National: Trump’s anti-voting order will mean chaos for mail voters if left to stand, experts warn | Jim Saksa/Democracy Docket

President Donald Trump’s new executive order on elections would tie up millions of everyday Americans who vote by mail in tangles of red tape, experts in election administration said. And that’s assuming government officials could even implement it in time for the upcoming midterm elections. Implementing Trump’s diktat ahead of the November midterms is simply “not feasible,” said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting. “The order itself is so convoluted,” Smith added. “That’s not up to the Postal Service. You can’t make them the gatekeepers for ballot delivery. That’s not somehow refining an existing practice to make it better, or whatever — that just doesn’t work.” Trump’s anti-voting order will mean chaos for mail voters if left to stand, experts warn - Democracy Docket

National: Federal election observers once played a key role in securing voting rights for all − but times have changed | Allison Mashell Mitchell/The Conversation

President Donald Trump appeared on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast in February 2026, where he stated: “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” Trump’s call to nationalize elections, to transfer the constitutionally mandated control of elections from local to federal authorities, drew bipartisan opposition and added to Democratic fears that the president may attempt to interfere with upcoming midterm elections. Despite Trump’s call to “nationalize the voting,” the U.S. Constitution clearly notes that states run elections – not the federal government. The federal government, however, has a role to play in national elections – as an observer. Federal observation ensures that Americans cast their votes on election day without reprisal. Initially dispatched to deter voter discrimination against Black Americans after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, election observers ensured that those qualified to vote could do so without trouble. Read Article

National: Privacy officer resigns as DOJ readies voter data for DHS | Jude Joffe-Block/NPR

As Justice Department officials are working to acquire sensitive voter registration data from states and have recently disclosed a plan to share it with the Department of Homeland Security, a key privacy officer in DOJ's division tasked with enforcing civil and voting rights laws has resigned. Kilian Kagle was the chief FOIA officer and senior component official for privacy for DOJ's Civil Rights Division before leaving his post in recent days. His resignation has not been previously reported. For nearly a year, the DOJ has been making unprecedented demands for sensitive voter data from most states – including voters' driver's license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth and addresses – that some say violate privacy law. Read Article

National: Can you change your mind after you mail in your ballot? It depends. | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

When the U.S. Supreme Court last week took up the question of late-arriving mail ballots, the discussion turned to something more basic: when a vote becomes final. Justice Neil Gorsuch raised a hypothetical — whether a voter who has already mailed a ballot could change their mind and have a postal carrier cancel their delivery after learning new information about a candidate, even after Election Day. For Mississippi, the plaintiff in the case before the court, the answer was clear. The state’s Solicitor General Scott G. Stewart told the court that’s not possible there. Once a ballot is cast, it stays cast. The justices also spent significant time on the broader question of finality — whether voters ever get a second chance, or at least a way to undo a vote made too soon. In most states, they don’t, especially after a ballot has been received by election officials and tabulated. Read Article

Arizona voters can now show ID to get their mail ballots counted faster | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

In Arizona, voters have long had the option of dropping off their mail ballots at polling places. Under state law, voters must show identification to cast ballots in person, but those dropping off ballots are allowed to skip that step — as well as any associated lines at the polls. Instead, they just have to sign the envelope that contains their ballot and place it in a secure box at the polling site. Trained staff later compare that signature to signatures the voter has on file before counting their vote. That process, called signature verification, is a key safeguard against fraud. But it also takes time — and as the state has morphed into a key electoral battleground, there has been increasing consternation with how long it takes to count so-called “late early” ballots dropped off in the final hours of voting. In 2024, state lawmakers passed legislation requiring election officials to offer a new option. Like Flahive, voters in the upcoming midterm election will have the option to wait in line and show a driver’s license, passport, or similar form of identification, instead of dropping their ballot off to go through signature verification. This option would allow their votes to be processed sooner and counted more quickly. Read Article

Arizona: Hand count immunity denied to Mohave County supervisor by Arizona Supreme Court | Howard Fischer/Arizona Capitol Times

Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould isn’t going to get immunity for the next time he wants to hand count ballots. In a brief order, the Arizona Supreme Court refused to disturb a decision by the state Court of Appeals that Gould is entitled to such an order. That ends the case. But Gould said it really doesn’t resolve the matter. He pointed out that the ruling against him never addressed the question of whether he — or any supervisor from any county — is free to pursue a hand count without what he says are “threats and intimidation” by Attorney General Kris Mayes. Instead, the appellate judges said he had no standing to ask the court to prospectively grant him immunity because he has yet to get the supervisors to pursue a hand count, one that Mayes has said is illegal and told the board “may result” in criminal penalties. Read Article

California: Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco suspends election fraud probe | Grace Toohey/Los Angeles Times

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a leading Republican candidate for governor, said Monday that he had paused his controversial investigation into unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, a probe that was facing mounting legal challenges and ethical concerns. It was a major reversal for the outspoken Trump supporter, who had defended the investigation — and broadened its scope — just last week. Bianco’s employees have seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in Riverside County during November’s election. Bianco’s attorney, Robert Tyler, said the sheriff had decided to wait for the courts to weigh in on the case before proceeding with the investigation or potentially terminating it, as California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has requested. Tyler said they were not conceding “that the attorney general has the ability to step in and stop a lawful investigation,” but said the case had brought up complex legal issues, such as competing authority between the executive and legal branches, that need to be addressed. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco suspends election fraud probe - Los Angeles Times

Colorado court orders resentencing for former county clerk Tina Peters | Colleen Slevin and Matthew Brown/Associated Press

A Colorado appeals court ruled Thursday that a former county clerk convicted in a scheme that sought to prove fraud in the 2020 presidential election should be resentenced because a judge wrongly punished her for statements protected as free speech. Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison term after being convicted of state crimes for sneaking in an outside computer expert to make a copy of her county’s election computer system during a software update in 2021. A photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were later posted on social media and a conservative website. Calls for Peters’ release have become a cause celebre in the election conspiracy movement. President Donald Trump has sought unsuccessfully to pardon Peters and pressured Colorado to set her free. Read Article

Florida Governor signs state version of the SAVE Act | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Wednesday that will require proof of citizenship to vote and impose stricter voter ID restrictions on Floridians. The new law, most of which won't take effect until after the midterm elections, is Florida's version of the federal SAVE America Act, a bill President Donald Trump has championed. That measure is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate, where it lacks the 60 votes needed to advance under current rules. “This bill protects and expands integrity in our voter registration process,” DeSantis said. “Our Constitution in the state of Florida says only American citizens are allowed to vote in our elections, so we need to make sure that is the law.” Democrats and voting rights advocates warn Florida's law will disenfranchise eligible voters who lack ready access to the documents that are needed to vote. Read Article

Georgia: Elections bill capsizes on final day of 2026 session | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

In an unexpected twist, members of the House and Senate concluded the 2026 legislative session without ending their longstanding stalemate over election policy, as Georgia hurtles toward the deadline for removing QR codes from voters’ ballots without a clear solution in sight. The lack of a solution has some lawmakers calling on Gov. Brian Kemp to convene a special session to give them another shot at passing an elections bill this year. On the final legislative day, House lawmakers passed Senate Bill 214, a measure that would postpone lawmakers’ self-imposed deadline for removing QR codes from ballots until 2028 and direct the state to begin the process of procuring a new election system this upcoming February. But the bill never made it across the finish line in the Senate, which adjourned shortly after 1 a.m. without taking up the measure. Since the 2026 session was also the end of the biennium, all bills must be refiled next year and start the legislative process over. Read Article

Georgia: Fulton County alleges DOJ used  FBI raid to circumvent lawsuit, seize 2020 ballots | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

Fulton County officials fighting for the return of 2020 election materials seized by the FBI asked a federal judge Tuesday to order the Department of Justice (DOJ) to disclose details about its repeated attempts to obtain the county’s election records. In a new filing, the officials alleged that unusual events before the FBI’s raid strongly suggested that the DOJ, having previously sought the records through demand letters and a lawsuit, pursued a criminal investigation against the county to seize and access the documents by force. The county officials noted that the FBI’s January search was initiated around 48 days after the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sought the same records in a lawsuit filed in mid December and just days after the division ran into legal obstacles in that suit. Fulton County alleges DOJ used  FBI raid to circumvent lawsuit, seize 2020 ballots - Democracy Docket

Kansas Legislature passes package of elections bills that alter voting processes | Anna Kaminski/Kansas Reflector

Kansas Republicans passed a package of legislation that purports to bolster election integrity but evoked warnings from Democrats of potential voter suppression. Despite pleas Wednesday from the top Democrat on the House Elections Committee to let the legislation die, most Republicans supported House Bills 2569 and 2437. HB 2569 could eliminate no-excuse mail-in voting if any judge in the state deems the state’s ballot signature verification law to be invalid. It also mandates all voting rights challenges in Kansas be heard in Shawnee County, where a judge who handles civil cases has leaned to the right. HB 2437 deputizes the Secretary of State to twice a year cross-reference driver’s license records and state voter rolls against the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database. It also restricts voter registration websites to .gov domains or state-approved sites and requires county elections officials to remove people from their voter rolls when a funeral home publishes a person’s obituary. Read Article

Oregon: With a national vote-by-mail fight ahead, Central Oregon leaders say some damage is already done | Jen Baires/OPB

A handful of Central Oregon’s elected leaders representing all levels of government gathered at Bend City Hall Wednesday afternoon to push back against President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to overhaul the country’s voting system. Oregon voters turn out to vote at some of the highest rates in the nation, ever since the state led the country in adopting an all vote-by-mail system more than 25 years ago. On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order to create a federal voter database and require the U.S. Postal Service to process mail-in ballots with specialized envelopes and barcodes for tracking. With a national vote-by-mail fight ahead, Central Oregon leaders say some damage is already done - OPB

Utah’s top elections offical compares Trump’s voting list order to ‘nonsensical dialogue’ | Emily Anderson Stern and Addy Baird/The Salt Lake Tribune

Within hours of President Donald Trump issuing an executive order Tuesday that attempts to create lists of eligible voters and crack down on mail-in voting, Utah’s top election official — a Republican — mocked the threats from the head of her party. “POV: When the latest Executive Order reminds you of that time when you were a senior in high school and you performed in a one act play called ‘Jack or the Submission’ by absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco and it was super weird and the script was full of nonsensical dialogue,” Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson wrote in a Threads post Tuesday evening, with a link to the order. Henderson’s remarks come in the midst of Trump’s Justice Department suing Utah and, so far, 28 other states to gain full access to their voter databases. Federal courts have thrown out four of those lawsuits. Read Article

South Carolina: Greenville County elections director departs to head turbulent state elections office | Macon Atkinson/Post and Courier

Greenville County’s longtime election director, Conway Belangia, will take the helm at South Carolina’s state election office following months of turmoil and turnover at the state agency tasked with overseeing voting and voter registration. The S.C. Election Commission voted unanimously March 25 to appoint him executive director after a special called meeting. Belangia leaves the state’s most populous county, home to 343,168 registered voters. Belangia has been Greenville County’s director of the Board of Voter Registration and Elections for 34 years. He has served as an elections official for more than four decades, with previous stops at the state Election Commission and in Orangeburg County. Read Article

Wisconsin: Madison voters disenfranchised in 2024 are are split on city’s response, lawsuit | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Months before becoming one of the nearly 200 Madison voters in 2024 whose absentee ballots were never counted, Nathan Haimowitz did what he thought he was supposed to do. As a journalist living in Spain and out of the habit of voting, the 26-year-old former poll worker said he wanted the 2024 presidential election to “be the thing that would spur me to vote more consistently.” To make sure everything was in order, he emailed Madison officials to confirm they had received his absentee ballot application. They told him they had, so he filled out his ballot, sent it in, and assumed his vote would be counted. It wasn’t. The mistake that disenfranchised Haimowitz and nearly 200 other voters set off a chain of consequences: the longtime city clerk resigned, state and local officials launched investigations, a lawsuit was filed, and the city began overhauling its voting procedures. Haimowitz hasn’t cast a ballot since. Read Article

A Serious Senate Debate About an Unserious Bill | Russell Berman and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Atlantic

The United States has launched a war in Iran. Soaring gas prices are pounding an economy that many Americans already considered unaffordable. And the federal department responsible for protecting the homeland ran out of money more than a month ago. Naturally, the Senate is debating none of those things. Instead, Republicans in Congress’s upper chamber are spending this week trying—likely in vain—to pass a bill aimed at addressing President Trump’s yearslong obsession with his 2020 defeat. The proposal, known as the SAVE America Act, would require people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and photo identification when casting their ballot. The legislation is ostensibly designed to toughen enforcement of a core tenet of American democracy that most election experts say is already rigorously enforced: the law that only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections. But those same experts, along with Trump himself, view the SAVE America Act as much more far-reaching. If it’s passed, voting-rights experts contend, more than 20 million eligible voters could lose ready access to the polls, including many married women who have changed their name and young people who have moved out of state to attend college. A Serious Senate Debate About an Unserious Bill - The Atlantic

National: Where Trump Has Installed 2020 Election Deniers in Government | Alan Feuer, Nick Corasaniti and Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

When President Trump sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 election and remain in power, resistance from within his own government helped to stop him. Top Justice Department officials rejected his specious claims that the vote had been marred by widespread fraud. Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security refused to go along with his outlandish efforts to seize voting machines. Cybersecurity experts praised the count as secure, and the intelligence community sidestepped his requests to declare that foreign nations had interfered in the results. But Mr. Trump’s second term looks very different. The president has filled his administration with people who are sympathetic to his baseless claims that the presidential race more than five years ago was stolen. Read Article

National: Amendment to require photo ID to vote fails in Senate as Democrats object | Caitlin Yilek/CBS

An amendment that would require voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot failed to advance in the Senate on Thursday, despite Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying last week that Democrats were not opposed to such a requirement. The amendment to the elections bill needed 60 votes to advance. It was defeated in a 53 to 47 vote. The vote came during the second week of a marathon debate over a controversial elections bill known as the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and certain forms of photo ID to cast a ballot. The legislation does not have enough support to clear the 60-vote threshold in the upper chamber, but President Trump has dialed up the pressure on Senate Republicans to find a way to force it through. ReaD ARTICLE

National: Some States Already Preparing for Potential Supreme Court Ban on Late Ballots | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Francisco Aguilar, the secretary of state in Nevada, stepped out of the Supreme Court in Washington on Monday, where justices had just heard arguments about the legality of counting mail votes that arrive after Election Day. He immediately called his top deputy. The court’s conservative majority had appeared deeply skeptical of the arguments for continuing the practice. So Mr. Aguilar’s message was urgent, he later said in an interview. He began listing things “we need to start working on and answering.” And in the middle of the midterm election season, they couldn’t wait for a decision to land — perhaps as late as June. “We have to provide a road map for the county clerks,” he said into the phone. Mr. Aguilar, a Democrat, is one of 18 top election officials in states and territories across the country bracing for the possibility that the Supreme Court will require major changes to election law just months before the midterm election in November. Part of the urgency: getting the message out to voters that late-arriving ballots may no longer be counted. Such a decision could affect hundreds of thousands of voters. Read Article

National: On cyber, local elections officials are ‘natural risk managers,’ says former CISA official | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Geoff Hale got his start in defending the nation’s elections infrastructure from cyberattacks in 2016. “I guess I can thank Russia for that,” he said, pointing to his work at the National Protection and Programs Directorate, which was two years later to be transformed into the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security division granted an expansive remit on coordinating and rallying technical and intelligence resources in response to cybersecurity threats, foreign and domestic. He recalled Russia’s successful cyberattacks in 2016 against the Democratic National Committee, but also lesser known cyber activity aimed at state governments. Much has changed over the past decade, including the level of support offered by the federal cyber agency created during Donald Trump’s first presidency. Federal support for state and local governments has been slashed broadly, including for programs that would aid local election officials as they prepare for the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race. Read Article

National: Republican states are pushing through their own versions of the SAVE America Act | Andrew Howard/Politico

As the Senate continues to stall on the SAVE America Act, Republicans in a number of states are moving forward with plans to add citizenship requirements to their voting laws. Six states are likely to vote on new measures this fall that echo President Donald Trump’s top legislative priority. Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Kansas, South Dakota and West Virginia have put various citizenship-related amendments on the ballot. In West Virginia, the most recent state to put a measure on the ballot, the amendment would change the state’s constitution from saying “citizens of the state shall be entitled to vote,” to “only citizens of the state who are citizens of the United States are entitled to vote.” Read Article

National: Trump’s voter crackdown reaches college campuses | Bianca Quilantan/Politico

College campuses are already getting a taste of President Donald Trump’s effort to impose broad, new voting restrictions across the country. While Trump’s push for a partisan elections bill faces several bottlenecks on Capitol Hill, his administration has spent months quietly chipping away at programs designed to boost turnout among a voting bloc Republicans say lean Democratic. Colleges play a critical role in helping students vote in what is often their first chance to cast a ballot. But the Trump administration is barring colleges from using a federal program that employs low-income students to register voters and threatening to investigate schools if they use data from a nonpartisan student voting study to help boost turnout. Read Article

National: Trump said he voted by mail in Florida because he ‘should be’ in D.C. He cast his ballot from Palm Beach. | Irie Sentner/Politico

President Donald Trump — a relentless critic of mail-in voting — said Thursday that he voted by mail in Florida’s special elections this month because he felt he should be in Washington D.C. “instead of being in the beautiful sunshine. Because of the fact that I’m president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida, because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine,” Trump told reporters at the White House during Thursday’s Cabinet meeting. Reminded that he is often in Palm Beach at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump responded: “I decided that I was going to vote by mail-in ballot because I couldn’t be there, because I had a lot of different things.” But the president cast his mail-in vote from Palm Beach, records show. Read Article

National: ICE agents have been deployed to airports. Are the polls next? | Gabe Cohen/CNN

The high-profile deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports has renewed support on the right and fear on the left about the possibility of ICE going to the polls in November. Steve Bannon is urging President Donald Trump — who surprised officials in his own administration this weekend by ordering ICE agents to airports to help alleviate long lines — to treat that move as a dress rehearsal for the 2026 midterms, arguing the same armed officers should ultimately be positioned around polling places. “We can use this as a test run — a test case — to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm election,” Bannon, a longtime Trump ally, said Monday on his “War Room” podcast, reiterating his past calls for a law enforcement presence at the polls. While Bannon holds no official role in the administration, his remarks reignited concerns among some election officials and Democratic lawmakers who fear the Trump administration could try to use ICE as a political weapon — intimidating voters and potentially suppressing turnout in November. They argue that kind of presence at polling sites could run afoul of federal law. Read Article

In Alaska, a grace period for ballots is seen as a necessity | AP News

The tiny Alaska Native village of Beaver is about 40 minutes — by plane — from the nearest city. Its roughly 50 residents rely on weekday flights for mail and many of their basic supplies, from groceries to Amazon deliveries of everyday household items. Air service plays an outsize role in the nation’s most expansive state, where most communities rely on flights for year-round access. Planes also play a critical role in elections, getting voting materials and ballots to and from rural precincts such as Beaver and in delivering ballots for thousands of Alaskans who vote by mail — some in places where in-person voting is not available. The vast distances and relative isolation of so many communities make Alaska unique and are why its residents have a significant interest in arguments taking place Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court. Read Article

California GOP sheriff who’s running for governor seizes ballots from 2025 election | Jane C. Timm/NBC

A Republican sheriff in California who's running for governor seized more than 650,000 ballots from election officials last week, saying he is investigating potential fraud in last year's election. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said a group of citizens conducted their own “audit” of California's 2025 special election results in the county, and he claimed that the election workers’ tally of ballots received was 45,000 fewer than the number of votes certified to the state. Riverside County considered one ballot question in the November special election: whether to approve a new Democratic-drawn congressional map. Voters statewide and in the county ultimately passed the measure, putting Democrats in position to gain up to five House seats in this year's midterm elections. Read Article

Florida: As SAVE America Act stalls in the Senate, Florida passes its own proof-of-citizenship law | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

A signature piece of voting legislation championed by President Donald Trump may not have much of a future in the U.S. Senate, but in Florida, the future is here. Earlier this month, Republican lawmakers in Trump’s home state approved a sweeping overhaul of the state’s voter registration system, one that mirrors the core idea behind the federal SAVE America Act: requiring proof of citizenship to get on the rolls. The details differ — the Florida bill, for instance, would not take effect until after the midterms — but the architecture is the same. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law any day now. In states like Florida, policies like this one that are on the GOP’s wish list can move quickly. Republicans face little meaningful Democratic opposition, and the bill advanced with relatively little resistance — a stark contrast to Washington, where things are far messier. Read Article

Georgia Court of Appeals sides with Fulton County in fight over election board appointments | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

Georgia’s Court of Appeals has overturned a trial court’s ruling ordering the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to seat two conservative election activists on the county election board or face daily fines. In May, Democrats on the board had rejected two Republican Party nominees, Julie Adams and Jason Frazier, citing concerns about both individuals’ past actions and arguing that they were not qualified for the position. But the Fulton County GOP filed a lawsuit arguing that the commissioners were required to approve the party’s nominees as long as they met basic required standards like living in the county, being a registered voter and not being an elected official. Read Article

Maryland: The price of new voting equipment is stirring up frustration | Latest News | Kyle Orens/WBOC

A looming 50/50 split for new voting equipment in Maryland is fueling frustration. Over the next few years, Dorchester County will have to pay $421,000 for new machines the county never asked for. Earlier this week, we reported on new, high-tech voting machines that Maryland plans on buying for the 2028 elections. It will cost the state an estimated $109 million, but every county across Maryland will have to pitch in. "It's another unfunded mandate that's being pushed down on to the counties," said Lenny Pfeffer, Dorchester County Council President. Pfeffer said that money, which is now going towards new poll books, scanners and ballot marking devices, could have been used for a new ambulance, new public works vehicles or even paving projects. Read Article