Arizona: Election in Cochise County is certified after judge’s order | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

Under a court order, officials in Republican-controlled Cochise County, Ariz., finally certified their local midterm elections results after they missed the state’s legal deadline and put more than 47,000 people’s votes at risk. Ruling from the bench at a court hearing on Thursday, Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey McGinley ordered the county’s board of supervisors to meet and make the results official by 5 p.m. MT Thursday. Two members of the board — Ann English, a Democrat, and Peggy Judd, a Republican — then voted to certify, while the board’s third member — Tom Crosby, a Republican — did not attend the court-ordered meeting. The court order came three days after the board’s two Republicans voted Monday not to certify the results — despite finding no legitimate problems with the counts — turning a usually uneventful step in the election process into a closely watched controversy. The move prompted multiple lawsuits, including one by the state’s secretary of state, who has been waiting for the county’s results to proceed with the statewide certification that is legally required to take place next week.

Full Article: Election in Arizona’s Cochise County is certified after judge’s order : NPR

Colorado election worker pleads guilty in election equipment tampering case | CBS

A former elections manager who prosecutors say assisted in a security breach of voting equipment in a Colorado county pleaded guilty on Wednesday under a plea agreement that requires her to testify against her former boss. Sandra Brown is one of two employees accused of helping Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters allow a copy of a hard drive to be made during an update of election equipment last year in search of proof of the false conspiracy theories spun by former President Donald Trump. Brown, 45, pleaded guilty to attempting to influence a public servant, a felony, and official misconduct, a misdemeanor, but will not be sentenced until right after she testifies at Peters’ trial next year so her performance on the witness stand can be considered. “There were things going on that I should have questioned and I didn’t,” Brown told Judge Matthew Barrett.

Full Article: Worker pleads guilty in Colorado election equipment tampering case – CBS News

Georgia election audit shows similar results as machine ballot count | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An election audit completed Friday showed similar results between a hand count and machine tally of ballots in the secretary of state’s race, a result that Georgia election officials said confirmed the outcome. The audit examined a randomized sample of 231,000 ballots cast in the secretary of state’s race and found few discrepancies in Republican Brad Raffensperger’s reelection over Democrat Bee Nguyen. Across the state, the audit counted 21 more votes for Raffensperger and 18 fewer for Nguyen. “This audit shows that our system works and that our county election officials conducted a secure, accurate election,” Raffensperger said. Georgia law requires an audit of one race after each general election, and Raffensperger decided to check his own win, which had the largest margin of victory in any statewide race, at 9.3 percentage points.

Full Article: Georgia election audit shows similar results as machine ballot count

Michigan Board of State Canvassers approves 2022 election results | Clara Hendrickson/Detroit Free Press

During a chaotic meeting that lasted over four hours, the state’s bipartisan elections panel rebuffed calls Monday from losing candidates not to officially certify the recent midterm election in Michigan, and the panel unanimously accepted the results. The vote by the Board of State Canvassers − made up of two Democrats and two Republicans − marks the first certification of a general election since the otherwise routine process garnered national attention two years ago, when allies of former President Donald Trump pressured GOP members not to certify the results and raised the prospect the panel might deadlock along partisan lines. But the board that year certified the election in a 3-0 vote with one GOP canvasser abstaining. During a lengthy public comment period that followed the certification vote of the recent Nov. 8 midterm, some echoed those calls from 2020 not to certify the results, accused state canvassers of committing treason, pleaded for a so-called forensic audit and said that they would pray for members of the board. “I will take prayers from anywhere,” said Republican canvasser and board chair Tony Daunt, in response to one commenter. Daunt kicked off the meeting by asking those attending to conduct themselves appropriately, but at times, attendees interrupted the proceedings with loud jeers directed at the canvassers.

Full Article: Michigan Board of State Canvassers approves 2022 election results

New Jersey: Why the voting machines failed in Mercer County | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

On Election Day, November 8, 2022, every voting machine in every polling place in Mercer County, New Jersey failed to work.  Voters in each precinct filled in the ovals in their preprinted optical-scan paper ballots, but the voting machines couldn’t read them.  So voters were instructed to put their ballots into “slot 3” of the voting machines, that is, directly into the ballot box.  The Mercer County Board of Elections collected the ballots at the close of the polls on election night, using their usual chain-of-custody procedures.  Then they counted those ballots using the county’s central-count optical-scan voting machines, which are normally used for mail-in ballots.  This took two or three days.  All the votes got counted – but it’s still an embarrassing screw-up that deserves scrutiny. Between 2002 and 2018, Mercer County used paperless full-face touchscreen voting machines.  That was an untrustworthy technology–if the computer miscounted the votes because of hacking or malfunction, there were no paper ballots that could be recounted, and we’d never know.  So I was glad to see those machines go, and glad to see them replaced by hand-marked optical-scan paper ballots, counted by precinct-count optical scanners.  This is the most securable technology I know of.  And that method of vote-counting is robust, meaning even if the voting machines fail to operate, voters can deposit their ballots in a ballot box for counting later.  That’s how all the votes got counted in the November 22 election. Still, we don’t expect every voting machine in the whole county to fail at once!  So what happened exactly?

Full Article: Why the voting machines failed in Mercer County

New York: Oops. Green ink. Stray marks. Inside the largest hand recount in Onondaga County history / Chris Carlson/syracuse.com

The largest hand recount in the history of Onondaga County elections began on Tuesday in an atmosphere resembling a standardized test. Officials, volunteers and lawyers began the painstaking process of counting more than 93,000 ballots by hand in a non-descript room in the Onondaga County Board of Elections. Over the next week, they will spend nearly eight hours a day counting the votes that will eventually determine whether Democrat John Mannion or Republican Rebecca Shiroff becomes the senator representing New York’s 50th District. With Mannion, the incumbent, leading by just 51 votes, the race is so close that it triggered a state law requiring a hand count of each ballot. The scene that played out in Onondaga County Tuesday is expected to be repeated each work day until the results are known sometime next week.

Full Article: Oops. Green ink. Stray marks. Inside the largest hand recount in Onondaga County history – syracuse.com

North Carolina dispute over congressional districts tees up major elections case at Supreme Court | Lawrence Hurley/NBC

When the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the Republican-drawn congressional district maps in February, Rep. Tim Moore, the Republican speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, reached for some potent ammunition. In appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, he and his allies embraced a hitherto obscure legal argument called the “independent state legislature” theory, which critics say could upend election law if the justices embrace it in a case being argued Wednesday. Moore said in an interview that he backed the theory because it is the only way to challenge a state court ruling that he believes was not based on law or precedent. “This ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court was one more ruling that many of us believed just went beyond the pale of anything we had seen a state court do and really was just a political ruling,” he said, citing other rulings with which he had disagreed. The case, which could have a broad impact on an array of election issues, is being closely watched for its potential impact on the 2024 presidential election.

Full Article: Dispute over North Carolina congressional districts tees up major elections case at Supreme Court

What New Hampshire Can Tell Us About Restoring Faith in Elections | Farah Stockman/The New York Times

Brad Winslow is a genial 67-year-old who hugs people he just met. But when it comes to elections, his trust evaporates. A self-described computer geek who has spent much of his career programming machines, Mr. Winslow has long suspected that vote-counting tabulators could be rigged to advantage one politician over another. “I have zero faith in the voting process,” he told me. Mr. Winslow has felt this way for decades, long before the Big Lie. But an error in the vote count in the 2020 election in Windham, the town where he lived, deepened his doubt. He joined a citizens group that searches for evidence of fraud and says he purchased an AccuVote vote-counting machine on eBay — the same ancient model that New Hampshire still uses — to see if he could prove his suspicions. It’s tempting to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. Plenty of people do. One voting rights activist in New Hampshire warned me: “Those people can’t be placated.” But the line between a fanatic and a dogged citizen investigator can be difficult to parse. Mr. Winslow has spent countless hours researching the mechanics of elections. Wasn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t democracy depend on citizens who ask questions and demand answers? I decided to listen to him, to see if there was anything that could restore his faith — or shake my own. Eventually, I came to see that rather than dismissing skeptical voters like him, we might better see how they force us to stay vigilant about our elections. Long before Donald Trump hijacked the rhetoric of election security, experts warned that America’s decentralized elections are at risk from human error, software bugs and hackers.

Full Article: Opinion | What New Hampshire Can Tell Us About Restoring Faith in Elections – The New York Times

Pennsylvania judge backs penalties against county in voting machine case | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania judge has recommended the state’s high court impose civil contempt penalties against a Republican-majority county government that this summer secretly allowed a third party to copy data from voting machines used in the 2020 election lost by former President Donald Trump. Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer’s 77-page report issued late Friday said the July inspection and copying of computer data from machines rented by Fulton County was a willful violation of a court order designed to prevent evidence from being spoiled. She recommended that the justices find that the county, based on the actions of Republican Commissioners Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch, “engaged in vexatious, obdurate, and bad faith conduct” in their lawsuit against the Department of State over whether a 2021 inspection by another outside group meant the machines could no longer be used. Cohn Jubelirer, an elected Republican, recommended that the county be ordered to pay some of the state’s legal fees and that the Dominion Voting Systems Inc. machines in question be turned over to a third party for safekeeping at the county’s expense.

Full Article: Judge backs penalties against county in voting machine case | AP News

Rhode Island: Will security concerns slow down speedy vote count? | Patrick Anderson/The Providence Journal

A mere hour after polls closed on Election Day, while many states were kicking off days of ballot counting, Rhode Islanders watching closely knew who would win all of the key statewide and federal races, including the ultra-competitive 2nd Congressional District battle. News organizations were able to call races (and meet deadlines) at hours that a few years ago would have been considered unthinkably early and get a head start formulating their post-vote takeaways. It hasn’t always been so fast. Rhode Island’s rapid election reporting is partly a consequence of its ultra-compact geography and the centralization of its elections bureaucracy compared to larger states where counties play a big role. And it’s partly because of decisions Rhode Island officials made a few years ago that turned it into the only state in the country where 100% of voting machines transmit results wirelessly.

Full Article: Will security concerns slow down Rhode Island’s speedy vote count?

Wisconsin’s midterm election results are certified with no fanfare after 2 years of histrionics over the 2020 vote | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin election officials for two years have taken fire from former President Donald Trump and supporters who believe Trump’s false claim that the Badger State should reverse the 2020 presidential election and question whether the state’s elections commission should keep its role in certifying vote tallies. But on Wednesday, in just about one minute and with no fanfare, the Wisconsin Elections Commission chairman certified the results of the first major election since the firestorm began. Chairman Don Millis’ certification of the reelections of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and the other election outcomes from the Nov. 8 midterm election marked at least a ceasefire in the two-year battle over how elections should be run and who should oversee them. Wisconsin’s quiet and orderly election certification creates a notable contrast with the state’s battleground counterparts in the Southwest and East, where some county officials in Arizona and Pennsylvania are refusing to certify election results after Democrats prevailed in races for governor and U.S. Senate. The smooth election outcome in Wisconsin also comes under increased scrutiny from a number of new poll observers recruited by political parties amid the false claims pushed by Trump over the security of the state’s elections.

Full Article: Wisconsin’s midterm election results are certified with no fanfare

Wyoming Attorney General Says Park County Cannot Count Ballots By Hand | Leo Wolfson/Cowboy State Daily

An effort to trigger a hand count audit of 2020 election ballots in Park County has been, for the most part, exhausted and rejected. The Wyoming Attorney General’s office has determined that Park County doesn’t have a right to allow a group of citizens to inspect and count ballots by hand. Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric had submitted to the Attorney General’s office three questions related to the matter. … With those questions answered, the Park County commissioners have indicated they’re shutting the door on any future consideration to hand count ballots. In two of the three questions, the AG’s office cited state law that covers the way ballots are counted in Wyoming. The law states that ballots designed to be counted by machine must be counted by said voting equipment and not determined subjectively by human tabulation, except in the case of damaged ballots. The secretary of state can set rules for the counting of ballots.

Full Article: Wyoming Attorney General Says Park County Cannot Count Ballots By Hand | Cowboy State Daily

‘We are clerks; we make it work’: The increasingly stressful duties of local election officials | Grace Bannasch/New Hampshire Public Radio

During the first week of mail-in voting, my office received nine misdirected ballots from Northampton voters for every one we received from Shutesbury. Either I drove 45 minutes across the Connecticut River to deliver these wandering ballots the day they arrived, or someone from the Northampton city clerk’s office made the same journey in the opposite direction. No matter what, these ballots got where they needed to be, so they could be counted. As my colleagues like to say, “We are clerks; we make it work.” But I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t exhausted, burned out and beaten down. I was appointed assistant town clerk in my hometown in 2019, and elected to the office of town clerk in 2020. In my short three years of clerkdom, I’ve witnessed — and had to adapt to — a fundamental transformation in how Massachusetts elections operate. Everything from voter registration to vote-by-mail has been changed by the pandemic.

Full Article: ‘We are clerks; we make it work’: The increasingly stressful duties of local election officials | New Hampshire Public Radio

Georgia election audit begins with dice roll to review random ballots | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With the roll of 20 colorful dice in the Georgia Capitol, election officials launched an audit of a random sample of ballots Wednesday that will be reviewed by hand across the state this week. The audit will check whether machine counts of ballots match hand tallies, showing whether the outcome was accurate. Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office, said he hopes the ballot review will prove to voters that they can trust the results of elections. “This audit is an important part of keeping that faith alive,” Sterling said. “Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, we want people to understand the state of Georgia is one of the best states, if not the best state, for fair and accessible elections.” State law requires an audit of one race every two years, and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger decided to check his own win over Democrat Bee Nguyen. It was the largest margin of victory in any statewide race, at 9.3 percentage points.

Full Article: Election audit in Georgia launches a manual review of paper ballots

National: Election deniers face especially stiff rebuke in Great Lakes states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania | Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

Voters rejected election deniers across the country last week. But they did so with particular verve along the Great Lakes. In Minnesota, the Democratic secretary of state defeated by a 10-point margin a Republican challenger who baselessly called the 2020 election rigged and pushed for restricting early voting. In Wisconsin, voters handed Gov. Tony Evers (D) a second term, declining to reward a candidate backed by former president Donald Trump who left open the possibility of trying to reverse the last presidential election. In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) crushed Republican Doug Mastriano, who had highlighted his willingness to decertify voting machines if he won the governorship. But perhaps the biggest statement on democracy came in Michigan, where voters by large margins rebuffed a slate of Republican election deniers running for governor, attorney general and secretary of state. They also embraced an amendment to the state constitution that expands voting rights and makes it much more difficult for officials to subvert the will of voters. In the process, they flipped the legislature with the help of new legislative maps drawn by a nonpartisan commission, giving Democrats complete control of state government for the first time in 40 years.

Full Article: Election deniers face especially stiff rebuke in Great Lakes states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – The Washington Post

National: Fact Check – WiFi access inside a polling place is not proof of election fraud | Reuters

Access to WiFi inside a polling place is not automatic proof of voter fraud, despite claims made online, experts told Reuters. Text circulated online ahead of the U.S. midterm elections urging voters to monitor the WiFi access outside a polling station and when inside, checking again to ensure no additional WiFi network was detectable. The post led to claims that a new WiFi network suddenly appearing from inside a polling station can lead to voter fraud. “If you find any new wifi networks that do not belong, please email your County and State Board of Elections with the name of that wifi network. Ask them to investigate,” a section of the text reads. One individual who shared the claim on Twitter said: “PROVE VOTER FRAUD WIFI !!” (here). Examples of the claim online can be found (here), (here) and (here). But the presence of a WiFi network inside a polling place is not automatic proof of nefarious activity, experts in election security told Reuters. “Network availability isn’t generally a cause for concern or proof that machines are connected to the internet,” David Levine, an elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy – German Marshall Fund, told Reuters. “WiFi networks are everywhere,” Juan E. Gilbert, chair of the Computer & Information Science & Engineering department at the University of Florida, told Reuters. “In fact, people can carry WiFi networks with them via their phones or jetpacks, etc. As such, the presence of a WiFi network in a voting area is not an immediate concern. It is not proof that machines are connected to the internet,” Gilbert added.

Full Article: Fact Check-WiFi access inside a polling place is not proof of election fraud | Reuters

National: Lawmakers advance bill to make mail voting more transparent | Camdyn Bruce/The Hill

The House Oversight and Reform Committee advanced a measure on Thursday to make it easier to track mail-in ballots for federal elections. The Vote by Mail Tracking Act requires that all mailed ballots include a U.S. Postal Service barcode that enables tracking of each individual ballot, as well as meeting other requirements for envelope design and bear an official election mail logo. Mailed ballots have been thrust into the political spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic, with millions of Americans choosing to vote from home. The 2020 general election saw record numbers of mail votes cast, and voting by mail remained popular in this year’s midterms. According to NBC, over 47 million people voted early in the 2022 midterms with 55 percent of them choosing to cast their ballot by mail.

Full Article: Lawmakers advance bill to make mail voting more transparent | The Hill

National: Former CISA director praises government’s role in election security | Ines Kagubare/The Hill

Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said the government and elections officials did a “good job” at securing the midterm elections and communicating with voters on what is accurate information. Krebs, who spoke on Wednesday at an annual cyber summit in New York hosted by the Aspen Institute, said the key is to effectively convey accurate information and debunk misinformation and disinformation narratives ahead of elections.  “You can do all this stuff in the background, but you have to continue to communicate, communicate, communicate on what is happening and what [voters] should be thinking about as information is teed up,” Krebs said.  “The key here is that the prebunking is dependent on identifying the potential areas that could be exploited,” he added. In 2020, CISA created a page on its website called the Rumor Control which debunks common misinformation and disinformation narratives. Testifying before a House panel in April, CISA Director Jen Easterly told lawmakers that the website provides accurate information regarding the election, including facts about absentee ballots, so that voters “have the information they need to maintain confidence in the integrity of elections.”

Full Article: Former CISA director praises government’s role in election security | The Hill

National: Lengthy vote counts frustrate, but don’t signal problems | Christina A. Cassidy and Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Four days after Election Day, with a bitter, high-profile race for Arizona governor still up in the air, Ohio’s secretary of state broke an unspoken protocol among top election officials. “Dear Arizona, need some advice on how to run an election the right way?” Frank LaRose, a Republican, chided his counterparts on Twitter. “Your process is obviously not working.” Though not as fast as most would like, the process actually was working as designed and as it has for years in a state where the vast majority of voters cast mailed ballots. What’s different is that many of the races were so close that winners couldn’t be quickly determined, a frustration that has become more common as Arizona has evolved into one of the nation’s most hotly contested political battlegrounds. The governor’s race eventually was called for the Democrat, Katie Hobbs, four days after LaRose sent his social media blast — with about 17,000 votes separating the candidates out of more than 2.5 million cast. Arizona isn’t the only state where votes were still being counted a week later. Even in Ohio, where the margins for Republican candidates were wide enough for all top races to be called on election night, counties were still tallying late-arriving mailed, military and overseas ballots nearly a week after Election Day. One state legislative race had yet to be called.

Full Article: Lengthy vote counts frustrate, but don’t signal problems | AP News

Arizona county leaders end hand-count lawsuit, cite recount | Bob Christie/Associated Press

Two Republicans who control the board in a rural southeastern Arizona county on Wednesday told a judge they want to withdraw a lawsuit they had filed just two days prior that sought to force their own elections director to hand-count all the ballots cast in-person on Election Day. The court filing and one of the GOP supervisors in Cochise County said they did not want to interfere with the likely recount in the race for Arizona attorney general. Democrat Kris Mayes was leading Republican Abraham Hamadeh by well under the recount margin as of late Wednesday afternoon. The Legislature this year changed the state’s election recount law to greatly increase the threshold for mandatory recounts. It now requires a recount when the candidates are within .5% of each other. In the attorney general race, the trigger is about 12,500 votes. Supervisor Peggy Judd told The Associated Press that she agreed to withdraw the lawsuit against Elections Director Lisa Marra that she and Supervisor Tom Crosby filed on Monday because they did not want to disrupt the statewide recount. That will be triggered once the state accepts the election certifications from all 15 Arizona counties and the statewide vote-totals are accepted.

Full Article: Arizona county leaders end hand-count lawsuit, cite recount – The Washington Post

Arizona precincts with voting problems were not overwhelmingly Republican | Lenny Bronner , Isaac Stanley-Becker and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

The voting locations that experienced problems on Election Day in Maricopa County, home to more than half of Arizona’s voters, do not skew overwhelmingly Republican, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. The finding undercuts claims by some Republicans — most notably Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor, and former president Donald Trump — that GOP areas in the county were disproportionately affected by the problems, which involved a mishap with printers. Republicans nonetheless argue that their voters were more likely to be affected, given their tendency to vote on Election Day rather than mail in their ballots. The claims come as Lake continues to narrowly trail her rival, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, and as the number of ballots remaining to be counted dwindles. Hobbs was up by 26,011 votes following the release of a fresh batch of results Sunday evening, with just over 180,000 estimated to remain. The Hobbs campaign issued a statement after the latest figures were released that called her “the unequivocal favorite to become the next Governor of Arizona.” “Katie has led since the first round of ballots were counted, and after tonight’s results, it’s clear that this won’t change,” said the statement, which was attributed to campaign manager Nicole DeMont.

Full Article: Arizona: Maricopa County precincts with voting problems were not overwhelmingly Republican – The Washington Post

Colorado: Lauren Boebert-Adam Frisch race appears headed to a recount in Congressional District 3 | Megan Verlee and Caitlyn Kim/Colorado Public Radio

The congressional race in Colorado’s 3rd District appears set to go even further into overtime. Final vote counting on Thursday has shrunk Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s lead over Democratic challenger Adam Frisch to fewer than a thousand votes, pushing it under the threshold for an automatic recount. Colorado law mandates a recount if the margin of votes in a race equals less than half a percent of the votes received by the leading candidate. However, it will be a while before the state makes it official — the Secretary of State officially certifies the vote count on Dec. 5, and only at that point will she order any automatic recounts. But as of Thursday afternoon, that result was looking more and more likely. Clerks in the 27 counties that make up the 3rd District have spent the day tallying their final ballots, which came from a mix of sources — military and overseas voters, ballots that were originally uncountable but were fixed by voters, and some regular ballots held back to ensure the final counts are fully anonymous.

Full Article: Lauren Boebert-Adam Frisch race appears headed to a recount in Colorado District 3 | Colorado Public Radio

Georgia Democrats sue to allow Saturday voting in runoff amid holiday dispute | Matthew Brown/The Washington Post

Democrats are suing to force Georgia election officials to allow early voting on a Saturday ahead of the Dec. 6 U.S. Senate runoff election. The suit comes in response to a determination by state officials that law forbids voting right after Thanksgiving and a state holiday that once honored Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The state’s decision, announced over the weekend, prompted a lawsuit from the Democrat fighting for reelection, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock, as well as the Georgia Democratic Party and the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm. They argue in their suit that current guidance “applies only to primary and general elections, not runoffs.” Without action by the courts, the suit states, Georgia voters “will be deprived of their right to vote during the advance voting period permitted by Georgia law.” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) responded to the lawsuit Tuesday morning by accusing Democrats of “seeking to change Georgia law right before an election based on their political preferences” and “muddying the water and pressuring counties to ignore Georgia law.”

Full Article: Democrats sue over Georgia early voting amid dispute over Robert E. Lee holiday – The Washington Post

Nevada high court rejects plea to stop county’s hand-count | Gabe Stern/Associated Press

The Nevada Supreme Court denied an emergency writ from two voting rights groups on Monday that sought to shut down a controversial hand-count of all paper ballots in rural Nye County, meaning that the county clerk can continue the hand-counting of ballots that have been counted by machine tabulators. “Having reviewed the petition and answer, we conclude that petitioner has not demonstrated that our extraordinary intervention is warranted at this time,” the justices said in their decision. Officials in the county first started a hand-counting process on Oct. 26 but the Nevada Supreme Court ordered it shut down a day later, siding with the American Civil Liberties Union’s objections to volunteers reading election results aloud. Nye County resumed a revised version of its hand-counting last week after Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske ordered the county to halt its counting until after polls closed. While Nye County commission members have shown support for scrapping voting machines completely, machine tabulators are the primary counting method for this election, and Nye has already reported the results of nearly 21,000 ballots cast. Nye County, home to about 34,000 registered voters, is the most prominent county in the U.S. to change its vote-counting process in reaction to conspiracy theories about election fraud tied to voting machines, though there has been no credible evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of machines.

Full Article: Nevada high court rejects plea to stop county’s hand-count | AP News

Nevada: Nye County clerk tempers hand count expectations, calls it a ‘test’ | Brett Forrest/KSNV

One day after Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf finally began his controversial hand count plan, he appeared to step back from previous claims and said it amounted to a “test.” “In any system conversion, if you wanted to change, you wouldn’t just shut off the old system and turn on the new one,” said Kampf on Friday. “You would test both in parallel to see how they work. And that’s been our intention all along.” … “We took the volunteers we had and put them to work. Unfortunately, you get a lot of mistakes when you get people in our demographic,” he said. “In this town, 85% of the people are 56 years and older. Sometimes even I make mistakes, you know, my ripe age of 68. So we had to send back a lot of votes for ballots for recount. But again, that’s part of the quality control process is to make sure that we get the vote right.” Kampf said each volunteer works as long as they can, but he planned many would be working long hours and through the weekend. They take breaks and on Friday, Kampf had pizza delivered for lunch. After the first day, Kampf estimated there was a 25% error rate. He admitted it was “very, very high,” but remained optimistic it would improve after each day. As for the volunteers who couldn’t seem to keep up or grasp the process, Kampf said he would thank them for the support, but send them on their way.

Full Article: Nye County clerk tempers hand count expectations, calls it a ‘test’ | KSNV

New Jersey: All Election Day votes are counted in Mercer County after mishap, but questions remain | Katie Sobko/northjersey.com

All ballots cast in person on Election Day have been counted in Mercer County, officials said this week. But that doesn’t include more than 5,200 provisional, 700 emergency and an unknown number of mail-in ballots that still need to be reviewed to decide a handful of local races. “The Office of the Mercer County Superintendent of Elections will continue to work through this process to ensure that all votes cast are counted,” Nathaniel Walker, the Mercer County superintendent of elections, said in a statement. “We remain committed to ensuring the integrity of our elections.” That announcement came a week after problems scanning ballots in voting machines on Election Day prompted voters to use backup paper ballots and, two days later, election officials won a court order to open voting machines to look for potentially missing ballots. Walker did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the search. “Everything’s been accounted for, and they counted all of the Election Day ballots. They are currently counting provisional ballots and vote-by-mail ballots … and emergency ballots as well,” Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami-Covello said. “This is a report that was made to me” by Walker’s office, she added. Sollami-Covello said she wasn’t involved in the court order last week.

Full Article: NJ elections: Mercer County live ballots counted, questions remain

Pennsylvania: How ten-sided dice play into state’s post-election audit | Justin Sweitzer/City & State

On Thursday, officials at the Pennsylvania Department of State rolled the dice. Literally. To kick off the state’s post-election audit of this month’s race for governor, department staff rolled 20 ten-sided dice to create a “seed number” used to randomly select batches of ballots to audit. That seed number will then be entered into Arlo, an audit software tool used to select random batches of ballots for auditors in each county to manually review. The auditors will then conduct a hand tally of the votes cast for governor in each batch, according to Department of State officials. The department will then compile the results of the audit and determine whether the statistical criteria needed to confirm the election results has been met. The audit, known as a risk-limiting audit or RLA, involves auditing a randomly-selected batch of ballots to confirm the outcome of the election. The number of ballots audited depends on how wide the margin was in a particular race.

Full Article: How ten-sided dice play into Pennsylvania’s post-election audit – City & State Pennsylvania

South Dakota: Tabulator catches human error in Tripp County post-election audit | Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight

The case of Tripp County’s 75 “missing” ballots has been solved, County Auditor Barb Desersa said this week. The discrepancy emerged last week after a hand count of ballots in the only county in South Dakota in nearly 20 years to perform one. The mismatch does not have any impact on election results. Tripp County officials were prepared to ask for a court order to reopen a ballot box to find the answer, but the question was resolved without one. The human error explanation for the mismatch, it turned out, was right there in the records from the vote tabulator – the machine that county commissioners had ordered Desersa not to use to tally the county’s official, reportable Election Day results. A Thursday vote canvas revealed a discrepancy in a single precinct between the number of official, completed ballots recorded in the poll book and the number of audited ballots in one precinct. Several races had to be recounted by Tripp County’s volunteer counting boards – sometimes three or four times on election night. The last precinct to come in, Colome, had mismatched numbers according to the tabulator audit the next day. Desersa ran the audit to prove to her county commissioners and residents that the machine was accurate. The mismatched numbers prove the point, Desersa said Monday.

Full Article: Tabulator catches human error in Tripp County post-election audit – South Dakota Searchlight

Texas: Election Day Problems Inflame Voter Fraud Conspiracies in Houston | Michael Barajas/Bolts

Some of the most notorious election deniers in Texas rallied outside the Harris County government building in downtown Houston Tuesday, while dozens of angry people waited inside for their turn at the mic to chastise county commissioners and local election officials. Among the shouting and calls for order during the meeting, one woman issued a biblical denunciation, pulling from the Book of Ezekiel: “The rulers will be helpless and in despair, trembling in fear… I will bring on them the evil they have done to others and they will receive the punishment they so richly deserve.” Another woman was even more cryptic. “You guys have been caught, you just don’t know it,” she said without elaboration. “You have no idea what’s coming your way.” At issue were the problems that voters experienced in Texas’s largest county last week. At least one polling place opened late, and some ran out of ballot paper. It remains unclear how widespread the problems were, but the Houston Chronicle reported that roughly three percent of the county’s 782 polling places experienced ballot paper shortages last week. Those problems followed others that occurred during the March primaries and ultimately forced the resignation of Harris County’s previous elections administrator and fueled baseless conservative conspiracies about voter fraud. Last week’s Election Day glitches have further inflamed bogus claims of stolen elections while also exacerbating an ongoing feud between state GOP leaders and Texas’ largest and increasingly left-leaning county.

Source: Election Day Problems Inflame Voter Fraud Conspiracies in Houston | Bolts

Texas elections official keeps the peace with right-wing voting activists | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Aubree Campbell, 33, a poll watcher from Tarrant County, is, by now, pretty well known among Texas election administrators. The redhead and self-described “metalhead” basically has many of them on speed dial. “Are your ballots prenumbered sequentially beginning with the number one according to the Texas election code 52.062 and 52.009? You’re sitting in violation of the state and national Constitution. Do you not know the code and the law off the top of your head like I do?” she asked one official, rapid-fire, in an audio recording she posted online in April. Her social media channels are full of posts and self-recorded videos documenting these often charged interactions, carefully monitored by a small but loyal following that reacts on every post. She volunteers in elections routinely, has trained dozens of other poll watchers and considers herself a knowledgeable watchdog of Texas elections administration. There’s a single elections administrator in Texas who, she says, “makes other election administrators look like idiots” — Heider Garcia, who oversees elections in her home county. It’s an interesting choice. Garcia, in fact, has received more rancor from voter fraud activists than most of the more than 200 people running elections across this state. They’ve accused him of contributing to voter fraud in other countries. Fringe activists groups shared his home address online, along with racist messages and death threats, making him fear for his life and the safety of his wife and small children.

Full Article: Texas elections official keeps the peace with right-wing voting activists | The Texas Tribune