Arizona: Maricopa County recorder privately lobbied supervisors for election control | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap privately pleaded with two county supervisors to support his bid for more power over the county’s elections, text messages obtained by Votebeat show. The messages, which county supervisors provided to Votebeat in response to a public-records request, include previously unreported behind-the-scenes conversations and confrontations as Heap negotiated with the supervisors board early this year over how to divide election duties in the closely watched swing county. “I really thought you guys would come through for me,” Heap wrote to Supervisor Mark Stewart, a fellow Republican, in March after a counterproposal from the supervisors. “This was the last straw for me, Mark.” Heap sued supervisors in June after the negotiations over an agreement governing the division of election duties fell apart. County supervisors countersued this month, and the lawsuit is pending in county court. The breakdown means that as the time to start preparing for next year’s midterm elections approaches, the division of duties between the recorder and supervisors remains in dispute. Read Article

California: Was a dog sent a ballot? Inside the DOJ’s strange lawsuit seeking state voter data | Sara Libby/San Francisco Chronicle

When the Department of Justice sued Orange County last month amid a squabble over election integrity, some legal experts were perplexed. Republicans have long pushed thin arguments that voter fraud has buoyed Democrats. But why was the Trump administration seeking information that the county considered clearly private — including the Social Security numbers and voting preferences of people whose registration had been canceled? The answer, in part, may rest upon who wrote the lawsuit: Michael Gates, the deputy assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights. Gates was until February the city attorney in Huntington Beach, where he made it his mission to antagonize the state’s liberal leaders. Read Article

Georgia Election Board seeks DOJ aid to again investigate 2020 election | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Three right-wing members of the State Election Board revived a fight over the 2020 presidential election Wednesday and called for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to intervene. The surprise move by the Republican board members — the same three praised by Trump as “pit bulls” during a campaign rally last fall — gives new life to skepticism of the president’s narrow loss in Georgia in 2020. While many elected Republicans in Georgia have said they want to move on from 2020 after Trump’s undisputed win last year, the State Election Board remains focused on its questions about Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 recount. Although multiple recounts, state investigations and court cases upheld the 2020 election, Trump’s supporters continue to make unproven allegations of fraud. Read Article

Michigan is consolidating election precincts. Will voters face longer lines? | Hayley Harding/Bridge Michigan

Across Michigan, thousands of voters are getting new precincts — and in some cases new polling places — as officials redraw their maps to take advantage of a new state law that allows for more consolidation of precincts. The new law, which increased the maximum size of a precinct from 2,999 to 4,999 voters, is a consequence of recent voter-approved initiatives to expand access to early and absentee voting, which Michiganders have embraced. The law went into effect early last year, and some communities put changes into effect before the 2024 general election. Others, including Livonia in Wayne County, will run their newly consolidated precincts for the first time next week during local primaries. The shift could eventually save communities a lot of money, experts say. But realizing those savings will take some time, and voters could encounter challenges as they get reassigned to renumbered precincts, different precincts, or new polling places, especially if clerks don’t equip consolidated polling sites to handle a larger pool of voters. Read Article

North Carolina: All-GOP Appeals Court panel ruled against Stein in elections board dispute | The Carolina Journal

Three Republican members of the North Carolina Court of Appeals issued the April order that blocked a lower court ruling favoring Democratic Gov. Josh Stein in a dispute over state elections board appointments. Appeals Court rules blocked release of the names of participating judges for 90 days. Now the court has revealed that Judges Julee Flood, Michael Stading, and Tom Murry issued the April 30 order. All three are Republicans. Republicans outnumber Democrats, 12-3, on the state’s second-highest court. The Appeals Court’s action paved the way for State Auditor Dave Boliek to make new appointments to state and county elections boards. The state Supreme Court later split, 5-2, in upholding appellate judges’ decision. Read Article

Oklahoma: Textbook Publishers Reveal How They Incorporated Controversial New Standards | Jennifer Palmer/Oklahoma Watch

The state’s social studies standards, ideologically aligned with conservative values, American exceptionalism and Christianity, will guide a committee’s review of dozens of textbooks and materials for use in Oklahoma classrooms. The social studies standards call for high school students to study the 2020 elections by looking into election fraud theories such as batch dumps and mail-in balloting risks using graphs and other information. Most made little effort to embrace the controversial aspects of the new standards, an Oklahoma Watch review of submitted materials found. Some made minor adjustments. And a few refused to do business with Oklahoma altogether. Read Article

South Dakota election office publishes voter list labeling thousands as public assistance applicants | Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight

Thousands of South Dakotans have been publicly labeled as applicants for government assistance and thousands more have had their email address and phone number exposed, due to a new state law and the way the state’s election office is implementing it. Although the legislation creating the law received some Democratic votes, it’s a product of the Republican-dominated Legislature. Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed it into law and Republican Secretary of State Monae Johnson is carrying out its provisions. Several legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, are now telling South Dakota Searchlight they did not intend for the law to expose sensitive information — especially the identity of public assistance applicants. Read Article

Texas Senate once again tries to give the attorney general authority to prosecute election crimes | Eleanor Klibanoff/The Texas Tribune

The Texas Senate voted 17-12 Wednesday to preliminarily approve a bill that would allow the attorney general to independently prosecute election crimes without waiting to be invited by a local district attorney, a long-standing priority for the office’s GOP incumbent, Ken Paxton. A similar proposal stalled out just before the finish line during the regular session, with the House and Senate unable to agree on how quickly the attorney general should be allowed to take the case from local authorities. This time around, both chambers are starting from the same spot on that issue, directing the attorney general to immediately step in and take over election fraud cases. But a potential new line of disagreement has opened. In setting the agenda for the Legislature’s ongoing special session, Gov. Greg Abbott asked lawmakers to grant this authority to the attorney general with a constitutional amendment, after Texas’ highest criminal court ruled in 2021 that the state constitution bars the agency from unilaterally inserting itself into criminal cases. Read Article

Wisconsin election officials wary of internet-linked e-pollbook options | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

More jurisdictions around the country are using commercial electronic pollbooks to check in voters, but many Wisconsin officials say they’re reluctant to give data to outside companies — and especially worried about using products that connect to the internet. Currently, the only e-pollbook option Wisconsin allows is Badger Book, which about 400 municipalities use. The product was designed by the Wisconsin Elections Commission and doesn’t connect to the internet. But it’s expensive and has limited features, clerks say, and officials in the largest jurisdictions, such as Madison, worry they wouldn’t get enough tech support if they used Badger Book. The worst-case scenarios for e-pollbooks getting hacked would be somebody stealing voters’ personal information, deactivating voter records, or making it look like a person had already voted, said Megan Maier, the deputy director of research and partnerships at Verified Voting. Meier and other experts said there is no known case of that happening. That risk would be mitigated, Maier said, if polling sites all had paper pollbooks printed out in addition to e-pollbooks. Read Article

National: The Supreme Court Is Writing a Slow-Motion Eulogy for One of America’s Greatest Achievements | Maureen Edobor/Slate

Next month marks the 60th anniversary of the passing of the Voting Rights Act—a law often celebrated as the “crown jewel” of the Civil Rights Movement. Signed in 1965 after years of organizing and unimaginable sacrifice, it was meant to realize the constitutional promise that the right to vote would not be denied or abridged on account of race. Yet, as we approach this milestone, we find ourselves not in a moment of reflection or rededication but in a state of legal free fall. The Supreme Court has scheduled arguments next term on Louisiana’s racially gerrymandered congressional map, and the court as early as next week may put on hold and set for argument a case in which the 8th Circuit held that private plaintiffs have no right to sue to enforce Section 2 of the act. These pending decisions threaten to gut what remains of this once powerful statute, which has already been largely hollowed out by the Roberts court over the past decade-plus. Read Article

Arizona election officials unload on Trump’s CISA after website hack | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Arizona election officials say a hack targeting a statewide online portal for political candidates resulted in the defacement and replacement of multiple candidate photos with the late Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. While officials say the threat is contained and the vulnerability has been fixed, they also blasted the lack of support they’ve received from the federal government, claiming the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is no longer a reliable partner in election security under the Trump administration. Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for Arizona’s Secretary of State, told CyberScoop that his office first became aware that something odd was happening on June 23, while many officials were at a conference. One user managing the candidate portal noticed that one of the candidate images uploaded to the site didn’t “make sense” because it appeared to be a picture of Khomeini. The next day they were notified that candidate profiles going back years had also been defaced with the same picture. Read Article

North Carolina elections board OKs changes to military, overseas voting | Theresa Opeka/The Carolina Journal

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) voted unanimously on several items at its meeting Monday morning, including changes to voting for military and overseas voters. The changes stem from protests by Republican Justice Jefferson Griffin, who challenged Democratic candidate Justice Allison Riggs for a seat on the state Supreme Court. In a legal dispute that moved through state and federal court, Griffin challenged more than 65,000 ballots cast in November’s General Election. After months of litigation, Griffin conceded to Riggs six months after the election, but not before changes were made to the way overseas and military ballots were counted. The Court of Appeals ruled that military and overseas voters must comply with the photo ID requirement when voting absentee in state and local nonfederal contests. Also, “never residents,” those with a family connection to North Carolina, for example, their parents lived here before moving overseas, are not eligible to vote in state and local elections, but can vote in federal elections. Read Article

National: Gabbard claim of anti-Trump conspiracy not backed by declassified documents | Byron Tau and Eric Tucker/Associated Press

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this month declassified material she claimed proved a “treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration in 2016 to politicize U.S. intelligence in service of casting doubt on the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory. As evidence, Gabbard cited newly declassified emails from Obama officials and a 5-year-old classified House report in hopes of undermining the intelligence community’s conclusion Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to boost Trump and denigrate his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Russia’s activities during the 2016 election remain some of the most examined events in recent history. The Kremlin’s campaign and the subsequent U.S. government response were the subject of at least five major investigations by the Republican-led House and Senate intelligence committee; two Justice Department special counsels; and the department’s inspector general. Read Article

National: Judge limits a small part of a court order blocking Trump’s election overhaul as lawsuits continue | Ali Swenson and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

A federal judge on Friday modified part of a previous ruling that blocked much of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order seeking to overhaul elections in the U.S. The minor change affects just one aspect of a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper granted on June 13 in a case filed by Democratic state attorneys general. The judge said Friday that the part of Trump’s order directing certain federal agencies to assess people’s U.S. citizenship when they ask for voter registration forms will now only be blocked in the 19 states that filed the lawsuit. Election law experts said the modification will have little, if any, practical effect because a judge in a different lawsuit filed against the executive order also blocked the federal agencies from obeying the mandate in all 50 states. Read Article

National: House Republicans endorse stricter state and federal-led voter roll purges despite dearth of evidence on fraud | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

In a congressional hearing on state voter registration practices Tuesday, Republicans on the House Administration Committee were united around common sentiments: It is too easy for citizens to register to vote and too easy for them to stay on voter rolls, states aren’t doing enough to remove ineligible voters, and it’s all led to the country’s elections being vulnerable to mass voter fraud and noncitizen voting. There was little evidence presented to back up most of those claims. Yet, the hearing focused on how states and the federal government could better review voter registration databases, with lawmakers hearing from two conservative nonprofit representatives and a North Carolina voter who was wrongly removed from the state’s voter rolls last year. Read Article

National: Administration Defying Court By Stonewalling on Anti-Voting Order, Plaintiffs Say | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

The Trump administration is defying a court order by refusing to say how federal agencies may be implementing President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting executive order, pro-voting groups and Democrats alleged in a filing Friday. Among the order’s directives that lawyers for the administration have failed to provide answers about: How is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allowing its databases to be used to purge voters? How will the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) punish states for continuing to offer a grace period for mail ballots that arrive after Election Day? And how will the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — an independent agency — withhold funds from states that don’t comply with aspects of the order? Read Article

National: U.S. to Curtail Practice of Assessing Fairness of Foreign Elections | Robbie Gramer and Alexander Ward/Wall Street Journal

The U.S. plans to stop commenting on the fairness, integrity and legitimacy of foreign elections, a major shift away from a decadeslong practice of promoting democratic elections abroad. A new instruction, delivered in a Thursday memorandum signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, orders statements on foreign elections to focus on congratulating the winning candidate and “avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.” The State Department should only make public statements about foreign elections if “there is a clear and compelling U.S. foreign policy interest to do so,” according to the memo, which cited the “the administration’s emphasis on national sovereignty.” Read Article

National: A State Agenda for Election Security and Resiliency | Derek Tisler and Chris McIsaac/Brennan Center for Justice

The 2024 election was widely regarded as an administrative success. It went off largely without a hitch, with only minor disruptions to voting. And a decisive victory by Donald Trump in the presidential campaign, paired with a prompt concession by Kamala Harris, helped avoid a long and contentious process of determining the winner, which might have eroded the perception of a well-run election. Yet there were serious attempts at disruption, including bomb threats at polling places, cyberattacks on election systems, and destruction of ballot drop boxes. That these incidents failed to have a major impact is a testament to the planning, preparation, and response of election officials and law enforcement. Still, these incidents highlight the need for policymakers to double down on their commitment to the election resiliency policies and practices that made 2024 such a success. Read Article

Arizona: Hackers who breached election website aimed at other targets, too | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona officials say they have “moderate confidence” that the Iranian government or its affiliates are responsible for a cyberattack that breached the state’s candidate web portal last month, and say the same actors attempted to breach servers for other agencies in Arizona and elsewhere. The hacker gained access to a server at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office on June 23 and began changing candidate profile photos that appear on the state’s election results website, according to office officials. The hacker changed all of the photos to the same image — a red and black image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution that established Iran as an Islamic republic. Read Article

California: They hope to form a new state. Shasta County’s top elections official is paying attention. | Nevin Kallepalli and Madison Holcomb /Shasta Scout

Last Saturday, less than a thousand people cast votes on an issue they hope will soon determine the fate of 40 million Californians. New California State (NCS), a movement attempting to separate from California to form its own state, held the July 12 election in order to approve a provisional constitution. According to NCS, participants representing more than 50 of California’s 58 counties voted, with some making long drives to reach one of the 26 NCS precincts. In Shasta County, ballots were cast in an unassuming conference room at the Redding Red Lion Hotel. One especially noteworthy voter was Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters (ROV) Clint Curtis, the public official tasked with running the county’s official California election process. Many of the same local activists who have consistently cast doubt on the integrity of the Shasta Election Office over the last several years helped administer the event. Read Article

Colorado: Longtime critic of voting machines charged in firebomb attack | Christina A. Cassidy and Colleen Slevin/Associated Press

A longtime critic of voting machines and local government has been charged with arson for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail-like device into the office holding the voting equipment in his Colorado mountain community. William Wayne Bryant, in a brief court appearance Wednesday, was advised of the charges presented against him in the June 12 firebombing of a county building in Pagosa Springs. The overnight attack sparked a fire that damaged Dominion Voting Systems equipment in the county clerk’s office and damaged the assessor’s office upstairs, police said. Court documents show Bryant faces two counts of arson and one count of using an explosive or incendiary device. Read Article

Kansas: Federal court rules legislators tried to suppress speech with 2021 advance voting law | Anna Kaminski/Kansas Reflector

A federal court ruling permanently blocked a 2021 Kansas law that banned groups from sending advance ballot applications to voters, finding that state lawmakers tried to suppress free speech. The case focused on the prefilled, mailed ballots that voting organizations sent to hundreds of thousands of Kansans leading up to the 2020 presidential election, which was rife with false accusations of illegitimate results nationwide. Danielle Lang, senior director for voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement the recent court decision affirms that encouraging voter participation is protected under the First Amendment. The center was one of three attorney groups arguing against the ban. Read Article

Michigan becomes latest target of Justice Department inquiry on voter roll maintenance | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The U.S. Justice Department is asking Michigan for a copy of its voter rolls and information about how the state maintains them, as well as a series of questions about its high levels of voter registration. In its letter to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, dated July 21 and obtained by Votebeat, the Justice Department also said it has received a complaint about the state’s compliance with a provision in federal law requiring all voters to be assigned unique identifiers. It is the latest in a series of letters the Justice Department has sent to states about their management of voter rolls, following directives in President Donald Trump’s March executive order on elections. Read Article

North Dakota: US Supreme Court blocks ruling that would undermine the Voting Rights Act | Lawrence Hurley/NBC

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked an appeals court ruling that would gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The decision grants an application brought by Native American tribes, putting on hold the decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Justice Brett Kavanaugh had temporarily blocked the lower court ruling a day before it was due to go into effect, giving the justices more time to decide what next steps to take. The brief, unsigned order noted that three conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, would have denied the application. Read Article

As Texas embraces federal immigration database to verify voter citizenship, some experts are worried | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas election officials are praising a revamped federal immigration database that they’ve begun using to validate the citizenship of registered voters. Texas is one of the earliest states to start using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ overhauled SAVE database to check voters’ eligibility. That comes after the Trump administration, in its campaign to eliminate the risk of noncitizen voting, made the database free for states to use and easier to search. But some experts and watchdogs warn that the changes haven’t necessarily made the system more reliable. They say the administration hasn’t publicly released enough information about it, which makes it difficult to assess how complete and accurate the search results are, and whether there are enough safeguards to protect people’s privacy and voting rights. Read Article

Wisconsin Elections Commission plans order designed to stop repeat of Madison ballot snafu | Sarah Lehr/Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin’s Elections Commission will work with Madison officials on an order designed to improve city policies and procedures, so that a recent snafu involving nearly 200 uncounted ballots doesn’t happen again. The commission learned in December that 193 absentee ballots from the city of Madison went uncounted in the Nov. 5 election. Those ballots would not have changed the outcome of any race or referendum at the local, state or national level. In January, the bipartisan commission voted to launch its own investigation into how the problem occurred and why it took more than a month for it to be reported to the agency. As part of that investigation, Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, and Don Millis, a Republican, took depositions from more than a dozen city and county staff members. Read Article

Wyoming: Judge Dismisses Challenge to Proof of Citizenship Law, Leaving Barriers for Voters in Place | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

A federal judge dismissed a major lawsuit challenging Wyoming’s new proof of citizenship voter registration law. In an order issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl, appointed by former President Barack Obama, ruled the plaintiffs in the case failed to show they would be personally harmed by the law, which took effect earlier this month. The law requires voters to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers, in order to register to vote. Voting rights advocates have warned it could disenfranchise eligible voters who don’t have matching or ready access to those documents including women, rural and low-income voters. Read Article

National: Jan. 6 Rioters Are the New Hot Event in Town for Republicans | James Fanelli/The Wall Street Journal

Former Jan. 6 defendants are the new draw at local Republican fundraisers, helping to fill seats at normally sleepy events while getting a platform to tell their version of the Capitol riot. The Davis County Republican Party in the Salt Lake City suburbs held its annual Abraham Lincoln Day Dinner in March at $75 a plate. One marquee speaker was a pardoned defendant who federal prosecutors said knocked back a shot of Fireball whiskey in the conference room of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “This was not an insurrection,” the speaker, Treniss Evans, told the crowd. “This was Kent State. This was Tiananmen Square.” It has been nearly six months since President Trump granted pardons and commutations to the roughly 1,500 people criminally charged in the attack on the Capitol. The pardons initially unsettled some Republicans who thought Trump was showing leniency to defendants who attacked law-enforcement officers, but the GOP is increasingly willing to reintegrate these former defendants into the fold. Read Article

National: Justice Department requests voter rolls and election data from states | Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

The Trump administration and its allies have launched a multipronged effort to gather data on voters and inspect voting equipment, sparking concern among local and state election officials about federal interference ahead of the 2026 midterms. The most unusual activity is happening in Colorado — a state that then-candidate Donald Trump lost by 11 points — where a well-connected consultant who says he is working with the White House is asking county clerks whether they will allow the federal government or a third party to physically examine their election equipment. Federal agencies have long offered technical assistance and cybersecurity advice to election officials but have not examined their equipment because election laws tightly limit who has access. Read ArticleRead Article

National: Election Officials Have Been Under Attack For Years. Now The DOJ Wants to Criminally Charge Them | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

In recent months, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sent letters to states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona, and Colorado, pressing for information about voter roll management, demanding to see state voter rolls, and threatening to sue over alleged voting law violations. But the department’s campaign has gone much further. Criminal prosecutors at DOJ sent separate broad requests for information to election officials in at least two states, people who have seen the requests told Democracy Docket. Those letters were first reported by the New York Times, which added that they’re part of a broader initiative at DOJ, still in its early stages, to look into whether it can bring criminal charges against election officials for not doing enough to protect their voting systems against fraud and illegal voting. Read Article