National: Conspiracies Fuel Hand-counting Push In US Midterms | Anuj Chopra/AFP

Conspiracy-endorsing US politicians have amped up their rhetoric against voting machines as two swing state counties moved to allow hand counting ahead of next week’s midterm election — at the risk of stoking doubt about polling accuracy. The contentious Republican push for hand counting — which US experts consider often less accurate than machine counting and prone to delays — has gained traction since Donald Trump falsely asserted that voter fraud led to his 2020 election defeat. The rhetoric got a fresh boost last week when officials in rural Cochise County in the battleground state of Arizona voted in favor of counting ballots by hand, ignoring warnings of logistical challenges and threats of lawsuits. The move came after officials in Nye County in Nevada, another swing state, approved hand counting, citing deep mistrust among local residents in tabulation machines. “Best practices in hand counting take time and care to implement,” Pamela Smith, president of the nonpartisan nonprofit Verified Voting, told AFP. “These last-minute changes in Nevada and Arizona introduce chaotic conditions that invite errors and undermine confidence, not least because they are hard for the public to observe.”

Full Article: Conspiracies Fuel Hand-counting Push In US Midterms | Barron’s

National: Election Day tests voters, voting systems amid election lies | Christina A. Cassidy and Geoff Mulvihill/Associated Press

Final voting began Tuesday in a midterm election where voting itself has been in the spotlight after two years of false claims and conspiracy theories about how ballots are cast and counted. Voters lined up at polls before dawn in several East Coast states, including New York and Virginia. Since the last nationwide election two years ago, former President Donald Trump and his allies have succeeded in sowing wide distrust about voting by promoting false claims of widespread fraud. The effort has eroded public confidence in elections and democracy, led to restrictions on mail voting and new ID requirements in some GOP-led states and prompted death threats against election officials. Election Day this year is marked by concerns about further harassment and the potential for disruptions at polling places and at election offices where ballots will be tallied. Election officials say they are prepared to handle any issues that arise, urging voters not to be deterred. “This bipartisan, transparent process administered by election professionals across the country will be secure, it will be accurate and it will have integrity,” said Matt Masterson, a former top election security official in the Trump administration, at a briefing organized by The Aspen Institute. “The best response for all of us is to get out and participate in it.”

Full Article: Election Day tests voters, voting systems amid election lies | AP News

Arizona county’s plan to hand-count ballots blocked by judge | Bob Christie/Associated Press

A judge on Monday blocked a rural Arizona county’s plan to conduct a full hand-count of ballots from the current election — a measure requested by Republican officials who expressed unfounded concerns that vote-counting machines are untrustworthy. The ruling from Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey F. McGinley came after a full-day hearing on Friday during which opponents presented their case and called witnesses. An appeal of the judge’s decision is likely. Election Day is Tuesday. McGinley said the county board of supervisors overstepped its legal authority by ordering the county recorder to count all the ballots cast in the election that concludes on Tuesday rather than the small sample required by state law. The opponents who sued to stop the proposed hand-count — a group called the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans — argued that state law only allows a small hand-count of early ballots to ensure the counting machines are accurate. Group members argued that a last-minute change would create chaos and potentially delay certification of the election results. Cochise County Elections Director Lisa Marra also opposed the plan for the expanded count and testified about how it could delay results and imperil ballot security.

Full Article: Arizona county’s plan to hand-count ballots blocked by judge | AP News

Colorado man arrested on suspicion of tampering with voting machine | James Anderson/Associated Press

A Colorado man who is a registered Democratic voter has been arrested on suspicion of tampering with voting equipment by allegedly inserting a USB thumb drive into a voting machine at a polling station during the primary election in June, authorities said. No elections data were accessed, and the June 28 incident didn’t cause any major disruption to voting, authorities said. But it heightened concerns among election officials and security experts that conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election could inspire some voters to meddle with — or even attempt to sabotage — election equipment. Experts say even unsuccessful breaches could become major problems in the days leading up to and on Tuesday’s midterm election, causing delays at polling places or sowing the seeds of misinformation campaigns. Richard Patton, 31, of Pueblo was arrested on Thursday by members of the Pueblo Police Department High-Tech Crime Unit for investigation of tampering with voting equipment, a felony, and cybercrime-unauthorized access, a misdemeanor, the department said in a statement. Court records indicate Patton was being held without bond at the Pueblo County Judicial Center pending an advisement hearing later Friday in which he will hear the pending charges against him. Patton was being represented by an attorney from the public defender’s office, which does not comment on pending cases.

Full Article: Man arrested on suspicion of tampering with voting machine | AP News

Florida: Black voters express fear, confusion as DeSantis election laws kick in | Lori Rozsa/The Washington Post

Geraldine Harriel usually helps her elderly parents vote by taking their mail-in ballots to the elections office for them. But new voting laws in Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis’s elections police force had her questioning that this year. So on a recent Sunday, she drove them to an early-voting site — gingerly guiding her 80-year-old mother, who walks with a cane, to the entryway and then pushing her 84-year-old father in a wheelchair along the same path. “Nobody wants to take the chance of being picked up,” Harriel, 65, said, referring to the voting police unit, which made its first arrests in August. Tuesday will mark the first major election in Florida since the legislature pushed through changes affecting voting in the Sunshine State. Voter advocates say the laws disproportionately affect Black voters — making it harder for many to vote — and have created an environment of confusion and fear. Voters can deliver ballots for immediate family members — but there are new forms to fill out, and some, like Harriel, worry that even a small mistake could result in a fine or an arrest. It is now illegal to turn in more than two ballots that don’t belong to a close relative. There are new restrictions for organizations that help register voters. And shortly after its inception, DeSantis’s Office of Election Crimes and Security announced deputies had made 20 arrests — 15 of them involving Black voters accused of voting illegally.

Full Article: Black voters in Florida express fear, confusion as DeSantis election laws kick in – The Washington Post

Georgia ballot rules mean voters are falling between cracks, advocates say | Carlisa N Johnson/The Guardian

Just six days before the midterm election, Madison Cook, an eager first-time Georgia voter and a college student at school in Mississippi, awaited the arrival of her requested absentee ballot. She continued to follow up with her county election officials. But nearly one month after her application was processed, it appeared to be lost in the mail. “Here’s a great example of a voter who is falling through the cracks,” said Vasu Abhiraman, deputy policy and advocacy director at ACLU of Georgia, who received an email seeking help for Cook. “If she doesn’t get her ballot, she has almost no hope of voting.” Here in Georgia, early in-person voting was projected to reach 2.4m by the end of Friday – the last day of early voting – marking the highest voter turnout of a midterm election in the state’s history. But voting rights organizers say that this year’s high in-person voter turnout is reflective of the impact Georgia’s new restrictive voting law has had on other forms of voting, such as casting an absentee ballot by mail or on election day. In this year’s midterm elections, about 200,000 of the nearly 300,000 requested absentee ballots had been returned as of Friday. That’s proportionally far less than the 2020 presidential election, when voters cast more than 1.3m absentee ballots throughout the state. “The hurdles are up in front of Georgia voters, and some are having difficulty jumping those hurdles on the way to the ballot box,” said Abhiraman. “Voters in Georgia are not feeling as confident when they cast their ballots this time around.”

Full Article: Georgia ballot rules mean voters are falling between cracks, advocates say | US midterm elections 2022 | The Guardian

Michigan: 2020 election upheaval continues to strain Antrim County | Mardi Link/Traverse City Record-Eagle

A federal magistrate judge recommended dismissing a civil lawsuit filed against the Jan. 6 Committee by a Washington, D.C., lobbyist, who in November 2020 visited Antrim County by private jet as part of a team of political operatives seeking local election data. The phone records of Katherine Friess, of Arlington, Va., and Vail, Colo., were previously subpoenaed by the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, court records show. Friess, listed in 13th Circuit Court documents as an expert witness in a since-dismissed civil suit accusing Antrim County of voter fraud, sued the Select Committee, referencing her work as a staff attorney for former President Donald Trump. The Select Committee sought Friess’ phone, text, private message and other communication records, sent or received between Nov. 1, 2020 and Jan. 31, 2021, a timeframe which includes dates Friess traveled to Antrim County. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix on Oct. 26 recommended a dismissal motion filed July 11 by attorneys representing the Select Committee be granted, which could clear the way for the committee to access Friess’ phone records.

Full Article: 2020 election upheaval continues to strain Antrim County | Local News | record-eagle.com

Nevada again rejects Nye County vote hand-counting plan | Colton Lochhead/Las Vegas Review-Journal

The Nevada secretary of state’s office refused to approve a revised proposal from the interim Nye County clerk that is seeking to hand count ballots before Election Day, citing “significant risks” and “concerns relating to the integrity of the election.” In a letter sent Friday to interim Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf, the secretary of state’s office laid out three key concerns that it said need to be addressed to bring it in compliance with a state Supreme Court directive before they would approve the plan. The letter, written by Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Mark Wlaschin, said that Kampf’s plan for three talliers to work in silence instead of reading the ballot aloud and to tally each side of the ballot individually would be problematic because those talliers might not notice if the other workers mark one of the ballots, either purposefully on by accident. An extra mark on a ballot may be deemed an “over-vote,” which would lead to that vote not being counted. Wlaschin also said in the letter that the plan had no requirements to use medical-style gloves to mitigate the risk of cheating or accidental markings and that there needed to be more detail on the county’s plan to deal with discrepancies that may pop up between the machine and hand counts. “These significant risks must be addressed prior to the approval of your plan,” Wlaschin wrote.

Full Article: Nevada again rejects Nye County vote hand-counting plan | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Nevada: Rural county won’t hand-count until polls close | Gabe Stern/Associated Press

Officials in a rural Nevada county say they will not proceed with hand counting early mail-in votes before polls close on Election Day. Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske ordered Nye County in late October to halt its hand-counting of ballots until after polls close on Nov. 8. Her order came after the Nevada Supreme Court issued an opinion siding with the American Civil Liberties Union’s objections to the reading of individual votes out loud. Still, Nye County submitted a revised plan for a silent hand-count last week in hopes of remedying the court’s concerns and being able to continue the count. Cegavske said Friday that the plan needed more details for it to be approved and declined to lift the hand-count ban, leading to Nye County’s announcement on Sunday that it would wait until Election Day. The county received 10,583 mail ballots as of Friday. For Election Day, which is Tuesday, polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m., though those in line at 7 p.m. will be able to cast their ballot. Nye County is one of the first jurisdictions nationwide to act on election conspiracies related to mistrust in voting machines, though other counties across Nevada have considered using hand-counts in the future.

Full Article: Rural Nevada county won’t hand-count until polls close | AP News

A New Mexico County Went To War With Voting Machines. It May Gain a Powerful Ally in November. | aul McLeod/Bolts

The lawyer was clear: what the commissioners of Otero County, New Mexico were thinking of doing this fall was against the law. If they followed through they could be removed from office and could face criminal charges. But Commissioner Couy Griffin was adamant. As the founder of Cowboys For Trump, he was steeped in election conspiracy theories that sprung up after Trump’s loss in 2020. At an August 11 meeting Griffin pushed for their county to eliminate election ballot drop boxes and voting machines, which he argued could be tools for voter fraud. He also wanted to sue Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who months earlier had gone to court to force them to certify primary election results that Griffin didn’t trust. The other two commissioners, also Republicans, weren’t buying it. As their county lawyer RB Nichols made clear, the use of voting machines and drop boxes is dictated by state law. “It won’t matter what we vote, we have no authority to do anything,” said Gerald Matherly. Fellow Commissioner Vickie Marquardt agreed, saying “this is out of our purview.” Hours later, after a raucous community meeting that included shouting, allegations of fraud, and calls for resignations, Griffin prevailed. The commission voted 2-1 to do away with drop boxes and voting machines, as well as to sue the secretary of state.

Full Article: A New Mexico County Went To War With Voting Machines. It May Gain a Powerful Ally in November. | Bolts

Pennsylvania Supreme Court clarifies order on mail ballots as another lawsuit filed | Jonathan Lai and Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

The scramble to figure out which Pennsylvania mail ballots to count and reject based on handwritten dates continued Saturday. A state Supreme Court order Tuesday — that many had earlier hoped would settle the matter for this election — directed counties to reject mail ballots missing those dates as well as those where the voter put a wrong date on their ballot. But the decision has since stirred uncertainty among elections administrators over what exactly constitutes an incorrect date and drawn new litigation from advocates who say rejecting ballots over what amounts to a mistake threatens to potentially disenfranchise thousands of legal voters. On Saturday, the state Supreme Court unexpectedly issued an additional order clarifying its definition: Mail-in ballots are to be rejected in this election if the handwritten dates fall before Sept. 19, 2022, or after Nov. 8 (Election Day), and absentee ballots are to be rejected if they are dated before Aug. 30, 2022, or after Nov. 8. Absentee and mail-in ballots are essentially the same, but under state law “absentee ballots” are for voters who are unable to make it to their polling places on Election Day, while “mail-in ballots” are for anyone else who chooses to vote by mail. Sept. 19 is the start of the state’s 50-day mail voting window, when counties can begin to print and send mail-in and absentee ballots. Counties treat absentee and mail-in ballots the same way and send them out at the same time.

Full Article: Pa. Supreme Court clarifies order on mail ballots as another lawsuit filed

Tennessee: Multiple counties report issues with ballots | Adam Friedman Nashville Tennessean

Multiple counties across Tennessee have reported ballot issues leading to some early votes cast in the wrong races. Election officials in Benton, Davidson and Shelby counties have all reported ballots issues largely related to congressional districts that were redrawn earlier this year. Jeff Roberts, the Davidson County administrator of elections, said 438 voters in Nashville cast votes in the wrong races. Roberts said it’s an increase from the 212 initially reported late last week because the previous amount did not factor in the final days of early voting, which ended on Nov. 3. Davidson has precincts split across the 5th, 6th and 7th Congressional districts. Meanwhile, Shelby County election officials reported 50 incorrect ballots were cast for voters in a precinct split between the 8th and 9th Congressional districts. A Benton County election official told the Associated Press some voters, likely fewer than 10, had been assigned to the wrong congressional districts, but they had fixed it before any votes were cast. Benton has precincts split between the 7th and 8th Congressional districts.

Full Article: Tennessee election 2022: Multiple counties report issues with ballots

Texas Civil Rights Project reports multiple instances of harassment and intimidation at the polls | David Martin Davies/Texas Public Radio

Reports of voter intimidation in Texas are unusually egregious this election, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project. The group is hearing from voters experiencing harassment at the polls. Christina Beeler, voting rights staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said there have also been multiple reports of intimidation during early voting across the state. “In Travis County, we received a very alarming report about a precinct chair of the Travis County Republican Party knocking on people’s doors, accusing them of illegally voting by mail even though the people we spoke with were clearly eligible to vote by mail,” she said. In Tarrant County, some voters are receiving letters saying there is a voter integrity investigation underway. “Those letters are very concerning,” she said. “These efforts seem to be motivated by right wing conspiracy theories around stolen elections.”

Full Article: Texas Civil Rights Project reports multiple instances of harassment and intimidation at the polls | TPR

Wisconsin: Judge denies request to sequester military ballots following Milwaukee election official case | Sophie Carson Alison Dirr/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On the eve of Tuesday’s midterm election, a Waukesha County judge denied a request to block the immediate counting of military ballots, calling the step a “drastic remedy” but also chiding the Wisconsin Elections Commission over its guidance to municipal clerks. “I think I made clear in my questioning that I felt that that was a drastic remedy, that I felt that it was at least at a minimum a temporary disenfranchisement of our military voters’ votes to say, ‘let’s put them on hold and let’s figure out after the fact whether or not there’s bad votes cast,’” Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Maxwell said at the end of a two-hour hearing. The request from state Rep. Janel Brandtjen and a group that says it represents Wisconsin veterans came after three military absentee ballots arrived at Brandtjen’s home in the names of voters who do not exist. A Milwaukee election official was fired and criminally charged last week with requesting the military ballots using fake names and having them sent to Brandtjen’s home in Menomonee Falls. The actions of the former Milwaukee Election Commission deputy director, Kimberly Zapata, demonstrate “a vulnerability in Wisconsin’s military absentee ballot process,” reads a court document filed Friday by the Thomas More Society.

Full Article: Request to sequester WI military ballots ahead of midterms denied

Wisconsin lawmaker sues to stop immediate counting of military ballots | Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

A Wisconsin lawmaker who has been a frequent promoter of false election claims is suing to prevent the immediate counting of military ballots in her state after she received three ballots under fake names. The lawsuit, filed on Friday, was brought by a veterans group and three individuals, including Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R), the chairwoman of the State Assembly’s elections committee. Last week, Brandtjen received three military ballots under fictitious names that were allegedly sent to her by Kimberly Zapata, a Milwaukee election official. Election officials have criticized Brandtjen for spreading false claims about the system, and Zapata later told prosecutors she was trying to alert Brandtjen about an actual weakness in the state’s voting system that should be addressed. Days later Zapata was fired and charged with a felony and three misdemeanors. Unlike most states, Wisconsin allows military members to cast ballots without registering to vote or providing proof of residency. Military ballots make up a tiny fraction of votes in Wisconsin — about 1,400 so far for Tuesday’s election.

Full Article: Wisconsin lawmaker sues to stop immediate counting of military ballots – The Washington Post

Cherokees Ask U.S. to Make Good on a 187-Year-Old Promise, for a Start | Simon Romero/The New York Times

In 1835, U.S. officials traveled to the Cherokee Nation’s capital in Georgia to sign a treaty forcing the Cherokees off their lands in the American South, opening them to white settlers. The Treaty of New Echota sent thousands on a death march to new lands in Oklahoma. The Cherokees were forced at gunpoint to honor the treaty, which stipulated that the Nation would be entitled to a nonvoting seat in the House of Representatives. But Congress reneged on that promise. Now, amid a growing movement across Indian Country for greater representation and sovereignty, the Cherokees are pushing to seat that delegate, 187 years later. “For nearly two centuries, Congress has failed to honor that promise,” Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, said in a recent interview in the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah, in eastern Oklahoma. “It’s time to insist the United States keep its word.” The Cherokees and other tribal nations have made significant gains in recent decades, plowing income from sources like casino gambling into hospitals, meat-processing plants and lobbyists in Washington. At the same time, though, those tribes are seeing new threats to their efforts to govern themselves. A U.S. Supreme Court tilting hard to the right seems ready to undermine or reverse sovereignty rulings that were considered settled, while new state laws may affect how schools teach Native American history. And tribes are embroiled in a caustic feud with Oklahoma’s Republican governor — despite his distinction as the first Cherokee citizen to lead the state — that has helped to make his re-election bid next week a tossup.

Full Article: Cherokees Ask U.S. to Make Good on a 187-Year-Old Promise, for a Start – The New York Times

Biden sends a stark warning about political violence ahead of midterms: ‘We can’t take democracy for granted any longer’ | Kevin Liptak, MJ Lee, Betsy Klein and Phil Mattingly/CNN

President Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered a stark warning to Americans that the future of the nation’s democracy could rest on next week’s midterm elections, an urgent appeal coming six days before final ballots are cast in a contest the president framed in nearly existential terms. “We can’t take democracy for granted any longer,” the president said from Union Station in Washington, blocks from the US Capitol where a mob attempted to interrupt the certification of the 2020 election. It was a sharp message to Americans considering sitting out next week’s congressional elections that the very future of the country was at stake. Biden suggested the preponderance of candidates for office at every level of government who have denied the results of the last presidential contest was red-flashing warning signal for the country. “As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America – for governor, for Congress, for attorney general, for secretary of state who won’t commit to accepting the results of the elections they’re in,” Biden said. “That is the path to chaos in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it is un-American.” Biden’s speech placed blame for the dire national situation squarely at the feet of his predecessor, Donald Trump, accusing the former president of cultivating a lie that has metastasized into a web of conspiracies that has already resulted in targeted violence.

Full Article: Biden sends a stark warning about political violence ahead of midterms: ‘We can’t take democracy for granted any longer’ | CNN Politics

‘We’re Afraid’: Arizona Town That Inspired Debunked Voter Fraud Film Braces for Election Day | Jack Healy and Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

It was a jumpy, 20-second video clip that touched off a firestorm: During a local primary election two years ago, the former mayor of this farm town of San Luis, Ariz., was filmed handling another voter’s ballot. She appeared to make a few marks, and then sealed it and handed a small stack of ballots to another woman to turn in. That moment outside a polling place in August 2020 thrust this town along the southern border into the center of stolen-election conspiracy theories, as the unlikely inspiration for the debunked voter fraud film “2,000 Mules.” Activists peddling misinformation and supported by former President Donald J. Trump descended on San Luis. The Republican attorney general of Arizona opened an investigation into voting, which is still ongoing. The former mayor, Guillermina Fuentes, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation for ballot abuse — or what the attorney general called “ballot harvesting” — a felony under Arizona law. Ms. Fuentes is one of four women in San Luis who have now been charged with illegally collecting ballots during the primaries, including the second woman who appears on the video. But there have been no charges of widespread voter fraud in San Luis linked to the presidential election. Liberal voting-rights groups and many San Luis residents say that investigators, prosecutors and election-denying activists have intimidated voters and falsely tied their community to conspiracy theories about rampant, nationwide election fraud. The film “2,000 Mules,” endorsed by Mr. Trump, has helped to keep those claims alive, and is often cited by election-denying candidates across the country.

Full Article: Town That Inspired Debunked Voter Fraud Film Braces for Election Day – The New York Times

National: States look to secure election results websites ahead of midterms | Kevin Collier/NBC

States are working to shore up what might be the most public and vulnerable parts of their election systems: the websites that publish voting results. NBC News spoke with the top cybersecurity officials at four state election offices, as well as the head of a company that runs such services for six states, about how they secure the sites. All agreed that while there was no real threat that hackers could change a final vote count, a successful cyberattack would be harmful for public confidence if hackers were able to breach the websites that show preliminary vote totals. “Election night reporting sites are very, very ripe for a perception hack, because they’re so visible,” said Eddie Perez, a board member at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for election security and integrity. The effort necessary is because it’s relatively easy to knock a website offline and deface it with simple cyberattacks. Vince Hoang, Hawaii’s chief information security officer, is well aware, having recently dealt with just such an attack. Last month, a hacker group called Killnet, which presents itself as a small group of pro-Russian hacktivists, announced plans to attack U.S. state government websites and air travel websites. While there’s no evidence Killnet stole any data or altered any files, it was able to temporarily keep some states’ sites from loading for hours with a series of distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks, unsophisticated cyberattacks that flood websites with traffic. One of its victims last month was Hawaii.gov, which also hosts the state’s election night reporting. Even though Hawaii uses Cloudflare, one of the top DDoS protection services, Killnet was able to render Hawaii.gov inaccessible for several hours.

Full Article: States look to secure election results websites ahead of midterms

National: Why do election experts oppose hand-counting ballots? | Karina Phan and Ali Swenson/Associated Press

Why do election experts oppose hand-counting ballots? It takes longer than counting with machines, it’s less reliable, and it’s a logistical nightmare for U.S. elections. A growing number of Republican lawmakers have pushed for switching to hand-counts, an argument rooted in false conspiracy theories that voting systems were manipulated to steal the 2020 election. Though there is no evidence of widespread fraud or tampering of machines in 2020, some jurisdictions have voted to scrap machines and pursue hand-counts instead this year. Numerous studies — in voting and other fields such as banking and retail — have shown that people make far more errors counting than do machines, especially when reaching larger and larger numbers. They’re also vastly slower. “Machine counting is generally twice as accurate as hand-counting and a much simpler and faster process,” said Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University who has conducted research on hand-counts. In one study in New Hampshire, he found poll workers who counted ballots by hand were off by 8%. The error rate for machine counting runs about 0.5%, Ansolabehere said. Just how long can hand-counting delay results? Depending on jurisdiction and staffing, it could be days, weeks or even months.

Full Article: Why do election experts oppose hand-counting ballots? | AP News

National: ‘Stolen election’ conspiracies already spreading ahead of US midterm | Mark Scott/Politico

With less than a week before the U.S. midterm elections on November 8, scores of local groups in key battleground states like Arizona, Michigan and Georgia are spreading conspiracy theories about alleged election fraud and calling on voters to take in-person action, based on POLITICO’s review of social media activity over the last three months. The falsehoods, which appear on mainstream networks like Facebook and Twitter as well as fringe platforms, include accusations that ballots will be tampered with and right-wing voters will be disenfranchised, as well as threats of real-world violence. Some of these allegations are fueled by high-profile figures, including former U.S. President Donald Trump. In many ways, the activity mirrors the so-called Stop the Steal movement in 2020. For months before that movement erupted in November protests across the country and on the National Mall on January 6, right-wing activists were peddling unsubstantiated claims on social media that accused Joe Biden and other Democratic politicians of rigging and plotting to steal the presidential election.

Full Article: ‘Stolen election’ conspiracies already spreading ahead of US midterm – POLITICO

National: Justice Department mulling potential special counsel if Trump runs in 2024 | Evan Perez, Katelyn Polantz and Jeremy Herb/CNN

As Donald Trump inches closer to launching another presidential run after the midterm election, Justice Department officials have discussed whether a Trump candidacy would create the need for a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations related to the former president, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. The Justice Department is also staffing up its investigations with experienced prosecutors so it’s ready for any decisions after the midterms, including the potential unprecedented move of indicting a former president. In the weeks leading up to the election, the Justice Department has observed the traditional quiet period of not making any overt moves that may have political consequences. But behind the scenes, investigators have remained busy, using aggressive grand jury subpoenas and secret court battles to compel testimony from witnesses in both the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of national security documents kept at his Palm Beach home. Now federal investigators are planning for a burst of post-election activity in Trump-related investigations. That includes the prospect of indictments of Trump’s associates – moves that could be made more complicated if Trump declares a run for the presidency. “They can crank up charges on almost anybody if they wanted to,” said one defense attorney working on January 6-related matters, who added defense lawyers have “have no idea” who ultimately will be charged. “This is the scary thing,” the attorney said. Trump and his associates also face legal exposure in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State and expects to wrap her probe by the end of the year.

Full Article: Exclusive: DOJ mulling potential special counsel if Trump runs in 2024 | CNN Politics

National: Election security has improved since 2016 | Tim Starks/The Washington Post

The vast majority of experts in our Network Survey told us they’re not more worried about cyberthreats in this election compared with the 2020 election. And there’s good reason for that. Ever since an election security push that began after the 2016 election, election systems have fortified with $880 million in federal funding and more states have moved toward hand-marked paper ballots. Election fraud was already a rare occurance, as our Post colleague Glenn Kessler noted in a fact-check this week. The new developments in election security lessen the risks even more – but that’s unlikely to deter some Trump-supporting Republican voters and activists from claiming election fraud in races where their candidate doesn’t prevail next week. “In physical and technical terms, we’ve made enormous progress since 2004, even 2016. In political terms, we seem very much in danger,” said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting. “And that gap between technical reality and political reality is a haunting one.” In 2016, more than 22 percent of voters lived in jurisdictions using a kind of electronic voting machine with no paper backup, which many experts say make them more of a security risk. Now, according to Verified Voting, a nonprofit that tracks election technology, less than 5 percent do. States including New Jersey and Louisiana have had issues switching off electronic voting machines with no paper backup. But even the supposed laggards have made significant improvements, Lindeman observed. In 2020, 36 percent of Texas voters lived in counties with that kind of paperless machine, known as direct-recording electronic. In 2022, that number has shrunk to 6 percent.

Full Article: Election security has improved since 2016 – The Washington Post

National: Trump fans have a plan to trick nonexistent vote hackers: Vote late | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

The news conference President Donald Trump’s lawyers held at the Republican Party’s national headquarters soon after the 2020 election is remembered mostly for former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s odd tonsorial drooling. But it must also be remembered as one of the first iterations of the clumsy effort to tie together seemingly contradictory strains of election-fraud theorizing: that the election was stolen on election night by manipulated electronic voting machines — but also later by illegal or fake mail-in ballots. Trump attorney Sidney Powell attempted to square this circle. The voting machines “probably” were used all over the country to flip Trump votes to ones for Joe Biden, something that “we might never have uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in so many of these states that it broke the algorithm that had been plugged into the system, and that’s what caused them to have to shut down in the states they shut down in.” Only after the flood of votes “broke the algorithm” — you can perhaps hear the sound of computer engineers slapping their foreheads — did the fraudsters come “in the back door with all the mail-in ballots.” Obviously this is all nonsense, every part of it, as months and years of analysis have proved repeatedly. But there’s something about Powell’s formulation that seems to linger as the 2022 midterms approach. Republicans who say they are worried about the upcoming elections being stolen have come up with a way to beat the system: Vote only at the very last minute to potentially stymie those devious hackers/fraudsters/Democrats.

Full Article: Trump fans have a plan to trick nonexistent vote hackers: Vote late – The Washington Post

National: Amid election conspiracy theories, CISA says there’s no credible threat to voting equipment | Christian Vasquez/CyberScoop

A week before the midterm elections, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said the Biden administration has done “everything we can” to protect election infrastructure and cautioned against overreactions to any voting mishaps on Election Day. “There are going to be errors, there are going to be glitches. That happens in every election,” Easterly said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington on Tuesday. “Somebody will forget the key to the polling place. A water pipe will burst. These are normal things they are not nefarious.” Her reassurances about the election process come as political tensions mount ahead of the Nov. 8 vote. Disinformation related to the election is flooding on social media, poll workers are facing threats of violence and experts are warning about foreign interference. And against this backdrop, mishaps that happen in the ordinary course of an election can be seized upon by political partisans to undermine the perceived legitimacy of the election process. At this time, Easterly said, CISA has “no information credible or specific about efforts to disrupt or compromise” election infrastructure. “We have done everything we can to make election infrastructure as secure and as resilient as possible.” She did point to the increase in physical threats and acts of intimidation against election officials, saying that “it’s a really difficult physical security environment.”

Full Article: Amid election conspiracy theories, CISA says there’s no credible threat to voting equipment

Editorial: The Courts Are the Only Thing Holding Back Total Election Subversion | Richard L. Hasen/The Atlantic

The United States has failed its first important test for democracy since the 2020 election season: Election denialism has taken hold among a significant segment of Republican voters, and election deniers are poised to win elections next week. They will go on to oversee or certify some elections in 2024. The question that matters now is whether the next line of defense for American democracy—our system of state and federal courts—is strong enough for the task ahead. Things were bad enough at the end of 2020 and into early 2021. Donald Trump’s relentless invocation of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him through phantom fraud and technical irregularities led to frivolous lawsuits, protests and threats against election workers, and the violence of the January 6 insurrection. When Trump left the White House on January 20, courageous and focused Republican leadership could have quashed Trumpian antidemocratic forces, especially if Democratic leadership had had an earlier singular focus on preventing election subversion.

Full Article: The Courts Are the Only Thing Holding Back Total Election Subversion – The Atlantic

Arizona: Pinal County rejects ballot hand count sought by supervisor | Robert Anglen/Arizona Republic

Pinal County will not conduct an expanded hand count of ballots cast in the Nov. 8 election. The Pinal County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday unanimously rejected a plan to increase the percentage of ballots counted by hand in order to ensure voting machines are accurate. Republican Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh, who sought the expanded hand count as a more reliable test of voting machines, ultimately voted against his own proposal after a barrage of community opposition. “This is what good government should look like,” he said, praising the nearly two-hour meeting as an important hearing on individual concerns. Cavanaugh’s comments contrasted with his opening remarks, when he raised the issue of “dismantling” voting machines before checking himself and saying he wasn’t going to talk about that. He shifted instead to voting machine accuracy. “There has been concern and commentary from both sides of the aisle, the most notable, of course, President Trump … saying elections are stolen,” he said. “I’m not getting into the issue of whether there’s code in the machines that change the vote.”

Full Article: Pinal County rejects ballot hand count sought by supervisor

Georgia’s Battle Over the Ballot | Darryl Pinckney/The New York Review of Books

Democracy can get a good person up in the middle of the night to read the newspapers online. When the news is bad, I fit a definition of literacy in the nineteenth century: someone has to tell me what is in the papers. Not long ago I was asking, How could Herschel Walker be one point ahead of Raphael Warnock in the race for the Georgia Senate seat? The world loves an ignorant, truculent Negro, Margo Jefferson said, especially the athletic kind. How could Brian Kemp be tied with Stacey Abrams in the contest for governor of Georgia? Some white people (and a few black men) resent a black woman whom they cannot patronize, no one had to tell me. The history of my family in Georgia is one of trying to get out of the state. When my parents were growing up there in the 1930s and 1940s, colored people couldn’t vote in the primaries; elections were just exercises in rubber-stamping. In 1946 the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld in King v. Chapman a 1945 district court ruling that the segregated Georgia primaries were unconstitutional. Henry A. Wallace got 1,636 votes in Georgia when he ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948. His tally was missing two votes, because my parents were no longer residents. A cousin in the NAACP had been assaulted trying to register black people. Strom Thurmond on the racist Dixiecrat ticket came in a distant second to Harry Truman, the Democrat. My parents remembered the name of Isaiah Nixon, murdered for trying to vote in Georgia in that election.

Source: Georgia’s Battle Over the Ballot | Darryl Pinckney | The New York Review of Books

Why do Georgia’s voting stickers now say, “I secured my vote”? | Sam Worsley/Atlanta Magazine

In 2020, the stickers handed out at polling places across Georgia began showing signs of anxiety—relatable, for sure. Previously a cheery illustration of a peach beneath the phrase “I’m a Georgia voter,” the item acquired another sentence, in shoutier lettering: I SECURED MY VOTE! The update was introduced by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger following a period of heightened attention to how Americans vote: In the past dozen years, a number of states have enacted measures making it more difficult, such as stricter voter-identification requirements. Many restrictions disproportionately affect people of color—in an effort to treat problems, experts say, that don’t meaningfully exist. The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks such restrictions, has calculated that onerous ID requirements, for instance, “address a sort of voter fraud more rare than death by lightning.” The origins of the “I voted” sticker are hazy, but they’ve become ubiquitous, allowing voters to sport their civic achievement while broadcasting a bit of peer pressure; in 1984, Vice President George H.W. Bush wore one that said, “I voted today—have you?” The introduction of the secret ballot in the 19th century made voting a lonelier and more somber affair than it had been previously, and may have contributed to falling turnout rates. The original “I voted” stickers offered a little good cheer and fellow feeling. In the emotional sense, then, the new ones are a departure, hinting at some darker possibility. Semantically, the message isn’t immediately clear: Is “voting” the same thing as “securing one’s vote”? What was I securing it against? “It’s bringing it up,” said Morehouse College political science professor Adrienne Jones. “Someone is leaving the polls like, Yeah, I secured my vote. They’re in that conversation about the idea that the vote is not secure.”

Full Article: Why do Georgia’s voting stickers now say, “I secured my vote”? – Atlanta Magazine

Illinois: Federal lawsuit threatens validity of potentially tens of thousands of mail-in, military ballots | Rick Pearson/Chicago Tribune

A pending federal lawsuit, brought by a downstate Republican congressman and two GOP officials, could invalidate potentially tens of thousands of mailed general election ballots that are cast by Illinois voters, including military members serving overseas, and postmarked on or before this coming Election Day but received by election authorities afterward. The lawsuit, led by four-term U.S. Rep. Mike Bost of Murphysboro echoes some of the rejected court challenges filed by former President Donald Trump in other states in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election that he falsely contends was stolen. Bost is being assisted in the suit by a nonprofit conservative advocacy organization that has backed a number of Trump’s efforts. At issue is a 2015 state law that allows vote-by-mail ballots to be counted if they are received within 14 days after Election Day if they were postmarked on or before the final day of voting. If the ballots lack a postmark or if it is illegible, ballots can be counted if the voter dated and signed the ballot on or before Election Day. Election Day is Nov. 8 and the 14-day time period, in which provisional votes also are considered, ends Nov. 22. The suit seeks to have no vote-by-mail ballots counted that are received after Nov. 8.

Full Article: Lawsuit in Illinois could invalidate thousands of mail-in ballots