National: 2024 election faces foreign influence efforts from Russia, Iran, China | Hayley Fuchs and Josh Gerstein/Politico

The season of foreign election interference is well underway. The Department of Justice this week announced it had seized websites linked to a Russian disinformation campaign. Federal authorities separately accused two employees of the Moscow-controlled media organization RT of being a part of a scheme to spread Russian propaganda, bolstered by millions of dollars. And it’s not just Russia. On Friday, a hawkish think tank revealed that a network of pro-Iranian sites have been circulating disinformation around the election. That comes on the heels of the intelligence community linking Iran to a hacking of the Trump campaign. U.S. officials said in a briefing with reporters on Friday that Russia, Iran and China were all trying to influence the upcoming elections. Read Article

Arizona tries to bridge language gap for Native voters | Jen Fifield/ICT/Votebeat

The group of Navajo speakers gathered at the Coconino County Elections Center were deep into translating the pages stacked in front of them when they began deliberating over how to best describe fentanyl. It wouldn’t be a straight translation — almost nothing is, from English to Navajo. But these county and state election officials, charged with translating Arizona’s long and complex ballot for a key group of voters on the Navajo Nation, would try their best to get it right. “Not azee’,” someone said. “Azee’ is medicine. It’s to heal.” They looked down at the English text: “Criminalizes selling fentanyl that causes the death of a person.” Azee’, they decided, gave the wrong impression. The group would need new wording, and quickly. This was just a single sentence, a small piece of just one of the 13 propositions set to appear on Arizona’s November ballot. By the end of the day, the group had to finish translating all of them into Navajo. Because Navajo is a historically oral language and many who speak it cannot read it, the goal was to come up with an audio translation that voters who are not proficient in English could listen to at the polls. Read Article

National: Trump threatens lawyers, donors and election officials with prison for ‘unscrupulous behavior’ | Jillian Frankel/NBC

Former President Donald Trump, who makes frequent false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen through rampant fraud, warned Saturday that he would try to imprison anyone who engages in “unscrupulous behavior” during this year’s race. Election workers across the country have been subject to threats, most famously Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, two election workers whose entire lives were uprooted when Trump and his allies targeted them after the 2020 election with false accusations of fraud. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump began making baseless warnings of election interference, which grew louder after he lost and culminated in a mob attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election. He has begun making similar statements ahead of this year’s election. Read Article

National: How unfounded GOP claims about noncitizen voting could cost some eligible voters their rights | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

At Tuesday’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump once again asserted that “elections are bad” and that Democrats are trying to get immigrants who’ve entered the country illegally to vote. As fact checks pointed out and Votebeat has previously reported, there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, and experts say it is extraordinarily rare. Republicans, though, continue to allege that voting by noncitizens is a pressing problem that demands a legislative solution. And the assertions aren’t just political theater: They are already affecting actual voters, and the impact could grow. Trump wants Republicans to shut down the federal government until they get their way on legislation requiring everyone registering to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship. Read Article

National: CISA publishes cybersecurity checklist ahead of November election | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

With the U.S. presidential election less than two months away, state and local election administrators finalizing operations can turn to a cybersecurity checklist published Monday by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to ensure their infrastructure is protected from malicious actors. The checklist outlines a series of steps election officials can take to protect their election infrastructure, including networks that store, host or process voter registration information, public-facing election websites that support functions like election night reporting and polling place lookup, as well as email and other critical business operations, which remain attractive targets for cybercriminals. Read Article

National: Bipartisan group of lawmakers signs pledge to certify 2024 election results | Sarah Ferris/Politico

More than 30 House members, including a half-dozen Republicans, have signed a bipartisan pledge to uphold the results of the 2024 election amid an increased focus on Congress’ role in certifying the tally next January. A pair of House centrists, Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.), have worked for months to organize what they’re calling a “unity commitment” — an agreement to “safeguard the fairness and integrity” of this fall’s presidential election. Five other Republicans also signed on: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) and Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.). None of the six Republicans who signed the pledge voted against certifying the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. (Several of them were not yet in office.) A total of 139 House Republicans did vote against certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. Read Article

National: Justice Dept. Official Calls Election Meddling a ‘Clear and Present Danger’ | Glenn Thrush/The New York Times

The Justice Department’s top national security official warned on Thursday that foreign interference in the 2024 election posed a “clear and present danger” and said that Russia was ramping up its disinformation efforts in hopes of helping former President Donald J. Trump. Matthew G. Olsen, the head of the department’s national security division, cited Iran’s recent hacking of the Trump campaign as evidence that some adversaries were also seeking to damage Mr. Trump’s chances of victory, though Tehran tried, unsuccessfully, to hack Democratic campaigns as well. Mr. Olsen, amplifying warnings issued by the U.S. intelligence community and senior F.B.I. officials, did not suggest that Mr. Trump or any of his associates were working with overseas actors. He also identified China as posing a serious threat to the election. Read Article

National: Officials warn that problems with US mail system could disrupt voting | John Hanna and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the U.S. Postal Service that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies. In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot. Read Article

Arizona: Pinal County begins audit to prove integrity of primary election | Sasha Hupka/Arizona Republic

Pinal County has begun an audit of its voting systems after one of its leaders raised doubts about the results of the recent primary election — a glimpse at how election denialism could possibly ensnarl local officials statewide in November. The examination, which county officials called “an election and cybersecurity technical assessment,” comes after Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh said he believed the outcomes of several races were “incorrect.” One of the contests he questioned was his own primary for county sheriff, which he lost by a 2-to-1 margin. He voted with the rest of the Board of Supervisors last month to certify primary results but said he did so “under duress.” His comments drew ire from his fellow supervisors and other county figures, all of whom are Republicans. Read Article

Connecticut: Paper ballots remain, but move to new tabulators begins | Mark Pazniokas/CT Mirror

Connecticut is entering a new era with the first early in-person voting in a general election and a nearly invisible and overdue technological change — the first, if limited, use of new tabulators that will count votes. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas and Gov. Ned Lamont held a press conference Thursday to identify the nine cities and towns that will use the new tabulators in a pilot program before they become standard next year. Thomas, Lamont and others spoke Thursday at the town hall in South Windsor, one of the nine communities that will use the new machines. The other eight are Glastonbury, Hamden, New Britain, New Haven, Rocky Hill, Southington, Waterbury and Windsor. Read Article

Georgia: Judge narrows election interference case against Trump | Charlie Gile, Laura Jarrett and Ginger Gibson/NBC

The judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump and several co-defendants in Georgia has thrown out three counts in the indictment — including two counts brought against the former president. The original 41-count indictment accused Trump and several of his allies of a broad scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, but the case has been stalled for months as an effort to disqualify the top prosecutor remains on appeal. Read Article

Michigan: A contentious race to be a tiny Antrim County’s top election official | Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

Sheryl Guy planned to oversee one last presidential election, and she hoped it would go more smoothly than last time. In 2020, the clerk in northern Michigan’s sparsely populated Antrim County initially misreported that Joe Biden won the heavily Republican area. Within days she corrected the tabulations with the accurate vote totals, but the error still provided fodder for far-fetched theories that spread across the country as Donald Trump falsely claimed he had won. Guy, 63, has weathered vilification, lawsuits and death threats. She was looking forward to retirement after the election this fall — until she realized who might take her job. Winning a five-way Republican primary for county clerk last month was Victoria Bishop, who promised to shake up the office, hand-count ballots and scrub people from the voter rolls. With no Democrat running, Bishop was all but assured of winning in November. This gnawed at Guy, who recently left the Republican Party and views Bishop’s pledges as signals that she will entertain the kinds of baseless claims that thrust the county into national headlines in 2020 and eroded public trust in elections. She decided to launch a write-in campaign to try to keep her job. Read Article

Michigan charts ‘proactive, preemptive’ plan to curb election challenges in 2024 | Sam Brodey/Boston Globe

Four years ago in Detroit, two Republican members of the normally low-profile Wayne County Board of Canvassers did something unprecedented: They declined to certify the results of the 2020 general election. Citing unfounded claims of voter fraud, the officials on the board disregarded their longstanding role to validate election results, as required by law, after recording the vote tally. In one swoop, they threw the entire state’s result into question, garnering national coverage and public outcry in the process. While the chaos they caused was brief — despite pressure from then-president Trump, the officials relented after two hours and voted to certify Wayne County’s results — the impact of the episode reverberated long afterward Anticipating fresh challenges this November, election officials in Michigan have undertaken the most aggressive effort among battleground states to ensure that the vulnerability exposed in Wayne County in 2020 will be difficult to exploit in 2024. Read Article

Nevada unveils new top-down voter registration and election management system | Tabitha Mueller/The Nevada Independent

Nevada election officials announced the implementation of a new voter-registration and election management system last week that they said will speed up the state’s release of election results and reduce voter registration errors. Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, and Washoe County Registrar of Voters Cari Ann Burgess showed reporters the new system and its processes Wednesday. Every county will use the program in the 2024 November general election, though Clark County, which implemented the program before the 2024 election cycle, will merge its voter registration database with the state in 2025. “Nevada runs some of the most safe, secure and accessible elections in the country,” Aguilar said. “[This system] only enhances those safeguards and increases our transparency.” Read Article

New Jersey: Two settlements approved in the historic dismantling of ‘county line’ ballot method | Amy S. Rosenberg/Philadelphia Inquirer

A federal judge on Thursday approved the first two county settlements in a lawsuit filed by U.S. Senate candidate Andy Kim that successfully challenged New Jersey’s Democratic Party primary ballot system that allowed preferential ballot position to party-endorsed candidates. The agreements were filed by Burlington County, Kim’s home county, and Middlesex County and approved by U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi. Kim, the Democratic candidate in the general election, called the settlements “the start of a new era of politics.” “The court judge approved our first settlement agreements — making Burlington & Middlesex counties the first to permanently stop the ‘county line’ ballot. Let’s build momentum across all counties to get NJ the fair ballot it deserves.” Read Article

North Carolina: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Sabotaged Early Voting in a Critical Swing State | Mark Joseph Stern/Slate

The North Carolina Supreme Court tossed a grenade into the state’s election on Monday, violating both state and federal law to grant Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cynical, last-minute removal from the ballot. Its 4–3 decision will compel election administrators to destroy nearly 3 million already-printed ballots that featured Kennedy’s name and redesign 2,348 different ballot styles across the state to accommodate the eleventh-hour change. This complex process will significantly delay the distribution of new ballots—which will, in turn, unlawfully abridge early voting for everyone while jeopardizing the voting rights of service members overseas in clear contradiction of federal statute. It’s a nightmare for local election officials, who must now disregard the laws they’re sworn to uphold. And it’s an affront to North Carolinians at large, whose right to a fair, orderly election has been sabotaged by a lawless court and the candidate it so obviously favors. Read Article

Pennsylvania polling place lookup tool has errors that could stymie voters | Carter Walker/Votebeat

An official government online tool designed to help Pennsylvanians find their polling places is riddled with misspellings and other quirks that make it difficult for some voters to use. The errors — which users encounter when they search for their municipality and street name — affect as many as 85,000 of the state’s 8.9 million voters, a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis found. The Pennsylvania Department of State said counties enter their own address information into a centralized voter management system that powers the lookup tool, and it’s their responsibility to fix the problems. Read Article

Texas sees high turnover of election administrators since 2020 election | Jack Fink/CBS Texas

A CBS News investigation has found since the 2020 election, Texas has seen a high turnover rate of people who oversee the elections in the state’s 254 counties. More than one-third of the election administrators and county clerks are new as the 2024 election approaches. “I think it’s going to be an intense season coming after the 2020 election,” said Dallas County Election Administrator Heider Garcia. “There’s been a lot of pressure, and the tone and social media can be very difficult.” For Garcia and others who run elections in counties across Texas, the political pressure has been a challenge. Read Article

Wisconsin town faces new complaint over barriers to accessible voting | Tamia Fowlkes/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Disability Rights Wisconsin and the firm Law Forward have filed a complaint to the Wisconsin Elections Commission in response to the northern Wisconsin Town of Thornapple’s decision to eliminate electronic voting machines in this year’s April and August elections. The complaint comes a week after the U.S. Department of Justice threatened a lawsuit for the Rusk County towns of Lawrence and Thornapple for failing to offer voting equipment for people with disabilities. The complaint alleges that Suzanne Pinnow, Thornapple town clerk, violated the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by halting the usage of electronic voting machines for the April presidential primary. The suit argues that without an electronic voting machine, voters with disabilities have more limited options to cast a ballot privately and independently. Read Article

National: Hacking blind spot: States struggle to vet coders of election software |  John Sakellariadis/Politico

When election officials in New Hampshire decided to replace the state’s aging voter registration database before the 2024 election, they knew that the smallest glitch in Election Day technology could become fodder for conspiracy theorists. So they turned to one of the best — and only — choices on the market: A small, Connecticut-based IT firm that was just getting into election software. But last fall, as the new company, WSD Digital, raced to complete the project, New Hampshire officials made an unsettling discovery: The firm had offshored part of the work. That meant unknown coders outside the U.S. had access to the software that would determine which New Hampshirites would be welcome at the polls this November. The revelation prompted the state to take a precaution that is rare among election officials: It hired a forensic firm to scour the technology for signs that hackers had hidden malware deep inside the coding supply chain. Read Article

National: No, local election officials can’t block certification of results – there are plenty of legal safeguards | Derek T. Muller/The Conversation

Some local election officials have refused to certify election results in the past few years. Georgia has new administrative rules that invite election officials to investigate results before certifying. And worries abound that election officials might subvert the results of the 2024 presidential election by refusing to certify the results. While states may have different names or processes, certifying an election typically looks something like this: On election night, the local precincts close, and local election workers tabulate the vote; they affirm or attest that the precinct results are the proper tabulation and send those results to the county. In a matter of days, the county election board assembles the results across all the county’s precincts, tabulates them and certifies the county’s result. Those results are sent to the state election board, which adds up the results from all the counties and certifies the state’s winners. The governor then signs certificates of elections for the winning candidates. There isn’t one weird trick to steal a presidential election. And there are ample safeguards to ensure ballots are tabulated accurately and election results are certified in a timely manner. Read Article

National: Justice Department accuses Russia’s RT network in $10 million election plot | Bart Jansen/USA Today

The Justice Department charged two Russian citizens with directing a $10 million campaign to influence the 2024 election through online platforms that flooded millions of Americans with disinformation, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Wednesday. The complaint focused on RT, the Russian state media network dropped by American distributors after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The company bankrolled a $10 million campaign through a Tennessee company to distribute Russian misinformation to U.S. social media influencers and encourage divisions in U.S. politics, Garland said. The department also seized 32 internet domains that Russians used to distribute misinformation about the election under a program called “Doppelganger,” Garland said. The domains were built to look like legitimate U.S. news organizations, but were instead filled with Russian propaganda that could be picked up and relayed through U.S. influencers. Read Article

National: State Republican parties renominate electors who were on fake slate in 2020 | Alice Herman/The Guardian

State Republican parties have nominated 14 of the 84 fake electors from the 2020 presidential election to serve again as Republican party presidential electors, an indication of the legitimacy that election deniers continue to hold in some quarters of the GOP. The Republican parties of Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada have each nominated one or more electors who attempted to submit themselves as electors for Donald Trump and Mike Pence in 2020 despite the former president losing in their states. Presidential electors typically perform a rote but critical behind-the-scenes role in elections. Read Article

National: Swing states prepare for a showdown over certifying votes in November | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

Stateline crisscrossed Michigan and Wisconsin — two states critical in the race for the presidency — to interview dozens of voters, local election officials and activists to understand how the voting, tabulation and certification processes could be disrupted in November. There is broad concern that despite the checks and balances built into the voting system, Republican members of state and county boards tasked with certifying elections will be driven by conspiracy theories and refuse to fulfill their roles if former President Donald Trump loses again. Last month, the Georgia State Election Board passed new rules that would allow county canvassing boards to conduct their own investigations before certifying election results. State and national Democrats have sued the state board over the rules. The fear that these efforts could sow chaos and delay results is not unfounded: Over the past four years, county officials in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania have refused to certify certain elections. After immense pressure, county officials either changed their minds, or courts or state officials had to step in. Read Article

National: GOP lawsuits set the stage for state challenges if Trump loses the election | Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

Before voters even begin casting ballots, Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a sprawling legal fight over the 2024 election through a series of court disputes that could even run past Nov. 5 if results are close. Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied. After Donald Trump made ” election integrity ” a key part of his party’s platform following his false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020, the Republican National Committee says it has more than 165,000 volunteers ready to watch the polls. Read Article

National: Christian group recruits ‘Trojan horse’ election skeptics as US poll workers | Alice Herman/The Guardian

A Christian political operative has teamed up with charismatic preachers to enroll election skeptics as poll workers across the country, using a Donald Trump-aligned swing state tour to enlist support in the effort. Joshua Standifer, who leads the group called Lion of Judah, describes the effort as a “Trojan horse” strategy to get Christians in “key positions of influence in government like Election Workers”, which will help them identify alleged voter fraud and serve as “the first step on the path to victory this Fall”, according to his website. Standifer has been on the road with a traveling pro-Trump tent revival featuring self-styled prophets and Christian nationalist preachers that has made stops in key swing states including Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Read Article

National: Iran Emerges as a Top Disinformation Threat in U.S. Presidential Race | Steven Lee MyersTiffany Hsu and Farnaz Fassihi/The New York Times

A website called Savannah Time describes itself as “your trusted source for conservative news and perspectives in the vibrant city of Savannah.” Another site, NioThinker, wants to be “your go-to destination for insightful, progressive news.” The online outlet Westland Sun appears to cater to Muslims in suburban Detroit. None are what they appear to be. Instead, they are part of what American officials and tech company analysts say is an intensifying campaign by Iran to sway this year’s American presidential election. Iran has long carried out clandestine information operations against its adversaries, especially Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States, but until now most of its activities were conducted under the shadow of similar campaigns by Russia and China. Its latest propaganda and disinformation efforts have grown more brazen, more varied and more ambitious, according to the U.S. government, company officials and Iran experts. Read Article

National: Justice Department accuses Russia of spreading disinformation before November election | Eric Tucker, Matthew Lee, David Klepper/Associated Press

The Biden administration announced wide-ranging actions Wednesday meant to call out Russian influence in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, unsealing criminal charges against two employees of a Russian state-run media company and seizing internet domains used by the Kremlin to spread disinformation. The measures represented a U.S. government effort at disrupting a persistent threat from Russia that American officials have long warned has the potential to sow discord and create confusion among voters. Washington has said that Russia remains the primary threat to elections even as the FBI investigates a hack by Iran of Donald Trump’s campaign and an attempt breach of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign. Read Article

Arizona: Conservative groups sue to force more citizenship checks on voters | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Conservative groups want a federal judge to force Arizona counties to further investigate the status of voters who have not provided documented proof of citizenship. A lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court of Arizona claims that counties haven’t been checking the citizenship status of these voters using specific methods required under federal and state law, including two new state laws enacted in 2022. It’s the latest in a slew of Republican-backed challenges to voters’ citizenship status across the country just before the November election, based on the premise that voting by noncitizens is a pressing problem in the U.S. — even though the practice is illegal and, according to experts, rare. Read Article

California sees significant election official turnover amid threats, misinformation | Julie Watts/CBS

In 25 of California’s 58 counties, the person in charge will be running the presidential election there for the first time this year – impacting nearly half of California’s registered voters. “Experience is super important because you have the opportunity to learn from what happened in a past election,” Adona said. “You’re also able to more quickly adjust.” But while turnover has skyrocketed in California since the last presidential election cycle, looking back two decades, this level of turnover is not extraordinary. And not everyone new to the top job is inexperienced. Bob Page is the new Orange County registrar of voters. He previously held the position in San Bernardino County. Read Article