Michigan prosecutor: ‘Additional investigation’ needed on DePerno election case | Dave Boucher/Detroit Free Press

The special prosecutor appointed to review broad allegations of possible criminal conduct by the Republican candidate for Michigan attorney general and eight others who sought to undermine the results of the 2020 election says more investigative work is needed before a decision can be made on bringing charges. In a statement, Muskegon County Prosecutor DJ Hilson declined to say if his decision on whether to criminally charge GOP attorney general hopeful Matthew DePerno or others allegedly involved in the election-related scheme would come before or after the Nov. 8 general election. “As prosecutor I have an ethical obligation to ensure that all necessary evidence and information is obtained and reviewed so that a determination of criminal charges can be made.  In order to meet that obligation, I have determined that additional investigative work needs to be done and I am working with investigators on those issues,” Hilson said in an email Wednesday morning. “I am acting as expeditiously as possible, but due to this ethical obligation, I cannot say at this time when any decisions would be made.”

Full Article: Michigan prosecutor: ‘Additional investigation’ needed on DePerno case

Michigan is trying to ensure security of its voting systems after tabulator breaches | Oralandar Brand-Williams/Votebeat

As the midterms approach, the Michigan secretary of state’s office has found itself repeatedly defending the state’s election system against local clerks. Experts say the clearest vulnerability facing Michigan are such insider threats, which the secretary of state has little ability to proactively prevent. The problem became most evident after a handful of local clerks last year allegedly gave people unauthorized access to election equipment, forcing the secretary of state’s staff to manage the fallout. Now at least one of those clerks is making false claims about the state’s voting machines and hinting she may conduct the election without them. Michigan is among the closest watched midterm battlegrounds, and the allegations that clerks in Barry County’s Irving Township, Missaukee County’s Lake Township, and Roscommon County, and a supervisor in Roscommon’s Richfield Township, allowed pro-Trump actors to have unauthorized access to tabulators last year sent shockwaves through the state. Experts and state officials agree that there has been no lasting damage to the state’s voting systems, because the protective measures in place worked. But Michigan’s decentralized election administration means the first line of defense in election security are the 1,609 county, municipal and township clerks, who are responsible for overseeing and protecting equipment and following the law — or not. The widely disseminated responsibilities make it difficult for the state to ensure that the rules are consistently followed. While there is no indication that other clerks have allowed unauthorized access and several interviewed for this story vowed to keep the machines secure, elections security consultant Ryan Macias said insiders willingly providing access remains “the biggest risk to security.”

Full Article: Michigan tabulator breaches: How security works when clerks follow rules – Votebeat Michigan – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting

Ohio elections officials still get calls about 2020. Here’s what they want you to know | Scott Wartman/Cincinnati Enquirer

Hamilton County Board of Elections gets questions from the public about the 2020 election and election security every day, even almost two years later. As the 2022 election nears, the number of emails and public records requests from members of the public regarding the 2020 election have spiked, said Alex Linser, the board’s deputy director. In the past two weeks, they have averaged about three a day, he said. “There are two common themes that we receive — distrust of the voting machines, and the other seeking reproduction of all of the documents created in the 2020 election,” Linser said. The latter, which includes every ballot ID envelope, costs $75,000 to copy every sheet. No one has taken the board of elections up on that offer, Linser said. It’s not just Hamilton County. Backers of former President Donald Trump and his false claims of a stolen 2020 election have swamped the boards of election in more than two dozen states and counties all across Ohio, the Washington Post, National Public Radio and other news agencies reported. “The board of elections receives a lot of communication from people who are questioning the integrity of the 2020 election,” Linser said. “We know that was the most accurate and safe and secure election in American history. The good news is, you don’t have to take my word for it. We can show you.”

Full Article: What security procedures are in place for the 2022 election?

Pennsylvania election offices challenged by surge of voting record requests | Jan Murphy/PennLive

With the Nov. 8 election less than two months away, county election offices across Pennsylvania are moving into crunch time for preparing for Election Day. But many are facing an added challenge this year. Along with checking voting equipment, processing voter registration/mail-in and absentee ballot applications and proofreading ballots, many say they are dealing with an unusual number of Right-to-Know requests for voting and election-related records. “I can’t believe how many we get,” said Sean Drasher, who has been Lebanon County’s elections officer for less than a year. “The feedback I’m getting from my colleagues is they’ve never seen anything like it.” Counties in other battleground states across the U.S. have experienced a similar phenomenon. Lorian County, in northeastern Ohio, for example, has received requests seeking an estimated 1 million documents, most related to the 2016 and 2020 elections, putting a strain on its election day preparations. In Pennsylvania, the picture is more mixed. Montgomery County spokeswoman Kelly Cofrancisco said there’s been a “substantial increase in RTK requests” submitted to her county’s Voter Services Office. State elections officials say other counties too have reported adding staff or dedicating staff time to respond to an unusual number of such requests.

Full Article: Election offices challenged by surge of voting record requests – pennlive.com

Texas: Election challenge disciplinary case dismissed against Attorney General’s top aide | James Barragán/The Texas Tribune

A district judge has thrown out the State Bar of Texas’ professional misconduct case against Brent Webster, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top aide, for his work on a case that challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election. Judge John Youngblood, a judge in Milam County who was assigned to the case in Williamson County court, sided with an argument by Webster that said letting the case move forward would violate the state constitution’s separation of powers because the state bar, an agent of the judicial branch, would be limiting the actions of the attorney general’s office, which is part of the executive branch. “[T]he separation-of-powers doctrine deprives this Court of subject-matter jurisdiction,” Youngblood said in a brief letter. “To hold otherwise would stand for a limitation of the Attorney General’s broad power to file lawsuits on the State’s behalf, a right clearly supported by the Texas Constitution and recognized repeatedly by the Texas Supreme Court.” A spokesperson for the state bar said the body does not have comment on the dismissal and said no decision has been made on an appeal. Paxton is facing a similar lawsuit in Collin County, in which he has made the same argument to the court. The judge in Paxton’s case has made no ruling.

Full Article: Election challenge disciplinary case dismissed against Texas AG’s top aide | The Texas Tribune

In Wisconsin, Election Skeptics Deploy as Poll Watchers for Midterms | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

Republicans here are recruiting a fresh batch of poll watchers to monitor voting in November as part of a revamped response to allegations of election fraud that roiled the latest presidential contest. Poll watching, a normally mundane duty where volunteers sit for hours watching for any possible rule violations at voting sites, is emerging as a flashpoint in the fight over U.S. election rules after former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 race. The Republican National Committee said it has launched a multimillion-dollar effort to recruit tens of thousands of poll watchers and poll workers and hire dozens of staff to monitor voting. Many Republican voters are heading into the midterms still skeptical about the results of the 2020 election, and the Republican Party is encouraging them to channel those concerns into activism by volunteering to monitor the polls. Some Republicans view the effort as a way to ensure that Mr. Trump’s fraud claims don’t prompt supporters to skip the election altogether because of doubts about the validity of the process. Democrats are raising concerns that highly partisan volunteers could try to intimidate voters or election officials. Here in Brown County, Wis., the local Republican party says it has signed up more than 100 poll watchers and is working to recruit more volunteers. Mr. Trump won Brown County in 2020 with some 53% of the vote. Wisconsin flipped from supporting Mr. Trump in 2016 to being won by Democrat Joe Biden by about 20,700 votes in 2020.

Full Article: In Wisconsin, Election Skeptics Deploy as Poll Watchers for Midterms – WSJ

Fighting bogus claims a growing priority in election offices | Ali Swenson and Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Election officials preparing for the rapidly approaching midterm elections have one more headache: trying to combat misinformation that sows distrust about voting and results while fueling vitriol aimed at rank-and-file election workers. Some states and counties are devoting more money or staff to a problem that has only grown more concerning since the 2020 presidential election and the false claims that it was marred by widespread fraud. A barrage of misinformation in some places has led election officials to complain that Facebook parent Meta, Twitter and other social media platforms aren’t doing enough to help them tackle the problem. “Our voters are angry and confused. They simply don’t know what to believe,” Lisa Marra, elections director in Cochise County, Arizona, told a U.S. House committee last month. “We’ve got to repair this damage.” Many election offices are taking matters into their own hands, starting public outreach campaigns to provide accurate information about how elections are run and how ballots are cast and counted. That means traveling town halls in Arizona, “Mythbuster Mondays” in North Carolina and animated videos in Ohio emphasizing the accuracy of election results. Connecticut is hiring a dedicated election misinformation analyst.

Full Article: Fighting bogus claims a growing priority in election offices | AP News

Mark Finchem Says Biden Didn’t Win in 2020, and He Has Big Plans for Elections in Arizona | Katherine Miller/The New York Times

Mark Finchem, the Republican nominee for Arizona’s secretary of state, talks a lot about tracking: procedures, processes, audits, the path a ballot takes from voter to tabulator. He’s a member of the Arizona State House of Representatives and has a formal way of speaking, full of numerical legislation titles and terminology, but also talks about things seen and unseen. Like a number of other Republican nominees for secretary of state this year, Mr. Finchem claims the last presidential election was fraudulent. “Here’s why we know it didn’t happen,” he told an interviewer who had just suggested Arizona may have actually voted for Joe Biden in 2020. “It’s nonsense intuitively. Leading up to the election, this would be August, September, October. It first started off that you’d see a Trump train of maybe a dozen cars, and this is in my community. It’s one community, but I think it’s fairly representative of Arizona. You’d see a Trump train of maybe a dozen cars.” The hosts start cracking jokes about Biden trains behind gas stations these days, but in the interview, Mr. Finchem remains undeterred and unlaughing: First it was 12 cars, then 24, then 48, culminating in a three-mile Trump train. This is the kind of thing Mr. Finchem will abruptly say amid talk of election procedure. In November 2020, Mr. Finchem was part of a hearing in Arizona where Rudy Giuliani aired claims of election fraud; Mr. Finchem went to Washington on Jan. 6. He wants to decertify the 2020 election and for Arizona to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonpartisan organization funded by participating states that helps them to find potential voters and determine duplicate active registrations. He also could win in Arizona this year; the state has been decidedly close the past several elections. His public comments tend to be premised on the possibility of rampant voter fraud — which, in actuality, takes place rarely — and to reflect a kind of individualism that’s a part of the tech and society we already have, where individuals routinely arbitrate and police disputes online.

Full Article: Opinion | Mark Finchem Says Biden Didn’t Win in 2020, and He Has Big Plans for Elections in Arizona – The New York Times

National: Top election security official warns of election workforce problems: 1 in 3 have left posts | Ines Kagubare/The Hill

Kim Wyman, the head of election security at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is warning against threats to election workers, which have forced many to quit their positions ahead of the midterms. In a recent interview with CBS News, Wyman, who served as the secretary of state of Washington, said that about 1 in 3 elections officials and poll workers have left their posts over concerns for their personal safety. “We are facing a workforce problem,” Wyman said. “As these stories of threats and intimidation are shared, people who would normally be poll workers on Election Day or work at a voting center are taking a step back and saying, ‘I don’t know that it’s worth my life or worth my personal safety,’” she added. Wyman also said that state officials across the country are having trouble hiring poll workers ahead of the midterm elections. “It’s unnerving,” Wyman said as she got emotional during the interview. Election officials are also preparing for other security threats, including foreign interference and insider threats. In April, CISA Director Jen Easterly told lawmakers that election security is a top priority for her agency, which has provided guidance and resources to state and local officials on how to secure the election from various threats. Easterly said she was also concerned about Russian interference in the midterms, including cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.

Full Article: Top election security official warns of election workforce problems: 1 in 3 have left posts | The Hill

National: Trump backers inundate election offices with requests for 2020 records | Amy Gardner and Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

Supporters of former president Donald Trump have swamped local election offices across the nation in recent weeks with a coordinated campaign of requests for 2020 voting records, in some cases paralyzing preparations for the fall election season. In nearly two dozen states and scores of counties, election officials are fielding what many describe as an unprecedented wave of public records requests in the final weeks of summer, one they say may be intended to hinder their work and weaken an already strained system. The avalanche of sometimes identically worded requests has forced some to dedicate days to the process of responding even as they scurry to finalize polling locations, mail out absentee ballots and prepare for early voting in October, officials said. In Wisconsin, one recent request asks for 34 different types of documents. In North Carolina, hundreds of requests came in at state and local offices on one day alone. In Kentucky, officials don’t recognize the technical-sounding documents they’re being asked to produce — and when they seek clarification, the requesters say they don’t know, either. The use of mass records requests by the former president’s supporters effectively weaponizes laws aimed at promoting principles of a democratic system — that the government should be transparent and accountable. Public records requests are a key feature of that system, used by regular citizens, journalists and others. In interviews, officials emphasized that they are trying to follow the law and fulfill the requests, but they also believe the system is being abused.

Full Article: Trump backers inundate election offices with requests for 2020 records – The Washington Post

National: Election logistics firm sues perpetrators of voter fraud smear campaign | Cameron Langford/Courthouse News Service

Election logistics firm Konnech Inc. says in a lawsuit filed Monday its founder and his family had to leave their home due to threats from supporters of True the Vote, a voter fraud conspiracy group spreading lies that the company is a vehicle of the Chinese Communist Party to control American elections. Making claims of defamation and computer fraud, Konnech sued True the Vote Inc., a Texas nonprofit, its founder Catherine Engelbrecht and board member Gregg Phillips in Houston federal court. Started and led by Eugene Yu, a U.S. citizen of Chinese descent, Konnech sells election logistics software called PollChief to U.S. governmental entities, which they use to manage poll workers and coordinate distribution of equipment and technical support staff to polling places. Though its software is meant to help county, city and local governments run elections more efficiently, Konnech underscores the limits of its services in its lawsuit. “Konnech’s software products are not involved in any way in the registration of voters, the production, distribution, scanning, or processing of ballots, nor the collection, counting or reporting of votes,” the complaint states. “Indeed, Konnech never handles any ballots and no ballots or other voting counts ever enter any of Konnech’s computer servers.” Nonetheless, Konnech says, True the Vote’s directors made it a target of their social media- and podcast-fueled smear campaign during an Aug. 13 event they dubbed “The Pit.”

Full Article: Election logistics firm sues perpetrators of voter fraud smear campaign | Courthouse News Service

National: Election deniers advanced to November ballots in 27 states, report finds | Adam Edelman/NBC

Candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election have advanced to November ballots in statewide races for positions that will oversee, defend or certify elections in more than half of the states, according to a nonpartisan group tracking the races. In the races in 27 states for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, at least one election-denying candidate will be on the ballot who has echoed former President Donald Trump’s continuing false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, according to a report to be published by States United Action, which has closely tracked the progress of election deniers throughout the 2022 primary season. NBC News obtained the report ahead of its release this week. Many of the general election contests will be competitive races in critical battleground states — among them Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Michigan — whose outcomes could have enormous impacts on the results of the next presidential election in those states.

Full Article: Election deniers advanced to November ballots in 27 states, report finds

National: Fraudulent Document Cited in Supreme Court Bid to Torch Election Law | Ethan Herenstein and Brian Palmer/Politico

Supporters of a legal challenge to completely upend our electoral system are citing a fraudulent document in their brief to the Supreme Court. It’s an embarrassing error — and it underscores how flimsy their case really is. This fall, the court will hear Moore v. Harper, an audacious bid by Republican legislators in North Carolina to free themselves from their own state constitution’s restrictions on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. The suit also serves as a vehicle for would-be election subverters promoting the so-called “independent state legislature theory” — the notion that state legislators have virtually absolute authority over federal elections — which was used as part of an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The North Carolina legislators’ case relies in part on a piece of paper from 1818. But there’s a problem: The document they quote in their brief is a well-known fake. So as the Supreme Court considers whether to blow up our electoral system, it should know the real American history. The story starts at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, when an ambitious young South Carolinian named Charles Pinckney submitted a plan for a new government. We don’t know exactly what was in Pinckney’s plan, because his original document has been lost to history. The Convention records, however, reveal that the framers hardly discussed Pinckney’s plan and, at key moments, rejected his views during the debates. Those documents were sealed for decades following ratification. This created a vacuum in the historical record, into which Pinckney strode. In 1818, when the government was gathering records from the Convention for publication, Pinckney submitted a document that, he claimed, represented his original plan. It was uncannily similar to the U.S. Constitution.

Full Article: Fraudulent Document Cited in Supreme Court Bid to Torch Election Law – POLITICO

National: States pass new laws to protect election workers amid ongoing threats | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Lawmakers in California recently approved legislation that aims to shield election officials from threats and harassment – becoming the latest state to attempt to confront the wave of abuse against election workers that began in the aftermath of the 2020 election and continues today. The new legislation would give election workers the option to have their addresses and other personal information redacted from government records. In addition, it amends a longstanding provision of California law that required the public posting of full names of precinct board members. Under the measure, only the party affiliations of those precinct officials must be publicly available. It awaits the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. “It will make someone feel safer if they know, that ‘Ok, it won’t be as easy to figure out where I live,’ ” said Gowri Ramachandran, a senior counsel at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, which advocated for the legislation. Election officials from around the country – ranging from secretaries of state to temporary poll workers – have testified publicly about how scary life has become for them. In one of the most heart-rending examples this year, former Georgia election worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss tearfully described to the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection how her life was turned “upside down” by the lie that she had committed voter fraud. And during a roundtable last month sponsored by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos said one staffer in his office suffered symptoms of PTSD and took a leave of absence to receive counseling after the office was targeted with repeated death threats.

Full Article: States pass new laws to protect election workers amid ongoing threats | CNN Politics

National: Campaign cybersecurity might be the weakest link in the midterms | Tim Starks/The Washington Post

An official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said last week that election security is “light-years ahead” of where it was in 2016. But there’s one area lagging behind as the 2022 midterm vote looms: the cybersecurity of political candidates’ campaigns. In the aftermath of Russia’s election interference in the 2016 cycle, Congress delivered hundreds of millions of dollars to state and local governments to spend on things like replacing less secure voting machines and giving cybersecurity training to election officials. There’s been no comparable mobilization for campaign security. That’s noteworthy because Russian hackers breaking into the systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign kicked off the big election security push in the first place. And political campaigns — almost none of which have dedicated cybersecurity staffers, and are near-totally focused on dedicating every available dollar to victory — are highly vulnerable.

Full Article: Campaign cybersecurity might be the weakest link in the midterms – The Washington Post

Arizona GOP candidates appeal ruling against hand counts | Associated Press

The Republican candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state on Wednesday appealed a federal judge’s ruling that threw out a lawsuit they filed seeking to require the hand-counting of ballots in November’s election. Lawyers representing governor candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state hopeful Mark Finchem filed a notice saying they would ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revive their lawsuit. The pair sued in April, repeating unfounded allegations that vote-counting machines are not secure. Named in the lawsuit is Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the state’s top election official and the Democratic candidate for governor, and the majority Republican Maricopa County board of supervisors. U.S. District Judge John Tuchi dismissed their lawsuit late last month, saying they lacked the right to to sue because they failed to show any realistic likelihood of harm. He also noted that their lawsuit must be brought in state, not federal, court and that it is too close to the election to upend the process. “The 2022 Midterm Elections are set to take place on November 8,” Tuchi wrote in is ruling. “In the meantime, Plaintiffs request a complete overhaul of Arizona’s election procedures.”

Full Article: Arizona GOP candidates appeal ruling against hand counts | AP News

District of Columbia Bill Would End Voter Registration As You Know It | Alex Burness/Bolts

Washington, D.C., may soon do away with voter registration as most Americans know it. Under a new bill, set to have its first council hearing on Friday, D.C. would mail ballots to people it knows are eligible, even if they are not registered. Drawing inspiration from Colorado, which many voting-rights experts characterize as the national standard for accessibility, the city would take information it collects when residents interact with the Department of Motor Vehicles and other agencies to maintain a constantly-updating list of people who are “preapproved” to vote. For people on that list, all there would be left to do is to vote come election time. “Traditionally, registration has been used as a way to keep people from voting,” Charles Allen, the D.C. councilmember who is sponsoring the legislation, told Bolts. “It’s a way to be a gatekeeper as to who you think should be able to vote.” Under Allen’s bill, voting itself would be the act of registration—at least for those the city identifies as prequalified. This would “make sure we are really reaching every single person we possibly can to make sure they can participate and have their voice heard,” Allen said.

Full Article: New Washington D.C. Bill Would End Voter Registration As You Know It | Bolts

Georgia voting breach reminds us how dangerous Trump’s ‘big lie’ is | The Washington Post

The tale of how rogue actors sought to access voting systems after the 2020 election becomes more convoluted with every new piece of information. Yet the bottom line remains simple: Former president Donald Trump’s allies went to swing states around the country breaching critical infrastructure and damaging democracy even as they claimed to protect it. The “big lie” motivating their efforts is as potent a threat today.
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New surveillance video from rural Coffee County, Ga., as reported by The Post’s Emma Brown and Jon Swaine, reveals a hodgepodge of election deniers visited a local elections office in early 2021 as they hunted for nonexistent proof of voter fraud. Most interesting are the activists’ links to each other and similar gambits elsewhere: Some were forensic specialists hired by lawyer Sidney Powell to copy sensitive software — an incident already the subject of a federal lawsuit against Georgia authorities. Others, it now appears, were consultants connected to interference in multiple other states including Michigan, where the same forensic firm also traveled for the same purpose, according to records.

The precise connections between attempts to probe voting systems not only in Georgia and Michigan but also in New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona remain unclear. What’s obvious, however, is the devastating impact of the tampering. Of course, when a password to a machine appears on YouTube, there’s a security risk. Punching a hole in a system also renders it more vulnerable to future hacking, which puts a heavy burden on cash-strapped jurisdictions forced to replace their equipment. Technical safeguards can mitigate some of this danger. But no piece of computer code can restore the public’s trust in the integrity of the country’s elections. That’s true for those who believe President Biden won in 2020 but now worry that hackers can fiddle with results, as well as those who still think, contrary to all available evidence, that Trump was the real victor — whose suspicions the meddlers sought to stoke.

Georgia: Election security experts seek precautions after Coffee County breach | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A group of computer scientists and election integrity advocates are calling for Georgia to abandon voting touchscreens and conduct more audits of this fall’s elections following the revelation that several supporters of Donald Trump coordinated the copying of election software in Coffee County. They asked the State Election Board to switch to hand-marked paper ballots instead of continuing to use Dominion Voting Systems touchscreens that print out paper ballots, according to a letter sent Thursday. “The release of the Dominion software into the wild has measurably increased the risk to the real and perceived security of the election to the point that emergency action is warranted,” said the letter by 13 people, including two Georgia Tech professors. Several tech experts working for then-Trump attorney Sidney Powell copied an election server, memory cards and other voting equipment in Coffee County on Jan. 7, 2021, according to documents subpoenaed in a lawsuit. Security video showed that Cathy Latham, one of Georgia’s fake electors who tried to cast the state’s votes for Trump, escorted the technicians into the county elections office. The letter to the State Election Board said the breach presents a danger that copied software could be exploited to create malware that could make voting equipment print incorrect votes, though there’s no evidence that has happened in an election so far. Three vote counts found that Democrat Joe Biden won Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, and investigations have repeatedly discredited claims of fraud.

Full Article: Georgia Election 2022: Election data copying spurs calls for changes

Michigan sheriff: Clerks can hand over tabulators. Experts: He’s wrong | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf contended in an interview this week that local clerks have the “authority” to hand over voting equipment to outside groups, a reading of Michigan election law that experts say is incorrect and problematic. Leaf was one of nine individuals whom Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office referenced in a petition for a special prosecutor over an alleged conspiracy to improperly obtain tabulators amid a push by supporters of former President Donald Trump to investigate the 2020 presidential election. Leaf’s department had launched a probe into unproven claims of election fraud in his west Michigan county, where Trump won 65% of the vote. Irving Township Clerk Sharon Olson indicated that she had been asked by Leaf to cooperate with the investigation and she later turned over a tabulator to a third party, according to the Attorney General’s Office. The Irving Township tabulator ended up being one of five that were taken to rental properties in Oakland County, where self-described cybersecurity experts “broke into” them and “performed ‘tests'” on them, the Attorney General’s Office alleged. Asked at an event Tuesday if he encouraged Olson to hand over her tabulator, Leaf replied, “No. That didn’t happen.” But moments later, he added, “You understand that the clerk has that authority, right? … Yeah. Even to a third party. That’s in the election law.” However, Jake Rollow, spokesman for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, said local clerks can give their equipment to only authorized vendors, contractors and voting system test laboratories.

Full Article: Michigan sheriff: Clerks can hand over tabulators. Experts: He’s wrong

New Hampshire: ‘Election Day’-Ja Vu: Windham Ballot Problems Discovered | Damien Fisher/NH Journal

On the eve of the primary election came reports out of Windham that ballots are being folded with the crease going through the voting oval, apparently repeating the same errors that led to an extensive audit of the town’s ballot system after the 2020 election. According to reports, absentee ballots sent to Windham voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary have been folded twice, with the creases going through the ovals. The same improper folds on absentee ballots in 2020 resulted in anomalous results and new state oversight of the vote. Windham Town Clerk Nicole Merrill could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Town Hall staff said she was away at Windham High School setting up for the election. Both Anna Fay with the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office, and Michael Garrity with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said state election monitors will be on hand Tuesday to make sure the election goes off smoothly “There will be an election monitor at the Windham polling place tomorrow. If there are any problems with improper folds or other issues, they will act accordingly,” Fay said. Windham is one of three communities that will have state monitors in place to oversee the primary election due to multiple errors found in the 2020 voting process. Windham, Bedford and Ward 6 in Laconia will all have election monitors in place In Windham, the audit found the vote total discrepancy was due to the improper folds. The folds in the paper ballots made it difficult for optical scan vote counters, AccuVote machines, to record the votes properly.

Full Article: ‘Election Day’-Ja Vu: Windham Ballot Problems Discovered – NH Journal

New Hampshire: As election distrust swirls, three communities were under a microscope during the primary | Mara Hoplamazian/New Hampshire Public Radio

Even after polls closed Tuesday evening in Windham, a small group of voters and candidates stuck around in the high school gym. As ballot counting machines softly hummed in the background, some began recording with their phone cameras, leaning over a line of red tape, looking for mistakes. Windham was one of three communities — along with Bedford and Laconia’s Ward 6 — under a microscope during Tuesday’s primary. Each was subject to extra oversight from state-appointed election monitors due to what the Attorney General described as serious, but unintentional, mistakes in ballot handling during the November 2020 election. While rare, the appointment of an election monitor is not entirely unprecedented in recent election cycles. But the added scrutiny comes at a time when election officials across the state and country are feeling mounting pressure and diminishing public trust. Secretary of State David Scanlan said having three election monitors in one season is especially unusual. But he said the unique circumstances of voting during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the challenges that led to the appointment of the state election monitors. “The issues that resulted in requiring a monitor being assigned to the polling place, at least in two of the polling places, were a direct result of the high volume of absentee ballots that were observed in 2020,” Scanlan said. “Of course, because of the pandemic, there were a lot more voters using absentee ballots than showing up at the polling place.”

Full Article: Election monitors watch over Windham, Laconia, Bedford | New Hampshire Public Radio

Pennsylvania: Election-denying ‘patriot’ groups are trying to stop the use of electronic voting machines across state | Gillian McGoldrick/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Across Pennsylvania, conservative activists are trying to stop the usage of electronic voting machines at the behest of former President Donald Trump and his allies who continue to claim without proof the 2020 election was stolen. Activists began collecting signatures to get a referendum question on the November ballot to stop the use of electronic voting machines, following a directive from Mr. Trump and his top supporters, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former Army intelligence officer Seth Keshel, who have made careers traveling the country to spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Now, these “patriot” groups have organized ballot referendum efforts in at least 16 counties, including Butler and Washington. “That’s what we have to do to save our country,” Mr. Lindell said in a pre-recorded message played at Mr. Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre on Sept. 3. In the years since the 2020 election, Mr. Trump’s closest allies have demonized several components of Pennsylvania’s election system, such as mail-in voting, ballot drop boxes and now, the use of electronic voting machines. These fears have crept into county government centers all around Pennsylvania and across the country from newly engaged citizens demanding their county commissioners overhaul the state’s election system back to a pre-21st century one.

Source: Election-denying ‘patriot’ groups are trying to stop the use of electronic voting machines across Pa. | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

South Carolina: Here’s why election equipment maintenance and licensing matters | Rachel Ripp/WLTX

Maintaining and renewing licenses for election equipment is vital. If it’s not maintained, and something goes wrong, it can impact the process of casting your ballot. That’s why this week, Lexington County Council met to approve about $184,000 for voting machine maintenance fees and licensing renewals. It’s a yearly to do list item, but it’s also critical to election integrity. “Maintenance on the equipment, so if something breaks, the screen breaks and you need a screen replaced, preventative maintenance on scanners, making sure the rollers are clean and everything’s functioning properly,” said Chris Whitmire, SC Election Commission spokesperson. Lexington County Election Administrator Lenice Shoemaker tells News 19 her office has been lucky the past 12 years she’s worked there. “I didn’t have any trouble with any of my machines that I get. I had a battery that was going low once, which these don’t use that anymore, and the rover came, swapped out the batteries and it was fine. I just used a different machine until he could check it,” Shoemaker said. But it’s better to be safe than sorry. Lenice explains her staff is starting the process of checking all the equipment, from cleaning it to making sure all the buttons work to scanning test ballots. After all, this equipment just sits in a storage room, unused for long periods of time if there’s no special or municipal elections. And when it is used, it’s on the move.
Full Article: Lexington County council renews election maintenance | wltx.com

Texas’ True the Vote sued, accused of defaming small election vendor | Natalie Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A defamation and computer fraud lawsuit filed this week against Texas-based True the Vote asks a judge to essentially determine whether the election integrity group’s campaign against a small election vendor constitutes slanderous lies or a participation in criminal acts. The suit was brought by Konnech Inc., a small elections logistics company based in Michigan. It alleges that True the Vote and its followers launched a stream of false and racist accusations against the company’s founder, forcing him and his family to flee their home in fear for their lives and damaging the company’s business. The suit cites True the Votes’ public claims that it hacked the company’s servers and accessed the personal information of nearly 2 million U.S. poll workers. In a rare move, the judge granted Konnech’s request for a temporary restraining order against Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, leaders of True the Vote, a nonprofit organization known for making allegations of voter fraud without evidence to support their claims. Judge Kenneth Hoyt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found a “substantial likelihood” that Konnech would “suffer irreparable injury” without it. The order also prohibits True the Vote from accessing, or attempting to access, Konnech’s computers or disclosing any of the company’s data and orders the group to disclose more information about the alleged breach. Experts told Votebeat the damage done through the spread of conspiracy theories about election software companies such as Konnech by groups like True the Vote could impact the already limited tools available that help election officials hire, train and schedule election workers.

Full Article: Texas’ True the Vote sued, accused of defaming small election vendor | The Texas Tribune

Wisconsin Elections Commission withdraws guidance on fixing ballot errors following court ruling | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Tuesday withdrew guidance clerks have operated under for six years to fill in missing address information on absentee ballots, a move to comply with a recent court ruling declaring such practices illegal. Commissioners voted 4-1 to withdraw the guidance hours after Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Aprahamian rejected Democrats’ motion to keep his Sept. 7 ruling from taking effect before the November election. Aprahamian ruled state law does not allow election clerks to fill in missing information on witness certification envelopes that contain absentee ballots, a decision that is expected to be appealed by Democrats who argued Tuesday that such rules should not change so close to an election. The ruling is a victory for Republican lawmakers who have spent months pushing for tighter voting rules since former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, a contest decided by about 21,000 votes in a battleground state crucial to both parties’ pursuit of power. The decision, which comes two months before the next election, is likely heading to the state Supreme Court, which is controlled by conservative justices.

Full Article: Elections Commission withdraws guidance on fixing ballot errors

‘Absolutely terrifying prospect’: How the midterms could weaken U.S. election security | Eric Geller/Politico

Republicans who support former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election would gain the power to open up access to their states’ voting machines if they win in November — a prospect that security experts call potentially catastrophic for American democracy. Already, unvetted outsiders have examined voting equipment or inspected the devices’ sensitive computer code in counties in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, bypassing longstanding security protections — in many cases with the support of Trump allies overseeing local elections. Now Republicans who embrace the former president’s conspiracy theories are running for governor or secretary of state, offices that would give them even broader authority to allow like-minded activists and consulting firms to conduct so-called “audits” of the entire voting systems in key states. These kinds of examinations would make it easier for hackers intent on sowing chaos or changing the outcomes of future elections to learn how to conduct their attacks, according to voting security professionals, who note that some sensitive information about voting machines has already been leaked since Trump supporters began their push for audits. It’s “an absolutely terrifying prospect,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer security expert and professor at the University of Michigan who has repeatedly exposed flaws in voting systems but has also debunked Trump’s claims about 2020 fraud.

Full Article: ‘Absolutely terrifying prospect’: How the midterms could weaken U.S. election security – POLITICO

Election deniers on ballot: What does this mean for democracy? | Peter Grier and Noah Robertson/CSMonitor

Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate to become Arizona’s top election official, secretary of state, has said he would not have certified President Joe Biden’s victory there in 2020. Kristina Karamo, the GOP nominee for Michigan secretary of state, claims that the 2020 vote there was rife with fraud and that former President Donald Trump – not President Biden, who won the state by 154,000 votes – was the true victor of the state’s Electoral College votes. Doug Mastriano, Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, is a state lawmaker who introduced a resolution following the 2020 vote claiming that the election was “irredeemably corrupted” and the state legislature should appoint new delegates to the Electoral College. If he wins the governorship this November, Mr. Mastriano would have the power to appoint Pennsylvania’s next secretary of state. Across America, Republicans who question the legitimacy of the last presidential election are on the ballot for the 2022 midterms. At least 195 GOP Senate, House, governor, attorney general, or secretary of state nominees have echoed Mr. Trump’s false charge that the presidential election was stolen, data media site FiveThirtyEight estimated this week. Yet multiple reviews in state after state have shown the election to be fair and the results accurate. Multiple officials of both parties, including Mr. Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr, have said they saw no evidence of widespread fraud.

Full Article: Election deniers on ballot: What does this mean for democracy? – CSMonitor.com

National: Cameras, Plexiglass, Fireproofing: Election Officials Beef Up Security | Neil Vigdor/The New York Times

In Wisconsin, one of the nation’s key swing states, cameras and plexiglass now fortify the reception area of a county election office in Madison, the capital, after a man wearing camouflage and a mask tried to open locked doors during an election in April.In another bellwether area, Maricopa County, Ariz., where beleaguered election workers had to be escorted through a scrum of election deniers to reach their cars in 2020, a security fence was added to protect the perimeter of a vote tabulation center.And in Colorado, the state’s top election official, Jena Griswold, the secretary of state and a Democrat, resorted to paying for private security out of her budget after a stream of threats.As the nation hurtles closer to the midterm elections, those who will oversee them are taking a range of steps to beef up security for themselves, their employees, polling places and even drop boxes, tapping state and federal funding for a new set of defenses. The heightened vigilance comes as violent rhetoric from the right intensifies and as efforts to intimidate election officials by those who refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election become commonplace.Discussing security in a recent interview with The Times, Ms. Griswold, 37, said that threats of violence had kept her and her aides up late at night as they combed through comments on social media.

Full Article: Before Midterms, Election Officials Increase Security Over Threats – The New York Times

National: Election activists are seeking the “cast vote record” from 2020. Here’s what it is and why they want it. | Rachel Leingang/Votebeat

Elections departments across the country are getting tons of near-identical requests for an obscure document generated by ballot-counting machines, spurred by people who insist this record could help detect fraudulent voting patterns that show former President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election. It is the latest example of the endless, fruitless quest for a smoking gun that has so far yielded no proof of wrongdoing affecting the election results. But the document, called a “cast vote record,” can’t be used to detect these kinds of patterns, nor is it particularly useful to people who aren’t researchers or auditors, experts say. And the sheer number of requests is overwhelming elections offices as they prepare for this year’s general election. “The remarkable thing is that there’s really a lot less here than it might seem in both directions. It’s way less ominous than it could be, but it’s also way less useful,” said Max Hailperin, a retired computer science professor who has researched election technology. Put simply, a cast vote record is the electronic representation of how voters voted. These lines of data appear in a spreadsheet full of zeros and ones to indicate the votes an anonymous ballot contained. Whether the resulting records can be made public varies around the country, and the exact definition and appearance of what’s included in a cast vote record also varies, depending on the jurisdiction and the voting technology it uses.

Full Article: What is a cast vote record? Election activists seek obscure document from ballot tabulators. – Votebeat Arizona – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting