiss the felony voter misconduct charges. Pese’s defense team argued that under the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Barbara, anyone born on U.S. soil—including U.S. territories like American Samoa—is constitutionally a U.S. citizen under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Read Article

Arizona: Court revives voting restrictions ahead of midterms | Natalie Hausmann/Democracy Docket

The Ninth Circuit ruled to uphold previously blocked voting laws in Arizona that will go into effect in time for the state’s midterm general election, making it harder for some voters to cast ballots. The 11-judge panel Friday reinstated two provisions of a 2022 law that imposed strict voter registration requirements. Parts of the bill have faced heavy litigation since its inception, with courts flip-flopping on the legality of the suppressive measures. One provision demands that a voter’s registration be cancelled when they move to a different county within the state. The other provision criminalizes what are deemed “mechanisms for voting,” which plaintiffs argue could include anything from helping someone update their address to sending a child at college their absentee ballot. Read Article

Georgia Secretary of State launches bipartisan election integrity task force | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

The Georgia Secretary of State’s office is launching a bipartisan task force to shore up voter confidence in election results on both sides of the aisle. The organization, which is made up of former elected officials from both parties, county election workers and other election experts, officially launched Wednesday. Members include former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, former GOP U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, former GOP U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson and former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who is a Democrat. In an interview, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is a Republican, said he hopes the appointees’ long records of public service will help voters trust the results of the midterm elections. Read Article

Michigan Attorney General charges 5 noncitizens who allegedly committed voter fraud in 2024 election | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Michigan’s attorney general announced Thursday she was charging five noncitizens for allegedly voting in the 2024 general election, plus one U.S. citizen accused of registering their noncitizen spouse to vote. Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, made the announcement more than a year after her office announced she was investigating 13 potential noncitizen voters referred by the Michigan Department of State. Thursday’s announcement encompassed those referrals as well as 25 other people referred more recently on similar allegations. In addition to the six who were charged, 10 of those cases have been closed without charges, and 22 remain under investigation. In addition, the voter registration of every identified noncitizen — including several who were not charged — has been cancelled. Read Article

Nevada: Clark County judge dismisses case against Nevada ‘fake electors’ for second time | Eric Neugeboren/The Nevada Independent

A Clark County judge has tossed out forgery charges against Nevada's six so-called "fake electors" for the second time, the latest defeat for prosecutors' efforts to convict the Republicans behind the effort to overturn Nevada's 2020 election results for President Donald Trump. Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled Thursday that state prosecutors did not provide enough evidence that the GOP electors had intended to defraud state officials. She also said prosecutors "independently undermine[d] the integrity of the indictment" against the electors by withholding certain evidence to members of the grand jury. In 2024, she tossed out the case on the grounds that Clark County was an invalid place to consider the case, but the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously overruled her last year, kicking the case back down to Southern Nevada. Attorney General Aaron Ford's (D) office plans to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court. That process — if it mirrors the one from Holthus' first dismissal — could take more than a year, prolonging the case that began almost three years ago. Ford, who is running for governor, is unlikely to still be in office by the time the case ends. Read Article