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

Colorado: On Native land, a new push to expand voting meets the long tail of state violence | Alex Burness/Bolts

Lorelei Cloud was born in 1967, three years before Native Americans living on tribal lands in Colorado were guaranteed the right to vote. Even once she turned 18, and for many years thereafter, she did not vote. Her polling place was in Durango, miles from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Reservation, where she lived, and she had no car with which to access registration services or to cast a ballot. Politicians seldom visited her area, and hardly seemed to represent her interests, anyway. Cloud is now vice chair of the Southern Ute tribal council, and from the tribe’s headquarters early this summer, she reflected on how much has changed. Since 2019, when Democrats gained a legislative trifecta in the state, Colorado has established a polling place on the reservation and placed a drop box there for mail ballots. The state has also hired special liaisons to promote and facilitate turnout among Native voters. “I don’t want future generations to have to deal with any of what we’ve had to, to get to vote,” Cloud told me. “We should have access to the vote, to shape our own region, our own country.” Read Article

Georgia Governor Faces New Pressure Over Far-Right Elections Board Takeover | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Georgia has long been a battleground in the fight over the country’s democratic institutions. This year, it is shaping up to be just as critical. Earlier this year, a new majority of far-right Republicans gained control of Georgia’s State Election Board. The votes taken since have prompted deep concern that the board is rewriting the rules of the game in a key swing state to disrupt certification of elections and favor former President Donald Trump. Now, a bipartisan effort to pressure the governor to investigate the three-person majority is ramping up. Democrats, voting rights groups and some Republicans are pressing Gov. Brian Kemp to rein in what they see as a rogue board increasingly aligned with the far-right wing of the Republican Party. Read Article

A Michigan canvasser said he might not certify the election. Now the ACLU is suing him. | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is suing a member of the Kalamazoo County Board of Canvassers, hoping a judge will declare that the man must certify the November election results, after a newspaper reported him saying that he might not. The suit is part of a growing legal effort around the country to ensure that the November election is certified on time by making it clear to any potentially defiant officials that they’re not allowed to refuse to certify, and that they could face charges or penalties if they do. The ACLU suit follows a Detroit News report that Robert Froman, a 73-year-old Republican canvasser in Kalamazoo County, said he would not certify the 2024 presidential election if it went the same way as the 2020 election, which he believed was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Read Article

Montana: Errors in Silver Bow County primary election identified | Mike Smith/Montana Standard

Butte-Silver Bow officials believe hundreds of votes from pre-election test ballots were mistakenly counted during the June 4 primary and that was the biggest error that led a recent recount. Four of five state senators looking into the errors were satisfied with the explanations Tuesday and after several hours of testimony, they rejected a request by Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, for further investigation. Manzella called the errors a “catastrophic failure” and said she wasn’t “100% sure” explanations by Linda Sajor-Joyce, Butte-Silver Bow’s clerk and recorder, were the actual reasons behind an overcount of more than 1,100 votes. But two Republican senators — Mike Cuffe of Eureka and Shelley Vance of Belgrade — joined Butte Democrats Edie McClafferty and Ryan Lynch in voting against Manzella’s call. Read Article

North Carolina Republicans Sue Over State Guidance On Absentee Ballots | Crystal Hill/Democracy Docket

The Republican National Committee (RNC), the North Carolina Republican Party and a voter are suing the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) over its guidance to county election boards that an absentee ballot may be counted even if it isn’t submitted in a sealed container-return envelope. It’s the latest RNC lawsuit targeting state voting procedures ahead of the 2024 race and third filed in the state over the past two weeks. The plaintiffs argue the state board’s guidance directly conflicts with state election law on counting absentee ballots. Specifically, state law stipulates that an absentee ballot must, among other things, be received by the appropriate county board of elections in a sealed container-return envelope to be counted by that board.” Read Article

Ohio: Election security group praises cybersecurity efforts while chiding eleventh hour voting changes | Nick Evans/Ohio Capital Journal

The Center for Election Innovation & Research has some good news and a few pointed critiques ahead of this November’s election. In a survey of states’ efforts to protect their voter registration databases from cyber-attacks, the group found election administrators have made great strides in protecting the voter rolls from outside threats. CEIR executive director David Becker explained that in 2016, Russian actors briefly gained access to Illinois’s voter registration database. His organization has been surveying states about security protocols every federal election cycle since. “Our nation and the 50 states are doing a very good job with voter registration database security,” he explained. “I think it’s one of the reasons that we’ve seen, to my knowledge, no real successful efforts to breach voter registration databases over the last several election cycles after the 2016 wakeup call.” But at the same time election officials are thwarting threats from without, they’re also undermining voter confidence from within through last-minute, legally dubious audits and policy changes. Read Article

Pennsylvania voters can cast a provisional ballot if their mail ballot is rejected, court says | Marc Levy/Associated Press

A court decided Thursday that voters in the presidential battleground of Pennsylvania can cast provisional ballots in place of mail-in ballots that are rejected for a garden-variety mistake they made when they returned it. Democrats typically outvote Republicans by mail by about 3-to-1 in Pennsylvania, and the decision by a state Commonwealth Court panel could mean that hundreds or thousands more votes are counted in November’s election, when the state is expected to play an outsized role in picking the next president. The three-member panel ruled that nothing in state law prevented Republican-controlled Butler County from counting two voters’ provisional ballots in the April 23 primary election, even if state law is ambiguous. Read Article

Pennsylvania: 2020 election deniers ordered to pay $1 million in voting machine dispute | Zachary Cohen/CNN

A Pennsylvania judge has determined that three 2020 election deniers must pay nearly $1 million in fees as the result of a years-long legal dispute with state officials over voting equipment used during the last presidential race, according to recent court filings. Recommendations from the judge, who was appointed to serve as a special master overseeing the case, attach a dollar figure to sanctions previously imposed by the state’s Supreme Court against two Republican county commissioners and their attorney for allowing an outside firm to examine voting equipment after the 2020 election – despite a court order prohibiting them to do so, according to the new filings. The case, which dates back to 2021, involves actions taken by two Fulton County, Pennsylvania, commissioners – Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch – who sought to have Dominion voting equipment examined by a third-party after the 2020 election. Many of former President Donald Trump’s allies falsely blamed Dominion’s software for his election defeat. Read Article

Texas attorney general sues over Bexar County voter registration program | Erik De La Garza/Courthouse News Service

Making good on his threats to sue one of the state’s most populated — and Democratic-leaning counties — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing Bexar County of enacting an illegal voter registration program. “This program is completely unlawful and potentially invites election fraud,” Paxton said in a statement immediately after filing the lawsuit in state court. “It is a crime to register to vote if you are ineligible.” County commissioners voted 3-1 on Tuesday in favor of a $392,700 contract for third-party company Civic Government Solutions to print and mail voter registration forms to unregistered voters “in location(s) based on targeting agreed to by the county,” according to the resolution. Read Article

Wisconsin social studies teachers face restrictions, complaints for teaching elections | Beatrice Lawrence/WPR

Social studies teachers are returning to the classroom during the home stretch of a contentious election season in Wisconsin. On top of their back-to-school responsibilities, they’re navigating how to teach about the topic in a politically polarized state. Sarah Kopplin is a social studies teacher at Shorewood Intermediate School and president of the Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies. She said an alarming number of social studies teachers around the state have seen pushback on their lessons about elections and other current events. A survey from the council found 42 percent of council member respondents reported that building administration, school boards or community members lodged complaints or put restrictions on lessons related to politics, an election or current events, Kopplin said on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” Read Article

How states are preparing to head off an election certification crisis in November | Carrie Levine, Natalia Contreras, Jen Fifield, Hayley Harding, Alexander Shur and Carter Walker/Votebeat

New rules in Georgia governing how local officials finalize vote totals have some election watchdogs worried that loyalists of former President Donald Trump could trigger a crisis if he loses the state in November, by abusing their authority to delay or avoid certifying results. Election experts say they’re confident that the system’s checks and balances will quash those efforts and that each state has the legal authority to force members of county election boards to fulfill their duty to certify results. But they and state election officials are still concerned that the attempts could push the process close to strict deadlines and stoke doubts about the integrity of the election. Read Article

Arizona: US Supreme Court partly grants GOP request to enforce proof-of-citizenship voting law | Lawrence Hurley/NBC

The Supreme Court on Thursday partly granted a request from the Republican National Committee to make Arizona enforce measures requiring people to show proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. In what is likely to be one of many election-related disputes to come before the court ahead of the November election, the justices allowed for one of three provisions of the state law to be enforced. The vote was 5-4 on allowing limited enforcement of the law with conservative justices in the majority. One conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined the three liberal justices in dissent. The court, in a brief order, did not explain its reasoning. Read Article