National: New wave of GOP lawsuits targets overseas ballots in key swing states | Adam Edelman/NBC

Republicans have filed lawsuits over the past week in three pivotal battleground states seeking to challenge the legitimacy of some ballots cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, including military members, arguing that some votes are particularly prone to fraud. Election officials in those states — Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — and nonpartisan voting experts strongly defended the previously uncontroversial overseas voting rules, arguing that the suits amounted to efforts to further lay the groundwork to question the veracity of the election results next month. The Republican National Committee last week sued election officials in North Carolina and Michigan in state courts, alleging they had on their books unlawful rules that extended overseas voting eligibility to people whose residency in those states had not been verified. Read Article

Georgia: Republican-led group sues to block rule requiring hand count of ballots | Jeff Amy and Kate Brumback/Associated Press

A Republican-led group is challenging Georgia’s new requirement that poll workers count the total number of ballots by hand, saying it’s another example of the State Election Board overstepping its legal authority. Eternal Vigilance Action amended its existing lawsuit on Wednesday to also challenge that rule adopted Friday by the board. The group, founded and led by former state Rep. Scot Turner, a Republican, was already suing the board over rules that it earlier adopted on certifying votes, a step that finalizes results. One of those rules provides for an undefined “reasonable inquiry” before county election officials certify while another allows county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.” Read Article

National: Voting Wars Open a New Front: Which Mail Ballots Should Count? | Michael Wines/The New York Times

As Pennsylvania voters begin casting perhaps two million-plus mail ballots, Democrats and Republicans are in furious legal combat over a once-overlooked aspect of voting remotely: which ballots are counted, which are rejected as defective and which ones voters are allowed to correct. Simple math explains why. In the 2020 presidential contest, Pennsylvania election officials rejected more than 34,000 mail ballots. In a tight 2024 election in the most coveted swing state, even a fraction of that many rejections could spell the difference between victory and defeat — not just in the presidential race, but also in any number of others. What’s true in Pennsylvania is true, to varying degrees, in other battleground states. Michigan rejected more than 20,000 mail ballots in 2020 and even more in 2022; Arizona turned down 7,700; Nevada 5,600; and Wisconsin about 3,000. Read Article

National: Election conspiracy theories fueled a push to hand-count votes, but doing so is risky and slow | Christine Fernando/Associated Press

Four years of Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election have kindled growing suspicion of voting machines among conspiracy theorists. One of their solutions is to replace the tabulators that count every vote with people who will do that by hand. Controversies over the issue have flared periodically in pockets of the country before the 2024 presidential election even though research has shown that hand-counting is more prone to error, costlier and likely to delay results. The few counties that have attempted the massive task have found the process more time-consuming, expensive and inaccurate than expected. Read Article

National: Election officials who back Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ stir concern in swing states | Joseph Tanfani and Nathan Layne/Reuters

In Michigan’s Macomb County, the Republican head of the board that will certify November’s election results called on former U.S. President Donald Trump to fight to stay in power after his election loss in 2020. In North Carolina’s Henderson County, a Republican election board member emailed legislators in August to claim, without evidence, that Democrats were flooding the state with illegal votes. And in Pennsylvania, considered a must win for both Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, Republican officials in six counties have voted against certifying results since 2020. Four years after Trump tried to overturn his election loss, his false conspiracy theories about voter fraud have become an article of faith among many Republican members of local election boards that certify results. Their rise raises the chances that pro-Trump officials in multiple jurisdictions will be able to delay or sow doubt over the Nov. 5 presidential election if Trump loses. Read Article

National: Election offices are preparing for a smooth voting process — and angry voters | /Derek B. JohnsonCyberScoop

Roughly a month out from Election Day, officials from across the country said they remain focused on carrying out a smooth voting process while bracing for the possibility that their offices could be overwhelmed by angry voters and false claims of election fraud. Speaking at a gathering in Washington D.C. hosted by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, a bipartisan group of election officials said that while they remain steadfastly confident in the integrity of past elections, they have had to put in place a host of new procedures over the past few years specifically to deal with claims of election malfeasance and fraud from local voters convinced by false claims of vote rigging by Republican candidate Donald Trump and his allies. Read Article

National: Russia, China and Iran Intend to Stoke False Election Claims, Officials Warn | Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

Foreign efforts to undermine American democracy will continue after Election Day, U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday, with covert influence campaigns focused on questioning the validity of election results after polls close. Adversaries believe that the possibility of a close presidential race and contested control of the Senate and House of Representatives offer opportunities to undermine trust in the election’s integrity, the officials said as part of an update one month before the vote. The officials said they were worried about foreign adversaries amplifying domestic concerns about voting irregularities, as well as manufacturing their own allegations. After the 2020 vote, Donald J. Trump’s campaign made false allegations about voting irregularities, and he and his supporters have already advanced similar claims ahead of this year’s vote, many of them echoed by Russian state media or Kremlin-friendly organizations. Read Article

National: How China is using X to influence local elections in 2024 campaign | Jeremy B. Merrill , Aaron Schaffer and Naomi Nix/The Washington Post

China is increasingly targeting downballot elections in America, according to a Washington Post analysis and senior U.S. intelligence officials, using fake accounts on social media to spread divisive and sometimes explicitly antisemitic claims and conspiracy theories about politicians — part of an effort to inflame tensions in the country just one month before the 2024 election. One covert influence operation has focused on Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), who is running to retain his House seat. A China-linked account on X called Moore “a Jewish dog” and claimed he won his primary because of “the bloody Jewish consortium,” among other derogatory tropes, according to a Post analysis of thousands of posts on X, of which about 75 concerned Moore. Moore, who recently backed new sanctions on Chinese officials, is not Jewish. Read Article

Arizona: Pinal County’s $150,000 audit confirms that its primary election was accurate and secure | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Pinal County spent at least $150,000 on an independent audit of its primary election after a losing candidate claimed fraud, a county spokesperson said Thursday, and the audit came back completely clean. The county’s supervisors, all Republicans, commissioned the audit in August to prove that the election was fair after one of them, Kevin Cavanaugh, blamed his loss in the sheriff’s race on malfeasance and voted to certify the results “under duress.” Brett Johnson of Snell & Wilmer, the law firm hired to lead the audit, presented the findings at a public meeting Wednesday afternoon, saying that the firm and the three technical experts hired to conduct the audit found no evidence of fraud or data manipulation. Read Article

California: How an ultra-right majority in Shasta County picked a novice to run its elections |  | The Guardian

When Shasta county had to search for a new official to oversee its elections earlier this year, there was an obvious candidate. Her name was Joanna Francescut, and she had been the assistant elections clerk and registrar of voters in this remote region in California’s far north. Francescut had worked in elections for more than 16 years, oversaw the office of the county clerk and registrar of voters for months after her boss went on leave, and was endorsed by elections officials and prominent area Republicans alike. Instead, the ultra-conservative majority on Shasta county’s board of supervisors in June selected Tom Toller, a former prosecutor who had never worked in elections and vowed to change the office culture, improve public confidence, and “clean up” voter rolls. Read Article

Colorado judge who sentenced Tina Peters to prison receives threats | Amy Beth Hanson/Associated Press

A rural Colorado county courthouse beefed up security Friday after threats were made against staff and a judge who sentenced former county clerk Tina Peters to nearly nine years behind bars and admonished her for her role in a data breach scheme catalyzed by the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Courthouse staff in Grand Junction, Colorado, received multiple threats that were being vetted by law enforcement while extra security was provided, said spokesperson Wendy Likes with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office. She did not say how many threats were made or how they were received. She also declined to describe the extra security. Read Article

Florida: Hurricanes force changes to election procedures | David A. Lieb and Brendan Farrington/Associated Press

With Florida still recovering from Hurricane Helene, some state and local officials are bracing for more disruptions from Hurricane Milton that could affect how people vote in the general election. Gov. Ron DeSantis already has granted counties hardest hit by Helene greater flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing polling sites for in-person voting. Further changes might be necessary after Hurricane Milton. “It’s possible mail ballots could get lost, either getting to the voter or being returned by the voter. They could be damaged, especially if there are high winds and waters,” said David Becker, executive director of The Center for Election Innovation and Research. In such cases, voters can request a replacement mailed ballot or still vote in person. Read Article

Georgia: Judge dismisses Republican lawsuit alleging voting machine vulnerabilities | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A judge threw out a DeKalb County Republican Party lawsuit Friday that claimed Georgia’s voting system was made vulnerable by the public disclosure of security features and computer code. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee dismissed the case because Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger complied with state law when he certified the Dominion voting system as “safe and practicable” before it went into use in 2020. “Although applicant may firmly believe that the secretary’s current processes are ‘nonsensical’ and ‘appalling,’ and good-faith concerns over how to better secure our elections should be taken seriously, this matter is currently one that must be deferred to the policymaking branches,” McAfee wrote in the dismissal. Read Article

Michigan: ‘What the hell’: Sheriffs dive into presidential race | Craig Mauger and Melissa Nann Burke/The Detroit News

Some Michigan sheriffs in charge of enforcing the law in their counties have gotten heavily involved this year in a heated presidential race, drawing criticism from opponents who argue the politicking — often done in uniform — has gone too far. From both sides of the aisle, sheriffs, elected on a partisan basis in Michigan, have been attempting to navigate a challenging political climate. Some have exercised their freedom to endorse candidates, while one sheriff used government resources for a campaign event to make a political contribution that’s now under investigation over its legality. Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy, a Republican, used his government email account in August to help organize a campaign event for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump that took place inside a sheriff’s department garage. Read Article

North Carolina: How Helene Has Upended Election Plans | Eduardo Medina and Mark Barrett/The New York Times

For decades, the North Fork Voting House has served as the official polling place for nearly 600 residents in the small mountain community of Creston, N.C. The tiny cinder block building was recently updated with a freshly painted white door, handmade curtains for the voting booths and a new metal roof. But the voting house was one of several structures destroyed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene late last month, uprooted by the epic flooding and mudslides that swept through western North Carolina. By the time the floodwaters subsided, the new metal roof was wrapped around a tree in a precinct worker’s yard. “You just think, ‘Really, something else?’” said Devon Houck, the director of the Ashe County Board of Elections. “There is already a lot of scrutiny, a lot of eyes watching North Carolina because of its swing state status, and now this.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: Republicans challenge legitimacy of overseas votes, including military | Colby Itkowitz and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

Republican congressmen from Pennsylvania have filed a federal lawsuit seeking stricter scrutiny of votes cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, reflecting a new GOP strategy to challenge the eligibility of a group of voters that includes overseas military personnel. The lawmakers claim in the suit, which was filed this week, that because local election officials in Pennsylvania are not required to verify the identity or eligibility of voters who register overseas, those ballots are vulnerable to fraud. They have asked a federal judge to require officials to set aside completed ballots and not count them until voter eligibility can be determined. The lawsuit is notable for targeting a group of voters long thought to favor Republicans because of the prevalence of military personnel stationed overseas, but that is now seen as more evenly divided or even leaning Democratic. The suit adds to a long list of Republican-backed litigation around the country with just weeks to go before the Nov. 5 election, with much of it aimed at disqualifying mail-in votes or removing ineligible voters from rolls. Read Article

West Virginia Republicans, Democrats Clash Over 2024 Legitimacy – Already | Crystal Hill/Democracy Docket

A proposal from five West Virginia Republicans urging the state not to recognize an “illegitimate presidential election” died quickly after it was introduced during a special legislative session. But not before a group of Democrats countered with their own proposal, requesting that the Legislature affirm a “free and fair” election. The session ended this week with no action on either resolution. But for some West Virginians, the brief episode reflects how the rural state’s Legislature, once majority-Democrat in a solidly blue state, has shifted further right over the past decade, especially since the rise of former President Donald Trump. Read Article

Wisconsin: Federal judge orders Rusk County town to bring back voting machines for voters with disabilities in future elections | Rich Kremer/WPR

A federal judge has ordered the Rusk County Town of Thornapple to resume using electronic voting machines after the town’s board switched to hand-counting paper ballots in two elections this year. The order says the town violated federal law aimed at making voting easier for people with disabilities. A preliminary injunction issued Friday by Chief U.S. District Judge James Peterson for Wisconsin’s Western District, states that the town’s clerk and three-member board of supervisors violated the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, by failing to provide at least one “voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities” at its single polling place in the April 2 and Aug. 13 elections. According to court documents, the town’s former clerk Suzanne Pinnow cited “the controversial nature of electronic voting machines” during a June 2023 town board meeting as part of the justification for moving to hand-counted, paper ballots. Read Article

Wyoming: Gillette Hand-Count Ballot Test Shows It Would Take Hundreds Of Counters, Cost Up To $1.3M | Leo Wolfson/Cowboy State Daily

A movement for hand counting election ballots in Wyoming has been gaining steam but faces many logistical hurdles if it’s ever required by law. A hand count election test conducted in Gillette last weekend showed that it could take hundreds of volunteers and cost as much as $1.3 million to make full hand counting of ballots work in Campbell County alone with an expectancy of getting results within a day of an election. Gillette resident Patricia Junek, a hand count supporter who helped facilitate the Campbell County test, said although she thought the test was “very successful” and proved hand counting could easily be done in Wyoming, it also showed a lot of volunteers would need to be recruited to make it happen. “We would need a substantial amount of people to count ballots,” Junek said. Read Article

National: Judge Unseals New Evidence in Federal Election Case Against Trump | Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage/The New York Times

When told by an aide that Vice President Mike Pence was in peril as the rioting on Capitol Hill escalated on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump replied, “So what?” When one of his lawyers told him that his false claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud would not hold up in court, Mr. Trump responded, “The details don’t matter.” On a flight with Mr. Trump and his family after the election, an Oval Office assistant heard Mr. Trump say: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” Those accounts were among new evidence disclosed in a court filing made public on Wednesday in which the special counsel investigating Mr. Trump made his case for why the former president is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Read Article

Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years for voting data scheme | Mead Gruver/Associated Press

A judge ripped into a Colorado county clerk for her crimes and lies before sentencing her Thursday to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme spawned from the rampant false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race. District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously. “I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.” Read Article

National: Domestic extremists with ‘election-related grievances’ could turn to violence in final weeks of election, FBI and DHS warn | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are concerned that “election-related grievances,” such as a belief in voter fraud, could motivate domestic extremists to engage in violence in the weeks before and after the November election, as it did during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to a new intelligence bulletin from the agencies. Domestic violent extremists [DVEs] “continue to create, exploit, and promote narratives about the election process or legal decisions involving political figures, and we are concerned that these grievances could motivate some DVEs to engage in violence, as we saw during the 2020 election cycle,” the FBI and DHS said in the bulletin sent to state and local officials and private executives. Read Article

National: ‘Damning non-answer’: Vance refuses to acknowledge Trump lost the 2020 election | Ryan J. Reilly/NBC

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election during the vice presidential debate Tuesday and downplayed the seriousness of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which injured more than 140 law enforcement officers. He also declined to say whether he would seek to challenge the results of this year’s election. Toward the end of the debate, Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz asked Vance to affirm that Trump lost the last election. “Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked. “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied before he pivoted to press Walz about censorship on social media. “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said. “I’m pretty shocked by this. He lost the election. This is not a debate, it’s not anything anywhere other than in Donald Trump’s world.” Read Article

National: Trump Allies Bombard the Courts, Setting Stage for Post-Election Fight | Danny Hakim, Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Republicans have unleashed a flurry of lawsuits challenging voting rules and practices ahead of the November elections, setting the stage for what could be a far larger and more contentious legal battle over the White House after Election Day. The onslaught of litigation, much of it landing in recent weeks, includes nearly 90 lawsuits filed across the country by Republican groups this year. The legal push is already more than three times the number of lawsuits filed before Election Day in 2020. Read Article

National: Homeless People Have the Right to Vote — but Often Lack the Ability | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Governing

There’s no constitutional requirement to have a home in order to vote. In practical terms, however, it can sometimes feel like it. Individuals experiencing homelessness often struggle to meet voter ID requirements, stay on voting rolls or get to polling locations, among other obstacles. Although 54 percent of all eligible voters turned out back in 2012, only about 10 percent of homeless citizens voted. “If we could get that number up to 20 or 30 percent, it would make a big difference, especially with local elections,” said Donald Whitehead, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “When people are thinking about structuring voter rights laws, they should be thinking about every citizen, not just those who are affluent or who have means.” Read Article

National: Republicans’ non-citizen voting myth sets stage to claim stolen election | Rachel Leingang and Sam Levine/The Guardian

James Cozadd, a 49-year-old plumber born in Montgomery, Alabama, has no idea why he got a letter from Alabama’s top election official telling him he was potentially ineligible to vote. He was born in the US, yet the letter said he was suspected of being a non-citizen and he would have to prove his citizenship to vote. “I’ve been racking my brain to try to figure out how I ended up on the list of purged voters, but I have no clue,” Cozadd said in a court filing in September. He was one of more than 3,200 voters the secretary of state asked to prove their citizenship – part of a wave of actions amid heated rhetoric among Republicans over the idea that non-citizens could be voting in large numbers in US elections, a theory that runs counter to data. Read Article

Opinion: Trump election interference trial: Jack Smith’s big new Jan. 6 brief is a major indictment of the Supreme Court | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

It’s rare to simultaneously feel red-hot anger and wistfulness, especially when merely reading a document. But those are exactly the emotions that washed over me when I read the redacted version of special counsel Jack Smith’s brief reciting in detail the evidence against Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. The anger is at the Supreme Court for depriving the American people of the chance for a full public airing of Donald Trump’s attempt to use fraud and trickery to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory before voters consider whether to put Trump back in office beginning January 2025. The wistfulness comes with the recognition that there is about an even chance that this will be the last evidence produced by the federal government of this nefarious plot. If Donald Trump wins election next month, the end of this prosecution is certain and the risks of future election subversion heightened. Read Article

Arizona can force counties to certify November results, despite federal court ruling | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

A federal judge has blocked an Arizona rule aimed at enforcing timely finalizing of election results, ruling that the state can’t simply exclude a county’s results if local officials there refuse to certify them, and noting the various legal alternatives that should make the rule unnecessary. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes had added the rule to the state’s most recent Election Procedures Manual, giving the secretary the power to move forward with the statewide certification without a county’s results. Read Article

Arkansas election board to sanction county officials over issues with hand-counted ballots | Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate

The State Board of Election Commissioners on Wednesday voted to sanction election officials in one Arkansas county where several hand-counted ballot mistakes occurred during the primary election. Commissioners did not explicitly state which county’s board of election commissioners would receive the sanctions; however, only officials in Searcy County hand-counted ballots in March. The investigation into the county that hand-counted ballots was among six that the SBEC considered at its meeting, all of which were discussed with some confidentiality. Reports remain private until 30 days after county officials accept the sanction, or deny it and prompt a public hearing. Read Article

California: Judge blocks law that targeted deepfake campaign ads | Jon Healey/Los Angeles Times

With deepfake video and audio making their way into political campaigns, California enacted its toughest restrictions yet in September: a law prohibiting political ads within 120 days of an election that include deceptive, digitally generated or altered content unless the ads are labeled as “manipulated.” On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the law, saying it violated the 1st Amendment. Other laws against deceptive campaign ads remain on the books in California, including one that requires candidates and political action committees to disclose when ads are using artificial intelligence to create or substantially alter content. But the preliminary injunction granted against Assembly Bill 2839 means that there will be no broad prohibition against individuals using artificial intelligence to clone a candidate’s image or voice and portraying them falsely without revealing that the images or words are fake. Read Article