Pennsylvania improves election data transparency, with more upgrades to come | Jordan Wilkie/WITF

Pennsylvania’s election data is easier to access and interpret than it’s ever been, with more changes in the works to improve transparency, the state’s top election administrator said last week. The state has sold the ability to download bulk data on every voter in the state for $20, including vote history, party registration, voter age and more, but the files are convoluted and hard to handle. Downloading the statewide voter registration file and gaining any meaningful insight from it requires computer programming savvy and knowledge of county-by-county election administration. To make it easier for people to understand the data, the Department of State rolled out new data dashboards in late May. One covers 2024 general election vote history and registration. The other shows data on mail-in ballots. Read Article

Texas bill creating more weekend early voting could boost turnout, but delay election results | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texans will have a new schedule for early voting in coming years under new legislation that starts the voting period later but slides it right up to Election Day, eliminating the three-day break in between. Experts say Senate Bill 2753, which lawmakers approved this week, will likely boost turnout, as it includes more time for voting on weekends. The author of the bill, Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, told Votebeat that the change also “simplifies the process” and would reduce the cost of election operations and equipment. But local election officials said they aren’t so sure of that, and are still determining how it will work and what it could cost counties. The bill doesn’t allocate any funding for counties to implement the changes. Read Article

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign sues Elon Musk, alleging million-dollar check giveaways were voter bribes | Bruna Horvath/NBC

A Wisconsin watchdog group has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk claiming that he unlawfully bribed voters with million-dollar checks and $100 giveaways in the state’s latest Supreme Court election. Wisconsin Democracy Campaign — a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that investigates election transparency — along with two Wisconsin voters, filed the suit against Musk, his super PAC America PAC and another Musk-owned entity called the United States of America Inc. In the suit, the plaintiffs claimed that Musk and his entities violated state laws that prohibit vote bribery and unauthorized lotteries. It also accuses Musk of conducting civil conspiracy and acting as a public nuisance. Read Article

Why stricter voting laws no longer help Republicans but the party is pushing tougher requirements anyway | The Economist

“The Republicans should pray for rain”—the title of a paper published by a trio of political scientists in 2007—has been an axiom of American elections for years. The logic was straightforward: each inch of election-day showers, the study found, dampened turnout by 1%. Lower turnout gave Republicans an edge because the party’s affluent electorate had the resources to vote even when it was inconvenient. Their opponents, less so. Yet Mr Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party has scrambled the voting coalitions that underpinned the pray-for-rain logic. Rich people used to vote Republican and poor people Democrat. Read Article

Justice Department targets Arizona and Wisconsin over compliance with federal election law | Alexander Shur andJen Fifield/Votebeat

The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to election officials in at least two key swing states, threatening action against the states if they don’t comply with provisions of a 2002 federal election law. Lawyers from the department’s civil rights division sent letters in recent weeks to both Arizona and Wisconsin. The Arizona letter said that state officials are not properly verifying voters’ identities as dictated by the Help America Vote Act, and warned of a lawsuit. The Wisconsin letter said the Wisconsin Elections Commission is not properly resolving administrative complaints as required by the same law, and threatened to withhold federal election funds over that issue. The Justice Department recently sued North Carolina also, claiming that the state has not been properly verifying voter identity. Read Article

National: Trump budget proposal would slash more than 1,000 CISA jobs | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

The fiscal 2026 budget proposal President Donald Trump unveiled last week would make deep cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency workforce, with a goal of eliminating 1,083 positions and chopping its budget by $495 million, to $2.4 billion. That’s a slightly deeper total cut than an earlier budget outline forecast. And a new document produced by the Department of Homeland Security details where those CISA personnel reductions would come from, alongside other documents that show planned decreases to other cybersecurity programs in the federal government. The latest budget documents still don’t offer a full picture of Trump’s plans, as the administration hasn’t produced a full Defense Department budget blueprint, and Congress is awaiting delivery of a rescission package that would allow it to cement some of the federal funding cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency. Read Article

National: Inside Trump’s gutting of the DOJ unit that enforces voting laws | Tierney Sneed and Hannah Rabinowitz/CNN

The Justice Department’s unit tasked with enforcing federal voting laws is down from roughly 30 attorneys to about a half-dozen, as most of its career staff has departed in the face of escalating pressure tactics from the Trump administration. The mass exodus that has whittled the voting section down to a fifth of its normal size came after a relentless campaign by the department’s political leaders to smear the work of the longtime attorneys, dismiss noncontroversial cases, and reassign career supervisors. During President Donald Trump’s first term, DOJ officials forced voting section attorneys to abandon the more high-profile work that had often been opposed by conservatives. But the gutting of the section during Trump’s second administration goes far beyond that, according to former department attorneys and outside voter advocates. Read Article

National: DOJ’s New Top Voting Lawyer Worked for Leading Anti-Voting Law Firm | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

The new top voting lawyer at the Department of Justice was until recently an attorney and activist for a leading anti-voting legal group that has worked for years to spread fear about illegal voting and press election officials to tighten voting rules. The lawyer, Maureen Riordan, also has appeared with Cleta Mitchell — the right-wing activist who played a key role in President Donald Trump’s failed bid to subvert the results of the 2020 election — backing Mitchell’s pledge to “reclaim our election systems from the left.” Riordan’s appointment, which has not been formally announced by the DOJ, underscores the sharp reverse the department and its voting section have undergone under Trump — from their previous role as a largely consistent defender of voting rights to instead working actively to undermine them. Read Article

National: What the REAL ID saga tells us about proof-of-citizenship requirements | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

You know the REAL ID that you need to have if you want to board a plane? The deadline to get one was supposed to be May 7. But just days before that, the Department of Homeland Security hit pause, again. Twenty years after Congress passed the REAL ID Act, too many people still didn’t have the right kind of ID, so enforcement was delayed — as it has been multiple times. It’s easy to see why. In states like Kentucky, residents seeking a REAL ID faced long lines, limited DMV appointments, and widespread confusion over which documents to bring. In Illinois, hundreds of complaints poured in from residents who were denied IDs despite having paperwork they thought would qualify. Some were turned away because of paperwork errors, others because staff misinterpreted the rules. Meanwhile, nationwide, millions of Americans still lack a REAL ID, and once the law takes effect, they would face added hurdles if they wanted to travel by plane. So what does this have to do with voting? Read Article

National: Google’s New AI Tool Generates Convincing Deepfakes of Riots, Conflict, and Election Fraud | Andrew R. Chow and Billy Perrigo/Time Magazine

Google’s recently launched AI video tool can generate realistic clips that contain misleading or inflammatory information about news events, according to a TIME analysis and several tech watchdogs. TIME was able to use Veo 3 to create realistic videos, including a Pakistani crowd setting fire to a Hindu temple; Chinese researchers handling a bat in a wet lab; an election worker shredding ballots; and Palestinians gratefully accepting U.S. aid in Gaza. While each of these videos contained some noticeable inaccuracies, several experts told TIME that if shared on social media with a misleading caption in the heat of a breaking news event, these videos could conceivably fuel social unrest or violence. Read Article

Arizona: Mohave County supervisor pushes for legal immunity for hand counted ballots | Howard Fischer/Arizona Capitol Times

Ron Gould contends that Mayes constitutes a “real threat” to his powers and duties to certify elections simply because he believes that supervisors should be able to order a complete hand count. However, so far, he has been unable to make his arguments after a trial judge last year dismissed his lawsuit, stating that he had not shown any imminent threat of prosecution. Now Gould is asking the state Court of Appeals to issue a ruling declaring he has a legal right to pursue the case and directing Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bradley Astrowsky to let him present his evidence. The new bid is getting a fight from Assistant Attorney General Alexander Samuels. He is telling the appellate court that Gould’s claims are “speculative,” especially as he has “not articulated a concrete plan to violate the law” in the future. And there’s something else. Samuels pointed out that state law requires the use of electronic tabulation of ballots, not the kind of hand count that Gould has pushed for in the past and may be seeking in the future. He noted that Gould is not challenging the legality of that law, but simply wants a declaration that he can’t be prosecuted for breaking it. Read Article

Connecticut Governor forces legislators to keep elections watchdog independent | Mark Pazniokas/CT Mirror

Facing a potential veto from Gov. Ned Lamont, the General Assembly agreed Wednesday to delete a portion of a bipartisan bill that would have ended a half century of independence by Connecticut’s elections watchdog. Lamont objected to a portion of Senate Bill 1405 that would have subjected the appointment of an executive director of the State Elections Enforcement Commission to approval by a legislative committee, the House and Senate. Rather than risk a veto of a bill already approved by both chambers and on its way to Lamont’s desk, legislative leaders agreed to insert language into an unrelated fiscal bill that makes the change sought by Lamont, the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and others. Read Article

Illinois: US Supreme Court to decide if challenge to grace period for mail-in ballots can proceed | Maureen Groppe/USA Today

The Supreme Court will decide whether a GOP congressman can challenge Illinois’ decision to count mail-in ballots that are cast, but not received, before the end of Election Day. Republicans have been trying to end that practice − adopted by many states − through lawsuits and a March executive order from President Donald Trump that is being litigated. They argue that states are illegally extending the election beyond the date set by federal law. But when Rep. Michael Bost, R-Illinois, and two presidential electors tried to make that case, lower courts said they hadn’t been sufficiently harmed by the policy so they couldn’t sue. The Supreme Court on June 2 said it will decide if the lawsuit can move forward. Read Article

Iowa Governor signs bills on election recounts, voter citizenship verification | Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed two bills related to Iowa’s election laws Monday, making changes to the state’s citizenship verification for voting and election recount processes. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, alongside several county auditors and some of the lawmakers who worked on the bills during the 2025 legislative session, joined Reynolds at the signing. House File 954, signed Monday, was the bill Pate proposed to better allow his office to check the citizenship status and other eligibility requirements of those on Iowa’s voter rolls. The second measure, House File 928, makes changes to Iowa’s system for election recounts, including setting new limits on who can request recounts. For statewide and federal races, the election results would have to have a 0.15% difference in votes between candidates for a candidate to request a recount. For state legislative and local races, a difference of 1% or 50 votes would be required. This would stop recounts in future elections similar to those requested in recent elections, like the 2024 election recount for the race between U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Christina Bohannan, that was within 0.2%. Read Article

Louisiana may finally buy new voting machines after Legislature approves new bidding process | Alyse Pfeil/The Times-Picayune

Louisiana may finally be on track to replace its decades-old voting machines, after years of controversies over how to do so. The Louisiana Legislature gave the Secretary of State the green light to use a new bidding process to pick a company that will replace the more than 10,000 machines that officials say are increasingly difficult to keep functioning. “Our machines are 35 years old, it’s impossible to find parts, and they don’t produce an auditable paper record for each vote cast,” Secretary of State Nancy Landry told lawmakers on the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee last month. Read Article

Michigan House sues Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over election training materials | Clara Hendrickson/Detroit Free Press

The Michigan House of Representatives filed a lawsuit Thursday, June 5, against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, transforming the fight between Republican lawmakers and the state’s chief elections officer over election training materials into a legal battle. House Republicans have repeatedly argued that they have a right to review the material to ensure that election officials receive proper training that complies with Michigan election law. Benson, meanwhile, has raised concerns that some of the information requested could compromise election security and fears it could end up in the wrong hands. The lawsuit comes after Republican lawmakers in the state House voted to hold Benson in contempt for withholding some election training materials requested by the House Oversight Committee, which subpoenaed Benson and the Michigan Department of State. Read Article

Nevada’s bipartisan deal: Voter ID law and more ballot drop boxes | Rio Yamat/Associated Press

Facing a legislature dominated by Democrats, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo stood before Nevada lawmakers earlier this year with a message that some did not expect to go far: “Set aside partisan politics.” It was a plea that might have seemed more aspirational than realistic, given the country’s deep polarization. Yet it set the stage for one of the session’s most unexpected outcomes — a bipartisan agreement to bring voter ID requirements to the perennial battleground state by next year’s midterm elections. In a deal that came together in the waning days of the session, the Democratic-controlled Legislature approved a bill that combined a requirement for voter ID — a conservative priority across the country and something that has been on Lombardo’s legislative wish list — with a Democratic-backed measure to add more drop boxes for mailed ballots in the state’s most populous counties. Read Article

North Carolina: Changing of the guard. New and outgoing elections directors offer opposing perspectives. | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Some might say newly appointed State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes wrote his own job into law. As general counsel for the Speaker of the House, Hayes had a hand in writing Senate Bill 382, the Tropical Storm Helene relief bill that also shifted election appointment power from the Democratic governor to the newly elected Republican state auditor. As a result, the State Board of Elections got a new Republican majority that then chose a new executive director. After a state court allowed the law to go into effect, the board chose Hayes, a Republican attorney whose election experience includes defending North Carolina’s voter ID law, legislators’ redistricting plans and most recently, Senate Bill 382. “So I worked on the legislation, I’ve defended the legislation, and now I’m here,” Hayes said in a recent interview. Read Article

Ohio secretary of state pushes new security directive for county election boards | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Monday announced a new security directive for the state’s 88 boards of elections, targeting a broad range of protocols and security controls designed to safeguard election systems that enjoy diminished federal support. In a May 29 directive, LaRose directs the state’s county boards of elections to strengthen their physical security, bolster their cybersecurity practices and comply with Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. The directive, the sixth to come from LaRose since he took office in 2019, covers a broad swath of tasks, from implementing cybersecurity awareness training to ensuring websites can withstand heavy traffic. He notes in the directive that while similar work had previously been supported by federal funding from the Help America Vote Act, such funding sources can no longer be consistently relied upon. Instead, LaRose wrote, he’s asking Gov. Mike DeWine and the state legislature for funds — $10,000 per county — so counties will be able to implement his directive. Read Article

Pennsylvania Senate committee advancing election bills, starting small | Jordan Wilkie/WITF

Any effort to update Pennsylvania’s elections law is going to run through state Sen. Cris Dush’s State Government Committee. No matter what changes House Democrats pass, they are going to need some buy-in from the Jefferson County Republican. Dush’s committee has not reviewed any major election issues this session, including the omnibus election reform bill passed on a party line vote in the House in May. Next up for the Senate State Government Committee is a technical bill to bar voting systems from including voter selections in a barcode as part of a printed ballot card. Read Article

Texas to expand voting on weekends for next presidential election | Jeremy Wallace/Houston Chronicle

Texas will no longer have a three-day gap between the end of early voting and Election Day under a bill passed by the Texas Legislature that is heading to Gov. Greg Abbott. Currently, Texas ends in-person early voting on the Friday before Election Day and restarts voting on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. for Election Day. But under the new changes, the gap is gone and Texas will essentially have one voting period that runs for 13 days. The bill by state Sen. Bob Hall, a North Texas Republican, had big support among Democrats too. “What it means is we’ll now have two weekends of early voting instead of just the one,” said State Rep. John Bucy, a Williamson County Democrat. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission chairwoman responds to warning letter from federal officials | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

U.S. Department of Justice officials are threatening to withhold funding from the Wisconsin Elections Commission over alleged violations of federal law but a top state election official says there’s no funding to cut. The Democratic chairwoman of the commission told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the commission doesn’t currently receive the funding federal officials are threatening to withhold and disputed the merits of the DOJ accusations. Even so, the Republican leaders of the state Legislature’s budget-writing committee on June 5 decided to delay voting on funding the state elections agency until they can review the DOJ matter further. Read Article

National: Prove citizenship to vote? For some married women, it might not be so easy. | Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

Some Republican-led states are moving to require voters to prove their citizenship, as Texas advances a controversial measure that could make it harder for eligible voters to get on the rolls because of changed names, mislaid paperwork or database errorsVoting rights advocates and Democrats warn the plans could prove particularly tricky for people who change their names, including women who do so when they get married or divorced, because their legal names don’t match the ones on their birth certificates. The emerging laws are part of a GOP push led by President Donald Trump to tighten requirements to cast ballots. Voting by noncitizens is both illegal and rare, and the attempts to crack down on voting by foreigners could drive down participation from a much larger pool of legitimate voters, according to election experts. Read Article

Controversial ExpressVote XL voting machine gaining use in New York elections | Emilie Munson/The Albany Times-Union

Last week, roughly 32,000 people cast their ballots in school board elections in Monroe County using a voting machine that’s been a source of controversy in New York for years. It was the largest number of votes cast on an ExpressVote XL machine in New York to date. And in Monroe and other counties, the device is gaining a foothold in the state, even as a movement to stop its use is brewing. The ExpressVote XL is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit seeking to block its use in New York. A group of Democrats in the Legislature are also trying to pass a bill to prevent the devices from being used in elections. An executive order by President Donald J. Trump opposing voting systems like the ExpressVote XL also looms. Read Article

National: CISA loses nearly all top officials as purge continues | Eric Geller/Cybersecurity Dive

Virtually all of the top officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have departed the agency or will do so this month, according to an email obtained by Cybersecurity Dive, further widening a growing void in expertise and leadership at the government’s lead cyber defense force at a time when tensions with foreign adversaries are escalating. Five of CISA’s six operational divisions and six of its 10 regional offices will have lost top leaders by the end of the month, the agency’s new deputy director, Madhu Gottumukkala, informed employees in an email on Thursday. Read Article

National: The Trump Administration’s Dismissal of Voting Rights Lawsuits | Chiraag Bains/Just Security

Congress created the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in 1957 and authorized the federal government to seek court injunctions against efforts to interfere with the right to vote. Further empowered by the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) and other laws, the Division has worked to eliminate racial discrimination and protect the right to vote for almost 70 years. It helped stop North Carolina from implementing restrictions that a court said targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision” and has compelled jurisdictions from New Jersey to California to provide bilingual ballot materials, among many other interventions over the years. Even with decades of progress, voter suppression persists today, making robust enforcement of these statutes critical to ensuring all eligible voters can participate fully in the political process. Under the Trump Administration, however, the Civil Rights Division has reversed course. On Jan. 22, 2025, Justice Department political appointees reportedly ordered a freeze on all new civil rights cases, stopping even the filing of complaints and settlements that had been approved internally after potentially lengthy investigations and negotiations. They later directed career attorneys to dismiss their pending cases, in most instances reportedly “without meeting with them and offering a rationale.” All but three career attorneys have resigned or been removed from the Division’s Voting Section. Read Article

National: Federal Election Assistance Commission cancels solicitation for PR contract | Noah Zuss/PR Week

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has canceled a solicitation seeking PR firms to provide comprehensive communications services. The agency search was canceled this month because the sole contracting officer is no longer working for the federal agency, according to solicitation documents from the government. There is no longer a “warranted contracting officer at the agency to process this procurement” as of May 12, the federal government said. The contract was set to run for one year, starting on September 1, according to solicitation documents, which did not include a budget. The contract sought PR and communications services in three sections: strategic media services, foundational collateral and content and social media. The RFP was released on April 24. Read Article

National: Trump administration begins cracking down on federal employees’ use of leave for voting | Eric Katz/Government Executive

With some key primary elections at the state level occurring in the coming weeks, the Trump administration has begun notifying employees they can no longer use paid administrative leave to vote. The reminder, so far sent out at least to various agencies within the Agriculture Department, complies with an executive order President Trump signed on his first day in office. That order revoked a bevy of previously issued presidential actions, including an order President Biden signed early in his term to allow the leave category for federal employees looking to vote. In March, Trump signed another executive order calling on agency heads to “cease all agency actions implementing” Biden’s order and, within 90 days, lay out what steps they have taken to implement the new directive. Read Article

National: Cyberdefense cuts could sap U.S. response to China hacks, insiders say | Joseph Menn/The Washington Post

As senior Trump administration officials say they want to amp up cyberattacks against China and other geopolitical rivals, some government veterans warn that such an approach would set the United States up for retaliation that it is increasingly unprepared to counter. Alexei Bulazel, senior director for cyber at the National Security Council, said earlier this month that he wanted to fight back against China’s aggressive pre-positioning of hacking capabilities within U.S. critical infrastructure and “destigmatize” offensive operations, making their use an open part of U.S. strategy for the first time. Read Article

Arizona: Ruling lets Cochise County throw out local election result over mail-ballot mistake | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

An Arizona judge is allowing Cochise County officials to throw out the results of a local tax election after challengers identified a requirement in state law that they said the county didn’t follow — one that applies only to a specific kind of election and that other counties haven’t followed in the past. The case involves the county’s May 2023 all-mail election on a proposed tax to fund construction of a new jail. The Arizona Court of Appeals found last year that the county erred by not sending ballots to its 11,000 inactive voters. Because of that error, the county supervisors’ plan to redo the election is reasonable and legal, visiting Judge Michael Latham of the Cochise County Superior Court ruled May 22. Arizona counties typically send ballots only to active voters, but the appeals court found that for local taxing district elections — such as the Cochise jail election — the law required officials to send ballots to inactive voters as well. Read Article