National: Election Officials Are on Alert for Cyber, Physical Attacks | David Uberti/Wall Street Journal

The array of potential threats to the 2022 midterms is “more complex than it has ever been,” a top U.S. official said Thursday, but Washington has yet to see specific or credible attempts by foreign governments to disrupt the Nov. 8 vote. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, warned of multipronged threats that could include hacking of computer networks, disinformation on social media and harassment campaigns that affect poll workers in the physical world. “The security challenges are intertwined,” Ms. Easterly said. “They can’t be viewed in isolation when you think about foreign interference.” CISA has taken an increasingly prominent role in recent years to coordinate security among the network of state and local agencies that hold elections across the U.S. While those efforts previously focused on countering digital interference by countries such as Russia, some cybersecurity experts say the Kremlin’s capacity for election meddling has shrunk. “Russian influence capabilities have very likely deteriorated as a result of the nation’s war against Ukraine,” cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said in a 2022 election report released Thursday. Instead, election officials this year have reported a surge in physical threats, largely from people angry about President Biden’s defeat of former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Full Article: U.S. Election Officials Are on Alert for Cyber, Physical Attacks – WSJ

Arizona: Cochise County continues pursuit of hand-count despite warnings | Jen Fifled/AZ MMirror

Supervisors in Cochise County said Tuesday they are intent on voting on a proposal to hand-count all ballots cast in November’s election, despite repeated warnings from their lawyer that the plan would be illegal. Deputy Cochise County attorney Christine Roberts repeatedly told the supervisors that state law does not give them the authority to conduct a full hand count of ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters, and even if it did, it isn’t legal to change election procedures this close to an election. She may be able to prevent them from moving forward. The county attorney’s office must approve items before they are placed on a supervisors meeting agenda, County Administrator Rich Karwaczka told Votebeat after the meeting. “The county attorney would block something they believe is unlawful,” he said, adding that allowing a vote on an illegal proposal would increase the county’s liability and risk. Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, both Republicans, want to continue using vote-counting machines this election, and to add a full hand count, as first reported by Votebeat. Together, they’re a majority on their three-person board. With Election Day only a few weeks away and early voting already under way, they didn’t offer details about how it would work or who would bear the costs.

Full Article: Cochise County continues pursuit of hand-count despite warnings | State | eacourier.com

Colorado clerks warn that election deniers infiltrate ranks of poll watchers and election judges ahead of November midterms | Conrad Swanson/The Denver Post

County clerks across Colorado say they’re bracing for a surge of highly motivated election deniers working as poll watchers or election judges in the November midterms — part of a nationwide attempt to manufacture evidence of election fraud. Local, state and federal officials, alongside political experts, have repeatedly debunked claims of election fraud but clerks in Chaffee, Eagle, El Paso, Fremont, Garfield, Summit and Weld counties told the Denver Post they’re still seeing an increasing number of bad-faith poll watchers and election judges around the state. Encouraged, even recommended, by party officials or far-right voices with national reach, the clerks say those watchers and judges have antagonized or threatened election workers, wrongly rejected hundreds of ballots and one man in Chaffee County even tried to steal a password to the election system last year. The irony sits in the notion that these far-right election judges and poll watchers are damaging the country’s foundation of fair and free elections, all under the guise of fighting for election security, Larry Jacobs, a professor of political history, elections and voting behavior at the University of Minnesota, said. Their goals appear to be to sow doubt and prop up losing candidates. The effort continues former President Donald Trump’s work to overturn the 2020 election except it’s now more sophisticated. “It’s moved from spur of the moment, ad hoc, to an organized, well-funded, premeditated effort to make charges of election fraud,” Jacobs said.

Full Article: Election deniers infiltrate ranks of poll watchers and election judges ahead of November midterms, Colorado clerks warn

Delaware Supreme Court finds vote by mail, same-day registration unconstitutional | Meredith Newman and Xerxes Wilson/Delaware News Journal

The Delaware Supreme Court on Friday struck down recent vote-by-mail and same-day voter registration legislation, overturning a signature achievement by Gov. John Carney and Democrat lawmakers. The court’s decision comes a month ahead of the Nov. 8 general election and while the Department of Elections was preparing to send mail ballots to voters on Oct. 10. The ruling means this will not happen and Delaware will return to its more limited, pre-pandemic voting setup where one must vote in person or have an excuse to vote absentee and one must register weeks in advance of an election to cast a ballot. Delawareans must now register to vote by Oct. 15. Debate over the legitimacy of the voting changes, enacted by lawmakers this past summer, centered on whether the state’s constitution would allow all registered voters to cast their ballot through the mail as well as whether allowing people to register to vote all the way up to Election Day is allowed by the provisions of that document. The court heard arguments on the issue Thursday. Friday’s ruling was only three pages long, and the justices wrote that a more thorough opinion explaining their logic will be issued soon.

Full Article: Delaware vote-by-mail ruled unconstitutional by state Supreme Court

Georgia memo says voter challenges not allowed at polling places | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s election director told county election officials Thursday that challenges to voters’ eligibility can’t be filed with poll workers when voters are trying to cast their ballots. The Official Election Bulletin from State Elections Director Blake Evans clarifies a previous memo earlier this week that resulted in questions about whether voters could be challenged in polling places as early voting begins Monday. Over 65,000 Georgia voter registrations have been challenged this year by Republican voters who believe registrants are no longer eligible to vote, often because address records indicate they might have moved. Georgia’s voting law passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly last year allows any voter to challenge the qualifications of an unlimited number of voters within their county. Most of the challenges have been dismissed by county election boards, but about 3,000 have been upheld, resulting in either canceled registrations or voters being placed in “challenged” status, requiring them to cast a ballot that would be reviewed before it’s counted. “Any voter challenge must be in writing, must specify distinctly the grounds of the challenge, and must be filed with the board of registrars,” Evans wrote. “Challenges cannot be filed with a poll manager or any poll worker.”

Full Article: Georgia memo says voter challenges not allowed at polling places

Kentucky county clerks bow out as election conspiracy theories persist | Morgan Watkins/Louisville Courier Journal

The last two and a half years have been unusual for the county clerks who help manage Kentucky’s elections, first with the pandemic at least temporarily changing how people voted and then with the spread of persistent-but-debunked election conspiracy theories. Some clerks decided 2022 was a good time to bow out, for various reasons. Even clerks staying on the job indicated they’ve noticed distrust of their work. This comes as former President Donald Trump’s insistence that he won the 2020 election (when he actually lost to President Joe Biden) continues to take root within the GOP. Scottie Harper, who stepped down this summer after 16 years as Logan County clerk, said his decision was impacted by unfounded suspicions of fraud directed toward election officials. “With any job that you do, if you have that on you day in and day out ― somebody saying you’re doing this corruptly ― it begins to affect you,” Harper told The Courier Journal. “There has to be change, or you’re going to run more clerks off.”

Full Article: Kentucky county clerks bow out as election conspiracy theories persist

In Michigan ‘It’s just a full-throttle attack on elections and on democracy’ | Jon King/ Michigan Advance

Election deniers, the legislation they are proposing and their efforts to dismantle Michigan’s voting systems ahead of the midterm elections, are being highlighted as the top threats to democracy in Michigan. That’s from an analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based Defend Democracy Project, which surveyed grassroots organizers, legal analysts and academic experts to identify what they assess to be the key risks. The report, “The Three Greatest Threats to Democracy in Michigan,” describes the primary threats as being intertwined. Yet Rebecca Parks, the research director for the Defend Democracy Project, says there is also coordination among these various efforts. “We see the same people pop up again and again and again and some of the same groups,” said Parks. “For instance, the sort of floods of public records requests that have just been really inundating county officials asking for sort of nonsensical records or just thousands and thousands and thousands of records from the 2020 elections that we’re seeing all across the country.”

Full Article: ‘It’s just a full-throttle attack on elections and on democracy in Michigan’ ⋆ Michigan Advance

Nevada: ACLU challenge of Nye County ballot hand-counting dismissed | Gabe Stern/Associated Press

A Nye County District Court judge dismissed an emergency petition by the ACLU’s Nevada chapter attempting to stop the county from its plan to hand-count votes alongside a machine tabulator starting later this month. The plan was spurred by false claims of election fraud. In a ruling Wednesday, the case was dismissed mainly on technicalities. Fifth District Court Judge Kimberly Wanker said the ACLU did not provide a recording or transcript of the publicly available Nye County Board of Commissioners meeting referenced in the organization’s petition. The judge said it was unreasonable for the court to access the video and watch a 7-hour, 23-minute video to find a presentation on the plan. She also said there was no certificate of service in the file that indicated the respondents were served with an emergency petition. The ACLU will file a new petition Friday in the Nevada Supreme Court seeking to block hand-counting, executive director Athar Haseebullah said. Nye County is one of the first jurisdictions nationwide to act on election conspiracies related to mistrust in voting machines. The county plans to start hand-counting mail-in ballots two weeks before Election Day, which the ACLU said in its lawsuit risks public release of early voting results. It alleges that their method of using a touch-screen tabulator for people with “special needs” illegally allows election workers to ask about a voter’s disability or turn away otherwise eligible voters based on “arbitrary decision making,” and that Nye County’s wording of “special needs” is ambiguous. The organization also argues that the county’s “stringent signature verification,” which allows the clerk to require an ID card if a voter’s signature fails, violates state statute.

Full Article: ACLU challenge of Nevada ballot hand-counting dismissed | AP News

Pennsylvania undated mail ballots likely to get new challenges after Supreme Court ruling | Jonathan Lai and Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday invalidated a lower-court decision that had allowed undated mail ballots to be counted in Pennsylvania, injecting new uncertainty into election rules that could affect thousands of votes next month. The order is almost certain to prompt new lawsuits over an issue that has become a consistent political and legal fight over the last two years, and it immediately ignited a new round of disputes over what the decision meant. Republicans have sought to throw out undated mail ballots that arrive on time but without a handwritten date on their outer envelopes as required by state law. Democrats have fought to count them. But Tuesday’s decision didn’t address the substance of that debate. It instead vacated a May decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on procedural grounds, leaving unresolved the central question of whether elections officials should count undated ballots. Amid that uncertainty, both sides rushed to interpret the ruling’s practical effects. The Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections as part of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration, said it expects counties to count undated ballots, citing a series of state court rulings earlier this year. Republicans said counties should reject undated ballots, citing state election law and a differing set of state court rulings. What is an ‘undated’ mail ballot?

Full Article: Pa. undated mail ballots likely to get new challenges after Supreme Court ruling

Texas Election Chief Speaks Out on Conspiracy “Nuts,” Death Threats, and President Biden’s Legitimacy | Michael Hardy/Texas Monthly

Take pity on John Scott. In October 2021, Governor Greg Abbott appointed the Fort Worth attorney as Secretary of State, Texas’s top elections official. He immediately found himself in the hot seat, targeted by voting rights activists aggrieved by what they saw as Republican-led voter suppression and by conspiracy theorists inflamed by former president Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election. Scott, who had previously served under Abbott as deputy attorney general for civil litigation and COO of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, told Texas Monthly at the time that his top priority was “bringing the temperature down.” This proved harder than he anticipated. Scott’s first major task was to conduct a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 general election in the two largest Democrat-led counties, Dallas and Harris, and the two largest Republican-led counties, Collin and Tarrant. The audit was demanded by Trump—even though he won Texas by more than five percentage points—and had been agreed to, less than nine hours after Trump issued his demand, by the Secretary of State office (the top post was then vacant). The effort immediately drew scorn from both liberals, who denounced it as a capitulation to election deniers, and Trump himself, who complained that limiting the audit to four counties was “weak.”

Full Article: Texas Election Chief Wants to Tamp Down Election Conspiracy Theories

Wisconsin Elections Commission deadlocks on poll watchers | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission couldn’t agree Monday on what to tell the state’s local election officials about how to handle poll watchers, including where they can stand as people register to vote and check in to receive their ballots. The commission split along party lines, with all three Republicans in support of sending a notice to clerks attempting to spell out what the law allows. All three Democrats opposed it, resulting in a deadlock vote and no change. The issue came up less than a month after the commission voted to start the lengthy process of reviewing existing rules and writing new ones for election observers. Commission chair Don Millis said that given the process won’t be done until a year or more after the Nov. 8 election, he wanted to offer clerks clarity on the existing law now. The unprecedented recruitment efforts are the result of heightened election skepticism and have some local clerks worried about safety at the polls, especially because reports of intimidating behavior from partisan observers have popped up across the country since 2020. Millis and other Republicans on the commission argued Monday that clerks needed some guidance to address concerns about poll watchers. Millis called his proposal “very modest.”

Full Article: Wisconsin Elections Commission deadlocks on poll watchers | AP News

Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every level | Sam Levine and Ed Pilkington/The Guardian

Item number 28 on the agenda for the March meeting of the county commission in rural southern Nevada seemed benign enough. But by the end of the hour-and-45-minute presentation Sandra Merlino, the longtime local clerk, felt sickened. One by one, a band of activists took to the podium to argue that Nye county should switch from electronic ballots to paper ones in forthcoming elections. They were led by Jim Marchant, a Las Vegas businessman who lost a 2020 House race but refused to concede, alleging fraud. He argued that the county couldn’t trust its electronic election equipment and that it should switch to a system in which it only used paper ballots and counted those ballots by hand. Three other speakers offered a flurry of complex-sounding analyses purporting to prove that the county’s voting equipment was vulnerable to hacking. They included Russell Ramsland, a Texas man who helped Donald Trump and allies push outlandish theories about fraud after the 2020 race, and Phil Waldron, a former army colonel who produced a 38-slide PowerPoint presentation after the 2020 race, urging Trump to seize control of voting equipment. Merlino was alarmed. She knew that what they were saying was bogus – the county’s election systems aren’t connected to the internet and there’s no evidence they were not secure. Counting ballots by hand was costly, not reliable, and would take a long time after the election to complete. “It’s so prone to error,” she said. “It just is a nightmare as far as I’m concerned.”

Full Article: Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every level | US news | The Guardian

National: Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft | Stuart A. Thompson/The New York Times

The top executive of an elections technology company that has been the focus of attention among election deniers was arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the possible theft of personal information about poll workers, the county said on Tuesday. Eugene Yu, the founder and chief executive of Konnech, the technology company, was taken into custody on suspicion of theft, the Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascón, said in a statement. Konnech, which is based in Michigan, develops software to manage election logistics, like scheduling poll workers. Los Angeles County is among its customers. The company has been accused by groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election with storing information about poll workers on servers in China. The company has repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in recent statements to The New York Times. Mr. Gascón’s office said its investigators had found data stored in China. Holding the data there would violate Konnech’s contract with the county.

Full Article: Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft – The New York Times

Arizona county mulls ballot hand-count, but lawyer says no | Bob Christie/Associated Press

Officials in a southeastern Arizona county were prepared to move ahead with a plan to hand count all ballots in November’s election alongside the normal machine count on Tuesday, but at the last minute the county attorney told the board they had no legal authority to do so. The advice from Chief Deputy Cochise County Attorney Christine Roberts seemed to stun two members of the county board who are pushing the hand-count, egged on by voters who believe in false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. They had brought the proposal to the three-member board just a day before early voting starts and ballots are mailed to residents across the state for the Nov. 8 election. “In this case, I don’t get where we would be breaking the law if we chose to train a group of volunteers and put them the driver’s seat for a minute hand-counting,” Republican Supervisor Peggy Judd said. “I don’t know that this is something that we can’t look into. I feel very strongly that we can.” Judd said she was acting to try to assuage voters who believe there are problems with voting systems in the state, although she praised Cochise County’s elections department and county recorder, who together oversee elections. Republican Supervisor Tom Crosby also proposed the hand-count, while board Chair Ann English, a Democrat, did not take a public position.

Full Article: Arizona county mulls ballot hand-count, but lawyer says no | AP News

National: Hand-counting ballots may sound nice. It’s actually less accurate and more expensive | Miles Parks/NPR

It’s a common refrain from election deniers and the Republicans who support them this election cycle: Get rid of the machines. According to many conspiracy theorists, the 2020 election was stolen by an algorithm, therefore if you take computers out of the voting process you can further secure your election. At a county commission meeting in Nevada’s Nye County this past March, for instance, Jim Marchant, an election denier who is the GOP nominee to be that state’s secretary of state, implored local officials to ditch their vote-counting equipment. “It is imperative that you secure the trust of your constituents in Nye County by ensuring that you have a fair and transparent election and the only way to do that is to not use electronic voting or tabulation machines,” he said. It’s a false sentiment that has festered in far-right corners across the country, shepherded by election denial influencers like MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and his acolytes. In some cases, officials are listening. Nye County is planning to hand-count ballots, alongside machine tabulation, in this November’s midterm elections, and another county in Nevada, Esmeralda, spent more than seven hours hand-counting just 317 ballots as part of its certification of this summer’s primary election.

Full Article: Voting explainer: Why experts oppose hand-counting ballots : NPR

National: Hundreds of elections deniers running for office nationwide in 2022 pose ‘major threat’ to U.S. democracy | Phillip M. Bailey/USA Today

Republican Mark Finchem maintains that the 2020 presidential election wasn’t on the up-and-up in Arizona. During the 30-minute secretary of state debate against Democratic rival Adrian Fontes on Sept. 22, he continued to argue – without providing evidence – that some votes were “outside of the law.” But when asked by moderators if the state’s 2022 midterm primaries in August were also fair, the GOP nominee to be Arizona’s chief election officer was caught flat footed. “What changed? The candidates,” Finchem said. “I have no idea. We’ve not really dug into what happened with our processing of ballots. The machines were the same.” Yet Finchem isn’t the only candidate on the ballot this November who has peddled false claims about 2020 that election experts and pro-democracy groups warn could undermine the next presidential contest – and subvert American democracy.

Full Article: Hundreds of candidates who denied 2020 results running for office

National: Election officials brace for confrontational poll watchers | Hannah Schoenbaum and Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

The situation with the poll watcher had gotten so bad that Anne Risku, the election director in North Carolina’s Wayne County, had to intervene via speakerphone. “You need to back off!” Risku recalled hollering after the woman wedged herself between a voter and the machine where the voter was trying to cast his ballot at a precinct about 60 miles southeast of Raleigh. The man eventually was able to vote, but the incident was one of several Risku cited from the May primary that made her worry about a wave of newly aggressive poll watchers. Many have spent the past two years steeped in lies about the accuracy of the 2020 election. Those fears led the North Carolina State Board of Elections in August to tighten rules governing poll watchers. But the state’s rules review board, appointed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, blocked the new poll watcher regulations in late September, leaving election officials such as Risku without additional tools to control behavior on Election Day, Nov. 8. “It becomes complete babysitting,” Risku said in an interview. “The back and forth for the precinct officials, having somebody constantly on you for every little thing that you do — not because you’re doing it wrong, but because they don’t agree with what you’re doing.”

Full Article: Election officials brace for confrontational poll watchers | AP News

National: Election officials confront a new problem: Whether they can trust their own poll workers | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Election officials are growing concerned about a new danger in November: that groups looking to undermine election results will try to install their supporters as poll workers. The frontline election workers do everything from checking people in at voting locations to helping process mail ballots — in other words, they are the face of American elections for most voters. And now, some prominent incidents involving poll workers have worried election officials that a bigger wave of trouble could be on the horizon. Michigan, in particular, has been a hotspot: a far-right candidate for governor, who lost the GOP primary, encouraged poll workers to unplug election equipment if they believed something was wrong. A Michigan county GOP organization encouraged poll workers to ignore rules barring cell phones in polling places and vote-counting centers. And just last week, the clerk of Kent County, Mich., announced that a witness allegedly saw a poll worker inserting a USB drive into an electronic poll book — the list of registered voters that shows who has cast ballots — during the August primary, leading to a pair of felony charges. The Kent County Clerk’s office declined to comment beyond a statement issued by Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons last week, stressing that the “incident had no impact on the election,” and that that specific poll book would no longer be used in future elections.

Full Article: Election officials confront a new problem: Whether they can trust their own poll workers – POLITICO

National: US faces election worker shortage ahead of midterms due to rise in threats | Ines Kagubare/The Hill

Officials warn the U.S. is facing a shortage of election workers ahead of the November midterms due to a rise in threats against those performing such jobs that experts link to false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In an interview last month, Kim Wyman, senior election security lead at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said because of those threats 1 in 3 elections officials and poll workers have quit their positions over fears for their safety, and state officials are having a hard time hiring for such positions. Experts attribute this problem to inflammatory rhetoric stemming from unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and elections officials were complicit. “Our elections have become very contentious,” said Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. Jaffer said the country is witnessing a situation where conflict between political parties is now affecting the work of election workers, many of whom are retirees volunteering their time to count votes. “Instead of respecting that civic duty, now people are taking out their frustrations and anger in politics on these election workers,” Jaffer said. “And that’s a real problem.”

Full Article: US faces election worker shortage ahead of midterms due to rise in threats | The Hill

National: Who’s Bankrolling Election Deniers? | Amisa Ratliff, Janice Zhong, Michael Beckel and Neha Upadhyaya/Issue One

As a record amount of money flows into races for states’ top election officials across the country, a new Issue One analysis shows that election-denying secretary of state candidates have collectively raised more than $12 million for their campaigns this election cycle — including more than $5.8 million raised by election deniers who prevailed in their primaries and will be on the ballot this November. Election-denying candidates — who have promoted disinformation about the 2020 election — have emerged as the Republican Party’s nominees in roughly half of the 27 secretary of state races on the ballot this November. If individuals who deny the outcome of the 2020 presidential election are successful in their bids for election administration positions, they could overturn the will of the voters in future elections. Democrats and Republicans who do not deny the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election have also raised tens of millions of dollars for secretary of state contests across the country. Yet Issue One’s research shows that election-denying secretary of state candidates who secured the GOP nomination this year have so far significantly outraised their Democratic opponents in two states where secretary of state contests are considered competitive by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics (Arizona and Indiana) and in two Republican-leaning states (Alabama and South Dakota). And in Wyoming, there is no Democratic general election opponent, meaning the election denier nominated by the Republican Party in August after a competitive three-way primary is on a glide path to becoming the next secretary of state there.

Full Article: Who’s Bankrolling Election Deniers? – Issue One

Alaska: Mat-Su assembly bans voting machines for borough elections starting next year | Sean Maguire/Anchorage Daily News

In what is apparently a first for Alaska, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly passed an ordinance this week that will prohibit the use of voting tabulation machines for borough elections, starting next year. The new Mat-Su ordinance, approved Tuesday night, caps off a months-long effort from a group of residents determined to ban the use of voting machines spurred on by false claims of election fraud. Last month, the Assembly unanimously voted to use a hand-count to verify the results of the Nov. 8 borough election, but voting machines will still be used. Borough officials determined that it would be a “great risk” to stop using machines and mandate hand-counting for this year’s borough election because there would be inadequate time “to properly prepare for a change of this magnitude,” according to a memo filed with the legislation. Instead, those changes are set to be in place for next November’s municipal election. The new ordinance will require hand counting of ballots on election night at each of the borough’s 41 precincts, with election workers calling results in, instead of counting taking place at the borough office in Palmer. Some assembly members raised concerns that transporting ballots before they are counted could increase the risk of vote tampering and fraud. No other boroughs appear to have taken similar steps, according to the Alaska Municipal League and the Mat-Su borough clerk.

Full Article: Mat-Su assembly bans voting machines for borough elections starting next year

Arizona: DOJ: Man threatened to kill election officials | Jose R. Gonzalez/Arizona Republic

An Iowa man arrested Thursday is accused of threatening to kill Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman and an official at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Mark A. Rissi, 64, of Hiawatha, Iowa, was charged with two counts of making a threatening interstate communication and one count of making a threatening telephone call, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Rissi was taken into custody in his city of residence and on Tuesday had an initial court appearance at a Cedar Rapids, Iowa federal courthouse, according to the DOJ. Rissi is suspected of leaving an expletive-filled voicemail on Sept. 27, 2021, for a Maricopa County Board supervisor and telling the official he and others were going to “lynch” him for “lying” about the 2020 election results, according to a department press release. On Tuesday, Hickman’s office confirmed he was the county board supervisor Rissi was said to have threatened. A statement from Hickman said he has been threatened “numerous times” in the past two years, along with some of his other colleagues on the board.

Full Article: DOJ: Man threatened to kill election officials in Arizona

Colorado: Man gets prison for threatening election official | Margery A. Beck/Associated Press

A Nebraska man was sentenced Thursday to 18 months in prison for making online threats against Colorado’s top elections official, one of the first cases brought by a federal task force devoted to protecting elections workers nationwide from rising threats. The sentence came the same day an Iowa man was arrested for allegedly leaving voicemail threats for an Arizona official and the Arizona’s Attorney General’s Office. In Nebraska, Travis Ford was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, where he lives. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to sending threats to Secretary of State Jena Griswold on social media. It was the first guilty plea obtained by the U.S. Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, launched last year after the 2020 presidential contest amid concerns about the potential effect on democracy of threats against election officials and workers. A national advocate for elections security, Griswold has received thousands of threats over her insistence the 2020 election was secure despite false claims by former President Donald Trump it was stolen. Ford must report to a federal prison Jan. 11 and later complete a year of post-prison supervision.

Full Article: Man gets prison for threatening Colorado election official | AP News

Georgia to replace voting machines in Coffee County after alleged security breach | Amy Gardner, Emma Brown and Jon Swaine/The Washington Post

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Friday that he intends to replace some election equipment in a south Georgia county where forensics experts working last year for pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell copied virtually every component of the voting system. Raffensperger (R) said his office will replace machines in Coffee County “to allay the fears being stoked by perennial election deniers and conspiracy theorists.” He added that anyone who broke the law in connection with unauthorized access to Coffee County’s machines should be punished, “but the current election officials in Coffee County have to move forward with the 2022 election, and they should be able to do so without this distraction.” Some election-security experts have voiced concerns that the copying of the Coffee County software — used statewide in Georgia — risks exposing the entire state to hackers, who could use the copied software as a road map to find and exploit vulnerabilities. Raffensperger’s office has said that security protocols would make it virtually impossible for votes to be manipulated without detection. The move comes after Raffensperger’s office spent months voicing skepticism that such a security breach ever occurred in Coffee County. “There’s no evidence of any of that. It didn’t happen,” Gabe Sterling, Raffensperger’s chief operations officer, said at a public event in April.

Full Article: Georgia to replace voting machines in Coffee County after alleged security breach – The Washington Post

Michigan: Republican clerk could be charged in voting-system breach | Nathan Layne/Reuters

A Michigan township official who promotes false conspiracy theories of a rigged 2020 election could face criminal charges related to two voting-system security breaches, according to previously unreported records and legal experts. A state police detective recommended that the Michigan attorney general consider unspecified charges amid a months-long probe into one breach related to the Republican clerk’s handling of a vote tabulator, according to a June email from the detective to state and local officials. Reuters obtained the email through a public-records request. The clerk, Stephanie Scott, oversaw voting in rural Adams Township until the state last year revoked her authority over elections. Scott has publicly embraced baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged against former U.S. President Donald Trump and has posted online about the QAnon conspiracy theory. In a second breach of the township’s voting system, the clerk gave a file containing confidential voter data to an information-technology expert who is a suspect in other alleged Michigan election-security violations. The expert, Benjamin Cotton, worked with voter-fraud conspiracists seeking unauthorized access to election systems in other states, according to court records reviewed by Reuters. The incident has not been previously reported.

Full Article: Republican clerk could be charged in Michigan voting-system breach | Reuters

Nevada county’s plans to hand-count early ballots challenged | Gabe Stern/Associated Press

A rural county in Nevada where conspiracy theories about voting machines run deep is planning to start hand-counting its mail-in ballots two weeks before Election Day, a process that risks public release of early voting results. Several voting and civil rights groups said Monday they objected to the proposal and will consider legal action if Nye County pushes ahead with its plan. Nevada is one of 10 states that allow local election offices to begin tabulating ballots before Election Day, but the machines that typically do that are programmed not to release results. Nye County officials are planning a full hand-count in addition to a primary machine tabulation for the November election. The move was prompted by unfounded claims of fraud involving voting machines in the 2020 presidential election. Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf said hand-count teams will start tallying mail-in ballots on Oct. 26, just under two weeks ahead of Election Day. Hand-count tallies are done publicly for transparency, with observers in the room. That raises the possibility that someone keeping score could make early results from the count public before most voters have even cast their ballot, voting experts said.

Full Article: Nevada county’s plans to hand-count early ballots challenged | AP News

Pennsylvania: Unresolved areas in mail voting law likely to spur fresh confusion, legal challenges | Stephen Caruso and Katie Meyer/WITF

As millions of Pennsylvanians once again go to the polls this November, some key questions on mail ballots remain unsettled, opening the door for more legal action and public confusion after the upcoming gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races. In a recent live event with Spotlight PA, Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman stressed that these issues will not affect the accuracy of the vote. But rules on key voting mechanics such as drop boxes or a chance for voters to fix a ballot error could vary by county. As such, people who plan to vote by mail should brush up on local rules to ensure there aren’t any issues with their ballots, Chapman said. “I really want people to make a plan to vote,” she said. “Think about it. Do you want to vote by mail?” Elections in Pennsylvania have become highly political, and the state election law has some gray areas. The patchwork of mail voting rules largely stems from 2019, when the legislature and governor passed a bipartisan overhaul of the commonwealth’s election law and allowed no-excuse mail voting for the first time.

Full Article: Unresolved areas in Pennsylvania mail voting law likely to spur fresh confusion, legal challenges | WITF

Rhode Island: ExpressVote ballots to be reviewed by Board of Elections, Secretary of State’s office | Amy Russo/The Providence Journal

The state’s Board of Elections has adopted new protocols for checking ExpressVote machines ahead of the general election on Nov. 8. In a plan released on Wednesday, the board said 522 machines and 592 DS200 tabulators will be tested in preparation for early voting on Oct. 19 and the general election. According to the document, tests involve a “checklist to check hardware and software functionality.” That includes seeing whether the machines power on properly, verifying precinct numbers and addresses, and ensuring ballots can be marked accurately, among a host of other checks. The board said Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea’s office already started proofing English and Spanish ballots on Saturday, the latter of which showed errors during the primary elections. At the time, some of those ballots featured the incorrect list of candidates. Mayor Jorge Elorza appeared to place blame both on Gorbea’s office and the board, calling for the ExpressVote machines to be removed during the primary. However, as the request was made last-minute and there was no viable alternative for those ADA-compliant machines, that was not possible.

Full Article: ExpressVote ballots to be reviewed by BOE, Secretary of State’s office

Texas: Conspiracy theorists and 16-hour days: Inside the stress elections officials face ahead of the midterms | Pooja Salhotra/The Texas Tribune

Since Todd Stallings began working in Nacogdoches County’s elections office in 2003, his responsibilities have grown exponentially. So has his stress. First came a shift toward digital voting records, along with new state legislation that created more duties for elections officials. Then, accusations of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential race stoked the public’s fear about election integrity. And conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election have led to heightened scrutiny. Although election deniers at one point concentrated their efforts in states like Arizona and Georgia, supporters of former President Donald Trump have since sent a barrage of public information requests to elections offices nationwide, including those in the smallest and reddest Texas counties, where Trump won handsomely. So on top of fulfilling their normal job duties, such as preparing ballots and updating polling information, officials are fielding questions from concerned voters. The increased demands have left some workers burned out. According to the secretary of state’s office, 30% of Texas elections workers have left their jobs since 2020. In one county, the entire elections administrator’s office resigned. “There’s just more and more to do,” Stallings said. “Which is fine, but it’s when there’s stuff we aren’t prepared for — that’s what kind of turns everyone into a panic.”

Full Article: Texas elections administrators face growing scrutiny from public | The Texas Tribune

Texas elections-monitoring group forced to name source of hacked poll worker data | Cameron Langford/Courthouse News Service

Counsel for a Texas voter fraud conspiracy group, in open court Thursday, reluctantly provided the name of a man who set off an FBI investigation into a software company’s compromised U.S. poll worker data. Eugene Yu, CEO and founder of Konnech Inc., a Michigan election logistics software purveyor, was supposed to be at a hearing Thursday in Houston federal court for his company’s lawsuit against True the Vote, a Texas nonprofit that backs Donald Trump’s claims voter fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election. But Yu was in Michigan working out a bail agreement following his arrest Tuesday “on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information” by investigators with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, with help from local police. According to District Attorney George Gascón, Konnech has a contract with LA County that mandates it keep election worker information on secure servers in the United States, and a probe by his office found probable cause to believe Konnech was storing the data on servers in China. Yu’s bail deal stipulates he must report to LA County by Oct. 14 to face charges. Konnech’s software helps local governments manage poll workers and coordinate allocation of equipment, it has nothing to do with registering voters or counting ballots, the company says.

Full Article: Texas elections-monitoring group forced to name source of hacked poll worker data | Courthouse News Service