Georgia officials consider changes to state’s runoff election system | Benjamin Barber/Facing South

In last month’s runoff election, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael G. Warnock of Georgia defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker by 97,000 votes. Warnock had won a plurality of the votes in the Nov. 8 general election but failed to reach the 50% majority threshold the state requires to win the general election outright, forcing the runoff. Runoffs, which can be held for both primary and general elections, are almost exclusively held in the South. States that have some form of runoffs in either primary or general elections include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Vermont. Georgia is the only state to use runoffs in both the primary and general elections. Mississippi implemented a similar system in 2020, but the state hasn’t had a general election runoff since the law was approved. In most other states, candidates who get the most votes win, while Alaska and Maine use ranked-choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting, to decide elections. Warnock’s recent victory was the third consecutive runoff win by Democrats in U.S. Senate elections in Georgia in recent years. Now lawmakers in the state’s Republican-led General Assembly are considering abolishing general election runoffs.

Full Article: Georgia officials consider changes to state’s runoff election system | Facing South

Minnesota elections chief seeks to make voting even easier | Steve Karnowski/Associated Press

Minnesota’s chief elections officer called on state lawmakers Monday to make it easier for residents to vote while protecting elections officials from threats and intimidation. Key elements of Secretary of State Steve Simon’s agenda are included in an elections package that fellow Democrats in the state House and Senate introduced last week. Others will be covered in separate legislation. As legislatures convene across the country, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are bracing for new fights on election-related legislation amid the continued false claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 election was stolen. Republicans are eager to tighten election rules further, whereas Democrats are seeking to make it easier to vote. Simon — who won more votes than any other candidate on Minnesota’s statewide ballot as he fought off a GOP challenger who claimed the 2020 election was rigged — said Minnesota consistently has one of the highest turnouts in the country by promoting voter access while balancing it with security measures that keep fraud at “microscopic” levels. “Minnesotans agree: Democracy was on the ballot in 2022,” Simon said at a news conference. “The voters of Minnesota had a chance to make their voices heard on elections and voting issues. They spoke loudly and clearly.”

Full Article: Minnesota elections chief seeks to make voting even easier | AP News

Montana Democrats say election security committee is a waste of time | Shaylee Ragar/Montana Public Radio

A special committee on election security will have its first meeting at the Montana Legislature on Thursday. Republicans and Democrats are at odds over its purpose. Republican Sen. Carl Glimm from the Flathead will chair the special select committee on election security. He says the six-person, Republican majority committee will have two main goals. “I would like to see us come out the other end with good legislation, if we deem that it’s necessary, and I would like for us to be able to give assurance to the citizens of Montana that our elections are the best they can be.” Glimm did not point to a specific case where elections have been flawed, but said there’s always room for improvement. Glimm says lawmakers are responding to concerns about election security from constituents, and will ask for expert testimony about how to prosecute election fraud, the chain of command of ballots at county elections offices and how ballot tabulation machines work.

Full Article: Democrats say election security committee is a waste of time | Montana Public Radio

Nebraska: Hand-counted election audit finds low error rate with voting machines | Aaron Sanderford/Nebraska Examiner

After facing months of questions about election integrity from populist Republicans, Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen — also a Republican — probed deeper to confirm his belief that the state’s voting processes were “reliable and accurate.” On Friday, his office released the results from an expanded audit of general election ballots, checking at least one precinct in all 93 counties. The audit hand-counted 48,292 ballots from 10% of precincts. That’s significantly more than the typical 2%-3% of precincts audited after each election. County election officials found a total of 11 ballot discrepancies, bolstering what Evnen and most political observers have consistently argued: that Nebraska’s vote-counting machines are accurate. The number of errors translates into one out of every 4,390 votes, or roughly 0.002%. That’s better than the one-tenth of 1% error rates of machine-scanned ballots that studies have found in other states. “There are Nebraskans who have expressed concerns about the integrity of the voting process,” Evnen told the Nebraska Examiner on Friday. “I thought it was important for us to address those concerns.”

Full Article: Hand-counted election audit finds low error rate with Nebraska’s voting machines | Nebraska Examiner

New Hampshire audit of open-source voting machine gives thumbs-up, mostly | David Brooks/Concord Monitor

The open-source software worked well but the hardware had a few issues. That’s the conclusion from audits of a new ballot-counting machine that was tested in three New Hampshire towns during the November election. The device, developed by a nonprofit called VotingWorks, is being considered as a possible replacement for the state’s aging AccuVote machines. The key point of the VotingWorks device is that it uses the open-source Linux operating system rather than software controlled by a private company. Its backers say this openness provides a level of transparency that can help defuse conspiracy theories about fair elections. Any decision about changing the devices that towns and cities can use for elections will be made by the Ballot Law Commission, a 10-person body whose members are appointed by the Legislature and the governor. There is no timeline for replacing the AccuVote machines. The VotingWorks machines were used in the Nov. 8, 2022, election in Ashland, Newington and Woodstock, three of the smallest towns in the state that count ballots with the AccuVote machines. The VotingWorks devices digitally scanned and tallied results from the state’s standard paper ballots. The results were later double-checked with a hand-count audit by the Secretary of State’s office.

Full Article: State audit of open-source voting machine gives thumbs-up, mostly

New Hampshire Vote Tabulation Machine Failed in November Pilot | Kevin Landrigan/The New Hampshire Union Leader

New ballot-counting devices tested in the Nov. 8 election broke down in one of the three small towns chosen for the pilot, Secretary of State David Scanlan said Monday. The machine was made by VotingWorks. It used open-source software rather than company-supplied software, which some advocates have said would improve voter confidence because its operations were more transparent to the public. Since the mid-1990s, the Ballot Law Commission has only allowed the AccuVote ballot counting device to be used in all cities and towns that don’t count ballots by hand. The manufacturer no longer makes replacement parts for this machine, forcing some New Hampshire cities and towns to purchase machines from communities in other states that upgraded their technology.

Full Article: New Hampshire Vote Tabulation Machine Failed in November Pilot

New York: Officials urged to modernize state’s election systems | Rick Reisman/State of Politics

Making it easier to register to vote and obtain an absentee ballot, funding a system of publicly financed campaigns and launching automatic voter registration are among the measures New York officials are being urged to focus on to strengthen the state’s voting infrastructure. The Brennan Center and a coalition of advocacy organizations in a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul and top lawmakers in the state Legislature called for a package of changes, some of which are being implemented this year, in order to bolster faith in voting in the state. The push for the measures comes as state lawmakers this week began the 2023 legislative session in Albany, and after legal challenges were made during last year’s election season to absentee ballots. “Last year, we witnessed a disturbing increase nationwide in election denialism, threats against election workers, and voter intimidation,” the groups wrote in the letter. “New York was no exception.”

Full Article: Officials urged to modernize New York’s election systems

Pennsylvania: 2020 Lycoming County election recount completed | Pat Crossley/Williamsport Sun-Gazette

It is done. Over two years after the 2020 presidential election, the final batch of ballots were counted again, this time by hand, early Wednesday afternoon. There were 59,481 ballots within the official results from the election that were counted, according to Forrest Lehman, director of Voter Services. “That’s how many we knew going into this that we needed to look at. We have one batch still out that is being hopefully finalized right now,” Lehman said, speaking in the nearly empty room that since Monday had been the site where about 24 people paired off and meticulously tabulating votes for the presidential and auditor general races in an election that was conducted in 2020. “It took a little over two days to get through the batches once, and then the additional time was spent today, Wednesday, (going) back through some of the batches a second time because the first time that they were looked at; we had some number discrepancies…, We kind of held onto those and then decided we were going to go back and look at them again at the end. So, that’s what we did,” he added.

Full Article: 2020 Lycoming County election recount completed | News, Sports, Jobs – Williamsport Sun-Gazette

Rhode Island: Elections Systems and Software settles with state over Spanish language ballot blunder | Patrick Anderson/The Providence Journal

The election equipment provider in the middle of a blunder on Spanish language ballots in the September primaries has agreed to credit Rhode Island $47,644, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea said Thursday. Nebraska-based Election Systems and Software “will provide a credit for all project management services provided in connection with the 2022 Primary Election,” Gorbea said in a news release. The company also agreed to post a message on its website reminding election workers that it’s a good idea to proofread all ballots and test all tabulation machines before voters head to the polls. “We have held our vendor accountable for their mistake, and working together we have succeeded in making systemic improvements to pre-election testing across my office, the Board of Elections and ES&S,” Gorbea said in the release. As a result of what were described as undetected “programming errors,” during the September primary’s early voting period some Spanish ballots on new touch-screen voting machines listed candidates from the 2018 election.

Full Article: Elections Systems and Software settle with RI over Spanish ballot mistake

Texas senators draw lots to determine how long their terms will be | James Barragan/The Texas Tribune

It was the luck of the draw for Texas senators on Wednesday as they drew lots to decide which half of them would get two-year terms and which would get four-year terms. The practice is outlined in Article 3, Section 3, of the Texas Constitution, which calls for “Senators elected after each apportionment [redistricting]” to be divided into two classes: one that will serve a four-year term and the other to serve a two-year term. That keeps Senate district elections staggered every two years. After that, senators serve four-year terms for the rest of the decade. On Wednesday, each of the chamber’s 31 lawmakers walked to the front of the chamber and drew lots by picking an envelope that held a pill-shaped capsule. Inside the capsules were numbers: Even numbers meant two-year terms, and odd were for four-year terms.

Full Article: Texas senators draw lots to determine how long their terms will be | The Texas Tribune

Wiscosnin: Racine at the center of election conspiracy universe | Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner

At the Nov. 30 meeting of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), several people spoke during the public comment period to complain about how the recent election had been administered by the city of Racine. In early December, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), a right-wing legal advocacy organization, filed a complaint against the city in circuit court for its use of a “mobile voting van” which allowed people to cast early votes at the van rather than going into the clerk’s office or other pre-determined site. The organization had previously filed a similar complaint with the WEC, which was dismissed. “Racine’s abuse of alternate absentee ballot sites circumvents multiple statutory safeguards on the collection of absentee ballots,” WILL deputy counsel Anthony LoCoco said in a statement. “The WEC Commissioners failed to take action and delegated the matter to the WEC Administrator who declined to enjoin Racine’s illegal behavior. Further, although WILL’s complaint was filed in August, the WEC Administrator did not issue her decision on the matter until in-person absentee voting for the 2022 general election was essentially completed which meant that WILL could not appeal the decision until after the November general election was over. We are confident that a court will put an end to Racine’s egregious practices.” In the two years since the 2020 election, the city of Racine and the surrounding area have become a hotbed of right-wing election-related activism.

Full Article: Racine at the center of Wisconsin’s election conspiracy universe – Wisconsin Examiner

Wyoming Secretary of State Scores Victory With Defeat Of Bill That Would Have Prevented Ballot Inspections | Leo Wolfson/Cowboy State Daily

Wyoming elections may be subjected to hand-count ballot audits after the Legislature’s House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee killed a bill Wednesday that would have prevented ballot inspections. With the rejection of House Bill 6, the possibility of hand-count ballot audits in Wyoming elections remains alive, as newly sworn in Secretary of State Chuck Gray has said he wants more scrutiny of Wyoming elections. HB 6, which would have clarified that ballots cannot be requested for inspection under the Public Records Act, was rejected by the committee on a 6-3 vote. It also was specific that any ballots, election records or images of ballots would be kept confidential.

Full Article: Chuck Gray Scores Victory With Defeat Of Bill That Would Have Prevented Ballot Inspections – Cowboy State Daily

National: Advocates seek federal investigation of multistate effort to copy voting software | mma Brown , Aaron C. Davis and Jon Swaine/The Washington Post

An effort by supporters of former president Donald Trump to copy sensitive voting software in multiple states after the 2020 election deserves attention from the federal government, including a criminal investigation and assessment of the risk posed to election security, according to election-security advocates. As new information about the multistate effort continues to emerge, the national election and campaign-finance reform group Free Speech for People, along with several former election officials and computer scientists, sent a letter Monday urging the Justice and Homeland Security departments to investigate. They wrote that by copying voting software and circulating it “in the wild,” partisan election deniers have created a digital road map that could help hackers alter election results or disrupt voting. Evidence of the multistate effort was unearthed by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit over the security of Georgia’s voting system. They found that as Trump falsely blamed his 2020 defeat on hacked voting machines, sympathetic officials in rural Coffee County, Ga., allowed computer-forensics experts, paid by a nonprofit run by Trump-allied attorney Sidney Powell, to copy voting software in January 2021. That software was then uploaded to a website, from where it was downloaded by election deniers across the country. “Because these events were revealed in a private lawsuit rather than through a law enforcement investigation, the significance and consequences may not have registered with the relevant federal agencies,” reads the letter. Several of its 15 signatories have served as experts for the plaintiffs in the case.

Full Article: Advocates seek federal investigation of multistate effort to copy voting software – The Washington Post

National: Center for Security in Politics Working Group Releases Statement on Developing Standards for Internet Ballot Return | Recent News | University of California, Berkeley

Technology is still too limited, and the security risks too great to establish responsible standards for voting via the internet at this time, a Center for Security in Politics working group announced. Made up of a non-partisan group of experts from politics, election administration, academia, and technology, the working group was charged with determining the kinds of technical and implementation standards needed to ensure safe and secure internet ballot return. The group was convened with funding from Tusk Philanthropies. “Internet ballot return has the potential to serve voters experiencing barriers to more traditional forms of voting,” said Mike Garcia, a cybersecurity and election security expert who chaired the working group. “It could also be valuable in the event of broad disruptions like wildfires or floods. But current technology cannot provide the level of security needed for widespread use in public elections—at least not yet.” “We are living through a time of intense skepticism about elections when the very foundations of the democratic process are under threat,” said CSP director and former homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano. “It is imperative that voting accessibility be balanced with security, transparency, and equity. The working group brought their expertise to bear on this important topic, and I thank them for their service.”

Full Article: CSP Working Group Releases Statement on Developing Standards for Internet Ballot Return | Goldman School of Public Policy | University of California, Berkeley

National: Election Deniers Were Defeated in 2022, But May Run Again in 2024 | Ryan Teague Beckwith/Bloomberg

An all-out offensive by activists and state officials against election denial scored major successes in clamping down on the “stop the steal” movement in 2022, amid continued attempts to undermine free and fair elections in the US. Advocacy groups spent millions on ads against candidates who adhered to Donald Trump’s false claims that he lost due to widespread fraud and were running to oversee voting in presidential battlegrounds or lead them as governors. Local and state elections administrators coordinated with law enforcement to ensure that polling places remained safe. In the end, though, it was voters who had the biggest impact, rejecting election deniers for governor and secretary of state in five key states, re-electing officials who defied Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss and backing ballot measures to make it easier to vote and harder to challenge fair and accurate results. But an even bigger challenge will come in the high-stakes 2024 presidential election.

Full Article: Election Deniers Were Defeated in 2022, But May Run Again in 2024 – Bloomberg

National: Special counsel has subpoenaed officials in all 7 states targeted by Trump allies in 2020 election | Zachary Cohen and Sara Murray/CNN

Special counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to local officials in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, for information related to the 2020 election, a spokesperson for the county told CNN. “Yes, we received a subpoena from the Department of Justice’s special counsel regarding the 2020 election. We have nothing further to share or provide,” said Amie Downs, the county’s communications director. The subpoena sent to Allegheny County is the latest in a string of requests for information sent by Smith, who is now overseeing the Justice Department’s sprawling criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Smith’s team has now sent subpoenas to local and state officials in all seven of the key states – Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – targeted by former President Donald Trump Trump and his allies as part of their bid to upend Joe Biden’s legitimate victory.

Full Article: Special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed officials in all 7 states targeted by Trump allies in 2020 election | CNN Politics

National: Report: threat of election subversion eased, but not ended | David Meyers/The Fulcrum

Even though many of the “election deniers” who sought influential positions in state government this year were defeated, the threat to democracy has not subsided, according to the latest report from a trio of organizations seeking to protect the system. Given the election results, the states that pose the greatest risk to free and fair elections are Florida, North Carolina and Texas, according to the States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy and Law Forward. Those groups released the latest version of their joint report, “A Democracy Crisis in the Making: How State Legislatures are Politicizing, Criminalizing, and Interfering with Elections,” on Wednesday. “As Americans, we may disagree on a lot of things, but we can all agree that voters — not election denying officials — should choose our elected leaders,” said Rachel Homer, counsel with Protect Democracy. “At ballot boxes across the country, American voters made clear: they don’t want politicians who attack and undermine our elections to be running their states. This is a big win for our democracy. But in some state legislatures, the election denial fever hasn’t not broken. The threat is still very real and we can’t afford to ignore it.” Both Florida and Texas are in the high-risk category because the report identifies the states’ senior officials – governors, attorneys general, secretaries of state – the legislative majorities have all embraced former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Those two states have also been at the forefront of legislative activity tightening voting rules.

Full Article: Report: threat of election subversion eased, but not ended – The Fulcrum

Arizona: Why Maricopa County’s ballot printers failed on Election Day | Jen Fifield/Votebeat Arizona

As Maricopa County investigates what exactly caused machines to reject thousands of voters’ ballots on Election Day, a Votebeat analysis of technical evidence found that local officials may have pushed the county’s ballot printers past their limits. The thickness of the ballot paper the county used, the need to print on both sides, and the high volume of in-person voting are all likely to have contributed to poor print quality on ballots, according to Votebeat’s review of printer specifications, turnout data, and interviews with eight ballot-printing and election technology experts. “It was a cascade of events, and once the first domino fell, they were setting the dominos back up while rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Genya Coulter, a senior election analyst and director of stakeholder relations for election technology and security nonprofit OSET Institute. The poor print quality caused machines to then reject thousands of ballots across the county, forcing voters to instead place their ballots in a secure box to be tallied later. Two technical experts closely familiar with the county’s equipment, who did not want to be named because they didn’t want to get ahead of the county’s public statements, said that the paper thickness was likely a major factor in why the toner — the powder laser and LED printers use to make images on paper — did not properly adhere to both sides of the paper.

Full Article: Why Maricopa County’s ballot printers failed on Election Day – Votebeat Arizona – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting

Colorado: Claims of interference in El Paso County recount ‘not supported by evidence’: 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office | Breeanna Jent/Colorado Springs Gazette

Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said this week he will not pursue criminal charges against the Colorado secretary of state or the El Paso County clerk and recorder following allegations they interfered with a recount of the June 28 primary election. Allen said in a Dec. 5 letter of review released to the media Tuesday that after his office completed a “thorough investigation” of the complaints lodged against Secretary of State Jena Griswold, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman and his staff “there are no reasonable grounds to pursue criminal charges based on the allegations” raised, which “are not supported by evidence.” Hugh Goldman submitted an affidavit to Allen’s office on Oct. 4 alleging Griswold interfered with the recount in El Paso County by “rewriting” state statutes governing recounts “into rules that materially and substantially misrepresent the statute, then officially distributed said rules to the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office.”

Full Article: Claims of interference in El Paso County recount ‘not supported by evidence’: 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office | Election Coverage | gazette.com

Georgia election officials conduct optional audit of US Senate runoff | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The U.S. Senate runoff was being audited Wednesday and Thursday in most Georgia counties, where election workers will count paper ballots by hand so they can be compared to the results from the computer tally on election night. Election officials said Tuesday the audit will show voters whether results were accurate when Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican Herschel Walker by over 99,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points. Because the audit isn’t required by state law, not every county chose to participate, making it impossible to double-check that statewide results were correct. Of Georgia’s 159 counties, 138 opted to join the audit, including all of metro Atlanta except Douglas County. “The big reason why we audit is we want to improve confidence in the results of the election,” said State Elections Director Blake Evans. “We want people to see that their county election officials are going the extra mile to be able to hand-count the batches of ballots that are selected, and those hand counts will be compared against the machine results.”

Full Article: Georgia election officials conduct optional audit of US Senate runoff

Michigan: Accuracy affirmed or errors exposed? Inside the proposal recount | Ben Orner/Live.com

The rustling of paper overtakes a city hall meeting room as election workers recount thousands of ballots by hand from four central Michigan counties. Votes examined here are among hundreds of thousands from 43 counties recounted since last Wednesday. So far, results have changed very, very little. But where election officials say they’ve seen the accuracy of Michigan’s midterm election upheld, the group behind the recount says it’s seen evidence of misconduct. “[The recount] was just to make sure that the election was accurate and run properly,” said Stefanie Lambert, a lawyer for Election Integrity Force, which requested the recount. “And there’s some very interesting problems that were discovered.” Despite the recount’s massive breadth, which Lambert said came via random sample, Proposals 2 and 3 passed by too many votes to be overturned – about 1.4 million votes combined. Prop 2 expands voting rights, including nine days of early in-person voting, and Prop 3 protects abortion rights. When the Board of State Canvassers greenlit the recount, chair Tony Daunt – a Republican – worried it was a bad-faith “fishing expedition” to further false claims of widespread fraud that originated after the 2020 election.

Full Article: Accuracy affirmed or errors exposed? Inside Michigan’s proposal recount – mlive.com

Michigan elections director warns against further recount ‘disruptions’ | Beth LeBlanc and Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

Michigan Elections Director Jonathan Brater in a Friday letter warned against disruptions at recount locations across the state, citing examples of some challengers overstepping their roles in the recount process and resulting in at least one individual being escorted from a Marquette recount operation. Challengers who disagree with bureau staff decisions are free to appeal to the Board of State Canvassers, but the Bureau of Elections “will not permit disruptive behavior” at the recount locations, Brater wrote to Daniel Hartman, a lawyer for recount petitioner Jerome Jay Allen and the Election Integrity Force. “To the extent challengers are engaging in this behavior, they run the risk of hindering or delaying the conduct of the recount,” Brater wrote, encouraging challengers to review recount procedure so as to avoid disruptions.

Full Article: Michigan elections director warns against further recount ‘disruptions’

Nevada elections department subpoenaed in Trump probe | Gabe Stern/Associated Press

Nevada’s departing Secretary of State was served a subpoena last month as part of the U.S. Department of Justice special counsel’s investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results. The subpoena required Barbara Cegavske to either appear in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., on Dec. 9 or provide a litany of documents detailing communications with officials. Those documents mirrored the special counsel’s subpoenas in other key swing states. Cegavske’s office opted to provide documents, of which there was only one, with officials who were not on the DOJ’s request list. In a statement Thursday evening, Cegavske’s office said that document was provided “out of an abundance of caution.” Special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the Justice Department investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s efforts to remain in power.

Full Article: Nevada elections department subpoenaed in Trump probe | AP News

New Jersey: Next Steps for Mercer County Following Voting-Machine Failure | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

Hand-marked optical-scan paper ballots are the most secure form of voting: with any other method, if the computerized voting machines are hacked, there’s no trustworthy paper trail from which we can determine the true outcome of the election, based on the choices that voters actually indicated.  Even those voting methods that appear to have a paper trail, if it’s a computer that created the paper trail, it’s less trustworthy.  And that’s the case even if the human voters have an opportunity to look at the paper, as I will explain below. Mercer County, NJ uses hand-marked paper ballots in its election-day polling places.  That’s good.  But after the system-wide voting-machine failure in Mercer County, some county officials are thinking of abandoning hand-marked paper ballots, and using Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) in polling places.  That would be a bad idea: BMDs can never be as secure as hand-marked paper ballots.   The use of BMDs can lead to unrecoverable election failures.  In  contrast, Mercer County’s failure was recoverable:  Even though the voting machines failed to work on election day, voters could (and did) hand-mark the same paper ballots that they would have fed into those voting machines, and the Board of Elections could (and did) count those ballots with their high-speed central-count optical scanners.

Full Article: Next Steps for Mercer County Following Voting-Machine Failure – Freedom to Tinker

88 Ohio counties, 11 different voting systems. Will that change anytime soon? | Abigail Bottar/Ideastream Public Media

Depending on what county you vote in, the way you actually cast your ballot may differ. There are 11 different voting systems used across Ohio’s 88 counties. That’s according to the Secretary of State’s office. However, when it comes to those 11 systems there is one big difference: paper or touchscreen? Richland County has used touchscreen technology for over a decade. Voters use the touchscreen machine which then prints their selections before they cast their ballot – all in one place. They rarely have problems with this technology, Board of Elections Director Matt Finfgeld said. “The voters in Richland County are pretty experienced with it,” Finfgeld said. “That’s what they’ve used and that’s what they’ve known for 15, 16 years.” This is what Lake County Board of Elections Director Ross McDonald calls a culture of touchscreen voting. Like in Richland, Lake has used touchscreen voting machines since the early 2000s. Unlike Richland, however, Lake recently moved to new technology. Voters still vote using a touchscreen but now the machine prints out a physical ballot that voters feed into a precinct scanner to be tabulated.

Full Article: 88 Ohio counties, 11 different voting systems. Will that change anytime soon? | Ideastream Public Media

Oklahoma: Audit confirms election results | Dale Denwalt/Oklahoman

A post-election review has confirmed the results of both the primary runoff and general elections in Oklahoma. Of the 31 races, and thousands of ballots re-tabulated, election officials found only two instances where the audit figures differed slightly from the certified results. The audit included results from federal, state, judicial and county elections. In one Okmulgee County precinct, a voter apparently put their “I Voted” sticker on their ballot before feeding it into the machine on Election Day, causing their pick for corporation commissioner to not be counted. During an audit in Johnston County, officials discovered that one ballot was missing from a sealed transfer case containing Election Day ballots. After recounting the ballots from that precinct multiple times and conducting a thorough search, the ballot could not be found. “While the ballot was not recovered, there appears to be no evidence of intentional wrongdoing by the precinct officials,” states the audit report. “The most likely explanation is that the precinct officials failed to properly secure the ballot in the transfer case after the polls closed.”

Full Article: Audit confirms Oklahoma’s election results

Pennsylvania: Recount requests delay election certification | Mark Scolforo and Brooke Schultz/Associated Press

Five weeks after Election Day, winning candidates in Pennsylvania from governor to Congress are waiting for their victories to become official. An effort that appears to be at least partially coordinated among conservatives has inundated counties with ballot recount requests even though no races are close enough to require a recount and there has been no evidence of any potential problems. The attempt to delay certification could foreshadow a potential strategy for the 2024 presidential election, if the results don’t go the way disaffected voters want in one of the nation’s most closely contested states. Recounts have been sought in 172 voting precincts across 40% of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. That led to nine counties missing their Nov. 29 certification deadline, though all but one has since certified. The Pennsylvania Department of State, in a response to The Associated Press on Wednesday, gave no date for certifying the results statewide but said it planned to comply with a request from the clerk of the U.S. House to send certification documents to Congress by mid-December. Wednesday was Dec. 14.

Full Article: Recount requests delay Pennsylvania election certification | AP News

Pennsylvania county to begin hand recount of 2020 votes for president, state auditor general on Jan. 9 | John Beauge/PennLive

The hand recount of the 2020 general election ballots for president and state auditor general in Lycoming County is to begin Jan. 9. The county Board of Elections in October voted 2-1 to do the recount of ballots for president and one statewide office to prove the electronic tabulation is accurate and to restore vote confidence. Approximately 5,000, people, many of whom identified themselves with the conservative Patriots group, sought a recount even though President Trump outpolled Joe Biden in the county, 41,462 to 16,971. Nearly 60,000 ballots will be counted by up to 40 county employees who will be pulled off their normal jobs. They first will be trained by elections director Forest Lehman. The cost of the recount has not been determined, Commissioner Scott L. Metzger said Wednesday. No one extra is being hired, he said. It is no different than taking county employees off their regular jobs to assist after an election, he said.

Full Article: Pa. county to begin hand recount of 2020 votes for president, state auditor general on Jan. 9 – pennlive.com

Texas Republicans pushing for creation of election police | Michael Murney Michael Murney/Houston Chronicle

Texas Republicans are prefiling bills aimed at creating an election police force similar to a unit deployed in Florida during the 2022 midterm elections, NBC News reported Tuesday. The push for increased law enforcement involvement in Texas elections comes as GOP lawmakers are casting doubt on the outcome of Harris County’s election results and District Attorney Kim Ogg probes for alleged criminal activity following issues with paper ballot availability and adjusted polling hours. Harris County leaders have defended the election’s integrity, claiming GOP scrutiny of the county’s procedures is part of a conservative effort to undermine election outcomes since the county first went blue in 2018. Bills such as SB 220 aim to create a team of “election marshals” that would probe alleged criminal violations of Texas election laws and allow for the filing of criminal charges in certain cases. Houston-area state senator Paul Bettencourt, who wrote SB 220, told NBC News that the proposed legislation is specifically designed to address the issues that arose in Harris County during midterm voting.

Full Article: Texas Republicans pushing for creation of election police

Utah: No evidence of fraud in midterm elections, but auditors say there‘s room to improve elections systems | Bryan Schott/Salt Lake Tribune

A deep dive into Utah’s vote-by-mail system found no evidence of fraud, widespread errors or systematic problems during the 2022 midterm elections. Additionally, legislative auditors found that the safeguards already in place are sufficient to thwart any attempts to undermine election integrity. Still, independent investigators pointed out several areas that are in need of improvement. Legislative leaders ordered the audit last December in the wake of Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud following his 2020 election loss. Utah House Majority Leader Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, argued the look would dispel any doubts about Utah’s voting system. Auditors observed the 2022 primary election in all 29 of Utah’s counties. They found that Utah’s decentralized system, where individual counties oversee elections, creates a firewall that makes it extremely difficult to compromise a statewide or national election. The final report also refuted one of the more outlandish conspiracy theories surrounding elections. Auditors examined election equipment in several counties and found no evidence that they are connected to the internet.

Full Article: Election audit: No fraud in Utah’s midterm, but room for improvement