National: They defeated election deniers, but these secretaries of state still fear ‘losing our democracy’ | Jacob Fulton/The Boston Globe

Secretaries of state, who have increasingly found themselves on the front lines in the fight for democracy, met last week in Washington to discuss how to keep election integrity top of mind as the next presidential election begins to gear up. Several of the officials gathered at the winter meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State had beaten back challenges last year from election deniers in contests that in some places attracted as much national attention as a competitive Senate race. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who defeated Republican Mark Finchem, a former Arizona state representative who routinely spread election disinformation, said races like his provided “good perspective” on “how close we still are to losing our democracy.” “A lot more people are going to be a lot more realistic when they see that democracy is something that needs to be nurtured,” Fontes said. According to the States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to fair and secure elections, 22 of the 27 secretary of state races in 2022 included at least one candidate with a platform that incorporated election denial. Just three of those candidates ended up winning in the general election.

Full Article: They defeated election deniers, but these secretaries of state still fear ‘losing our democracy’ – The Boston Globe

National: Top state officials push to make spread of US election misinformation illegal | Kira Lerner/The Guardian

Chief election officials in several states want to make it illegal for someone to knowingly spread false information about an election, a move that raises questions around first amendment protected speech. The Democratic secretaries of state for Michigan and Minnesota told the Guardian they’re supporting legislation that would criminalize people who spread misinformation about an election. Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said the law would prevent people from tweeting that Election Day is on a Wednesday or saying that voting machines are insecure, when they know that information to be false. Benson said that since she took office in 2019, she has seen an increase in people lying to voters about their rights, which she considers an election security threat. “We have to hold those folks accountable, otherwise it’s going to continue and it will harm our democracy,” she said. Most states already prohibit interference with the election process in some manner, but the specificity in the laws when it comes to the spread of misinformation or the use of deceptive practices before an election varies from state to state.

Full Article: Top state officials push to make spread of US election misinformation illegal | US elections 2024 | The Guardian

National: ‘Incredibly damning:’ Fox News documents stun some legal experts | Paul Farhi , Jeremy Barr and Sarah Ellison/The Washington Post

The disclosure of emails and texts in which Fox News executives and personalities disparaged the same election conspiracies being floated on their shows has greatly increased the chances that a defamation case against the network will succeed, legal experts say. Dominion Voting Systems included dozens of messages sent internally by Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch and on-air stars such as Tucker Carlson in a brief made public last week in support of the voting technology company’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network. Dominion claims it was damaged in the months after the 2020 election after Fox repeatedly aired false statements that it was part of a conspiracy to fraudulently elect Joe Biden. Dominion said the emails and texts show that Fox’s hosts and executives knew the claims being peddled by then-president Donald Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell weren’t true — some employees privately described them as “ludicrous” and “mind blowingly nuts”— but Fox kept airing them to keep its audience from changing channels. If so, the messages could amount to powerful body of evidence against Fox, according to First Amendment experts, because they meet a critical and difficult-to-meet standard in such cases. “You just don’t often get smoking-gun evidence of a news organization saying internally, ‘We know this is patently false, but let’s forge ahead with it,’” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah professor who specializes in media law.

Full Article: ‘Incredibly damning:’ Fox News documents stun some legal experts – The Washington Post

Arizona’s top prosecutor kept private records that debunked election fraud | vonne Wingett Sanchez and Isaac Stanley-Becker/The Washington Post

Nearly a year after the 2020 election, Arizona’s then-attorney general, Mark Brnovich, launched an investigation into voting in the state’s largest county that quickly consumed more than 10,000 hours of his staff’s time. Investigators prepared a report in March 2022 stating that virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Brnovich, a Republican, kept it private. In April, the attorney general — who was running in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat — released an “Interim Report” claiming that his office had discovered “serious vulnerabilities.” He left out edits from his own investigators refuting his assertions. His office then compiled an “Election Review Summary” in September that systematically refuted accusations of widespread fraud and made clear that none of the complaining parties — from state lawmakers to self-styled “election integrity” groups — had presented any evidence to support their claims. Brnovich left office last month without releasing the summary.

Full Article: Arizona’s top prosecutor kept private records that debunked election fraud – The Washington Post

Arkansas group pitches hand-count elections to counties as Legislature prepares to weigh in | Hunter Field/Arkansas Advocate

An Arkansas group with connections to former President Donald Trump is traveling the state with a pitch to county quorum courts: ditch the voting machines. Instead, the Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative urges counties to rely on paper ballots marked and counted by hand. The group had existed in relative obscurity since it was formed last year by Conrad Reynolds, a retired Army colonel who twice lost in the Republican primary for Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District seat to U.S. Rep. French Hill. But last month, it convinced the first county, Cleburne County, to switch to hand-marked and counted ballots. Now, some of the most conservative members of the Arkansas Legislature appear to have taken notice, filing a bill to require counties that opt to hand-count ballots to pay for it themselves and first run the ballots through a tabulation device. … Pamela Smith, the president and CEO of the nonpartisan election technology group Verified Voting, said there are groups and people across pushing agendas similar to Reynolds’ and AVII’s. However, she said that the hand counting of ballots is not optimal for the initial tally of votes. “The time and place for a hand count is a post-election audit or check to make sure the machines worked correctly or in the recount of a very close race.”

Full Article: Arkansas group pitches hand-count elections to counties as Legislature prepares to weigh in – Arkansas Advocate

Georgia bills seek to eliminate ‘Zuckerbucks’ and ballot bar codes | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Republican Georgia senators rolled out a package of bills Thursday that continue to focus on perceived flaws in the 2020 presidential election, attempting to restrict outside money, eliminate votes scanned from bar codes and ban foreigners from being hired as election workers. The proposals come two years after lawmakers passed a far-reaching overhaul to Georgia voting laws following Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow victory against Republican Donald Trump. … Another bill would require Georgia’s voting system to scan ballots without having to rely on QR codes, often called bar codes, which are unreadable to the human eye. Both election integrity advocates and skeptics say voters should be able to know that the scanner is reading their choices, but state election officials say the change would cost millions of dollars without improving security.

Full Article: Georgia bills seek to eliminate ‘Zuckerbucks’ and ballot bar codes

Kansas House, Senate pass bills on ballot boxes, three-day grace period for advance ballots | Allison Kite and Rachel Mipro/Kansas Reflector

Election legislation meant to shore up public trust and transparency passed out of the Kansas House and Senate Thursday, despite concerns that the bills would have a chilling effect on voters. House and Senate lawmakers passed bills ending the three-day grace period for advance ballot collection 77-45, following Wednesday’s debate on the ethics of limiting the window. The vote marks a shift from 2017, when the House voted to create the three-day grace period for ballots with 123 voting in favor of the legislation. Senators voted 23-17 Thursday to do the same. Republican proponents of the bill have said the measure will restore state residents’ trust in the electoral process, though some of the bill’s critics have said proponents are the ones undermining the electoral system in the first place. Rep. Stephanie Sawyer Clayton, an Overland Park Democrat, said the current system should be kept. “We believe that the best way to maintain trust in our election systems is by working under the current constructs as opposed to undermining democracy itself through inflammatory rhetoric,” Sawyer Clayton said. Under the House bill, all advance ballots need to be returned by 7 p.m. on Election Day, eliminating the window currently in place. The restriction would apply to advance voting ballots received by mail, in the office of the county election officer, the satellite election office, any polling place or a county-maintained election drop box.

Full Article: Kansas House, Senate pass bills on ballot boxes, three-day grace period for advance ballots – Kansas Reflector

Michigan bills would ban guns at polls, punish election worker harassment | Ben Orner/MLive.com

Michigan House Democrats have introduced a package of bills they say will protect election officials and workers by increasing penalties for harassment and banning guns from voting locations. The four bills follow promises that Democrats have made early in this new legislature – where they hold majorities in both chambers – to further secure Michigan’s elections. House Bill 4127, introduced by East Lansing Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou, and HB 4128, introduced by Detroit Rep. Stephanie Young, would make it illegal to possess a firearm at or 100 feet from polling places, ballot drop boxes, early voting locations and absentee vote counting boards. This ban already applies to churches, courts, sports arenas, day care centers, hospitals and more. Violation is a misdemeanor punishable with at worst 90 days in prison. Uniformed law enforcement officers are exempt. “Keeping guns away from polling places and counting boards is just common sense,” said Tsernoglou, the House Elections Committee chair, in a statement Thursday. “This legislation will help ensure we all can vote, free from intimidation.” Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in 2020 issued a directive to ban open carry at polling places, but a judge struck down her ban before the November election, saying it’s up to the legislature.

Full Article: Bills would ban guns at Michigan polls, punish election worker harassment – mlive.com

New Hampshire towns to vote on banning voting machines | Angelina Berube/Eagle Tribune

Residents in Pelham, Salem and Sandown will consider in March if their towns should exclusively hand count ballots in future elections. The issue is presented as a citizen’s petition in each community. The petitions look to stop and prohibit the future use of electronic ballot counting devices in town and school elections, instead requiring a hand count. The three select boards did not recommend the warrant articles. This isn’t the first time Salem or Sandown has heard from citizens looking to change the longstanding voting method. The subject was on Salem’s warrant in March 2022 — rejected 1,564-2,130 — and submitted by Jaime Thornock, who is now petitioning it again. She said there’s a lack of reliability and trust surrounding electronic machines. Requiring hand counts would create transparency, she said, on real numbers from election night. Rep. Joe Sweeney said Salem must trust election officials. He stressed the burden of hand-counting on poll workers, since they are obligated get ballots counted in a single sitting.

Full Article: NH towns to vote on banning voting machines | New Hampshire | eagletribune.com

North Carolina County official refused to certify 2022 election results. Two face removal from office | Charles Duncan/Spectrum News

Two people on the Surry County Board of Elections face a hearing to remove them from the board after they circulated a letter calling the 2022 elections “illegal,” and one refused to certify the results. A complaint filed with the North Carolina State Board of Elections says Jerry Forestieri and Timothy DeHaan should be removed from the Surry County board. In the letter, the two Surry County men took issue with a 2018 federal court ruling that stopped voter ID requirements in North Carolina. They did not question the results in their county in the foothills northwest of Winston-Salem. “Secretary Forestieri and Member DeHaan failed to uphold their oaths of office while executing the duties of their offices as county board members during the Surry County canvass meeting,” said Bob Hall, the former head of the left-leaning Democracy NC, in his complaint to the state board. “Their inflammatory language, as expressed in the Canvass Letter and confirmed during the board meeting, shows an unmistakable failure to support the federal and state constitutions as interpreted by our courts, and to instead substitute their own version of election law in its place,” Hall said.

Full Article: County official refused to certify election, 2 face removal

Unequal Pennsylvania election policies disenfranchised voters in 2022 | arter Walker and Kate Huangpu/Votebeat and SpotlightPA

Pennsylvania voters did not have equal opportunities to cast or correct their ballots during the November 2022 election, the latter producing a disparity that disenfranchised hundreds of voters, a Spotlight PA and Votebeat analysis has found. As part of a first-of-its-kind review, the news organizations contacted election officials in all 67 counties about policies regarding drop boxes and mail ballots that had disqualifying technical errors. The outlets focused on how counties treat mail ballots, as state law is silent on logistical details that directly impact how Pennsylvanians can vote and whether a person’s vote counts. Spotlight PA and Votebeat also sought to understand the access voters have to physical polling places and to minutes of meetings held by county election boards that make critical policy decisions such as which ballots get counted and who gets a chance to fix their ballot.

Full Article: Unequal Pennsylvania election policies disenfranchised voters in 2022 – Votebeat Pennsylvania – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting

Texas bill would make illegal voting a felony again, even if someone doesn’t know they’re ineligible to vote | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Republican leaders in the Texas Senate are intent on raising the penalty for voting illegally from a misdemeanor to a second-degree felony, despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud in Texas. The effort comes nearly two years after the Legislature passed a sweeping voting bill, Senate Bill 1, that lowered the penalties for such crimes to a misdemeanor — and then almost immediately began discussing raising them back. Senate Bill 2, filed Tuesday by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would also change the standard for determining someone’s intent for illegal voting, according to policy experts. The law as enacted under SB 1 says a person commits a crime if they “knowingly or intentionally” vote or attempt to vote in an election in which the person “knows they’re not eligible” to vote. Hughes’ new bill changes that language so that anyone who votes or attempts to vote in an election in which “the person knows of a particular circumstance that makes the person not eligible to vote” could face charges. That means that rather than having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the voter knew they were casting their ballot unlawfully, prosecutors would only need to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the voter knew of the circumstance that made them ineligible to vote, said James Slattery, senior supervising legislative attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Full Article: Texas Senate revives effort to make illegal voting a felony | The Texas Tribune

National: Security experts warn of foreign cyber threat to 2024 voting | Ayanna Alexander/Associated Press

Top state election and cybersecurity officials on Thursday warned about threats posed by Russia and other foreign adversaries ahead of the 2024 elections, noting that America’s decentralized system of thousands of local voting jurisdictions creates a particular vulnerability. Russia and Iran have meddled in previous elections, including attempts to tap into internet-connected electronic voter databases. Distracted by war and protests, neither country appeared to disrupt last year’s midterm elections, but security officials said they expect U.S. foes to be more active as the next presidential election season draws near. The first primaries are less than a year away. Jen Easterly, director of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, referenced Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the U.S.-led effort to supply weapons and other aid to the besieged country as a possible motivator. She said the agency was “very concerned about potential retaliation from Russia of our critical infrastructure.” She also mentioned China as a possible source of election interference, especially as the relationship between the two countries has deteriorated, mostly recently over the suspected spy balloon that floated across the country before being shot down by a U.S. fighter jet.

Full Article: Security experts warn of foreign cyber threat to 2024 voting | AP News

Georgia bill tries to remove bar codes from ballots | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A bill introduced in the Georgia Senate would make the printed words on ballots the official vote instead of bar codes that are unreadable by the human eye. State election officials urged caution before lawmakers change Georgia’s voting system and impose new costs on taxpayers. The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Max Burns, said Thursday that he wants voters to know that their choices are counted correctly rather than having to trust votes encoded in bar codes, also called QR codes. “The intent is to make sure that the voter has confidence that what their paper ballot indicates is what was actually counted,” Burns said of Senate Bill 189. “If you look at the QR code, that gives some people concern because they can’t read it.” Georgia’s voting system relies on a combination of touchscreens and printers, which produce a sheet of paper that includes a bar code along with a human-readable list of the voter’s choices. Then, voters insert their ballots into optical scanning machines that read the bar code, which counts as the official vote. Election security advocates have said that bar codes could be manipulated by hackers, though there’s no evidence that has ever happened. But the state’s voting technology, purchased in 2019 for over $100 million, doesn’t include the ability to interpret printed text. Instead, optical scanners interpret bar codes from in-person ballots and bubbled-in choices from absentee ballots.

Full Article: Bill introduced in Georgia seeks to eliminate ballot bar codes

National: Election deniers face a nationwide wave of pushbacks | Amy Gardner, Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

When the new Arizona attorney general took office last month, she repurposed a unit once exclusively devoted to rooting out election fraud to focus on voting rights and ballot access. In North Carolina on Tuesday, the State Board of Elections began proceedings that could end with the removal of a county election officer who had refused to certify the 2022 results even as he acknowledged the lack of evidence of irregularities. And later this week, a group of secretaries of state will showcase a “Democracy Playbook” that includes stronger protections for election workers and penalties for those who spread misinformation. These actions and others reflect a growing effort among state election officials, lawmakers and private-sector advocates — most of them Democrats — to push back against the wave of misinformation and mistrust of elections that sprang from former president Donald Trump’s false claim that his 2020 defeat was rigged.

Full Article: Election deniers face a nationwide wave of pushbacks – The Washington Post

National: Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret | Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral-fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter. The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court. About a dozen people at the firm worked on the report, including econometricians, who use statistics to model and predict outcomes, the people said. The work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, before the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Trump continues to falsely assert that the 2020 election was stolen despite abundant evidence to the contrary, much of which had been provided to him or was publicly available before the Capitol assault. The Trump campaign’s commissioning of its own report to study the then-president’s fraud claims has not been previously reported.

Source: Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret – The Washington Post

National: Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Trump’s Election Fraud Claims | Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson/The New York Times

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air. The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020. Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not. The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.” On one occasion, as Mr. Murdoch watched Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on television, he told Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”

Full Article: Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Trump’s Election Fraud Claims – The New York Times

Alabama: Prefiled election bills require paper ballots, ban internet-capable voting machines | Maddie Biertempfel/WHNT

One state lawmaker is working to codify some of Alabama’s election rules into law. The first election-related bill from Sen. Clyde Chambliss (R- Prattville) would require paper ballots for all elections. The second prohibits any vote county machines from connecting to the internet. The current administrative code already has those rules in place. Chambliss said these bills would cement them into law. “If there is a problem, say a lightning strike or computer failure or something like that, we always have a paper trail to go back and to make sure that we have the count exactly right,” Chambliss said. New Secretary of State Wes Allen supports the proposals. He said even though Alabama has secure elections, strengthening the current rules is important to voters.

Full Article: Prefiled election bills require paper ballots, ban internet-capable voting machines

Arizona Court of Appeals rejects Kari Lake’s election challenge | Brian Rokus and Jack Forrest/CNN

The Arizona Court of Appeals has rejected Kari Lake’s challenge to the result of the Arizona gubernatorial election after she appealed an earlier ruling from the superior court. Lake had requested a declaration from the court that she – and not her opponent, Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs who won the election by about 17,000 votes – was the actual winner of the election. “Her request for relief fails because the evidence presented to the superior court ultimately supports the court’s conclusion that voters were able to cast their ballots, that votes were counted correctly, and that no other basis justifies setting aside the election results,” the Court of Appeals decision stated. The appeal rejection marks the latest defeat for Lake, who has continually doubled down on her support for former President Donald Trump and false claims that he 2020 election was stolen, a central rallying call in her 2022 gubernatorial bid.

Source: Arizona Court of Appeals rejects Kari Lake’s election challenge | CNN Politics

Georgia legislators answered Trump’s call to overturn election | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With his chances of winning Georgia slipping away in December 2020, then-President Donald Trump hit upon a novel scheme to stay in power: State legislators would name him the winner. So, while his allies spun dubious tales of voting fraud at the Georgia Capitol, Trump’s campaign called nearly 120 Republican legislators to ask whether they would appoint a slate of presidential electors who would vote for Trump instead of Democrat Joe Biden. A log of those phone calls recently released by congressional investigators shows some lawmakers were eager to help. “Hell, yes,” said one. “100%,” replied another. “Very supportive and ready to go,” a third lawmaker told the campaign. In all, about 30 Republican legislators expressed some level of support for allowing the General Assembly to name Trump the winner of the presidential election, according to the call log. The log and other documents released by investigators suggest scores of other lawmakers also may have supported the plan.

Full Article: Jan. 6 documents: Georgia legislators answered Trump’s call to overturn election

Hawaii Republicans lose challenge of 2022 election audit process | Candace Cheung/Courthouse News Service

Republicans nationwide continue to question election integrity — despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud — but a Oahu Circuit Court judge put a stop to one such complaint at a hearing Friday afternoon in Hawaii. The Hawaii Republican Party had accused the state’s election office of violating election statutes during the post-election ballot auditing process for the 2022 general elections, where Democrats won a majority of the races including for governor. The complaint, first filed two weeks after the election, named the State of Hawaii Office of Elections and Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago in his official capacity as defendants and asked for a proper election audit to be completed. The GOP’s suit relies on an assortment of witness statements and affidavits from election observers who claimed to have seen election officials using digitized images of ballots to tally votes rather than the paper ballots as required by state law. Defendants argued the Republican Party did not have any concrete evidence to any kind of wrongdoing and said the party’s assertions were without any evidence and called them “pure speculation.”

Full Article: Hawaii Republicans lose challenge of 2022 election audit process | Courthouse News Service

Michigan Secretary of State once again calls for firearms ban at polling locations | Priya Vijayakumar/Michigan Radio

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced Thursday that she wants to see legislation to ban firearms within 100 feet of polling places. “The time for only thoughts and prayers is over,” said Benson at the annual Judge Damon Keith Memorial Soul Food Luncheon. Benson issued a similar directive to local clerks to ban the open carry of firearms at polling places in 2020. But a judge struck down that directive. The plan now is to include the gun ban in legislation on voting rights that’s being drafted. “Our kids deserve to go to school free from fear of gun violence. They deserve to go to church or synagogues or mosques with their families to worship free from fear of gun violence,” said Benson. “They deserve to live in a democracy where their voices are heard and where they can cast their ballots free from intimidation or threats of violence. That is the world I am fighting for.” Benson is collaborating with lawmakers and local election officials on the legislation.

Full Article: Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson once again calls for firearms ban at polling locations

New Jersey: Monmouth County recount after ES&S screwup changes results of 2022 election | David Wildstein/New Jersey Globe

A court-ordered recount in Monmouth County after the nation’s largest voting machine manufacturer, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), admitted to a programming error that caused some votes to be double counted, appears to have changed the outcome of one race in the November 2022 general election. In the Ocean Township school board contest, a hand recount of ballots in Ocean Township shows Jeff Weinstein with a four-vote lead, 3,408 to 3,404, against Steve Clayton. After the votes were tallied in November, Clayton had defeated Weinstein, then the incumbent, by 20 votes. Clayton took office last month. Clayton lost 119 votes from his November total, while Weinstein lost 95. Attorney General Matt Platkin has ordered an investigation into the the ES&S system failure. Once the new result is certified, the contest will likely head back to Superior Court Judge David Bauman for instructions on removing Clayton and seating Weinstein.

Full Article: Monmouth recount after ES&S screwup changes results of 2022 election – New Jersey Globe

Pennsylvania Court won’t force release of election records | Marc Levy/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania appellate court said Thursday that it will not order Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration to produce records on voters and election systems sought by Republican lawmakers in a quest inspired by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The decision by the Commonwealth Court came a year-and-a-half after a Republican-controlled state Senate Committee voted to issue a subpoena seeking detailed state election records. Those records include information that Democratic lawmakers and the state attorney general’s office said were protected by privacy laws, including the driver’s license numbers and last four digits of their Social Security number of 9 million registered voters, as well as details about election systems. The court said that the Senate committee voted to issue the subpoena under its own internal rules and can enforce it under the state’s contempt laws. But that process, it said, does not involve seeking a court order to enforce it. “The Senate Committee has chosen to seek the election-related materials by legislative subpoena, and it is bound by that choice,” Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote in the 21-page decision.

Full Article: Court won’t force Pennsylvania to release election records | AP News

South Dakota Senate wants post-election audits | Bob Mercer/KELO

South Dakota counties would be required to conduct post-election audits of ballot-counting machines under a plan moving ahead in the Legislature.State senators voted 34-0 on Monday for SB-160. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives where the lead sponsor is Republican Rep. Drew Peterson. Republican Sen. David Wheeler said state government will pay counties for the cost of the audits. He said South Dakota is one of the few states where post-election audits aren’t done. “It’s appropriate for us to do a spot-check, and that’s what this would do,” said Wheeler, the bill’s prime sponsor. Counties would check the two statewide contests that are closest in outcome each election. “So people can have confidence the machines are counting correctly,” Wheeler said. Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s office testified in “soft” opposition during the Senate committee hearing, according to Wheeler. She plans to conduct a study this summer. One of the points she ran on last year was the need for post-election audits.

Source: Senate wants post-election audits for South Dakota

Texas: Unrecoverable Election Screwup in Williamson County | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

In the November 2020 election in Williamson County, Texas, flawed e-pollbook software resulted in voters inadvertently voting for candidates and questions not from their own districts but from others in the same county.  These voters were deprived of the opportunity to vote for candidates they were entitled to vote for—and their votes were wrongly counted in elections that they shouldn’t have voted in.  This wasn’t the voters’ fault, but it does mean that the results in elections for local offices were affected by this screwup by Tenex Software Solutions.  Tenex’s e-pollbook malfunctions call into question the results of the 2020 school district races, municipal elections, potentially a county commissioners race, and state legislative races in Williamson County. As more and more states use e-pollbooks in vote centers, election administrators should understand this failure, because it could potentially affect any kind of e-pollbook that prints ballots on demand. I’ve written about other screwups caused by election software or hardware—in Antrim County MI, in Windham NH, in Mercer County NJ—but in all those cases, voters marked the paper ballots they were entitled to vote on, and election officials can and did recount those ballots to report accurate election results.  That is, all those screwups were recoverable, and election officials took immediate action to recount and recover—to get an accurate result.

Full Article: Unrecoverable Election Screwup in Williamson County TX – Freedom to Tinker

Wisconsin: Bipartisan vote tracking measure brings parties together on elections | Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

A Republican-authored bill with bipartisan support in the Wisconsin Legislature would allow voters to track the status of their ballots through text messages sent to their cell phones. Currently, absentee voters must log into MyVote, the Wisconsin Election Commission’s information portal, to make sure their ballots have been received by a clerk. Under Senate Bill 39, introduced by Sens. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) voters who apply for absentee ballots can sign up for free text message updates letting them know when their ballots are received. The Secure Democracy Foundation, a national nonprofit group dedicated to building confidence in elections and improving voters’ access to the ballot box across the United States, applauds the Wisconsin measure. … Voters in 49 states including Wisconsin have some sort of ballot-tracking system, and at least eight other states use a system to actively notify voters about the status of their ballots, according to the group.

Source: Bipartisan vote tracking measure brings parties together on elections – Wisconsin Examiner

Wyoming election security bill stumbles but continues progress through the legislature | Hugh Cook/Wyoming Public Media

A bill that would impact the election systems and codify existing rules established by the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office is continuing its journey through the legislature. House Bill 47, sponsored by the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Interim Committee, was received for concurrence on Feb. 13 but failed on a 6-54-2 vote in the House due to issues with amendments. “We had a standing committee amendment that went through the rules and found, ‘Okay, so here’s a list of rules that are not being codified,’ and then we just decided to codify them,” said Rep. Jared Olson (R-Laramie). “That’s where the bill left. The amendment is a little peculiar, because it basically adopted half of our standing committee amendment and then went back in and backtracked and erased half of our standing committee amendment.” The bill takes rules on election certification from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office related to federal certification of election systems and would codify them if signed into law. It was laid back or delayed on its third reading in the Senate but later passed that chamber on a 24-7 vote on Feb. 13.

Full Article: An election security bill stumbles but continues progress through the legislature | Wyoming Public Media

National: Electronic pollbook security raises concerns going into 2024 | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

They were blamed for long lines in Los Angeles during California’s 2020 presidential primary, triggered check-in delays in Columbus, Ohio, a few months later and were at the center of former President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to protest in Detroit during last November’s midterms. High-profile problems involving electronic pollbooks have opened the door for those peddling election conspiracies and underscore the critical role the technology plays in whether voting runs smoothly. Russia and Iran already have demonstrated interest in accessing the systems. Despite their importance and potential vulnerabilities, national standards for the security and reliability of electronic pollbooks do not exist and efforts underway to develop them may not be ready or widely adopted in time for the 2024 presidential election. “We have a trust issue in elections. The more we can say there are standards that equipment must be tested to, the better,” said Larry Norden, an election security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s like a seal of approval that really doesn’t exist right now.” Poll workers use electronic pollbooks to check in voters. They typically are a tablet or laptop computer that accesses an electronic list of registered voters with names, addresses and precinct information, with some doing so through an internet connection.

Full Article: Electronic pollbook security raises concerns going into 2024 | AP News

Pennsylvania voting officials are still fighting election deniers | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

It’s been 27 months since President Biden won the 2020 election. But that election continues to haunt officials in the Philadelphia suburb of Delaware County, Pa., who are still dealing with lawsuits alleging election fraud, despite no substantial evidence, and ongoing criticism from some local residents during public meetings. For William Martin, the county’s solicitor, the level of frustration hit a breaking point last month during a county council meeting. “I am profoundly offended to listen to baseless allegations of fraud against me and against other county workers,” Martin said after sitting through another round of public comments. “It’s time to put up or shut up. If you think there is fraud, sue me. Sue me! Sue me personally. Because then when it gets thrown out, I’ll sue you for abuse of process. Sue me!” Many other local officials in Pennsylvania are still grappling with the aftermath of the 2020 election. More recent political contests in that swing state have become a hotbed for election deniers and misinformation. And election watchers are concerned about how that could spill over into upcoming elections, including next year’s presidential race.

Full Article: Election misinformation continues to roil Pennsylvania : NPR