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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michigan Supreme Court suspends order on poll challengers | Clara Hendrickson/Detroit Free Press

The Michigan Supreme Court on Thursday suspended a Michigan Court of Claims order — celebrated by Republicans — that required revisions to the instructions for election observers that monitor polling locations and absentee ballot counting rooms. The Michigan Supreme Court’s order leaves in place for the general election the same poll challenger guidelines used in the recent August primary. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and election officials raised concerns that the last-minute revisions ordered by the lower court would cause confusion and chaos at the polls and counting rooms. Former Michigan elections director Chris Thomas worried it would potentially pave the way for intimidation against election workers. Republicans had heralded the earlier lower court order as a legal victory in response to a pair of lawsuits challenging the legality of the poll challenger manual: one from the Michigan GOP and Republican National Committee and another from GOP candidates and challengers representing organizations that deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Full Article: Michigan Supreme Court suspends order on poll challengers

Nevada ACLU asks for probe into ‘partisan’ hand count of mail-in ballots | Zach Schonfewld/The Hill

The ACLU of Nevada says it filed a complaint with the state’s secretary of state on Wednesday alleging “coordinated partisan election administration” during a hand count of ballots in Nye County. The rural county had begun hand counting early ballots late last month in response to conspiracy theories about voting machines there, but the ACLU and other groups have challenged the move in court, and Nevada’s secretary of state told the county last week it must temporarily stop the hand count. The ACLU of Nevada alleged in its new complaint that one of its observers watching the then-active hand count was removed from an observation room by an armed individual initially thought to be a county employee. The group alleged it has since discovered the individual was Laura Larsen, the vice chair of the county GOP’s central committee, who also demanded the ACLU observer turn over her notes. “Nye County’s actions during this election, including the disastrous failure that was its attempt at hand counting paper ballots, exceed the bounds of normalcy and decency,” ACLU of Nevada Executive Director Athar Haseebullah said in a statement.

Full Article: Nevada ACLU asks for probe into ‘partisan’ hand count of mail-in ballots | The Hill

Pennsylvania has seen unSusual threat levels against poll workers: FBI | Siafa Lewis/CBS

As Election Day nears, officials in Philadelphia are reminding everyone that voter intimidation and harassment is illegal. Pennsylvania is one of seven states the FBI has identified as having seen unusual threat levels against poll workers. That has led to a shortage of poll workers and resulted in Philadelphia increasing pay for poll workers. Additionally, there are concerns about voter intimidation at polling places and officials are trying to get ahead of it all. “Sometimes with extremists, it’s necessary to knock on their foreheads early, and that’s what we’re doing now,” District Attorney Larry Krasner said. “We’re making sure you have the information you need so you do not get yourself into a pair of handcuffs, because believe me, if you try to interfere with or erase the votes of Philadelphians, that’s exactly where you’re going to be.” Krasner also warned that they have handcuffs, jail cells and Philadelphia juries ready for anyone who breaks the law. “Rest assured Philadelphians, it will be safe for you to vote the same as it’s always been,” City commissioner Omar Sabir said.

Full Article: Pa. has seen unusual threat levels against poll workers: FBI – CBS Philadelphia

Pennsylvania Supreme Court says undated mail ballots should be segregated, not counted | Jonathan Lai and Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania counties must segregate and not count mail ballots with missing or incorrect dates, the state Supreme Court said Tuesday in a ruling that could affect thousands of votes in November’s midterm elections. The order came as the result of a 3-3 deadlock on the court over whether rejecting such ballots — which have been at the center of an ongoing political and legal fight between Democrats and Republicans — violates federal civil rights law. Three of the justices said throwing out the ballots of otherwise qualified voters over a missing or incorrect date would improperly exclude legal votes. Three others disagreed. The seventh spot on the court remains vacant after the death of former Chief Justice Max Baer. “We hereby direct that the Pennsylvania county boards of elections segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes,” the court said in its brief order, which was not immediately accompanied by any opinions explaining the justices’ reasoning. The order said only that opinions would be released later.

Full Article: Pa. Supreme Court says undated mail ballots should be segregated, not counted

South Dakota: Tripp County to hand count election ballots | Eric Mayer and Rae Yost/KELO

Tripp County Commissioner Joyce Kartak made the motion and Dan Forgey seconded the motion to hand count the ballots. The motion came after an hour and 45 minute discussion was held on the concerns of the elections and the machine used to count the ballots, according to minutes from the Tripp County Commission. “It actually surprised me,” DeSarsa said of being able to find enough volunteers to help hand count the votes. “It wasn’t terrible.” The votes will counted by hand at the precinct sites, she said. “I thought that was the best way,” DeSarsa said. Roughly 80% of the site workers said they stay to help count votes, while others can’t stay to count, DeSarsa said. Given that, she needed eight to 10 additional volunteers. … Tripp County will also be using the voting tabulation machine that night. “We were asked to do the machine count (too),” DeSersa said. The hand count will be the official count.

Full Article: Tripp County to hand count election ballots

Texas GOP push to monitor voting in Harris County spurs outcry | Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

With a week to go before Election Day, a showdown is emerging between state and local leaders here over how to protect the security of the vote without intimidating voters and election workers. The clash is playing out in Harris County, Texas’s largest jurisdiction and home to Houston, where state and local Republicans are deploying monitors to oversee the handling of ballots in the Democratic enclave. Local Democratic officials have said the move is an effort to intimidate voters — and asked the Justice Department to send federal observers in response. The result could be a partisan showdown, in which two different sets of monitors face off on Election Day in this giant metro region. That’s not including the thousands of partisan poll watchers who are expected to fan out at voting locations across Texas. GOP officials and conservative poll watchers say heightened scrutiny is necessary to prevent election fraud and mismanagement. Voting-rights advocates and local leaders, meanwhile, say the GOP is scaring voters and election workers alike — and undermining faith in the results for a county that Republicans are pushing hard to win control of on Nov. 8.

Full Article: GOP push to monitor Texas voting in Harris County spurs outcry – The Washington Post

Wisconsin: Republican says party ‘will never lose another election’ if he wins | Martin Pengelly/The Guardian

The Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin told supporters at a campaign event that if he is elected his party “will never lose another election” in the state. Tim Michels’ opponent next Tuesday, the incumbent Democrat Tony Evers, said the comment, which was released by a left-leaning group, showed the Republican was “a danger to our democracy”. Michels, a construction company owner, is endorsed by Donald Trump. He has repeated the former president’s lie that his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 was the result of electoral fraud, and refused to say if he would certify results in a presidential election if he was governor and a Democrat won Wisconsin. In a debate with Evers last month, Michels did not say he would accept the result of his own election. He later said he would. Republican candidates in other swing states have cast doubt on whether they will accept results next week. Fred Wertheimer, president of the non-partisan group Democracy 21, told the Guardian this week: “There’s great danger that the Trump ‘big lie’ is going to spread to states all over the country. “If election deniers lose their elections by narrow margins we can expect that they will reject the results and refuse to accept them.”

Full Article: Republican says party ‘will never lose another election’ in Wisconsin if he wins | Wisconsin | The Guardian

National: ‘We are a tinderbox’: Political violence is ramping up, experts warn | Melanie Mason and David Lauter/Los Angeles Times

In San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights neighborhood, an intruder broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home and violently attacked her husband. In a New York courtroom, a man pleaded guilty to threatening to kill California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. In Washington, federal law enforcement warned that violent domestic extremism posed an elevated threat in the approaching midterm election. All on the same day. The targeting of the home of Speaker Pelosi, a Democrat who is second in line for the presidency, stood out on Friday for its brutality and sinister intent. But for many Americans, shock was tinged with a weary sense of inevitability. Far from a freak occurrence, the attack felt of a piece with the other threats and warnings publicized that day — the latest additions to the country’s growing sense of political menace, especially from the far right. “Unfortunately, this is a continuation of at least a 2½-year-long established pattern of violence against elected officials and local officials, including poll workers, that has been steadily ramping up,” said Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard Kennedy School professor who studies political violence. Politically motivated violence has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history. Currently, America is going through an upsurge in right-wing violence, according to researchers who track attacks and other incidents. They say today’s climate is comparable to that in the mid-1990s, when a similar wave of right-wing violence culminated in the 1995 bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.

Full Article: Extremist political violence is increasing, experts warn – Los Angeles Times

Georgia: How one small-town lawyer faced down the plans of election skeptics | Stephanie McCrummen/The Washington Post

Word of the hearing had been spreading for weeks, and on a bright fall Friday, election skeptics from around northwest Georgia filed into the normally quiet Pickens County Courthouse, expecting that a victory for their movement was imminent. “Down the hall,” a security guard said to a man in an American flag golf shirt, a woman holding fliers for a possible victory rally, and others wearing stickers that read, “The machines must go,” and soon every seat was taken in Courtroom A. Of all the counties in Georgia, this was the one where the activists believed they would succeed. Pickens County is small, rural, overwhelmingly White and Republican, an under-the-radar place where election disinformation had flourished and the people who believed it had easily overtaken the establishment GOP. What they wanted now was a version of what people like them were going for at the grass-roots level all over the country: a way to question the results of a decided election. In their case, they wanted a hand recount of paper ballots cast in the May GOP primary. They wanted to make those sealed paper ballots public records. And they wanted a judge to grant their county election board broad powers to conduct elections in whatever manner it deemed necessary to assuage the doubts of people like them, a ruling that could be applied across all of Georgia’s 159 counties ahead of the midterm elections and beyond.

Full Article: How Pickens County, Ga. election skeptics lost fight to make ballots open records – The Washington Post

National: Federal officials warn that domestic violent extremists pose heightened threat to midterm elections | Geneva Sands and Sean Lyngaas/CNN

Federal officials on Friday warned that domestic violent extremists pose a heightened threat to the 2022 midterm elections, in a joint intelligence assessment sent to state and local officials and obtained by CNN.The bulletin, released by the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, US Capitol Police and National Counterterrorism Center, says that perceptions of election fraud will likely result in heightened threats of violence. The bulletin did not list any specific credible threats. “Following the 2022 midterm election, perceptions of election-related fraud and dissatisfaction with electoral outcomes likely will result in heightened threats of violence against a broad range of targets―such as ideological opponents and election workers,” it states. Enduring perceptions of election fraud related to the 2020 general election continue to contribute to the radicalization of some violent extremists, and likely would “increase their sensitivity to any new claims perceived as reaffirming their belief that US elections are corrupt,” according to the assessment. The joint federal assessment comes as election workers are increasingly concerned about physical threats to themselves and election infrastructure, and foreign actors seek to widen divisions in the United States. “We assess that election-related perceptions of fraud and [domestic violent extremist] reactions to divisive topics will likely drive sporadic [domestic violent extremist] plotting of violence and broader efforts to justify violence in the lead up to and following the 2022 midterm election cycle,” the bulletin states.

Full Article: Feds warn that domestic violent extremists pose heightened threat to midterm elections | CNN Politics

National: In 5 key battlegrounds, most GOP state legislative nominees are election deniers, report finds | Adam Edelman/NBC

Nearly 6 in 10 Republican state legislature nominees in five key battleground states deny the results of the 2020 election, according to an analysis by a group tracking the races. Of those 450 Republican nominees — including incumbents running for re-election and nonincumbents — in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Minnesota, 58% of them have echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him, according to research shared exclusively with NBC News by The States Project, a left-leaning group that tracked state legislative races in battleground states. Experts warn that if enough of these election-denying nominees are elected, Republican majorities in the state houses of these crucial battlegrounds could have the power to rewrite election laws and affect future elections, including in 2024 when Trump might run again. “When election deniers are in control, they will do whatever they can to undermine free and fair elections,” said Daniel Squadron, The States Project’s executive director. “We know that the rules for elections and determining the winners are set through the legislative process, so what these folks do would have enormous impact” on “everything from who can register and who can vote to how the results are counted,” Squadron added.

Full Article: In 5 key battlegrounds, most GOP state legislative nominees are election deniers, report finds