National: White House Hires ‘Stop the Steal’ Lawyer to Investigate 2020 Election Claims | Josh Dawsey, Eliza Collins and Ryan Barber/The Wall Street Journal

A former Trump campaign lawyer who worked on the effort to overturn the 2020 election results has joined the administration to investigate that year’s election and voting-related issues, according to people familiar with the matter. Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who unsuccessfully pushed claims of voter fraud, has joined the administration as a “special government employee,” some of the people said. The appointment gives Olsen 130 days to work from within the White House without giving up any private business interests. He is talking directly with President Trump, the people said. Trump asked Olsen to join the administration to work on election issues important to him, a senior administration official said. Olsen started his job in the past month, some of the people said, and has told others he wants to examine election machines. Read Article

National: Your ballot or other mail may not get postmarked by USPS the day it’s dropped off | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

Changes at the U.S. Postal Service are forcing people who rely on postmarks when voting, filing taxes or mailing legal documents to be extra careful when cutting it close to deadlines. Postmarks include the dates that USPS stamps on envelopes, and those are often used to determine whether a piece of first-class mail was sent on time. But the Postal Service has proposed revising its mailing standards to say that postmark date “does not inherently or necessarily align” with the date that a mail piece was first accepted by a letter carrier or dropped off at a post office or collection box. “In other words, the date on a machine-applied postmark may reflect the date on which the mailpiece was first accepted by the Postal Service, but that is not definitively the case,” USPS said in a recent Federal Register notice. Read Article

National: These cases could give the Supreme Court an opening to reshape election law | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

Election officials and voters preparing for next year’s midterm elections face disruptions on multiple fronts, including President Donald Trump’s efforts to influence voting procedures, a rare midcycle redistricting push in several state legislatures, and activity in the U.S. Supreme Court, whose election-related docket could have a big impact. This month, the justices heard arguments in two cases with potentially profound implications for elections and redistricting — and at least two more significant election-related cases are seeking a spot on the court’s docket. The highest-profile case, Louisiana v. Callais, was before the justices this week for a rare reargument. It’s a complex and long-running dispute over political maps in Louisiana, and voting rights advocates have warned it could allow the conservative majority to erode or strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, further limiting the use of race as a factor in redistricting as a remedy for past discrimination. Read Article

National: Voting Rights Act faces a near-death experience at US Supreme Court | Jan Wolfe/Reuters

The Voting Rights Act, a landmark law barring discrimination in voting, was a product of the U.S. civil rights era, sought by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King, passed by Congress and signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Six decades later, it faces its greatest threat, with the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, looking poised to hollow out one key section after gutting a different one in 2013. The court is expected to rule in the coming months in a case argued on Wednesday concerning a map delineating U.S. House of Representatives districts in Louisiana. The conservative justices signaled they could undercut the law’s Section 2, which bars voting maps that would result in diluting the voting power of minorities, even without direct proof of racist intent. In doing so, the court would not be striking down the Voting Rights Act. But the question is what will be left of the law after the court issues its decision. Read Article

Arizona Supreme Court hands Democrats win on election policy, but GOP changes still possible | Ray Stern/Arizona Republic

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes praised a recent decision by the state Supreme Court that gives him more control over election policies, calling a lawsuit that prompted the ruling a political ploy. The Oct. 16 decision declared that the Arizona Administrative Procedure Act, a comprehensive set of rules found in state law governing the workings of state agencies, cannot bind the creation of the state’s Elections Procedures Manual. The elections policy manual is updated every two years by the Secretary of State’s Office. It serves as a guidebook to election policy in the state but must comply with state and federal law. Once approved by the governor and state attorney general, it’s a crime to deviate from it during elections. Read Article

Georgia’s Sweeping Anti-Voting Law Suppressed Black Votes, New Data Shows | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

Four years after GOP lawmakers in Georgia enacted one of the most aggressive anti-voting laws in the country, new evidence filed in federal court shows that Senate Bill 202 (SB 202) has drastically deepened racial inequalities in voting access in the state. The findings came in a recent filing by voting advocates challenging the law, and they were drawn from 2024 election data and expert testimony. They indicate that more than 1.6 million registered voters faced increased barriers because of the law, with Black and minority voters bearing the biggest brunt. Read Article

Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales sued over new voting laws affecting naturalized citizens | Kayla Dwyer/Indianapolis Star

Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales and the directors of the Indiana Election Division are being taken to federal court over two new state laws that impact naturalized citizens who vote. Both laws, which became effective July 1 of this year, require some form of cross-check between voter information and citizenship status in a manner that some voting rights organizations, in a lawsuit filed Oct. 21, allege violates both the National Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act by creating unnecessary barriers for a certain class of U.S. citizen. “Many individuals (we have) assisted to obtain citizenship over the years fled from countries where they never had the chance to participate in a democracy,” Cole Varga, CEO of Exodus Refugee Immigration, one of the plaintiffs, wrote in a statement. “We cannot allow their voices to be silenced again in Indiana.” Read Article

Maine: Question 1 could stop prisoners from voting | Emily Bader/The Maine Monitor

Some civil rights advocates are worried that Question 1 on next month’s referendum ballot could block incarcerated people’s right to vote. The coalition Voter ID for ME successfully petitioned through a citizen initiative to put the proposed legislation on the November 4 ballot. Question 1 asks voters to consider requiring photo identification to vote both in-person and absentee. It would also prohibit absentee ballot requests by phone, end the ongoing absentee voter registration program, limit the number of drop boxes in municipalities and eliminate two days of absentee voting, among other changes to voting procedures. Read Article

Michigan: Dearborn ballot error leads to dispute with Wayne County over reprint cost | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Taxpayers will be on the hook for reprint costs after Dearborn, Michigan, printed and mailed out thousands of ballots that listed an incorrect candidate. But it’s unclear whether paying the bill will be the responsibility of the city or Wayne County. City officials estimate that Dearborn printed about 10,000 ballots that incorrectly listed Mohammed Shegara as a candidate for City Council even though he dropped out of the race in April. Roughly 9,000 of those went out to voters, City Clerk George Darany told Votebeat. To reprint and resend corrected ballots cost about $3,600, Darany said. The postage part of that, 21.3 cents per ballot, came out of the city’s account already, but no one has been billed yet for the reprint part, which is about 15 cents a ballot. Read Article

Nevada’s recent cyber attack shows the importance of shoring up security for election systems | Kerry Durmick/Nevada Current

On August 24th, Nevadans woke up to several key government sites having gone dark – taken offline by a massive cyber attack. The cyber attack ended up crippling several critical services like the Department of Motor Vehicles for over a week, and the full extent of the data that was compromised is still unknown as state officials, the Cyber Security Infrastructure Administration, and the FBI continue their investigation. However, one critical state service – the Secretary of State’s voter registration information – remained untouched. This was due in large part to a 2021 law that mandated centralizing voter data into a top-down voter registration system, consolidating all counties’ voter information. The old system, which had required each county to individually track and record voter data, was a bottom-up system where counties had to manage their own lists and cybersecurity before the information was transmitted to the SOS system. In contrast, the Voter Registration and Election Management System (VREMS) requires that all counties report voter registration and election data into a single system, which allows for more uniform list maintenance and provides a more secure cybersecurity infrastructure, as seen with the cyber attack earlier this year. The change, although expensive, has resulted in a safer and more transparent system for election officials and voters alike. Read Article

Ohio GOP proposes restrictions on mail-in ballot deadline, prompting concern from veterans | Morgan Trau/Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would restrict the mail-in deadline, requiring all absentee ballots to be received by elections officials by the time polls close. Some veterans raised concerns that this could prevent military and overseas ballots from being counted. “It’s a feeling that when your country calls you, you go,” Army veteran Adam Miller said. Joining the military is one of the most patriotic things an Ohioan can do, he said, but so is participating in the democratic process. “Being able to cast your vote is one of the fundamental freedoms that patriots fought for,” he said. When you are deployed overseas or in another country, the only way to vote is by mail — which Miller did when he was fighting in the Middle East. Read Article

South Carolina: How a $28 million contract for voting machines ballooned into $33 million election agency headache | Nick Reynolds/The Post and Courier.

State election officials brokered an agreement to avoid defaulting on a multi-million-dollar agreement for voting machines, quelling distant fears the bank that financed the deal could potentially repossess the equipment. The final price tag will run millions of dollars more than officials originally anticipated. In a settlement finalized at an Oct. 20 state Election Commission meeting, the agency’s governing board announced it would pay TD Bank around $33 million for its recent purchase of 3,240 ballot readers from voting tabulation firm ES&S on a delayed basis. The move averts an emerging minor fiscal crisis for the agency after officials learned it was unable to make the first $10 million payment to the bank last month due to a budgeting error. The miscue had sparked concerns from figures like state Treasurer Curtis Loftis that the bank could potentially repossess the machines and damage the state’s credit rating. Read Article

Texas asked to halt rollout of updated voter registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Groups representing election officials across Texas are asking the state to halt the rollout of its updated voter registration system and address issues that they say “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.” The groups outlined their complaints in a letter sent Friday to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson. County election officials across the state have for months reported problems that they say began when the state overhauled its voter registration system, known as TEAM, in July. Those issues contributed to a backlog of tens of thousands of voter registration applications, Votebeat reported, though that now has nearly been cleared. Election officials also said issues with TEAM were affecting their preparations for the upcoming constitutional amendment election. Read Article

Wisconsin Attorney General appeals ruling requiring election officials to verify voters’ citizenship status | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Attorney General Josh Kaul is appealing a Waukesha County judge’s ruling that requires election officials to verify the citizenship status of all Wisconsin voters before the next statewide election in February. Kaul filed an appeal Monday of Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Maxwell’s Oct. 6 decision that mandates the Wisconsin Elections Commission to review the state’s voter rolls over the next five months to determine whether anyone who is not a U.S. citizen is registered to vote. “The circuit court’s decision and order drastically alters voter registration and elections in Wisconsin, violates state law, and threatens voting rights,” Kaul wrote in the Oct. 20 filing to the Dane County-based District IV Court of Appeals. Read Article

National: Supreme Court appears poised to weaken key pillar of Voting Rights Act | Sam Levine/The Guardian

The conservative majority on the US supreme court appeared poised to weaken a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act after a lengthy oral argument on Wednesday, paving the way for a significant upheaval in American civil rights law. After hearing arguments from lawyers for nearly two and a half hours, it seemed clear there was a majority on the court in favor of narrowing section two of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racially discriminatory electoral practices, as it applies to redistricting. The only remaining question in the case, Louisiana v Callais, appeared to be how far the court was willing to go. A ruling narrowing section two would strip minority voters of a tool to challenge discrimination. For decades, voting rights lawyers have turned to section two to challenge district lines – from congressional districts to school boards – that dilute the influence of minority voters. Supreme court precedent requires plaintiffs to clear a series of challenging hurdles in order to strike down an existing district. Read Article

National: One Republican Now Controls a Huge Chunk of US Election Infrastructure | Kim Zetter/WIRED

Former GOP operative Scott Leiendecker just bought Dominion Voting Systems, giving him ownership of voting systems used in 27 states. Election experts have concerns. With the Dominion acquisition, Leiendecker gains control of election equipment in more than half of the states. Dominion equipment is used across 26 states plus Puerto Rico. Knowink electronic pollbooks, which replace traditional paper pollbooks used to verify the eligibility of voters when they sign in at precincts, are used in 29 states plus the District of Columbia. But there are jurisdictions across 14 states, covering 20 million registered voters, that use both Dominion and Knowink systems. This gives companies that Leiendecker controls ownership of equipment that covers the entire election process in those jurisdictions—from the verification of registered voters to the casting of ballots and tabulation of results. Read Article

National: Layoffs, reassignments further deplete CISA | Eric Geller/Cybersecurity Dive

The Trump administration is pursuing twin strategies to shrink the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, laying off staffers and ordering others to either take new jobs elsewhere or leave the government. The layoffs and forced relocations are the latest phase of the White House’s massive downsizing of CISA, which experts warn could further deplete the U.S.’s already weakened cyber-defense force. While the full consequences of the staff reductions remain unclear, they could include diminished support for critical infrastructure organizations and a reduced readiness to counter evolving nation-state and criminal threats. Read Article

National: Hands Off Our Elections: States and Congress, Not Presidents, Set the Rules | Michael Mcnulty/The Fulcrum

Trust in elections is fragile – and once lost, it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. While Democrats and Republicans disagree on many election policies, there is broad bipartisan agreement on one point: executive branch interference in elections undermines the constitutional authority of states and Congress to determine how elections are run. Recent executive branch actions threaten to upend this constitutional balance, and Congress must act before it’s too late. To be clear – this is not just about the current president. Keeping the executive branch out of elections is a crucial safeguard against power grabs by any future president, Democrat or Republican. The Constitution is clear: Congress and states make the rules for federal elections, not presidents. Article 1, Section 4, the “Elections Clause,” gives states primary responsibility for administering elections and Congress the authority to “make or alter” those rules. The framers intentionally excluded the executive branch from this power, because they knew the grave risks of letting the president decide the rules of the game. Their foresight has protected our republic from the kinds of authoritarian power grabs that have undermined democracies around the world. Read Article

National: Democrats introduce bill to halt mass voter roll purges  | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the Department of Justice has made an ambitious effort to collect sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including information that one election expert described as “the holy trinity” of identity theft: Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and dates of birth. In states where Trump’s party or allies control the levers of government, this information is handed over willingly. In states where they do not, the DOJ has formally asked, then threatened and then sued states that refuse. The department has also claimed many of these reluctant states are failing to properly maintain their voter registration rolls, and has pushed states to more aggressively remove potentially ineligible voters. This week, Democrats in the House and Senate introduced new legislation that seeks to defang those efforts by raising the legal bar for states to purge voters based on several factors, such as inactivity or changing residency within the same state. Read Article

National: Midterm elections will likely see increased effects of misinformation, reduced federal security activity, experts say | Paige Gross/News From The States

A year after the 2024 presidential election, technologists and election experts are wrestling with their new reality; tech-aided misinformation and disinformation campaigns are and will continue to be a part of the United States’ democratic process. Technology has always played a role in information dissemination in elections, said Daniel Trielli, an assistant professor of media and democracy at the University of Maryland. Mass use of the internet in the early 2000s gave everyday people the ability to be “publishers,” which increased the amount of misinformation, he said. But the rise of social media platforms and the evolving technologies, like generative artificial intelligence, in the last five years have brought it to new levels. “We have had much more volume of misinformation, disinformation grabbing the attention of the electorate,” Trielli said. “And quickly following through that, we see a professionalization of disinformation … The active use of these social media platforms to spread disinformation.” Read Article

Arizona says it will sue Mike Johnson if he does not swear in new rep – and likely trigger the release of the Epstein files | Joe Sommerlad/The Independent

House Speaker Mike Johnson has been threatened with legal action by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes over his ongoing failure to swear in her state’s new Democratic congresswoman-elect, Adelita Grijalva. Grijalva, 54, won a special election in Arizona’s 7th congressional district on September 23, comfortably beating Republican Daniel Butierez by picking up 69 percent of the vote to his 29 percent, and will, eventually, succeed her late father, Raul Grijalva, who passed away in March. In a letter sent to the speaker on Tuesday, Mayes wrote: “Arizona’s right to a full delegation, and the right of the residents of CD 7 to representation from the person they recently voted for, are not up for debate and may not be delayed or used as leverage in negotiations about unrelated legislation.” Read Article

Colorado election officials say they don’t expect big changes after sudden sale of Dominion Voting Systems | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

The announcement last week that a former Republican election official had purchased Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems and given it the new name Liberty Vote took many county clerks in the state by surprise. Unaffiliated clerk Tiffany Lee from La Plata County in southwest Colorado said she had no advance warning about the sale from Dominion or Liberty Vote. “There was no notification to us that this was even a conversation at their level,” said Lee. Like other clerks she found out through the media and Liberty Vote’s press release. “That’s concerning to me that we didn’t get any kind of information from them directly or Dominion,” she said. Reasd Article

Florida: After yearslong lawsuit Miami-Dade will save ballot images | Claire Heddles/Miami Herald

Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Alina Garcia will start saving digital images of ballots starting in next month’s local elections — a change Florida’s Democratic Party has been fighting the office for in court for years. Under state law, supervisors are required to save paper ballots for 22 months after an election. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit have argued that law should apply to digital images of the ballots taken by the voting machine too to add another layer of security during recounts. Their case against Miami-Dade’s elections office was set to go to trial in January. “This is a huge victory for verifiability and for transparency,” said Joseph Geller, one of the plaintiffs and Democratic Miami-Dade County School Board member, of Garcia’s decision to start saving ballot images. Read Article

Georgia will continue to use election equipment under Liberty Votes ownership, spokesperson says | Chase McGee/Georgia Public Broadcasting

Dominion Voting Systems, the company contracted to supply Georgia’s elections equipment, has been sold to a former Republican elections director. In 2019, Georgia entered a 10-year contract with Dominion and has since spent more than $100 million on election infrastructure. During the 2020 election, the company was plagued by baseless conspiracy theories, which alleged that the voting machines rigged ballots in favor of then-candidate Joe Biden. Dominion’s new owner, Scott Leiendecker of Missouri-based Liberty Votes, wrote in a message that his company was “committed to transparency, independent audits, and verifiable paper records,” echoing challenges to past elections. Read Article

Michigan election tampering case stalls as DePerno seeks to block texts linked to 2020 audit effort | Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance

After the preliminary examination of former attorney general candidate Matt DePerno and former state Rep. Daire Rendon (R-Lake City) kicked off on Thursday, the review of evidence has been put on pause over a dispute on whether a series of text messages should be admitted as evidence. Rendon and DePerno, as well as attorney Stefanie Lambert Junttila, were indicted in 2023, following an investigation into potential tampering with election equipment following the 2020 election, led by Special Prosecutor D.J. Hilson. The three defendants are each accused of participating in a conspiracy to gain access to voting tabulators, where a group of information technology experts allegedly performed “testing” on the machines.

Nebraska group starts ballot push for winner-take-all, hand-counting votes | Juan Salinas II/Nebraska Examiner

A nonprofit group behind a handful of Nebraska ballot initiatives announced a campaign Tuesday to gather signatures for two new ones aimed at conservative election goals. One would alter how the state awards Electoral College votes for president, giving all five to the winner of the popular vote statewide. The other would require elections in the state to be conducted exclusively using paper ballots counted by hand. The group, Advocates for All Nebraskans, is now collecting signatures for five ballot initiatives. The group, headlined by former leaders of the Nebraska Republican Party, argues that the initiatives are about reclaiming the state’s voice and promoting government accountability. Read Article

North Carolina: Voting rights advocates prep for federal trial over ‘election integrity’ law | Will Doran/WRAL

A federal trial scheduled for next week could help shape the rules that govern the 2026 elections in North Carolina, as voting rights advocates challenge a law approved by Republican lawmakers who said it would protect election integrity. The trial could be happening in Winston-Salem at the same time state lawmakers return to Raleigh to further assert their influence ahead of next year’s midterms — by attempting to further gerrymander the state’s U.S. House of Representatives districts in favor of GOP candidates. Marques Thompson is the organizing director for the group Democracy NC. He said Tuesday that the law his group is suing over, as well as the proposed new maps, both have a shared goal: Making it less likely that the will of the people matters when it comes to who wins or loses elections. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Five years after trying to aid Trump, Fulton County faces steep penalty | Carter Walker/Votebeat

After President Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020, he and his allies were pushing false narratives about the election being stolen, pressuring state and local officials, and calling for audits of the results. In Fulton County, Pennsylvania, a Republican stronghold where Trump won a larger percentage of the vote than anywhere else in the state, local leaders wanted to help. “Sending this email to see what’s going on with this rigged election,” County Commissioner Randy Bunch, a Republican, wrote to state Sen. Judy Ward, also a Republican, in a Nov. 12 email obtained by watchdog group American Oversight. “We can’t let this election get stolen if there is anything I can do please let me know.” A few weeks later, according to court documents, the county let an outside company examine its voting machines and download data from them. In text messages sent shortly afterwards, one county commissioner said that if the county hadn’t given the company access, a Trump ally would have forced it to do so via a subpoena. That decision to allow a third party to access sensitive voting equipment set off far-reaching consequences for Fulton County. As a result of a state order, it had to purchase all-new voting equipment. After years of legal proceedings, the county is facing more than $1 million in fines, an amount equal to roughly one-eighth of the county’s yearly budget. Read Article

South Carolina: Missing $4 million? State investigations? Election Commission awash in drama | John Monk and Lucy Valeski/The State

A missing $4 million, a $10 million loan installment coming due with no money to pay for it and whether former State Election Commission director Howard Knapp misrepresented the price of buying new machines for the state in 2024. Those were three questions about a $28 million purchase for machines to count voter’s ballots aired Wednesday during an unusually open public meeting of the State Election Commission board. “We know that we authorized $28 million (for the voting machines) … but the loan appears to be for $32 million,” said Commission chairman Dennis Shedd during the meeting. The three other commission members agreed that they had approved a $28 million loan. Read Article

Texas: Voter system switch leaves thousands of residents unverified ahead of early voting, | Shakari Briggs, John Lomax V/Houston Chronicle

Elections officials across Texas are scrambling to register voters after the near-collapse of a voter registration company led counties across the state to transfer to a system provided through the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Votec, a California-based company that has run voter registration everywhere from Harris County to Travis County, warned officials in August that a grim fiscal outlook had cast doubt on their ability to register voters ahead of the November election. The scare sparked a mass exodus of counties from Votec to the Texas Elections Management System, a statewide database that has been used by the Secretary of State’s Office to manage voter registration information since the early 2000s. But the transition to TEAM has been bumpy, and came just as the state rolled out a major update to the system. All told, the switch has left as many as 17,000 voters in Harris County and 400 in Fort Bend County in limbo with just days before early voting is scheduled to begin. Read Article