Arizona Vote Review ‘Made Up the Numbers,’ Election Experts Say | Michael Wines and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The circuslike review of the 2020 vote commissioned by Arizona Republicans took another wild turn on Friday when veteran election experts charged that the very foundation of its findings — the results of a hand count of 2.1 million ballots — was based on numbers so unreliable that they appear to be guesswork rather than tabulations. The organizers of the review “made up the numbers,” the headline of the experts’ report reads. The experts, a data analyst for the Arizona Republican Party and two retired executives of an election consulting firm in Boston, said in their report that workers for the investigators failed to count thousands of ballots in a pallet of 40 ballot-filled boxes delivered to them in the spring. The final report by the Republican investigators concluded that President Biden actually won 99 more votes than were reported, and that former President Donald J. Trump tallied 261 fewer votes. But given the large undercount found in just a sliver of the 2.1 million ballots, it would effectively be impossible for the Republican investigators to arrive at such precise numbers, the experts said.

 

Source: Arizona Vote Review ‘Made Up the Numbers,’ Election Experts Say – The New York Times

National: False election claims undermine efforts to increase security | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Officials say the biggest threat facing U.S. elections isn’t Russian hacking or domestic voter fraud but disinformation and misinformation increasingly undermining the public’s perception of voting security. Since the 2016 vote, Congress has allocated millions of dollars to states in an attempt to shore up cybersecurity and replace outdated, vulnerable voting machines, but even as improvements are made, faith in the system is being eroded. “I believe that the biggest vulnerability is disinformation, that these machines are not functioning in the way that they were intended,” Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Commissioner Thomas Hicks, who was nominated by former President Obama, said Thursday during a virtual event hosted by Freedom House, the Bush Institute, Issue One and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. EAC Chairman Donald Palmer, nominated by former President Trump, agreed with Hicks, telling The Hill Friday that “our systems are secure, and they have been tested and are secure, and the misinformation about those systems, that hurts voter confidence.” Concerns over misleading claims undermining elections are nothing new, but gained widespread public attention after 2016. In the months leading up to November, Russian government hackers targeted election infrastructure in all 50 states, successfully accessing voter registration systems in two of them, though no votes were changed.

Full Article: False election claims undermine efforts to increase security | TheHill

National: New legislation seeks to expand protections for election workers | Linda So/Reuters

A U.S. senator introduced legislation on Monday to broaden protections for election workers, their family members and physical polling locations in response to a Reuters investigation into threats against election administrators. The Election Worker and Polling Place Protection Act aims to make the workers who help administer America’s elections safer — from officials to volunteers and the contractors who set up and maintain voting equipment. The protections would extend to family members of election officials and prohibit threats of damage to polling places, tabulation centers or other election infrastructure. The measure, sponsored by Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, cites two recent Reuters reports about threats of physical harm and death against election workers across the country, from senior officials to volunteer poll workers along with their families. The barrage, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s ceaseless false claims that the 2020 vote was stolen, has continued nearly a year after the November election. There have only been four known arrests in response to the threats and no convictions. “Threats of violence targeting election officials and polling places are threats against our Constitution and the right to vote,” said Ossoff, 34, elected this year. “At this moment of peril for our democracy, my bill will strengthen federal laws protecting election workers and polling places from violent threats and acts of violence.”

Full Article: New U.S. legislation seeks to expand protections for election workers | Reuters

National: Trump seeking to elevate Republicans who refuse to accept Biden victory | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Donald Trump and allies are seeding one of their most dangerous efforts to undermine US elections to date, seeking to elevate candidates who refuse to accept Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 to crucial offices where they could do significant damage in overturning the 2024 elections. The former president has endorsed several Republican candidates running to be the secretary of state, the chief election official, in their respective states. If elected, these candidates would wield enormous power over elections, and could both implement policies that would make it harder for Americans to cast a ballot and block the official certification of election results afterwards. Ten of the 15 candidates running for secretary of state in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada have either said the 2020 results were stolen or that they need to be further investigated, Reuters reported earlier this month. The endorsements from the former president underscore the enormous power that secretaries of state have over election rules and procedures, both before and after the election. One of the main reasons Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed in many places were election officials, including Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, who refused to go along with his effort. If those officials are voted out of office next year, it would be a serious blow to the guardrails of US democracy.

Full Article: Trump seeking to elevate Republicans who refuse to accept Biden victory | Donald Trump | The Guardian

National: Alex Jones and pro-Trump conspiracy theorists face legal consequences | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

Misinformation has always been a problem in politics. What has changed over the last six years or so is how much one movement in particular — the one led by former president Donald Trump — has embraced it as an organizing principle. Trump and his allies have also aligned with the kind of extremist purveyors of conspiracy theories who were once given the cold shoulder in polite society. Increasingly, though, a bit of a reckoning is taking place. Trump allies spouting wild, baseless theories and otherwise taking our political discourse down misinformation rabbit holes are confronting consequences in court or otherwise facing bona fide legal penalties for their actions. The question, as ever, is whether it will change anything — whether those penalties will serve as the deterrent they are supposed to be. Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is the latest to be ordered to pay up by a court. As The Post’s Timothy Bella reported Friday, a judge ruled Jones was liable for all damages in lawsuits over his claims that the massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six others at Sandy Hook Elementary was a “false flag” and a “giant hoax.” The conspiracy theory has led to the harassment of the victims’ families.

Full Article: Alex Jones and pro-Trump conspiracy theorists face legal consequences – The Washington Post

Editorial: Will 2024 Be the Year American Democracy Dies? | Spencer Bokat-Lindell/The New York Times

Nearly nine months after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election, a question still lingers over how to place it in history: Were the events of Jan. 6 the doomed conclusion of an unusually anti-democratic moment in American political life, or a preview of where the country is still heading? Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law and an expert in election law, believes the second possibility shouldn’t be ruled out. In a paper published this month, he wrote that “The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly, and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules.” It could be a bloodless coup, he warns, executed not by rioters with nooses but “lawyers in fine suits”: Between January and June, Republican-controlled legislatures passed 24 laws across 14 states to increase their control over how elections are run, stripping secretaries of state of their power and making it easier to overturn results. How much danger is American democracy really in, and what can be done to safeguard it? Here’s what people are saying.

Source: Opinion | Will 2024 Be the Year American Democracy Dies? – The New York Times

Editorial: Don’t be afraid of the election audits — they may be our only ticket out of this mess | Benjamin L. Ginsberg/The Washington Post

Bring on the audits. Really. As a Republican election lawyer who has participated in more than 30 post-election recounts, contests and audits, I am extremely confident: They won’t find anything. The massive fraud that former president Donald Trump claims tarnished the 2020 election has been and will remain illusory — because it didn’t exist. But audits, I believe, can be the friend of sanity, helping everyone in the political process, especially the Republicans who understand that convincing their voters that elections are hopelessly rigged is no way to win elections. Denying reality is not a successful electoral strategy. My argument to Republicans is simple: In the end, Trump’s elections-are-rigged message is going to hurt not only our democracy but also Republicans more than it hurts Democrats. So to the extent that some of those who have bought into Trump’s delusional claims of a stolen election can be dislodged from this view by the repeated conclusions of the audits he himself has called for, my advice is: Bring it on. Welcome them with open arms. The furies have already been unleashed. And if there’s a better plan to dispel the “big lie” out there, no one’s described it. The status quo is not sustainable, Trump is corroding American democracy with his unproven charges of fraudulent elections. Almost 30 percent of the electorate — and an astonishing 66 percent of Republicans — say they buy into Trump’s “big lie.” Constant fact-checking and reprobation by mainstream media outlets and good-government groups have not budged that number.

Full Article: Opinion | Don’t be afraid of the election audits — they may be our only ticket out of this mess – The Washington Post

Arizona Audit Backers Turn on Each Other After Recount Flop | Will Sommer/The Daily Beast

Supporters of Republicans’ controversial “audit” of 2020 presidential election ballots have turned on each other after the partisan investigation failed to find proof of election malfeasance, with disaffected backers even circulating a fabricated rival report they claim shows interference by the “deep state.” The audit report landed with a thud on Friday, only proving, if anything, that Joe Biden won Arizona by more votes than previously realized. On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer are joined by Arizona Mirror reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy to discuss the audit’s fractious aftermath. “Some people who were involved in the report say the deep state kept the real truth out,” Sommer said on this week’s episode. “The deep state and the politically correct lawyers and RINOs of the GOP suppressed this,” said MacDonald-Evoy, summarizing right-wing critics’ complaints about the anti-climactic audit report. Among the audit report’s new detractors: Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the controversial inventor whose supposed technology analyzing folds in ballot paper had promised, according to audit supporters, to detect some kind of voter fraud. Instead, the final audit report contained no mention of Pulitzer’s imaging technology, a change Pulitzer attributed on Twitter to “deep state” malfeasance. Asked over email who in the “deep state” supposedly sabotaged his contribution to the report, Pulitzer remained vague. “That’s the big question — is it not?” Pulitzer wrote in an email to The Daily Beast.

Full Article: Arizona Audit Backers Turn on Each Other After Recount Flop

California bar urged to probe Trump 2020 election adviser David G. Savage/Los Angeles Times

A group of prominent lawyers, including former governors and judges, urged the California bar on Monday to launch an investigation into John C. Eastman’s role in advising President Trump on how he could overturn his election defeat, including by having his vice president refuse to count the electoral votes in seven states won by President Biden. Eastman, a former law professor and dean at Chapman University in Orange County, emerged as a key legal advisor to Trump in the weeks after it was apparent he had been defeated in the November election. He wrote two legal memos that advised Vice President Mike Pence he could decide the results in several states were disputed and therefore that their electoral votes would go uncounted. Doing so would have turned Trump from a loser to the winner. Trump repeatedly pressed Pence to follow Eastman’s advice. But Pence understood correctly that the Constitution gave the the vice president a quite limited role. He presides in Congress on the day when the electoral votes are counted, but he has no role beyond opening the envelopes and announcing the state-by-state results. Despite Trump’s pressure, Pence decided he would follow the law, not the advice from Eastman.

Full Article: California bar urged to probe Trump 2020 election adviser – Los Angeles Times

District of Columbia: Supreme Court Turns Away Bid For D.C. Voter Representation in Congress | Kaia Hubbard/Associated Press

The Supreme Court on Monday affirmed a lower court’s decision to rule against giving District of Columbia residents a voting member in the House of Representatives. Last year, a panel of judges ruled against a group of Washington residents who brought forward the case, seeking representation in the nation’s capital. “Because voting is a fundamental right and Congress has conferred that right on thousands of individuals who are not state residents – Applicants argue that voting representation must be extended to District residents,” the group’s attorney wrote. “Applicants’ suit thus challenged their denial of access to this fundamental right as a violation of their equal protection, due process, and first amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.” The lower court’s decision held that residents of the District are not entitled to voting representation in the House of Representatives.

Source: Supreme Court Turns Away Bid For D.C. Voter Representation in Congress | National News | US News

Idaho Election denialists smacked down by secretary of state | Reid Wilson/The Hill

Conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation about the 2020 elections took their allegations to Idaho, and Idaho officials pushed right back. Top Gem State election administrators in Secretary of State Lawrence Denney’s (R) office said late Wednesday they had visited two counties to conduct a hand recount of last year’s presidential contest after hearing from readers of a website linked to MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, widely discredited for spreading easily disprovable misinformation in recent months. Denney’s office said it received allegations, in the form of screenshots of a report published on Lindell’s site, that vote tallies in all 44 of Idaho’s counties showed evidence of “electronic manipulation.” The only problem: At least seven of Idaho’s 44 counties do not use any electronic steps in their vote-counting process, making the claims impossible. Those counties, all small rural areas, still count ballots by hand, bypassing electronics or machines altogether. That process is feasible because there are so few ballots cast.

Full Article: Election denialists smacked down by Idaho secretary of state | TheHill

Illinois: DuPage County Board to Put Election Equipment to Vote Again | Megann Horstead/Naperville Community Television

The DuPage County Board is preparing to put election equipment to a vote again in the coming weeks after rejecting a bid from a vendor over what some officials describe as a questionable procurement process. A decision made last month to deny awarding the contract to Hart InterCivic has prompted the county to take another look at its vendor selection process. Chairman Dan Cronin said the county is committed to addressing the issue that arose, but he did not specify what went wrong. A vote on election equipment failed along party lines with the county board’s Democrats expressing confidence in Hart InterCivic and what the vendor offers and Republicans taking issue with it. Potential county board action to consider another bid comes as officials face continuing backlash from DuPage County residents at a recent meeting for failing to commit to the purchase and implementation of new election equipment.

Full Article: DuPage County Board to Put Election Equipment to Vote Again | Naperville

Michigan Poll Challengers Are Suing Dominion With Dershowitz’s Help | Madison Hall/Business Insider

A group of eight Michigan poll challengers is suing Dominion Voting Systems after the company sent them cease and desist letters. First reported by The Daily Beast, the group is being led by a former “Stop the Steal” attorney, Kurt Olsen, who attempted to convince the US Department of Justice to file a lawsuit regarding the 2020 election to the Supreme Court as part of an effort to undermine President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Famed Democratic attorney and former lawyer for President Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, is also a part of the group’s counsel. He told The Daily Beast he’s an “adviser and consultant on the First Amendment issues of this case.” The state of Michigan allows for interest groups and political parties to appoint “election challengers” to challenge a voter’s eligibility or an election inspector’s actions.  Eight of the state’s challengers from the 2020 presidential election said they received cease and desist letters from Dominion after they inquired about potential irregularities in the election despite never mentioning Dominion in their formal challenges.

Full Article: Michigan Poll Challengers Are Suing Dominion With Dershowitz’s Help

Montana: GOP legislators push for special panel to probe elections | Sam Wilson/Helena Independent Record

An overwhelming majority of Montana’s GOP legislators are urging their leadership in the state House and Senate to appoint a special committee to investigate the security of the state’s election system, an effort spearheaded by Republican legislators who are pushing theories of widespread voting fraud. The decision to appoint a special select committee, as requested in the Wednesday letter signed by 86 of the GOP’s 98 lawmakers, rests entirely in the hands of Senate President Mark Blasdel and House Speaker Wylie Galt, both Republicans. Galt didn’t return phone calls requesting comment on the letter, which asks for a response from them by Oct. 6, and Blasdel declined to comment when reached Friday. The letter proposes forming a GOP-majority committee, in which each party gets seats relative to their numbers in each chamber. Republicans hold 67 of 100 House seats and 31 of 50 Senate seats. “Many of our constituents have reached out to us with questions about Montana election security,” the letter states. “… The Select Committee would conduct hearings about the process and security of Montana elections and propose future changes if needed; including legislation.”

Full Article: GOP legislators push for special panel to probe Montana elections | 406 Politics | helenair.com

Oregon county clerks inundated with calls for audit of 2020 presidential election | Bill Poehler/Salem Statesman Journal

Eleven months after the 2020 election, county clerks in Oregon are getting a new round of calls and emails disputing the results. Marion County Clerk Bill Burgess said the requests for audits and canvasses of election results in the county have been coming since June. But he said they’ve picked up in the past few weeks following an audit of a county’s election results in Arizona. “People, they’ll come and they’ll start asking the question and then they won’t wait for an answer,” Burgess said. “They’ll start railing away and sometimes with a lot of obscenity and all, too.” In the 2020 presidential election, voters in Marion County swung to Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump by 49.2% to 48%, a margin of 1,870 votes out of 164,308. That was a reversal from the 2016 election when Trump carried the county. Burgess said the calls and emails have also become threatening, including some he’s forwarded to the FBI in the past few weeks. He said some of his election staff don’t want their photo taken for fear of being tracked. “It seems to go in waves,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t tell if these are direct threats or not.”

Full Article: Spike in calls for Oregon audit of 2020 election after Arizona recount

Pennsylvania Republican made a big claim to defend the party’s election review. There’s no evidence for it. | Jonathan Lai and Andrew Seidman/Philadelphia Inquirer

Days after Pennsylvania Republicans subpoenaed Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration for millions of voters’ personal information, including the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, the head of the Senate GOP acknowledged the request was “intrusive.” But, Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward said, the subpoena simply demanded the same records the administration had already disclosed to third parties. Not only that, but those outside groups could have compromised the voter rolls, she suggested last month: “We don’t know what information they could add to the system. We don’t know what information they could take from the system.” It was a striking claim. Trump supporters have been pushing similar claims for months, and the Republican senator leading the party’s new election review has said lawmakers will be “digging into” the issue. But there’s no evidence to support it. A top Pennsylvania elections official said in sworn testimony earlier this year that outside groups had no such access. House Republicans investigating the matter accepted his explanation. Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), House Republicans’ point person on elections, said he’s concluded there’s nothing to it: “Just because you read it on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Full Article: Defending subpoena for Pennsylvania Republican election review, Kim Ward misstates facts

Pennsylvania: Deadline passes in GOP’s election ‘investigation’ subpoena | Marc Levy/Associated Press

The deadline passed Friday for Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to comply with a subpoena from a Republican-controlled state Senate committee pursuing what the GOP calls a “forensic investigation” of last year’s presidential election, as a state court sorted through three legal challenges. Wolf’s administration and Senate Republicans remained silent in the matter Friday. The court was expected to set up an expedited briefing schedule in one or all of the cases. Challengers, including Senate Democrats and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, have sought broadly to block the subpoena, saying it is an abuse of legislative power, and in particular have challenged its request for the driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers of roughly 9 million registered voters. Republicans maintain that they are attempting to find and fix problems in last year’s presidential election and this year’s primary election. Democrats accuse them of helping perpetuate baseless claims that former President Donald Trump was cheated out of victory. It’s not clear whether Wolf’s administration can be forced to comply with a Senate subpoena. The subpoena comes as Trump and his allies pressure battleground states to investigate ballots, voting machines and voter rolls for fraud. Democrats say it is part of a national campaign to take away voting rights and undermine both democracy and elections. Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes, according to certified results.

 

Full Article: Deadline passes in GOP’s election ‘investigation’ subpoena

South Carolina elections director steps down three months earlier than planned. Here’s why | Joseph Bustos/The State

South Carolina’s state elections director, who announced her resignation in May after she pushed for COVID-19 health precautions before the 2020 election, has stepped down three months ahead of her original leave date. Marci Andino’s last day on the job was Friday, Oct. 1, said state elections’ spokesman Chris Whitmire, adding she’s accepted a new job as the director of the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, part of the nonprofit Center for Internet Security. Andino notified the five-member State Elections Commission of her planned move on Sept. 15, though she had initially planned to stay on through the end of December. Voter Services Director Howard Knabb will serve as interim director until commissioners find a permanent replacement, Whitmire said. … Last year, and what ultimately led to her departure, Andino pushed for expanded access to absentee early voting and mail-in options as a way to limit the spread of COVID-19. She also asked lawmakers to allow voters to request absentee ballots online and to remove the witness signature requirement on absentee ballots.

Full Article: SC elections director steps down early to take new job | The State

Wisconsin: Michael Gableman issues subpoenas for election records | Molly Beck Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The attorney overseeing Assembly Republicans’ review of the 2020 election served subpoenas Friday demanding records and interviews with officials from the state and at five cities about private funds used to help run the election. The subpoenas — the first to be issued by state lawmakers in decades — are the most significant step yet in former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s probe into the November contest that elected President Joe Biden. Recounts and court rulings have repeatedly found Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by 0.6 percentage points.  Gableman is seeking to take testimony at a Brookfield office on Oct. 15 with Meagan Wolfe, the director of the state Elections Commission, and officials in Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha. With his subpoenas, Gableman is seeking information about private grants to help conduct elections that have long frustrated Republicans. So far he has not sought ballots or voting machines — an idea that has raised far more serious concerns for clerks because of their legal duty to maintain custody of them. “We are still analyzing it and do not have any comment at this time,” Wolfe said in a statement. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester this summer hired Gableman as Republicans in other states pursued similar partisan reviews. Gableman, who contended last year without evidence that bureaucrats stole the election, has a taxpayer-funded budget of about $680,000.

Full Article: Michael Gableman issues subpoenas for Wisconsin election records

National: There’s a Bipartisan Voting Rights Bill. Yes, Really. | Maggie Astor/The New York Times

A bipartisan elections bill is the rarest of creatures, one many Americans have never seen in the wild. Congressional Democrats are united behind sweeping voting rights legislation that won’t pass the Senate so long as the filibuster exists, because Republicans are united against it. Republican legislators in Texas, Georgia, Florida and elsewhere have passed numerous voting restrictions over united Democratic opposition. But on one sliver of voting issues, it seems lawmakers might — might! — be able to agree. The Native American Voting Rights Act, or NAVRA, was introduced in the House last month by Representatives Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, and Sharice Davids, Democrat of Kansas. Senator Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, introduced companion legislation in the Senate. It would let tribes determine the number and location of voter registration sites, polling places and ballot drop boxes on their reservations; bar states from closing or consolidating those sites without tribal consent; require states with voter identification laws to accept tribal ID; and create a $10 million grant program for state-level task forces to examine barriers to voting access for Native Americans. The bill — endorsed by many Native American tribes, as well as advocacy groups such as the Native American Rights Fund, the National Congress of American Indians and Four Directions — is in the earliest stages of the legislative process. It hasn’t even had a committee hearing. Congress has been rather preoccupied with matters like stopping the government from shutting down or defaulting on its debt. While the broad voting rights measures are a high priority for Democrats, NAVRA is much lower on the list. And there is no telling how many Republicans besides Mr. Cole will get on board.

Full Article: There’s a Bipartisan Voting Rights Bill. Yes, Really. – The New York Times

Georgia: Department of Homeland Security Cyber Office Wants to See Secret Voting Machine Vulnerability Report | Shannon Vavra and Jose Pagliery/The Daily Beast

A cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security has shown interest in seeing a copy of a report alleging “severe” vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting machines—a report that a federal judge has decided to keep secret. As The Daily Beast reported last month, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg ordered the report—authored by a renowned computer security academic—to remain sealed. Although the report only discusses the potential for future election interference, her restrictions appear to be driven by a desire to avoid fueling unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in 2020. But now the Streisand effect is in full swing, as the report’s secrecy is attracting even more attention from two camps: the federal agency tasked with helping protect elections and state election officials around the country who are also relying on these machines in certain jurisdictions. According to an email exchange filed in court documents, University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman reached out directly to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) one week after The Daily Beast’s reporting and quickly heard back from the department’s election security director. “Yes, CISA would be willing to receive the report regarding possible vulnerabilities in election infrastructure,” wrote Geoffrey Hale, who leads the agency’s so-called “Election Security Initiative,” according to the court filing.

Full Article: Department of Homeland Security Cyber Office Wants to See Secret Voting Machine Vulnerability Report

Here’s what Congress can do to keep the next Trump from stealing an election | Richard L. Hasen/The Washington Post

We know from the Bob Woodward and Robert Costa book “Peril” that the country came closer to a stolen presidential election than was previously reported. President Donald Trump’s lawyer John Eastman advised Vice President Mike Pence that he would be justified in single-handedly accepting some fake alternative slates of electors for states that Joe Biden won — on the grounds of supposed fraud in various states — and simply declare Trump the winner of the election. Pence would have done so on Jan. 6, when he sat in his ceremonial role as president of the Senate. Pence supposedly seriously considered the possibility, only to reject it upon getting sounder legal advice. These machinations involving Pence came on top of at least 30 direct Trump contacts with election officials, elected officials and others to cajole Republican state legislatures to send in those alternative slates of electors. (None did, but Eastman’s plan pretended that they had.) We dodged a bullet last time, and things are much worse now. Election officials have been leaving their jobs as they face threats of violence and harassment, and some of the people who will replace them have bought into the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. Those are the people who will be in charge of counting the votes in some places next election. Simply put, we face a serious risk that election results will not reflect the will of the people in 2024 or some other future American presidential election. Congress has the power to put up barriers to election theft, but the window is quickly closing. That’s because Democrats may soon lose control of one or both Houses of Congress, and Republicans, fearful of Trump or complicit in his plans, cannot be expected to take the lead on deterring election subversion.

Full Article: Here’s what Congress can do to keep the next Trump from stealing an election – The Washington Post

National: Election Security Problems Still Must Be Addressed | Susan Greenhalgh and J. Alex Halderman

Since last November, Donald Trump and his allies have attempted to undermine our democratic framework with a relentless barrage of lies, fantasies and falsehoods about imaginary vote-rigging schemes. They have enabled supporters of the former president to grasp onto the most arrant nonsense and farcical theories to convince themselves that Trump did not lose to President Joe Biden by 7 million votes nationwide and 74 Electoral College votes. It shouldn’t need saying, but the lies are not true. As the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and Republican and Democratic election officials have affirmed, there is no evidence whatsoever of large-scale electoral fraud. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. Period. But the fact that the presidential outcome was correct this time does not mean that our elections are well enough secured. Plenty has been written about how the Big Lie is corroding public trust and tearing at the fabric of our democracy. But in addition to these obvious harms, Trump’ insidious disinformation is also inhibiting legitimate and necessary election security reforms. Well before the 2020 election, bipartisan investigations from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee documented significant weaknesses in U.S. voting equipment. These findings only confirmed what previous studies from state election officials and academic researchers revealed—voting machines are computers with inherent vulnerabilities and weak security protocols.

 

Full Article: Election Security Problems Still Must Be Addressed | Opinion

National: As Trump hints at 2024 comeback, democracy advocates fear a ‘worst-case scenario’ for the country | Ashley Parker/The Washington Post

A year before the 2020 election, about two dozen constitutional scholars and democracy advocates traveled to Washington to work through a range of scenarios where something goes awry on Election Day. The country’s political system was being tested by a campaign like no other in modern history, with an incumbent president, Donald Trump, who showed little regard for the democratic traditions and constitutional norms that had guided his predecessors — and who repeatedly claimed that the only way he could lose was through rampant fraud. So the group considered a slew of hypothetical catastrophes: “What do we do if a vigilante group takes over a major county tabulation facility and burns it to the ground? What do we do if there is a military coup?” But, as Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser to the elections program at Democracy Fund tells it, the experts were too quick in retrospect to dismiss the outrageous as unlikely to happen in a country like the United States. Either we were not creative enough or the norms of civility our nation has seen over centuries were not reliable enough,” said Patrick, a former elections official in Maricopa County, Ariz. The challenges for American democracy were on stark display almost exactly two months after Election Day, on Jan. 6, when a violent mob of Trump supporters mounted a deadly insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. And the challenges have been clear in the eight months since the riot, as Trump and his allies have intensified false claims of election fraud and the former president has remained the Republican Party’s most popular leader.

Full Article: As Trump hints at 2024 comeback, democracy advocates fear a ‘worst-case scenario’ for the country – The Washington Post

National: The Push For Internet Voting Continues, Mostly Thanks To One Guy | Miles Parks/NPR

By 2028, Bradley Tusk wants every American to be able to vote on their phones. It’s a lofty goal, and one that most cybersecurity experts scoff at. But it’s a quest that the venture capitalist and former political insider continues to chip away at. His nonprofit, Tusk Philanthropies, announced a $10 million grant program Thursday to fund the development of a new internet-based voting system that he says will aim to win over security skeptics, who have long been wary of votes being cast via digital networks rather than through the paper ballots or ATM-type machines that most Americans currently use. NPR is the first to report on the announcement. “My goal is to make it possible for every single person in this country to vote in every single election on their phone,” Tusk said in an interview with NPR. Tusk was Uber’s first political adviser, and he is also a former staffer for Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He has already bankrolled a number of small-scale mobile-phone voting pilot projects across the U.S. over the past few years, in which voters with disabilities and Americans living abroad from a select few districts have been able to return their ballots digitally. However, the vendors that conducted those pilots have faced heavy scrutiny for security flaws in their systems as well as for a general lack of transparency around their software, as the source code for the underlying technology has remained private.

Full Article: Despite Security Concerns, Online Voting Gets $10 Million Push : NPR

Editorial: The GOP isn’t just re-litigating 2020. It’s pre-litigating 2022. And 2024. | Olivier Knox/The Washington Post

The best way to understand the aggressive Republican push to cast doubt on the 2020 election results and rewrite voting procedures in states the GOP controls is not as re-litigating President Biden’s victory, though that is a tool for trying to undermine him. Instead, it’s better understood as pre-litigating 2022 and 2024: Laying the foundation for challenging or even overturning Democratic victories of the lowercase “d” democratic variety in the future. Yes, I know that this has been blindingly obvious for some time. (Also, I offer my apologies to all of my English teachers for “pre-litigating.” I blame years of covering State of the Union “preactions.”) But consider what we’ve learned — though “confirmed” might be a better word — over the past week about former president Donald Trump’s avalanche of false claims he was cheated out of a second term. And consider he’s flirting with running again and has been repeating this nonsense at campaign-style rallies. First, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — hardly “Never Trump” politicians — personally investigated the Trump camp’s claims of widespread irregularities and found nothing to deter them from voting to certify Biden’s victory.

Full Article: The GOP isn’t just re-litigating 2020. It’s pre-litigating 2022. And 2024. – The Washington Post

Editorial: America would be much better off if our elections were as boring as Germany’s | Max Boot/The Washington Post

Imagine that we lived in an alternative universe where Republican George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1980 and stayed in office until 1996. He was then followed by Democrat Michael Dukakis for two terms. Then, for the next 16 years, Republican Mitt Romney was in office. And finally, in 2020, Romney was succeeded by his vice president — Democrat Joe Biden. In this universe, our politics would be more boring — and a lot more sane and sensible. That, roughly, is what Germany has achieved. Helmut Kohl of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was chancellor from 1982 to 1998. He was followed by Gerhard Schroeder of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1998 to 2005. For the past 16 years, Germany has been led by the CDU’s Angela Merkel, governing for most of that time in coalition with the SPD. Chancellor Merkel — who makes Romney look like the life of the party by comparison — leaves office with higher approval ratings than any other world leader. She has reduced the German unemployment rate, maintained stability and successfully navigated challenges such as a euro-zone debt crisis in 2009, a massive influx of refugees in 2015 and a coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Little wonder that the leaders of the CDU and SPD were competing over who would be seen as her heir. The winner, by a hair, in Sunday’s balloting was the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, who served as Merkel’s vice chancellor and finance minister for the past three and a half years. He marketed himself as “Angela the second,” right down to making the same diamond-shaped hand gesture as Merkel. His chief challenger, the CDU’s Armin Laschet — who might still be able to form a governing coalition with smaller parties — was just as dull. “It’s Election Season in Germany,” a New York Times article noted. “No Charisma, Please!”

Full Article: Opinion | America would be much better off if our elections were as boring as Germany’s – The Washington Post

Arizona: ‘We won’: Trump and his allies barrel ahead with election lies despite review confirming his loss | Jeremy Herb and Fredreka Schouten/CNN

The Cyber Ninjas failed to prove fraud in the Arizona 2020 election, but former President Donald Trump’s election fraud crusade is now proceeding as if they’d won — pushing for more “forensic audits” and restrictive voting in that state and elsewhere across the country. Trump’s allies are already demanding a new review of another Arizona county won by President Joe Biden. They are launching more partisan ballot reviews in other states following the Arizona playbook after passing laws making it harder to vote earlier this year. And they are calling for decertification of Arizona’s 2020 election despite the lack of fraud, as part of a larger effort to validate Trump’s “Big Lie” and undermine the 2020 election results. The lesson they’re taking from Arizona’s Maricopa County ballot review is not that they failed and should stop, but rather that they should try to avoid the negative scrutiny that hounded the Cyber Ninjas’ review and “do it better” in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, even if there’s no evidence of fraud, said Sarah Longwell, a conservative publisher and executive director of the conservative group Defending Democracy Together. “It has nothing to do with auditing votes,” Longwell told CNN. “It has to do with creating a cloud of suspicion around the elections and keeping their fraud narrative front and center.”

Full Article: Arizona election audit: Trump and his allies barrel ahead with election lies despite review confirming his loss – CNNPolitics

Arizona Secretary of State’s Ability to Defend Election Laws Restored By Judge’s Ruling | Mary Ellen Cagnassola/Newsweek

Republican-passed laws in Arizona that ban schools form requiring masks and restrict the ability of local governments to enact COVID-19 requirements were dismantled by a judge Monday, a devastating blow to a nationwide GOP effort to limit pandemic rules. The decision by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper could create a path for Arizona cities and countries to enact mask requirements, if it withstands an impending appeal. Nearly 30 public school systems ignored the laws and required masks for students and staff. Republican Governor Doug Ducey‘s office called the ruling “clearly an example of judicial overreach.” “Arizona’s state government operates with three branches, and it’s the duty and authority of only the legislative branch to organize itself and to make laws,” C.J. Karamargin said in a statement. “Unfortunately, today’s decision is the result of a rogue judge interfering with the authority and processes of another branch of government.”

Full Article: Arizona Secretary of State’s Ability to Defend Election Laws Restored By Judge’s Ruling

California Governor Newsom signs bill to make voting by mail permanent in California | Emily Deruy/Marin Independent Journal

In a move that cements California’s future as a vote-by-mail state, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a bill that makes permanent what Golden State voters experienced during the pandemic elections of 2020 and last month’s recall: Every active registered voter will receive a ballot in the mail for every election. Advocates hailed the new law — Assembly Bill 37 from Menlo Park Assemblymember Marc Berman — as a way to make it more convenient for people to vote, which could increase participation in elections. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least five other states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — already conduct elections by mail. California’s more permissive voting system stands in stark contrast to efforts in other states to tighten voting requirements. Earlier this year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill passed by the state’s Republican-dominated legislature that included new ID mandates and banned around-the-clock early voting. Georgia recently passed a law requiring voters to provide their driver’s license number or other form of ID to get or return an absentee ballot. “As states across our country continue to enact undemocratic voter suppression laws, California is increasing voter access, expanding voting options and bolstering elections integrity and transparency,” Newsom said in a statement.

Full Article: Gov. Newsom signs bill to make voting by mail permanent in California – Marin Independent Journal