Warren Stewart – Page 4 – The Voting News

A divided state House approved an elections bill Tuesday that clears a path for more ballot challenges, election audits, and registration removals. Democrats roundly criticized House Bill 958, saying it will make unfounded voter challenges more likely, sow confusion, inject partisanship into election administration, and make it harder for eligible voters to have their votes count. “You don’t know the fear of having a government agency coming in and turning your life upside down,” said House Democratic Leader Robert Reives (D-Chatham). The House approved the bill in a party-line 66-47 vote. It now goes to the Senate for consideration. Rep. Phil Rubin (D-Wake) argued the bill is based on the false premise that the voter rolls are overrun with ineligible voters, when study after study has shown that isn’t the case.“This bill legislates a fantasy, and it chases ghosts,” he said. NC House passes its controversial elections bill with only GOP votes • NC Newsline

Texas Attorney General’s voter registration may violate Texas election law | Zach Despart/The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have used an address where he did not live while voting in six elections in the past two years, including in May’s runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. senator. State Sen. Angela Paxton said in a 2025 divorce filing that Paxton, whom she accused of adultery, moved out of their Collin County home a year earlier. But Paxton continues to list the home’s address in the northern Dallas suburb on his voter registration. Angela Paxton declined to be interviewed. A source close to the Paxtons said the attorney general has not moved back into the home since leaving. It is unclear where Paxton has lived for the past two years, but reporting by ProPublica and the Tribune has linked him to a home in neighboring Denton County since February. Read Article

Wisconsin: Green Bay city clerk on leave after state calls for investigation into duplicate ballots | Joe Schulz/WPR

The Green Bay City Clerk is on administrative leave, pending an internal review from the city and a state investigation into how her office issued duplicate ballots in two elections this year. Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich issued a statement Thursday afternoon, saying City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys had been placed on leave. It came the same day the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously to investigate how Green Bay issued duplicate ballots in both the April election and the August primary. “Elections are a critical piece of the work we perform at the City,” Genrich stated. “While we have no concerns with the security or propriety of the electoral process, these errors in the Clerk’s Office are unacceptable.” Read Article

Wisconsin municipality disenfranchised voters using controversial absentee ballot policy | Alexander ShurVotebeat

For years, Mequon election workers employed an unusually strict standard for judging the validity of witness addresses on absentee ballot envelopes — a standard not apparently used elsewhere in Wisconsin and that the Wisconsin Elections Commission has now said is illegal. Under that standard, Mequon officials rejected absentee ballots if the witness address did not include a state or ZIP code and the municipality name was not unique nationwide. That’s despite the fact that Wisconsin’s absentee ballot envelope no longer specifically asks witnesses to provide the information Mequon treated as essential: a state or ZIP code. But a Votebeat review of hundreds of April 2026 absentee ballot envelopes, the dozens of ballots Mequon at least initially rejected since 2024, and scores of city records found that the city’s strict standard was applied unevenly — and, in some cases, resulted in the initial rejection of ballots that did not appear ambiguous at all. Read Article

National: Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s bid to restrict mail-in voting | George Chidi/The Guardian

The Trump administration’s plan to deny mail-in ballots to states that would not give their voter rolls to federal officials was blocked on Thursday morning by a federal judge in Boston. US district judge Indira ⁠Talwani ruled that the provisions of an executive order issued by Donald Trump on 31 March requiring the postal service to require the use of a barcode tracking system for ballot envelopes tied to US Citizenship and Immigration Services data was unconstitutional. It comes amid a broader drive by the president and his officials to reshape rules and regulations around voting ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump is pushing Congress to pass the Save America Act, which would impose new ID requirements on voters and curtail mail-in voting. Voting rights groups, joined by 23 states and the District of Columbia, sued the administration to stop the proposed rule, arguing that the US constitution provides no authority for the president to issue orders governing the administration of elections. Read Article

National: Court rules SAVE database illegal, orders it dismantled | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

A federal court ruled Monday that the Trump administration’s national voter database violates federal privacy laws, interferes with Americans’ right to vote, and must be dismantled. In the ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the District Court of Washington D.C. wrote that records reviewed by the court show federal agencies knew that the SAVE voter database violated federal laws like the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, but were “scrambling” to comply with President Trump’s executive order to create a system for mass voter verification. That pressure resulted in agencies “haphazardly” combining and repurposing the personal information of millions of Americans from different government databases, including citizenship data they knew was unreliable. Read Article

National: White House delays release of US voting machine study as midterms near | Erin Blanco, Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay/Reuters

White House officials have for months delayed the release of a U.S. government report that outlines what it describes as significant vulnerabilities in the nation's voting machines ahead of the November midterms, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concludes that voting ‌machines could be further safeguarded by, for example, updating their software, the sources said. It does not say the vulnerabilities have led to votes flipping, but examines security gaps in how the machines are used during U.S. elections. Some White House officials have argued the report could undermine voter confidence, particularly among Republicans. Others have said they do not believe the report goes far enough in supporting President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, the three sources said. Some Democrats said privately they worried Gabbard’s probe into voting machines would be used by the administration to push states to use paper ballots. Several court cases filed by Trump's lawyers failed to prove voter fraud in the 2020 presidential race. Read Article

National: Federal judge bars Trump from proof of citizenship requirement to vote | Julie Carr Smyth and Michael Casey/Associated Press

A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban. Casper rejected the Republican administration’s argument that the lawsuit to block the changes brought by Democratic state attorneys general was premature because the rules had yet to be put in place. Instead, she agreed that the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to regulate elections, and that Trump’s requirements violated the separation of powers. Read Article

National: Trump admin plans to use DHS funds to force states election changes | Gabe Cohen and Tierney Sneed/CNN

The Trump administration is threatening to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds from states unless they adopt a sweeping set of election changes, according to multiple sources and internal documents obtained by CNN. The move is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to root out alleged voter fraud — despite studies showing it’s far rarer than he claims — and exert more federal influence over how elections are run. It comes as multiple states have passed laws that seek to prevent the federal government from interfering with elections. Under new rules governing several homeland security grant programs, states must take a number of steps, including phasing out certain electronic voting systems and moving to hand-marked paper ballots. They must also run their voter rolls through a controversial Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification database. Read Article

National: Democratic states scramble to prevent potential Trump administration interference in their elections | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Democratic-led states are racing to safeguard November’s midterm elections against potential interference from the Trump administration and its allies, passing new laws that restrict the presence of law enforcement at polling places or seek to thwart the federal government’s efforts to obtain sensitive election material. Five states – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington state — have recently enacted legislation to shield their elections from federal actions, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks election-related legislation, and CNN’s research. Sponsors say they are responding to President Donald Trump’s continued rhetoric about fraud in voting and the administration’s increasingly aggressive moves to reshape how voting is conducted. The US Constitution gives states the primary task of running elections and Congress the power to set the ground rules for federal contests. Read Article

National: The Election System Wasn’t Built for This | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Atlantic

Not so long ago, the Republicans who ran elections in one of the nation’s most important battlegrounds—Maricopa County, Arizona—largely got along. There were egos and quibbles, sure. But in the face of unyielding attacks on elections led by President Trump, the recorder and board of supervisors—which together split election duties—resolved conflicts without blowing up a delicate system built on trust and cooperation. Today’s recorder and board, a mostly new cast chosen by voters in 2024, are different. They’re locked in an all-out war over the machinery, money, and operations that make the democratic process possible. Both sides agree that the standoff threatens their ability to carry out November’s midterm elections free of complications for the county’s 2.6 million voters, more than half the state’s total. The recorder’s side describes the situation in dire terms, writing to a judge that “the legal validity of the election results themselves” is at risk. The recorder’s critics fear that the fight could be used as pretext to cancel results MAGA doesn’t like in elections that could tip the balance in Congress. Read Article

Opinion: These 19 election deniers and vote suppressors are on the ballot in the midterms. We should be worried | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

From Maine down to Texas, and from North Carolina out to Arizona — hundreds of Republican election deniers and vote suppressors will be on the ballot this fall. Many are running for pivotal state-level roles like governor or secretary of state that wield enormous power to undermine a fair election. Others are running for seats in the U.S. House or Senate, from which they could help drive anti-voting policies that threaten to disenfranchise millions of voters. A tally by the pro-democracy group States United Action found that there are 132 election deniers across 35 states running for statewide or federal office this year. Read Article

Alaska legislators probe decision to remove candidate from the ballot | Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon

Members of the Alaska House Judiciary and State Affairs committees held an investigatory hearing on Monday about the state’s decision to remove a candidate from the U.S. Senate election with the same name as the incumbent — Dan Sullivan. The Division of Elections announced that Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg, was not eligible to run for the U.S. Senate. It cited complaints from the incumbent and Republican groups when it decided his candidacy was not in “good faith,” and aimed at confusing voters with the incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan. The division cited a state regulation that forbids the Division of Elections from listing a candidate’s name “in a manner that is confusing or misleading to voters or compromises the fairness or neutrality of the ballot.” But some lawmakers questioned the decision and the division’s authority to remove the challenger candidate. An attorney representing the Alaska Legislature issued a legal memo Wednesday saying the decision to disqualify the candidate was likely unlawful, since he did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s qualifications to run for office. Read Article

Arizona: Maricopa County power struggle over elections could undermine midterms | Ronald J. Hansen/Arizona Republic

The election-related power struggle in Maricopa County and President Donald Trump's unproven claims of election fraud may undermine public confidence in — and lead to historic challenges to — Arizona's November midterm contests, experts warn. The once sleepy subject of election administration has remained a pitched battle in the state's most populous county, with simultaneous fighting over the ground rules for the July primary and renewed speculation over the flawed recount of its 2020 ballots. On June 18, just days before early ballots for the July 21 primary are sent to voters, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that the county Board of Supervisors didn’t have to rush a complex division of its voter database with Recorder Justin Heap. In doing so, the court held that averting 11th-hour confusion for voters alone justified delaying a task first formalized in mid-April. Read Article

Arkansas: Supreme Court allows a ruling that ends a tool to protect minority voters in 7 states | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

By declining to take up a lower court ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act.The court announced Monday that it will not review an Arkansas-based lawsuit, leaving in place a 2025 appeals panel ruling that ends a long-used tool for protecting minority voters from discrimination under the landmark law in seven mainly Midwestern states.That ruling found that in the states covered by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota — private individuals and groups do not have the right to sue to enforce what's known as Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which generally allows voters with a disability or inability to read or write to get help with voting from a person of their choice. Read Article

California: Trump says he asked US attorney for election probe: ‘Do me a favor’ | Marisa Guerra Echeverria, Blake Jones and Ben Johansen/Politico

President Donald Trump acknowledged having called federal prosecutors in California to probe the state’s primary election results, claiming without evidence on Tuesday that his intervention resulted in Republican Steve Hilton advancing to the runoff in the gubernatorial race. His remarks, at a rally in Pennsylvania, came weeks after California primary results first cemented Democrat Xavier Becerra as the front-runner advancing to the November ballot, with results for the Trump-endorsed Hilton arriving days later. “I called up the very powerful, very good U.S. attorney in California. I said, ‘Do me a favor. Take a look,’” the president said. Trump took credit for Hilton’s victory, claiming the former Fox News host only advanced after the attorney made a call to an unspecified person. “About an hour after the call, ladies and gentleman, Mr. Hilton has won,” Trump said. “Had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would be watching the election from home.” Read Article

Georgia will keep QR codes for counting votes through midterms | Sudhin Thanawala and Kate Brumback/Associated Press

Georgia will stick with an embattled vote-counting method that relies on a QR code for this year’s midterm elections after lawmakers passed legislation Tuesday that put off making changes until 2028. The votes in the state House and Senate came after lawmakers limited a provision that requires a hand recount of ballots in certain races. Leaders in the Republican-controlled Legislature said their plan to delay action on the vote-counting equipment had the support of the governor, Republican Brian Kemp. Kemp had called lawmakers into a special session in part to address a July 1 deadline that was set to ban the QR codes used for the official vote count. Legislators passed a law two years ago that set that deadline, but then failed to find a replacement for tabulating votes. Read Article

Michigan: Appeals court rejects Trump administration’s effort to get sensitive voter information | Melissa Quinn/CBS

A divided federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department is not entitled to Michigan's voter registration list containing sensitive information from voters in the state. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit is now the first appeals court to weigh in on the Trump administration's efforts to obtain the unredacted voter rolls from more than two dozen states. At issue in the case decided by the 6th Circuit is the Justice Department's demand for the information from Michigan. In a 2-1 decision, the 6th Circuit said a provision of federal civil rights law does not entitle the government to Michigan's voter registration list, which contains the names, birth dates, driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers of all registered voters in the state, among other information. Read Article

New Hampshire: Weeks before election, state appeals ruling striking down proof-of-citizenship voting law | Ethan DeWitt/New Hampshire Bulletin

A month after a federal judge struck down a law requiring hard proof of citizenship to register to vote in New Hampshire, the state Attorney General’s Office has requested a stay of the decision while it appeals. On May 28, Judge Samantha Elliott of the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire ruled that the Republican law imposes an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. Because of that ruling, first-time voters do not currently need hard proof of citizenship to register for the September state primary and November general elections, though they will need proof of identity, age, and domicile. The state’s motion, if successful, would allow the new proof-of-citizenship law to take effect this fall. Read Article

North Carolina House set to vote on sweeping election bill despite opposition to overseas voter restrictions | Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline

The North Carolina House of Representatives is expected to vote on a hotly contested election reform bill next week after it passed the powerful House Rules Committee on Wednesday. House Bill 958 passed the committee by a margin of 14-9, becoming one of the rare bills to not receive the support of all Republicans on the panel. That’s in part due to backlash over provisions that would require voter identification from military and overseas voters, among other restrictions. The bill did not arrive on the House floor Wednesday as lawmakers took up a slew of veto overrides instead. Speaker Destin Hall (R-Caldwell) told members of the media he expects a vote next week, though there may be additional changes coming to the bill. Read Article

Pennsylvania officials want to bar feds from polling places for midterms | Matthew Rink/USA Today

Trump's rhetoric and executive orders over unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud, coupled with his expansion of ICE to carry out mass deportation of immigrants, has alarmed Democrats and other critics that the president might use federal agents to suppress voter turnout in places with high concentrations of Democrats during the midterm elections. State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Philadelphia-area Democrat, in February announced he would introduce legislation that specifically bans these federal agents from entering polling places. Pennsylvania already prohibits on-duty law enforcement officers from being within 100 feet on a polling place unless they are responding to a specific incident. However, Kenyatta told the USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania that law says nothing about federal agents. Read Article

Texas lawmakers seek fixes to statewide voter registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for assurances that issues with the state’s voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election. “Those fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don’t, we can’t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Harris County, during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing that addressed voter registration and voter list maintenance issues. Bettencourt said he’s heard complaints about the system, known as TEAM, from election officials in Travis, Austin, and Jackson counties, among others. Christina Adkins, the elections division director at the secretary of state’s office, said the agency is “dedicating every possible resource that we have within our office to resolving these issues.” Read Article

Wisconsin elections chair wants state to speed destruction of Milwaukee’s 2020 ballots amid FBI probe | Rich Kremer/WPR

The chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission wants state Attorney General Josh Kaul to push for the destruction of what he says are more than quarter-million absentee ballots from Milwaukee’s 2020 election, after the FBI interviewed city officials and police. The call by Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Don Millis, a Republican, comes after the FBI seized 2020 ballots in Georgia earlier this year amid President Donald Trump’s repeated false claims the election was stolen. During a Sunday appearance on WISN 12’s “UpFront,” Millis said FBI agents have been “offered up various conspiracy theories” about Milwaukee’s 2020 results that “certain grifters have put out there.” Millis said the agents have been professional and have been given information showing that “there was not any conspiracy or that the counting of the ballots in 2020 was wrong or done improperly.” Read Article

National: Experts alarmed as Trump launches broad-front attack on US voting rights | Peter Stone/The Guardian

The Trump administration is waging war on voting rights using justice department lawsuits, FBI investigations and an executive order to limit voting by mail, moves mirroring the US president’s false claims he lost the 2020 election due to voting fraud, say election experts and ex-officials. Since Donald Trump began his second term, numerous 2020 election denialists have been installed in key agencies such as the Department of Justice, the FBI and elsewhere to pursue widely discredited claims of fraud, which can intimidate election workers and voters in swing states that Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020. The justice department has also filed lawsuits seeking sensitive voter data from 30 states – even though, by law, states control elections – and the FBI has launched investigations into debunked allegations of voting fraud in Georgia, Wisconsin and a few other swing states that Trump lost in 2020. Trump in late March this year issued an executive order sharply tightening mail-in voting rules, which Trump has long claimed without evidence contribute to fraud. The order gives the United States Postal Service unprecedented powers to issue new rules making voting by mail harder. Read Article

National: Local election officials reel over ‘logistical nightmare’ of Trump’s vote-by-mail order | Jonathan Shorman/News From The States

As election officials across the country steel themselves for the midterm elections in less than five months, President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail threatens to upend their preparations. The executive order instructs the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t provide lists of voters or meet other requirements. It has created a sense of deep uncertainty and concern among election officials as they consider how to comply, according to a review of court documents and interviews with election officials and experts on election administration. The March 31 executive order, and a proposed Postal Service rule published June 2 that would put the order’s requirements into effect, raise serious logistical and procedural challenges for those running elections, they say. Rural areas with limited resources are especially at risk, but jurisdictions of all sizes could be forced to scramble. The executive order is the latest step taken by Trump to assert control over state-run elections, along with the stalled SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide documents proving their citizenship. The Justice Department, under Trump’s control, is also trying to obtain state voter rolls. Read Article

National: Voting officials fear DHS may actually be a threat to elections this year | Miles Parks/NPR

Gary Berntsen is convinced Venezuela stole the 2020 U.S. election. That myth has been debunked numerous times, including as part of Fox News' 2023 $787 million settlement with voting machine company Dominion, but Berntsen, a former CIA operative, has been pushing it for years. "One of the things that we learned is there's 14 different technical ways that you can steal an election," Berntsen explained in an interview in the fall with conservative podcaster Lara Logan. But ahead of the 2024 election, Berntsen says he couldn't get anyone to listen to him. Not the FBI. Not the media. Finally, he went to Congress, where he says he was similarly rebuffed by almost everyone, including Republicans. Except one. "One politician in America was not afraid," Berntsen told Logan. "It was Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma." Allies of Berntsen say Mullin — then a U.S. senator, now the head of the Department of Homeland Security — brokered a meeting at Mar-a-Lago so Berntsen could brief President Trump's team on conspiracy theories about Venezuelan interference in elections. That is just one time of many that Mullin has gone to bat for election denial. DHS could be a threat to midterm elections this year : NPR

National: Trump Pulls Back Intelligence Pick to Pressure Congress on Elections Bill | Michael Gold and Dustin Volz/The New York Times

President Trump said on Wednesday that he was pulling back his own nominee to be the nation’s top intelligence official as he again tried to pressure Congress to pass a strict voter identification law that does not have enough support among Republicans to advance. Mr. Trump announced last week that he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, to be the director of national intelligence, after senators in both parties condemned his earlier decision to install Bill Pulte, a loyalist and his top housing official, to the post. Senate leaders had sought to quickly confirm Mr. Clayton, hoping to clear the way for a bipartisan agreement to renew a surveillance law that expired last week. The bill to extend it collapsed amid the furor over Mr. Pulte, who has no national security experience and drew withering bipartisan criticism. And some Democrats had indicated they might be willing to fast-track his confirmation, eager to block Mr. Pulte. Read Article

National: Challenges in Rural Election Administration ‘Exacerbated’ in Runoff Elections | Bridget Goodman/The Daily Yonder

Runoff elections — including Tuesday’s in Alabama and Georgia — stress existing fragilities in rural election administration. “Challenges are exacerbated by the short timeline of a runoff,” said Cameron Wimpy, political science professor and director of the Institute for Rural Initiatives at Arkansas State University. “And then other challenges become exacerbated by the fact that you’re just having to do a whole election again.” More than two-thirds of American elections happen in rural areas, according to Wimpy. Although elections are administered – and often, largely financed – locally, counties must meet state standards. “A lot of things in election administration have to happen the same, whether you’re in a small place or a large place, an urban place or a rural place,” Wimpy said. “Voting machines have to be tested, boxes have to be checked, laws have to be followed, but that’s often being done with less people.” There are 10 states with runoff elections: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas. Each state has unique state laws governing how and when those elections occur. Read Article

National: Watch Out for False Voter Fraud Claims Fueled by SAVE Program | Jasleen Singh/Brennan Center for Justice

This year, observers should be wary of voter fraud claims made by government officials and private groups, even if those claims cite federal government data. Many such false or misleading claims promoted over the past year have relied primarily on the flawed Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which this article addresses in detail. The second Trump administration has been engaged in a concerted campaign to undermine elections. Part of that involves collecting state voter files and using federal data sources to lend pseudolegitimacy to false claims of widespread fraud. While there may be valid ways to use federal data to support election officials’ efforts to keep voter rolls accurate and up to date, there are notable shortcomings in such data, and it may be misused to spread misinformation. To properly assess any claim of voter fraud based on federal data, it is important to understand the flaws in the data, common analytical pitfalls, and the ways faulty data may be exploited to disenfranchise eligible voters and erode confidence in elections. Read Article

National: Republicans are trying to impose Trump’s voting restrictions at the local level | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket