National: Republicans push mail-in voting for the midterms in defiance of Trump | Lisa Kashinsky/Politico

Republicans are making mail-in voting a core part of their midterm battle plans — a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump’s efforts to abolish the practice as they scramble to turn out his base. In Wisconsin, the state party is preparing a full-court press of mailers, emails, phone banks, door knocks and digital ads to get voters to sign up for mail ballots. In Michigan, the Monroe County GOP ran a social media campaign ahead of the fall election urging voters to utilize permanent absentee ballots and is planning an even bigger push next year. In Pennsylvania, where Republicans poured $16 million into boosting the number of GOP voters using mail ballots in 2024, the state party chair called it “a priority” for 2026. The nonprofit Citizens Alliance, which aided efforts to get Republicans to return their mail ballots in Pennsylvania last year, is planning to knock 750,000 doors ahead of the midterms to encourage infrequent voters to embrace the practice. Read Article

National: The Justice Department has now sued 18 states in an effort to access voter data | NPR

The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against four more states as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to access sensitive voter data. The DOJ is also suing one Georgia county, seeking records from the 2020 election. The department has now filed suit against 18 states — mostly Democratic-led, and all states that President Trump lost in the 2020 election — as part of its far-reaching litigation. For months, the Justice Department has been demanding certain states turn over complete, unredacted copies of their voter registration lists, including any driver’s license numbers and parts of voters’ Social Security numbers. Read Article

National: Congress could try to pass new election laws before the 2026 midterms | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have had a lot to say about the rules and laws that govern our elections. Changing them, though, is harder. House Republicans are signaling plans for legislation to inscribe at least some of the party’s election-administration wish list into federal law, including changes to the landmark National Voter Registration Act that would make it easier to remove ineligible voters from the rolls. Republicans have long accused states of failing to appropriately clean their voter rolls, and the U.S. Justice Department has filed a host of lawsuits seeking access to unredacted state voter rolls in what government lawyers have said is an effort to make sure states are complying with their obligations under federal law. Trump issued a sweeping executive order on elections in March, and the White House said last month he is working on a second. But major provisions of the March order have so far been halted by the courts after federal judges found the president lacked the constitutional authority to enact them. Read Article

National: Key lawmaker says Congress likely to kick can down road on cyber information sharing law | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

With a little more than a month left before a foundational cyber threat information sharing law expires for a second time, Congress might have to do another short-term extension as negotiations on a longer deal aren’t yet bearing fruit, a key lawmaker said Tuesday. House Homeland Security Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., said the problem with a long-term extension of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, which provides legal protections to companies to share cyber threat data with the federal government and other companies, is that there are three different views about how to approach it. The Trump administration and some in the Senate want a clean, 10-year reauthorization of the law, which Congress extended last month until Jan. 30 as part of the legislation that ended the government shutdown, after the information sharing law lapsed in October. But a reauthorization without any changes could run into House opposition, Garbarino said. Read Article

National: AI tops cybersecurity in survey of state IT priorities | Colin Wood/StateScoop

In a development that will surprise few who’ve been tracking government, technology or world events more broadly, artificial intelligence has, on average, overtaken all other concerns in state technology offices across the nation. The National Association of State Chief Information Officers, a group that represents state governments’ top IT officials, on Tuesday published its annual list of priorities, which is based on a survey of its membership. In last year’s list, AI was barely edged out for the top slot by cybersecurity, a technical and political concern that has made the list all 20 years since its first edition. But this year, said Doug Robinson, NASCIO’s executive director, AI won and “it wasn’t even close. It’s been a very swift ascension to No. 1.” For state CIOs, generative AI tools represent a means of offsetting workforce shortages that have been slow to repopulate after the COVID-19 pandemic, chatbots to provide residents more personalized experiences when they visit government websites, or a scalpel to shave a few extra hours of work off processing applications for safety-net benefits that will receive less support under the second Donald Trump presidency. Read Article

Colorado Officials Reject Trump’s ‘Pardon’ of a Convicted Election Denier | Jack Healy/The New York Times

President Trump’s pledge to pardon Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines, touched off a new battle on Friday over the fate of perhaps the last high-profile 2020 election denier still behind bars. Democratic leaders in Colorado dismissed the pardon as an empty attempt to bully a Democratic state into freeing one of the president’s political allies. They argued that Mr. Trump had no legal power to overturn Ms. Peters’s conviction in state court. Ms. Peters, the former clerk in conservative-leaning Mesa County, a ranching and oil-and-gas region on the western edge of the state, was sentenced to nine years in prison last year after being found guilty of interfering with voting machines in an effort to prove falsehoods that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump. Read Article

Georgia: ‘Who’s Gonna Stop You?’ Listen to Trump Press Georgia Speaker Over 2020 Vote | Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim/The New York Times

In a newly obtained recording of a phone call from late 2020, President Trump can be heard pressing the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives to hold a special legislative session to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss. After citing false conspiracy theories of election fraud in Georgia, Mr. Trump told David Ralston, the speaker at the time, in the call on Dec. 7, 2020, that he could justify calling a special legislative session by saying it was “for transparency, and to uncover fraud.” Mr. Trump added, “Who’s gonna stop you for that?” Mr. Ralston, a Republican lawyer who died in 2022, responded with a chuckle, “A federal judge, possibly.”

Georgia: DOJ files suit to obtain 2020 election records in Fulton County | Zoë Richards/NBC

The Justice Department sued Fulton County, Georgia, this week in an effort to obtain more than five-year-old ballots tied to the 2020 presidential election which President Donald Trump lost. The eight-page complaint filed in federal court in Atlanta on Thursday names Fulton County Clerk of Courts Che Alexander as a defendant, alleging that the clerk violated the Civil Rights Act by failing to produce records tied to the 2020 presidential election as requested by state and federal officials. The lawsuit asks that the court demand that the records be produced within five days of a court order. According to the lawsuit, the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections last month refused to comply with an Oct. 6 subpoena, from the state’s election board, for election records, including used and void ballots, stubs and signature envelopes from the 2020 presidential election, saying in a Nov. 14 letter that the records were “under seal” in accord with state law. Read Article

Louisiana’s search for new voting system advances | Alyse Pfeil/New Orleans Times-Picayune

Six voting systems Louisiana displayed for public testing this summer have been certified to advance to the state’s bidding process, Secretary of State Nancy Landry announced Thursday. Just one of those will ultimately replace Louisiana’s current, decades-old machines. Companies can only compete for the state contract if their voting system complies with dozens of standards, including using paper ballots, having tamper-evident seals, and not connecting to the internet, among many other requirements. Previous efforts to replace the voting system have stumbled at multiple junctures in the face of bid-rigging allegations. Louisiana lawmakers imposed more stringent standards for new machines in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when false claims the election was rigged proliferated. Reasd Article

Michigan: Embattled Hamtramck election official sues city amid disputed mayoral race | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Amid a contested mayoral election marred by revelations of insecure ballots, the top election official in Hamtramck is suing several city officials, alleging they retaliated against her for trying to expose the city’s “ongoing election integrity issues.” City Clerk Rana Faraj has been on leave since Nov. 10, days after 37 ballots cast in the 2025 municipal election were initially misplaced in her office. Faraj’s lawsuit alleges that she was put on leave as a way to satisfy city officials who had a grudge against her “after being falsely accused of meddling with the election.” The lawsuit also provides more alleged details about the circumstances that led to the 37 ballots not being counted. The ballots may have been decisive in Hamtramck’s nonpartisan mayoral race, which was separated by only 11 votes after a recount last week. Rwad Article

New Hampshire: Judge strikes down challenge to absentee voting law | New Hampshire Public Radio

A superior court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a group of visually impaired New Hampshire voters who argued a newly passed absentee voter law violates the state constitution. In a lawsuit filed this summer, the plaintiffs alleged the measure, which was backed by state Republicans, places a disproportionate burden on people with disabilities by making it harder to vote. On Friday, New Hampshire Superior Court Judge David Ruoff dismissed the case, ruling that the new policies are reasonable. The new law requires people requesting an absentee ballot to prove their identity in one of three ways: either mail in a photocopy of an ID, along with their ballot application; have their ballot application notarized; or show an ID at town hall prior to an election. Read Article

North Carolina: New GOP-controlled local election boards reject early voting sites on some college campuses | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Disagreements have always existed over early voting sites in North Carolina, no matter who is in power. County election board members regularly debate over whether to allow Sunday early voting, how many sites to use, where they should be located and how long they should be open. But in Jackson and Guilford counties, Democratic board members are raising concerns over the exclusion of early voting sites that serve college students from 2026 primary election plans. In Jackson County, Republican board members voted against Democratic board members to remove an early voting site from Western Carolina University’s campus. In Guilford County, Republicans denied Democrats’ request to add early voting sites on North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and University of North Carolina-Greensboro’s campuses. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Luzerne County struggles to leave behind election troubles after years of staff turnover and errors | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

A Pennsylvania county that has drawn congressional scrutiny for the way it runs elections continued to experience problems in 2025, despite a stabilization in leadership and changes aimed at preventing errors. For Luzerne County, the most populous in northeastern Pennsylvania, the issues this year started in October with a mix-up with mail ballots that resulted in the county mistakenly sending 31 voters two ballots. The county quickly canceled the duplicate ballots and blamed the mishap on a state-run software program. “It’s not a specifically Luzerne County issue,” Emily Cook, the county’s election director, told the local NPR affiliate. “It’s not something that we did ourselves.” The state, however, said the error was on Luzerne’s end. Read Article

Texas: Some registered voters flagged as “potential noncitizens” had already shown DPS proof of citizenship | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas officials have now determined that 11 registered voters in Travis County flagged as potential noncitizens actually provided proof of citizenship while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID at the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to county leaders. State officials generated the list of potential noncitizens by checking the state’s voter roll — more than 18 million registered voters — against a federal database used to verify citizenship. The Trump administration overhauled the database, known as SAVE, this year, making it free for states to use and easier to search, and it has urged election officials around the country to use it to search for potential noncitizens on their voter rolls. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it had not initially checked the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the federal database against DPS records. State officials in October sent the list to county officials and directed them to investigate the citizenship status of those flagged registrants.

Wisconsin Judge Allows Election Case to Proceed Against Trump Advisers | Danny Hakim/The New York Times

A Wisconsin judge ruled on Monday that there was sufficient evidence for two men to face trial on charges that they illegally tried to keep President Trump in power after his 2020 election loss. The two defendants are James Troupis, a lawyer and former judge who is accused of being an architect of the plan to deploy fake electors in a number of states that Mr. Trump lost; and Mike Roman, a top staff member in the 2020 Trump campaign. The preliminary hearing for a third defendant, Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who also faces charges, was delayed amid questions of whether statements he had made to investigators were admissible. The defendants face 11 forgery-related charges in connection with the drafting of false elector certificates, representing an alternative outcome to Wisconsin’s presidential election that year, when Mr. Trump lost to former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Defense lawyers argued that their clients were seeking to preserve Mr. Trump’s options should a long-shot court challenge to the official results succeed. Read Article

25 Years After Bush v. Gore, Supreme Court and Election Law Still Feel the Fallout | Stephen Spaulding/Brennan Center for Justice

It all started with that infamous ballot. Presidential candidates from major and minor parties appeared on either side of a line of holes down the center of the ballot for voters to punch through with a stylus to indicate their pick. On the left, the first two names were Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, but confusingly they corresponded to the first and third holes. In addition to the layout problems was an issue with how the ballots recorded votes: Some voters punched cleanly through the card, while others left only dimples that election workers later examined with magnifying glasses to determine voter intent. Some ballots presented the issue of the “hanging chad,” where a piece of the ballot was left clinging by a corner or two. (The Smithsonian also has a bag of these.) Studies indicate that at least 2,000 Palm Beach County voters accidentally selected Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Gore, who lost Florida — and therefore the Electoral College — by just 537 votes. Read Article

National: Republicans in Congress eye more power for states to remove voters | Jonathan Shorman/Stateline

Republicans in Congress want to give states more authority to remove ineligible voters — including noncitizens and people who have moved or died — from voter rolls, seeking to reinforce the Trump administration’s own push to scrub the lists. At a U.S. House hearing on Wednesday, lawmakers weighed changing a landmark federal voter registration law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, which requires state motor vehicle agencies to offer residents the opportunity to register to vote. Some conservatives say the law makes it too difficult for states to keep their voter rolls up to date. Since President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have ramped up efforts to scoop up data on voters and pressure state officials to conduct more aggressive maintenance of their lists to ensure that everyone on the roll is eligible to vote. Read Article

National: Governors Shapiro (D) and Cox (R) join forces to denounce political violence | Colby Itkowitz and Yasmeen Abutaleb/The Washington Post

Josh Shapiro and Spencer Cox know firsthand what happens when political violence comes home. Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor who is widely expected to run for president in 2028, was asleep with his family when an arsonist set fire to their home. Cox, Utah’s Republican governor, was one of few voices who called for calm and “moral clarity” after the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot onstage at Utah Valley University in September. The two spoke together about rising political violence Tuesday at Washington National Cathedral, a rare bipartisan event in a deeply polarized country. Both criticized their parties for not doing enough to cool partisan tensions and condemn political violence when it affects their opponents. Read Article

National: Trump’s SAVE citizenship tool is flagging U.S. citizen voters | Jude Joffe-Block/NPR

Anthony Nel is the kind of voter who doesn’t like to skip an election. The 29-year-old lives in the Dallas-Forth Worth area and usually votes early, which he did as recently as Texas’ Nov. 4 constitutional election. So he was disturbed last month to open a letter from his local election office in Denton County, calling into question whether he was eligible to vote at all. “We have received information from the Texas Secretary of State reflecting that you might not be a United States citizen,” read the notice. The notice said he needed to provide proof of citizenship — such as a copy of a U.S. passport, birth certificate or naturalization certificate — within 30 days. Otherwise, his registration would be canceled, though it said he could be immediately reinstated if he showed that documentation at a later date. Read Article

National: Voting by mail faces uncertain moment ahead of midterm elections | Jonathan Shorman/Stateline

Derrin Robinson has worked in Oregon elections for more than 30 years, long enough to remember when voters in the state cast their ballots at physical polling sites instead of by mail. As the nonpartisan clerk of Harney County, a vast, rural expanse larger than Massachusetts, Robinson oversees elections with about 6,000 registered voters. Oregon has exclusively conducted elections by mail since 2000, a system he thinks works well, requires fewer staff and doesn’t force voters to travel through treacherous weather to reach a polling place. “As you can tell, I’m not an advocate for going back,” Robinson said. Not everyone agrees. An Oregon Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation to end the state’s mail voting law, and organizers of a ballot measure campaign seeking to ban mail-in voting say they have gathered thousands of signatures. Read Article

National: CISA Left Leaderless as Plankey’s Nomination Stalls in Senate | Emily Hill/The National CIO Review

The nomination of Sean Plankey to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has effectively stalled following his exclusion from a recent Senate vote to advance a group of nominees. Plankey, a former Coast Guard officer and cybersecurity adviser, faced multiple procedural holds from senators, one of which was linked to a dispute over a Coast Guard contract. As Plankey was not included in a package of nominees that advanced last Thursday, Senate procedures now make it unlikely that his nomination will move forward in the current session. This development leaves CISA without a Senate-confirmed director at a time of increasing focus on national cybersecurity efforts and ongoing transitions in agency leadership. Read Article

National: John Robert’s Dream Is Finally Coming True | David Daley/The Atlantic

In 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was up for reauthorization, the Reagan Justice Department had a goal: preserve the VRA in name only, while rendering it unenforceable in practice. A young John Roberts was the architect of that campaign. He may soon get to finish what he started. Last month, at the oral argument in Louisiana v. Callais, a majority of the conservative justices seemed to signal their willingness to forbid any use of race data in redistricting. That could lead to the end of the VRA’s Section 2 protections for minority voters, and allow states across the South to redraw congressional districts currently represented by Black Democrats into whiter, more rural, and more conservative seats, potentially before the 2026 midterms. A central question of the case, hotly debated during oral arguments, is whether Section 2 should prohibit election laws and procedures that have a racially discriminatory effect, or just those passed with clear racially discriminatory intent. Roberts almost certainly had flashbacks. This is the same question that was at the center of the 1982 reauthorization fight. Back then, the future chief justice’s job was to design the Department of Justice’s VRA strategy. Read Article

 

Arizona: Appeals court deals final blow to GOP’s elections rulebook challenge | Caitlin Sievers/AZ Mirror

After nearly two years of court rulings, with wins and losses on both sides, one of the Republican challenges to Arizona’s elections rulebook is finally finished. On Dec. 5, the Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed a legal challenge to the state’s 2023 Election Procedures Manual that had been brought by the Republican National Committee, the Arizona Republican Party and the Yavapai County Republican Party. Every two years, the secretary of state is tasked with creating a new EPM, outlining procedures and rules for county elections officials to implement state election laws when they conduct elections in the state. The manual carries the force of law, and must be approved by the governor and attorney general — offices both currently held by Democrats — before it’s published. Read Article

Colorado: Federal judge declines to release Tina Peters, the only Trump ally in prison for 2020 election-related crimes | Marshall Cohen/CNN Politics

A federal judge on Monday refused to release from prison former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the only ally of President Donald Trump currently behind bars for crimes related to the attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Last year, a state jury convicted Peters, the former Republican clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, of participating in a criminal scheme with fellow election deniers to breach her county’s secure voting systems, in hopes of proving Trump’s false claims of massive fraud. Trump has championed the case of Peters, 70, who is now one year into a nine-year prison sentence, calling her an “innocent political prisoner.” CNN recently reported that Trump is being strongly encouraged to more aggressively intervene in the matter, to try to get her out of prison. FRead Article

Georgia election board rejects rule change on using hand-marked paper ballots | Jeff Amy and Kate Brumback/Associated Press

Georgia’s State Election Board on Wednesday rejected a proposal defining when hand-marked paper ballots could be used in place of the state’s touchscreen voting machines. Opponents said the rule would have overstepped the board’s legal authority and could have created an escape hatch for widespread use of paper ballots when state lawmakers mandated the use of the ballot-marking devices. Janice Johnston, the board’s vice chair, seemed to agree, saying, “This really is the duty and the job of the legislators.” The proposed rule failed on a 2-2 vote after a debate in which proponents contended that use of the current machines at least sometimes violates the law because voters can’t read their ballots’ QR code to ensure it matches the paper ballot, and because machines don’t afford enough privacy to voters. Read Article

Maryland makes headway on voting system overhaul, awards new pollbook contract | Sarah Petrowich/WYPR

Maryland is set to update its electronic pollbook vendor for the first time in close to twenty years as part of a larger overhaul to the state’s voting system. Last week, the Maryland Board of Public Works approved new vendor Tenex Software Solutions to modernize the state’s electronic pollbook, which verifies voter eligibility at polling locations. Legacy vendor Election Systems and Software (ES&S) has been operating Maryland’s pollbook since 2006, but the State Board of Elections (SBE) says the current system has outperformed its lifespan. SBE hoped to have a new pollbook up and running for the 2024 election after awarding a contract to DemTech Voting Solutions a few years back, but the company underestimated the complexity and resources required to implement a working system before the deadline of Summer 2023. Read Article

Michigan court rules against Secretary of State’s election guidance: Mismatched mail-in ballots can’t be counted | Danielle James/mlive.com

The Michigan Court of Claims has ruled that guidance issued by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on counting absentee ballots with mismatched numbers is not valid. Ballots are typically prepared with a detachable stub at the top that has a unique identifying number. When ballots with these stubs are sent out to absentee voters, a local clerk will record the number on the stub assigned to that same voter in the qualified voter file (QVF). That number then corresponds with what is printed on the outside of the absentee ballot’s return envelope. In cases where absentee ballots are returned and the numbers don’t line up, Benson’s previous guidance to election officials was that they could process the ballots as “challenged.” The plaintiffs requested the court declare that guidance unlawful, arguing that absentee ballots should be rejected the same way that one of an in-person voter would be if there was a mismatch, or of an absentee voter whose signature could not be verified. Read Article

New York: Voting machines said Stephentown rejected the proposed library budget. A recount said otherwise. | Tyler A. McNeil/Albany Times-Union

Unofficial results after Election Day a month ago showed that Stephentown Memorial Library’s budget proposal was shot down by 89% of voters, or 528-60. As it turns out, that count was wildly inaccurate. Certified election results submitted by the Rensselaer County Board of Elections following a recount show that the library’s proposal — to increase municipal tax contributions from $95,000 to $110,000 — actually passed easily by a vote of 540 to 279. Those results were filed Monday with the state Board of Elections. The certification marks the end of a shocking chapter for the rural library located less than 3 miles from the Massachusetts border. The initial results had been met with disbelief among library stakeholders. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Judge to rule on whether Trump pardon applies to 2020 election fraud case | Carter Walker/Votebeat

A judge overseeing a criminal double-voting case in Pennsylvania appeared open to the defendant’s argument that a pardon from President Donald Trump should apply to him. The defendant, Matthew Laiss, is accused of voting for Trump twice in the 2020 election — once in person in Florida and once via mail in Pennsylvania. At a hearing Monday in federal court, he argued that Trump’s Nov. 7 pardon of allies who attempted to overturn his 2020 loss should also apply to his alleged crimes. While Trump did not directly name Laiss in the pardon, his attorneys argued it covers his case because of its broad language. The Department of Justice argues the pardon does not apply to Laiss, a view it says is shared by the U.S. pardon attorney. Read Article

South Carolina: Federal lawsuit claims absentee ballot law makes voting harder for people with disabilities | Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette

A South Carolina law meant to prevent election fraud makes it harder for people with disabilities to vote, civil rights groups claimed in a federal lawsuit. Under a 2022 law, anyone can vote early with no excuse necessary or request an absentee ballot to vote by mail. To prevent the possibility of fraud, legislators added a limit of five ballots that any one person could request or submit for someone else. In nursing homes and residential care settings, where residents often rely on a single staff member to help them vote, that makes voting difficult, attorneys for the state American Civil Liberties Union argued in a lawsuit filed in federal court Friday. Three nursing home residents sued alongside the state NAACP, contending the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act. Read Article