Arizona Court of Appeals rejects Kari Lake’s election challenge | Brian Rokus and Jack Forrest/CNN

The Arizona Court of Appeals has rejected Kari Lake’s challenge to the result of the Arizona gubernatorial election after she appealed an earlier ruling from the superior court. Lake had requested a declaration from the court that she – and not her opponent, Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs who won the election by about 17,000 votes – was the actual winner of the election. “Her request for relief fails because the evidence presented to the superior court ultimately supports the court’s conclusion that voters were able to cast their ballots, that votes were counted correctly, and that no other basis justifies setting aside the election results,” the Court of Appeals decision stated. The appeal rejection marks the latest defeat for Lake, who has continually doubled down on her support for former President Donald Trump and false claims that he 2020 election was stolen, a central rallying call in her 2022 gubernatorial bid.

Source: Arizona Court of Appeals rejects Kari Lake’s election challenge | CNN Politics

Georgia legislators answered Trump’s call to overturn election | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With his chances of winning Georgia slipping away in December 2020, then-President Donald Trump hit upon a novel scheme to stay in power: State legislators would name him the winner. So, while his allies spun dubious tales of voting fraud at the Georgia Capitol, Trump’s campaign called nearly 120 Republican legislators to ask whether they would appoint a slate of presidential electors who would vote for Trump instead of Democrat Joe Biden. A log of those phone calls recently released by congressional investigators shows some lawmakers were eager to help. “Hell, yes,” said one. “100%,” replied another. “Very supportive and ready to go,” a third lawmaker told the campaign. In all, about 30 Republican legislators expressed some level of support for allowing the General Assembly to name Trump the winner of the presidential election, according to the call log. The log and other documents released by investigators suggest scores of other lawmakers also may have supported the plan.

Full Article: Jan. 6 documents: Georgia legislators answered Trump’s call to overturn election

Hawaii Republicans lose challenge of 2022 election audit process | Candace Cheung/Courthouse News Service

Republicans nationwide continue to question election integrity — despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud — but a Oahu Circuit Court judge put a stop to one such complaint at a hearing Friday afternoon in Hawaii. The Hawaii Republican Party had accused the state’s election office of violating election statutes during the post-election ballot auditing process for the 2022 general elections, where Democrats won a majority of the races including for governor. The complaint, first filed two weeks after the election, named the State of Hawaii Office of Elections and Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago in his official capacity as defendants and asked for a proper election audit to be completed. The GOP’s suit relies on an assortment of witness statements and affidavits from election observers who claimed to have seen election officials using digitized images of ballots to tally votes rather than the paper ballots as required by state law. Defendants argued the Republican Party did not have any concrete evidence to any kind of wrongdoing and said the party’s assertions were without any evidence and called them “pure speculation.”

Full Article: Hawaii Republicans lose challenge of 2022 election audit process | Courthouse News Service

Michigan Secretary of State once again calls for firearms ban at polling locations | Priya Vijayakumar/Michigan Radio

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced Thursday that she wants to see legislation to ban firearms within 100 feet of polling places. “The time for only thoughts and prayers is over,” said Benson at the annual Judge Damon Keith Memorial Soul Food Luncheon. Benson issued a similar directive to local clerks to ban the open carry of firearms at polling places in 2020. But a judge struck down that directive. The plan now is to include the gun ban in legislation on voting rights that’s being drafted. “Our kids deserve to go to school free from fear of gun violence. They deserve to go to church or synagogues or mosques with their families to worship free from fear of gun violence,” said Benson. “They deserve to live in a democracy where their voices are heard and where they can cast their ballots free from intimidation or threats of violence. That is the world I am fighting for.” Benson is collaborating with lawmakers and local election officials on the legislation.

Full Article: Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson once again calls for firearms ban at polling locations

New Jersey: Monmouth County recount after ES&S screwup changes results of 2022 election | David Wildstein/New Jersey Globe

A court-ordered recount in Monmouth County after the nation’s largest voting machine manufacturer, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), admitted to a programming error that caused some votes to be double counted, appears to have changed the outcome of one race in the November 2022 general election. In the Ocean Township school board contest, a hand recount of ballots in Ocean Township shows Jeff Weinstein with a four-vote lead, 3,408 to 3,404, against Steve Clayton. After the votes were tallied in November, Clayton had defeated Weinstein, then the incumbent, by 20 votes. Clayton took office last month. Clayton lost 119 votes from his November total, while Weinstein lost 95. Attorney General Matt Platkin has ordered an investigation into the the ES&S system failure. Once the new result is certified, the contest will likely head back to Superior Court Judge David Bauman for instructions on removing Clayton and seating Weinstein.

Full Article: Monmouth recount after ES&S screwup changes results of 2022 election – New Jersey Globe

Pennsylvania Court won’t force release of election records | Marc Levy/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania appellate court said Thursday that it will not order Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration to produce records on voters and election systems sought by Republican lawmakers in a quest inspired by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The decision by the Commonwealth Court came a year-and-a-half after a Republican-controlled state Senate Committee voted to issue a subpoena seeking detailed state election records. Those records include information that Democratic lawmakers and the state attorney general’s office said were protected by privacy laws, including the driver’s license numbers and last four digits of their Social Security number of 9 million registered voters, as well as details about election systems. The court said that the Senate committee voted to issue the subpoena under its own internal rules and can enforce it under the state’s contempt laws. But that process, it said, does not involve seeking a court order to enforce it. “The Senate Committee has chosen to seek the election-related materials by legislative subpoena, and it is bound by that choice,” Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote in the 21-page decision.

Full Article: Court won’t force Pennsylvania to release election records | AP News

South Dakota Senate wants post-election audits | Bob Mercer/KELO

South Dakota counties would be required to conduct post-election audits of ballot-counting machines under a plan moving ahead in the Legislature.State senators voted 34-0 on Monday for SB-160. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives where the lead sponsor is Republican Rep. Drew Peterson. Republican Sen. David Wheeler said state government will pay counties for the cost of the audits. He said South Dakota is one of the few states where post-election audits aren’t done. “It’s appropriate for us to do a spot-check, and that’s what this would do,” said Wheeler, the bill’s prime sponsor. Counties would check the two statewide contests that are closest in outcome each election. “So people can have confidence the machines are counting correctly,” Wheeler said. Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s office testified in “soft” opposition during the Senate committee hearing, according to Wheeler. She plans to conduct a study this summer. One of the points she ran on last year was the need for post-election audits.

Source: Senate wants post-election audits for South Dakota

Texas: Unrecoverable Election Screwup in Williamson County | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

In the November 2020 election in Williamson County, Texas, flawed e-pollbook software resulted in voters inadvertently voting for candidates and questions not from their own districts but from others in the same county.  These voters were deprived of the opportunity to vote for candidates they were entitled to vote for—and their votes were wrongly counted in elections that they shouldn’t have voted in.  This wasn’t the voters’ fault, but it does mean that the results in elections for local offices were affected by this screwup by Tenex Software Solutions.  Tenex’s e-pollbook malfunctions call into question the results of the 2020 school district races, municipal elections, potentially a county commissioners race, and state legislative races in Williamson County. As more and more states use e-pollbooks in vote centers, election administrators should understand this failure, because it could potentially affect any kind of e-pollbook that prints ballots on demand. I’ve written about other screwups caused by election software or hardware—in Antrim County MI, in Windham NH, in Mercer County NJ—but in all those cases, voters marked the paper ballots they were entitled to vote on, and election officials can and did recount those ballots to report accurate election results.  That is, all those screwups were recoverable, and election officials took immediate action to recount and recover—to get an accurate result.

Full Article: Unrecoverable Election Screwup in Williamson County TX – Freedom to Tinker

Wisconsin: Bipartisan vote tracking measure brings parties together on elections | Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

A Republican-authored bill with bipartisan support in the Wisconsin Legislature would allow voters to track the status of their ballots through text messages sent to their cell phones. Currently, absentee voters must log into MyVote, the Wisconsin Election Commission’s information portal, to make sure their ballots have been received by a clerk. Under Senate Bill 39, introduced by Sens. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) voters who apply for absentee ballots can sign up for free text message updates letting them know when their ballots are received. The Secure Democracy Foundation, a national nonprofit group dedicated to building confidence in elections and improving voters’ access to the ballot box across the United States, applauds the Wisconsin measure. … Voters in 49 states including Wisconsin have some sort of ballot-tracking system, and at least eight other states use a system to actively notify voters about the status of their ballots, according to the group.

Source: Bipartisan vote tracking measure brings parties together on elections – Wisconsin Examiner

Wyoming election security bill stumbles but continues progress through the legislature | Hugh Cook/Wyoming Public Media

A bill that would impact the election systems and codify existing rules established by the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office is continuing its journey through the legislature. House Bill 47, sponsored by the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Interim Committee, was received for concurrence on Feb. 13 but failed on a 6-54-2 vote in the House due to issues with amendments. “We had a standing committee amendment that went through the rules and found, ‘Okay, so here’s a list of rules that are not being codified,’ and then we just decided to codify them,” said Rep. Jared Olson (R-Laramie). “That’s where the bill left. The amendment is a little peculiar, because it basically adopted half of our standing committee amendment and then went back in and backtracked and erased half of our standing committee amendment.” The bill takes rules on election certification from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office related to federal certification of election systems and would codify them if signed into law. It was laid back or delayed on its third reading in the Senate but later passed that chamber on a 24-7 vote on Feb. 13.

Full Article: An election security bill stumbles but continues progress through the legislature | Wyoming Public Media

National: Electronic pollbook security raises concerns going into 2024 | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

They were blamed for long lines in Los Angeles during California’s 2020 presidential primary, triggered check-in delays in Columbus, Ohio, a few months later and were at the center of former President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to protest in Detroit during last November’s midterms. High-profile problems involving electronic pollbooks have opened the door for those peddling election conspiracies and underscore the critical role the technology plays in whether voting runs smoothly. Russia and Iran already have demonstrated interest in accessing the systems. Despite their importance and potential vulnerabilities, national standards for the security and reliability of electronic pollbooks do not exist and efforts underway to develop them may not be ready or widely adopted in time for the 2024 presidential election. “We have a trust issue in elections. The more we can say there are standards that equipment must be tested to, the better,” said Larry Norden, an election security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s like a seal of approval that really doesn’t exist right now.” Poll workers use electronic pollbooks to check in voters. They typically are a tablet or laptop computer that accesses an electronic list of registered voters with names, addresses and precinct information, with some doing so through an internet connection.

Full Article: Electronic pollbook security raises concerns going into 2024 | AP News

Pennsylvania voting officials are still fighting election deniers | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

It’s been 27 months since President Biden won the 2020 election. But that election continues to haunt officials in the Philadelphia suburb of Delaware County, Pa., who are still dealing with lawsuits alleging election fraud, despite no substantial evidence, and ongoing criticism from some local residents during public meetings. For William Martin, the county’s solicitor, the level of frustration hit a breaking point last month during a county council meeting. “I am profoundly offended to listen to baseless allegations of fraud against me and against other county workers,” Martin said after sitting through another round of public comments. “It’s time to put up or shut up. If you think there is fraud, sue me. Sue me! Sue me personally. Because then when it gets thrown out, I’ll sue you for abuse of process. Sue me!” Many other local officials in Pennsylvania are still grappling with the aftermath of the 2020 election. More recent political contests in that swing state have become a hotbed for election deniers and misinformation. And election watchers are concerned about how that could spill over into upcoming elections, including next year’s presidential race.

Full Article: Election misinformation continues to roil Pennsylvania : NPR

National: Election skeptics slow to get sweeping changes in GOP states | Tomm Davies, Christina A. Cassidy and Mead Gruver/Associated Press

Republicans in some heavily conservative states won their campaigns for secretary of state last year after claiming they would make sweeping changes aimed at keeping fraud out of elections. So far, their efforts to make good on their promises are mixed, in some cases because their rhetoric has bumped up against skepticism from members of their own party. Voters in politically pivotal swing states such as Arizona, Michigan and Nevada rejected candidates seeking to oversee elections who had echoed former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election. But newly elected secretaries of state in Alabama, Indiana and Wyoming who had questioned the legitimacy of that election won easily in those Republican-dominated states. They are now facing the task of backing up their campaign pledges in states where Republicans have already set strict election laws. In Indiana, Secretary of State Diego Morales has been relatively quiet. He has not been making the rounds at the Statehouse trying to persuade lawmakers to embrace the wide-ranging tightening of voting rules he promoted as a candidate.

Full Article: Election skeptics slow to get sweeping changes in GOP states | AP News

National: Dominion calls out Fox for missing evidence in lawsuit | Lillian Rizzo/CNBC

Dominion Voting Systems is calling out Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp, for failing to turn over evidence, with less than two months before the companies are set to go to trial over a defamation lawsuit. On Wednesday, attorneys for Dominion and Fox met before a Delaware Superior Court judge to discuss scheduling for upcoming checkpoints. However, an attorney for Dominion said they are concerned that some evidence – such as certain board meeting minutes and the results of searches of personal drives – has yet to be produced by Fox and its cable TV networks. While this issue was already raised in July and January, the Dominion attorney said Wednesday they are still missing documents. “We have not gotten anything. We pointed out categories of missing documents for both Fox News and Fox Corp that are still missing. And we are not talking about a document slipping through … we are talking about categories of documents,” said Dominion attorney Justin Nelson on Wednesday. Nelson said Dominion’s attorneys had been assured that Fox’s legal team would “ask the hard questions about missing documents so that we didn’t have to do it and engage in further discovery practice.”

Full Article: Dominion calls out Fox for missing evidence in lawsuit

National: Pence receives subpoena from prosecutors examining Trump’s Jan. 6 role | osh Dawsey and Perry Stein/The Washington Post

Former vice president Mike Pence received a subpoena from the special counsel investigating key aspects of the sprawling probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, according to a person familiar with the matter. Jack Smith — the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead the day-to-day operations of the investigation — is also heading a separate criminal probe into Trump’s possible mishandling of classified documents at his Florida home. The Pence subpoena is related to Jan. 6, according to the person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The subpoena comes after months of negotiations between the Justice Department and Pence. ABC News first reported news of the subpoena. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment. A spokesman for Pence also declined to comment.

Full Article: Pence receives subpoena from prosecutors examining Trump’s Jan. 6 role – The Washington Post

Arizona: Cochise County Recorder David Stevens stands to get more power after pursuing illegal hand count | Jen Fifield/Votebeat Arizona

David Stevens had never supervised a ballot count. He didn’t know how he would count nearly 50,000 ballots by hand, who would help, or where he would find enough space to do it. But that didn’t dissuade him. Less than a month before the November election, Stevens, the Cochise County recorder, told the county supervisors he would be happy to try. Arizona GOP leaders had spent two years promoting unfounded claims about compromised vote-counting machines, and were scouring the state for a county that would willingly hand-count ballots. They found it in Cochise County, where Stevens grasped onto the idea, devised a plan, and stoked the sentiment starting to take hold locally. The Republican recorder propelled the proposal to illegally hand count all midterm election ballots, thrusting a rural Arizona county known for historic mining towns and natural beauty into months of chaos, court hearings, and national headlines. Cochise’s two Republican supervisors bore the brunt of the backlash — threatened with jail time and, even now, facing a citizen-led recall effort. But the initial effort would have hit an abrupt stop without Stevens, who mostly remained behind the scenes.

Full Article: Cochise County Recorder David Stevens stands to get more power after pursuing illegal hand count – Votebeat Arizona – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting

California: Kern County considering another contract with Dominion Dalu Okoli/KGET

Although it has been three months since the 2022 midterm election, attention and contention is already turning to the 2024 contest. 17 News is learning more about one of the most controversial issues — Kern County’s contract with Dominion –the voting machines used around the nation, including in Kern, that have sparked heated debate since the 2020 election. Last month, over a dozen residents took the floor at a rowdy Board of Supervisors meeting, asking the county not to renew its contract with Dominion. The Board voted to delay consideration for the second time, this time pushing the topic until the Feb. 28 meeting. It has led to questions about whether Kern’s election head Aimee Espinoza is considering another option to count votes.

Full Article: Kern County considering another contract with voting machine vendor

Colorado: Judge refuses to toss voter intimidation claims against election-skeptic group’s founders | Michael Karlik/Colorado Politics

A federal judge has refused to throw out claims of voter intimidation brought against the founders of a Colorado organization that believes the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. On Jan. 31, U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney agreed it is a matter to be decided at trial whether Shawn Smith, Ashely Epp and Holly Kasun are liable for violating the Voting Rights Act and the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan Act. The facts are disputed, Sweeney wrote, about whether agents of the defendants’ organization, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, went door-to-door in the wake of the election and intimidated voters by interrogating them about their voting history. However, she agreed to dismiss USEIP itself from the lawsuit. While Sweeney believed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit requires her to rule that unincorporated groups, such as USEIP, are not “persons” to be sued, Sweeney took the unusual step of openly criticizing the 10th Circuit for restricting plaintiffs’ ability to hold alleged civil rights violators accountable. Under the 10th Circuit’s precedent, she wrote, “civil rights organizations cannot seek relief against unincorporated associations … to halt an allegedly discriminatory conspiracy committed by the group’s members — which is entirely contrary to the purpose and history of the Ku Klux Klan Act.”

Full Article: Judge refuses to toss voter intimidation claims against election-skeptic group’s founders | Courts | coloradopolitics.com

Indiana: Settlement expands voting access to Hoosiers with print disabilities | news | Violet Comber-Willen/Indiana Public Media

Indiana will now offer a remote, accessible ballot marking tool for those with print disabilities following a new settlement. This could increase ballot accessibility for voters with these types of disabilities. Prior to this settlement, voters with print disabilities could only vote by mail if they were assisted by someone from the state’s appointed travel board. Jelena Kolic is an attorney with Disability Rights Advocates. She said voters with print disabilities now have other options beyond this travel board option. “That requirement is now permissive, rather than mandatory,” she said. “Now, they also could request the assistance of a person of their choice for the purpose of the mail.” Voters may also vote independently with this electronic software. Kolic said this expanded access to resources gives Hoosiers who have print disabilities rights equal to those who do not. “Voting is the bedrock of democracy – it’s the bedrock of citizenship,” Kolic said. “People with print disabilities are entitled to this right just as much as everyone else and should be on equal footing with everyone else and thanks to the settlement, they will be.”

Full Article: Settlement expands voting access to Hoosiers with print disabilities | news – Indiana Public Media

Michigan election worker charged with equipment tampering wants Kent County case tossed | Bradley Massman/MLive

An attorney representing a man charged for allegedly tampering with a voting machine wants his client’s case dismissed because of a lack of evidence, court records show. A motion filed in Kent County Circuit Court last month requests a judge to dismiss the charges against 68-year-old James D. Holkeboer. Holkeboer is charged with falsifying records/returns under election law and using a computer to commit a crime for allegedly tampering with a voting machine after the primary election last August. In the motion to quash, defense attorney Charles E. Chamberlain Jr. argued there is no evidence that Holkeboer fraudulently removed or secreted a voter list. “The felony complaint provides that on or about Aug. 3, 2022, Mr. Holkeboer, ‘being an inspector of election, did fraudulently remove or secrete, in whole or in part, an election list of voters, which are required to be made, filed, or preserved by the Michigan election law …,” the motion states. Holkeboer was hired as an election inspector in Precinct 8 for Gaines Township for the Aug. 2 primary election. He is not an employee of Kent County or Gaines Township, but was a resident trained and certified by clerks to work at precincts during elections as well as at absentee ballot counting boards.

Full Article: Election worker charged with equipment tampering wants Kent County case tossed

Nevada: “They don’t trust us”: Election Workers Still Face Pressure and Harassment | Alex Burness/Bolts

Election administration used to take up a fraction of Lacey Donaldson’s headspace. “An every-two-years kind of thing,” she said. But these days, Donaldson, the elected clerk and treasurer of Pershing County, Nevada, can hardly run an errand without being reminded of how much has changed since 2020 for elections professionals like her. “It’s not just people questioning you at work. It’s at the grocery store, or at your niece’s birthday party,” she said. Her county covers an area almost as big as New Jersey but has a population of just over 6,700 people. “I pretty much know everyone,” added Donaldson, a Democrat starting her fourth term in a county then-President Donald Trump won by 51 points in 2020. “They don’t trust us. We’re letting them watch the process, but you can’t really argue with those people that have believed misinformation. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve known you. They’ll say, we know you’re doing it the right way, but the county next door isn’t. Well, that doesn’t make you feel any better about your job.” This relatively new stressor is part of the long tail of election denialism that was kicked off by Trump during the 2020 presidential election. It remains as an animating belief among some on the right that entire electoral systems—and the people who run them—are irredeemably untrustworthy.

Full Article: “They don’t trust us”: Nevada Election Workers Still Face Pressure and Harassment | Bolts

New Hampshire Senate Weighs Permanent Voting Machine Audits | Eagle Times

During the 2022 elections, the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office audited voting machines in six different polling places, checking for accuracy and consistency as part of a one-time requirement by the Legislature.  Now, Senate lawmakers are hoping to make the auditing permanent. Senate Bill 157 would require the office to audit at least two AccuVote machines on Election Day during state primaries and up to eight machines during the general election. The audits would need to be conducted at specific towns and city wards across the state, selected at random, the bill states. They would be carried out in public by people appointed and trained by the secretary of state. For each machine, at least 5 percent of the ballots scanned must be examined, the bill adds. The choices on the ballots must be compared to the results recorded in the machines, and any differences must be documented.

Full Article: ‘Never Been More Important’: NH Senate Weighs Permanent Voting Machine Audits | | eagletimes.com

On North Carolina’s Supreme Court, G.O.P. Justices Move to Reconsider Democratic Rulings | Michael Wines/The New York Times

An extraordinary pair of orders by North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Supreme Court is highlighting how the partisan tug of war has pervaded the state’s courts and, by extension, the nation’s. On Friday, the court moved to rehear two major voting rights cases that it had previously decided, one striking down a gerrymandered map of State Senate districts and another nullifying new voter identification requirements. Such rehearings by the court are exceedingly rare. In fact, North Carolina’s Supreme Court ordered as many rehearings on Friday as it has in the past three decades. What also made the rehearings exceptional was that the cases had been decided less than two months ago — by a court that, at the time, contained four Democratic and three Republican justices. The court that voted to rehear the cases has a 5-to-2 Republican majority, courtesy of the party’s sweep of state Supreme Court races in November. And the potential beneficiary of those reviews is the Republican leadership of the state General Assembly, which had both drawn the political map and enacted the voter ID law that the court struck down in December. Lawyers for those leaders asked the court to reconsider the cases in petitions filed last month. “Quite literally the only thing that changed is the court’s composition,” Joshua Douglas, a professor and expert on state constitutions at the University of Kentucky College of Law, said in an interview. “The whole thing simply smells of partisanship.”

Full Article: On North Carolina’s Supreme Court, G.O.P. Justices Move to Reconsider Democratic Rulings – The New York Times

Pennsylvania Supreme Court opinion opens the door for a patchwork of county policies on wrongly dated ballots | Jonathan Lai and Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has once again waded into the protracted legal battle over whether mail ballots missing a date or with the wrong date should be thrown out. But while a series of opinions the justices issued Wednesday offered new clarity, they also opened the door to fresh confusion and the almost certain prospect of counties developing a patchwork of different policies over what exactly constitutes a correct date. The ruling follows an order the court issued last fall instructing counties to set aside all undated and wrongly dated ballots for last November’s midterm. It did not issue opinions explaining the decision at the time or providing guidance to counties going forward. The question of how to handle dates on mail ballots — state law requires voters to handwrite a date on the outer envelope — had been one of the most hotly contested legal and political fights in recent elections. In a tense status quo before last fall’s order, some counties had accepted undated ballots or ballots with any date, such as voters’ birth dates, saying it was unfair to disqualify ballots from legal voters simply because they had made a mistake.

Full Article: Undated Pa. mail ballots: State Supreme Court opinions open door to confusion, policy patchwork

Texas: Overlooked provision of SB 1 requires election equipment that doesn’t exist, at a cost of $116 million | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat Texas

When state lawmakers passed a sweeping and controversial new election law in 2021, they quietly included a provision that drew little notice or debate. But election administration experts say the measure is unprecedented, it mandates the purchase of voting technology that doesn’t currently exist — and it’s on the verge of costing taxpayers more than $100 million. Sponsors of the provision said they aimed to prevent cheating in elections by prohibiting the use of modern technology to count votes and store cast ballot data. It passed without debate on a voice vote, and goes into effect just before the November 2026 general election. … Here’s how it works now: With permission from the Texas secretary of state, election officials use media storage devices such as USB flash drives — provided by state-certified voting machine vendors — to collect data from ballot scanners used at precincts and voting centers on Election Day. Those drives are how officials easily and safely take that data on cast ballots to a central counting station, where they’re inserted into a tabulating computer to quickly gather results. The equipment involved is expensive, and elections officials reuse it each time an election is held, writing over the previous data with the new election data. But the provision — proposed by Sen. Bob Hall (R-Edgewood) and supported by the then-bill’s primary author, Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) — prohibits the use of this exact kind of data storage device that can be reused, including the ballot scanners and the tabulating machines. Experts say that, in order to fully comply with the new law, counties would have to buy entirely new voting systems each election cycle.

Full Article: SB 1 provision requires the use of voting equipment that doesn’t exist – Votebeat Texas – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting

Utah legislature considers requiring performance audit | Katie McKellar/Deseret News

It’s not an Arizona-style, so-called “forensic” audit that some far right Republicans were calling for in 2021, but Utah lawmakers are a step closer to requiring a “comprehensive performance” audit of Utah’s elections every other year. The Utah House on Friday voted unanimously to approve HB269, a bill that would require the Office of the Legislative Auditor General to conduct a biennial audit of elections in even-numbered years. The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration. “We have a pretty good system here in Utah,” the bill’s sponsor, House Majority Leader Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said, noting the last legislative audit conducted of the 2022 election showed just that. In that audit, legislative auditors found no evidence of fraud and only small discrepancies in the number of ballots cast and the number of votes counted in some counties. “But there’s always room for improvement,” he added, “and it’s always important that we keep our eye on the ball and strive for perfection.”

Full Article: Election audit: Utah legislature considers requiring performance audit – Deseret News

Wyoming bill that would codify rules for electronic voting machines has been postponed for a final vote | Hugh Cook/Wyoming Public Media

A bill that would codify rules for electronic voting machines was postponed for its third reading in the Senate. Sponsored by the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Interim Committee, it passed the House on a 33-27-2 vote and was introduced to the Senate on Jan. 19 where it subsequently passed its first two readings. The bill aims to codify the Wyoming Secretary of State’s guidelines regarding election system security. That includes requiring proof that a vendor, or the provider of a voting system(s) meet the specified requirements outlined in the bill, the EAC [U.S. Election Assistance Commission], and the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office, which would issue a certificate indicating the vendor was in good standing with the state. The EAC is an independent, bipartisan commission that was created by Congress via the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). It’s tasked with developing guidelines to meet HAVA requirements and serve as a clearinghouse of information on election administration, among other responsibilities. “The County Clerk’s support [the bill] and would really appreciate the codification of the federal certification for our electronic voting systems,” said Mary Lankford, a representative of the Wyoming County Clerk’s Association. “We feel that the codification of this portion of the rules only strengthens the security of Wyoming’s election system and our integrity.”

Full Article: A bill that would codify rules for electronic voting machines has been postponed for a final vote | Wyoming Public Media

National: Election officials say democracy is still at risk in 2024: ‘The gun is still loaded’ | Jane C. Timm/NBC

The November midterms gave election officials and pro-democracy advocates their first sigh of relief in years: The election system they’d spent years defending and shoring up operated almost seamlessly, and most of the election deniers who threatened to disrupt it were defeated. … “The extreme rhetoric is not stopping,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, a group that led the charge in battleground states against election denialism. “It just led to a little girl having bullets shoot through her wall in New Mexico because someone was mad at her mom because they thought that she rigged an election, right? I really do not think we’re out of the woods.” Election experts, pro-democracy advocates and secretaries of state who defeated election deniers said in interviews that while democracy defenders have won a key battle, the existential threat to American democracy remains. “In some ways, it was just a dress rehearsal for the 2024 presidential election,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said. In November, he defeated Republican Kim Crockett, a Trump-endorsed candidate who said the 2020 election was rigged.

Full Article: Election officials say democracy is still at risk in 2024

Arizona election ‘audit’ full of infighting, deceit, messages show | yan Randazzo/Arizona Republic

Thousands of new documents The Arizona Republic obtained from Cyber Ninjas, the obscure company state Senate Republicans hired to conduct a partisan “audit” of the 2020 election, show the endeavor was fraught with conflict and confusion. The contractors confided they didn’t know Arizona election law when they were hired, struggled to pay bills and raise money, fought over what to report to the Senate, got deeply sidetracked by a film about their effort, and consistently were in touch with people who tried to concoct ways to keep former President Trump in office after his election loss. Among the most revealing details in the new documents are that the lead contractor reached out to people close to Trump to ask for money to conduct the supposedly objective “audit,” and others involved communicated with the former president as well. The Republic and a left-leaning watchdog group called American Oversight sued the Senate and Cyber Ninjas for emails, texts and other communications from the project and have received batches of documents for more than a year. Doug Logan, the CEO at now-defunct Florida-based Cyber Ninjas, which former Senate President Karen Fann chose to direct the work, has continued to fight the release of all of his communications, which a judge said were subject to disclosure. But facing a $50,000-a-day fine imposed more than a year ago, he recently turned over thousands of texts and Signal messages.

Full Article: Arizona election ‘audit’ full of infighting, deceit, messages show

National: Election officials ready themselves for the next wave of Trump followers | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Hundreds of local election officials across the country are about to confront a political challenge putting their management skills and their campaign chops to the test: Administering the 2024 presidential vote while running for reelection themselves. Donald Trump acolytes galvanized by the former president’s false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from him piled into last year’s campaigns for state election officer positions. And although Democrats and mainstream Republicans defeated all of those candidates in key battleground states like Michigan, Arizona and elsewhere, far more races for local election positions there and in other states will be up for grabs next year. The slate of below-the-radar campaigns will test how much money and attention will be available for these critical roles in the midst of a presidential race. “The concerns about being primaried is absolutely on the mind of very dedicated and very middle-of-the-road, nonpartisan-functioning” election officials in Florida, said Mark Earley, the election supervisor in Leon County, Fla., a blue-leaning county in the state’s deep-red Panhandle.

Full Article: Election officials ready themselves for the next wave of Trump followers – POLITICO