Editorials

Opinion | What to remember about Jan. 6 | Joe Biden/The Washington Post

On this Jan. 6, order will be called. Clerks, staff and members of Congress will gather to certify the results of a free and fair presidential election and ensure a peaceful transfer of power. Capitol Police will stand guard over the citadel of our democracy. The vice president of the United States, faithful to her duty under our Constitution, will preside over the certification of her opponent’s victory in the November election. It is a ceremony that for more than two centuries has made America a beacon to the world, a ceremony that ratifies the will of the voters. For much of our history, this proceeding was treated as pro forma, a routine act. But after what we all witnessed on Jan. 6, 2021, we know we can never again take it for granted. Read Article

Opinion: Trump election interference trial: Jack Smith’s big new Jan. 6 brief is a major indictment of the Supreme Court | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

It’s rare to simultaneously feel red-hot anger and wistfulness, especially when merely reading a document. But those are exactly the emotions that washed over me when I read the redacted version of special counsel Jack Smith’s brief reciting in detail the evidence against Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. The anger is at the Supreme Court for depriving the American people of the chance for a full public airing of Donald Trump’s attempt to use fraud and trickery to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory before voters consider whether to put Trump back in office beginning January 2025. The wistfulness comes with the recognition that there is about an even chance that this will be the last evidence produced by the federal government of this nefarious plot. If Donald Trump wins election next month, the end of this prosecution is certain and the risks of future election subversion heightened. Read Article

Opinion | Worry about AI interference and misinformation in the 2024 election | Josh Tyrangiel/The Washington Post

At a recent tech conference, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, struggled to convey optimism about AI, revealing deep concerns about its potential dangers alongside its benefits. This ambivalence is shared by other tech leaders like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who express both hope and fear regarding AI’s future impact. The upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election underscores these fears, with FBI Director Christopher Wray warning of AI-driven election interference. Despite the urgency, Congress has made little progress in regulating AI, leaving election officials under-resourced and unprepared for sophisticated AI-generated misinformation campaigns. The legal case Murthy v. Missouri has further complicated efforts by restricting federal communication with social media platforms, exacerbating the risk of widespread misinformation. With inadequate legislative action and rapid technological advancements, the integrity of the election process faces significant threats, highlighting the need for immediate and effective regulation and funding. Read Article

Opinion: The 2024 Election Will Be Fair. People Still Won’t Believe It.  | Richard L. Hasen/Politico

Last election, I warned of an “election meltdown” and a country that was not prepared for a litany of ills — foreign interference, spikes in misinformation, attempts at election subversion and more. This time around, however, I have a different outlook: Those threats are still there but this time we are aware and we are better prepared. What we should be more worried about is that losers won’t accept the results as legitimate, a sentiment that exploded only after election day in 2020, when Trump’s refusal of an orderly transition of power led to a violent assault on the Capitol. In 2024, however, election denialism is at the forefront, before most voters have even cast their ballots. This supercharged distrust could lead to further violence and instability and help cement the kind of corrosive election denialism that does lasting damage to our democracy. Read Article

Opinion: Internet voting remains a risky method of casting election ballots | Susannah Goodman, Susan Greenhalgh and Lawrence Norden/The Hill

Online voting is not yet a secure method of casting a ballot. The risks are many. Malware on a voter’s personal device could alter a voter’s selections or replace ballot images with fakes. Experts have noted that “Consumer-grade devices with consumer-grade protections are no match for a motivated attacker, particularly if the attacker is a nation-state.” Targeted denial of service attacks could disenfranchise thousands of voters and alter election outcomes.  Voter authentication credentials could be stolen. The list goes on. Read Article

Opinion: Security and Reliability Concerns Around Internet Voting Outweigh Benefits | Jalisa Giles/Public Citizen

In the US, reputable federal entities that oversee cybersecurity and elections — including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Election Assistance Commission (EAC), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — have made clear that internet voting cannot be conducted securely at this time, citing the risk of potential hacking, manipulation, and data breaches Read Article

Opinion: Where an Obsession With Election Integrity Can Lead – Counting Ballots by Hand Is a Bad Idea | Jessica Huseman/The New York Times

There's a growing right-wing movement advocating for manual vote tallies without the use of machines, a practice that is rare in the U.S. This approach, however, is shown to be problematic due to the complexity and volume of choices in American ballots, making manual counting error-prone. While some advocates for hand counting have caused disruptions in predominantly conservative areas, it's crucial to acknowledge that this method risks disenfranchising voters and could undermine the integrity of elections. Despite this, the Republican Party has been notably silent on the issue, missing an opportunity to address the potential harm to election systems in red counties. The move towards hand counting, if implemented, could lead to financial strain, disrupt long-term contracts with voting machine companies, and create logistical challenges for election administrators. Read Article

Opinion: Ahead of 2024, we must protect election workers nationwide. Our democracy depends on it.   | Kathy Boockvar/The Hill

Every week, we continue to see news about the 2020 election and the shocking, seditious efforts to tear down our democracy that followed. Federal and state criminal indictments for conspiracies to overturn the election. Sentencing of extremist leaders of the Jan. 6 riots. Rudy Giuliani’s liability for defamation and infliction of emotional distress against two Georgia election workers.  Accountability for these past actions is critically important. But as these stories dominate the news cycle again and again, it is important not to lose sight of one of the unconscionable continuing consequences — the increase in hostility toward our nation’s election officials, and the impact it has on our democracy. Read More

Opinion: Paper ballots are good, but accurately hand-counting them all is next to impossible | Barry C. Burden/The Conversation

There's a growing movement, mainly among Republicans, to return to hand-counting ballots in the United States, fueled by suspicions of the 2020 election results. However, this approach, while appealing for transparency and accountability, has significant drawbacks. Hand-counting is slower and less accurate than machine tabulation, as it's time-consuming, especially with ballots containing multiple contests, and prone to human error. Machine-counting systems, like optical scanners, are faster and more accurate, offering detailed data that demonstrates their superiority. While hand counts can play a role in post-election audits or close recount scenarios, they are not suitable for widespread adoption in modern elections due to speed and accuracy concerns. Read Article

Opinion: Need Better Election Security? The Feds Can Help. | Derek Bowens and Scott McDonell/Governing

Two local election officials from different parts of the United States emphasize the importance of accessing federal election security resources as they prepare for the 2024 presidential election. They mention that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated election infrastructure as critical infrastructure in 2017, allowing DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to offer free services and resources to improve election resiliency against cyber and physical threats. These resources include physical security assessments and recommendations. The officials highlight the need for these resources as election officials face security concerns, including threats and incidents. They stress that accessing federal resources can help improve the security of election buildings and support safer and more secure elections. Read Article

Opinion: Donald Trump triggers the politics of emergency | Jason Willick/The Washington Post

The disqualification of a candidate from the 2024 presidential election based on the 14th Amendment's Section 3, which disqualifies officials who engaged in insurrection, is becoming a point of debate and concern. While President Trump was acquitted in the Senate for "incitement of insurrection" following the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, a new paper by legal scholars argues that Trump's disqualification is "automatic" and not dependent on congressional processes. This notion adds to a complex legal-constitutional conversation and raises questions about political legitimacy and emergency measures, should Trump's candidacy continue to rise. Disqualification efforts, if pursued, could further polarize public opinion and lead to uncharted legal and political territories. Read Article

Opinion: ExpressVote XL “fix” doesn’t fix anything | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

Five years ago I described a serious security flaw in the design of all-in-one voting machines made by two competing manufacturers, ES&S and Dominion. These all-in-one machines work like this: the voter indicates choices on a touchscreen; then a printer prints the votes onto a paper ballot; the voter has a chance to review the ballot to make sure the right choices are printed; then the machine sends the ballot past an optical scanner to record and tabulate the votes. Then the mechanism drops the paper into a ballot box where it is saved for recounts or audits. The reason we have paper (in addition to the optical scanner’s computer-count of the votes) is for our protection, in case the software in the voting machine is hacked. The votes printed on the paper and seen by the voter, can be seen again by the humans performing the recount or audit. The fatal flaw is having the ballot printer in the same paper path that goes from the voter to the ballot box. That’s because the machinery (printer, scanner, motor-driven rollers) is controlled by the software, and if the software is hacked (replaced by fraudulent software) then the software can make the machinery do things “out of proper order”. In particular, after the voter approves the ballot and touches the “cast-vote” button on-screen, the software is supposed to convey the ballot past the scanner into the ballot box; but hacked software can direct the machinery to take a detour past the printer, where additional votes are printed on to the ballot that the voter did not approve. Read Article

Opinion: Nonpartisan Election Administration Is the Norm in Other Democracies. Why Not Here? | Thom Reilly/Governing

A study conducted by the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University found that Arizona voters strongly support requiring top state and local election officials, such as secretary of state and county recorder, to be elected in a nonpartisan manner. The study surveyed registered voters from different parties, and 92 percent of respondents felt that top election officials should take an oath to function in a nonpartisan manner. Currently, most states in the United States select chief election officers through explicitly partisan processes, leading to concerns about public trust and polarizing campaigns. Implementing a nonpartisan election system could potentially increase overall confidence in the election system and reduce distrust in elections. Read Article

Editorial: Black and Latino voters are being erased from databases: Here’s how to fix it | Miriam McKinney Gray/The Hill

Millions of Black and Latino individuals are missing or inaccurately listed in voter databases, according to a recent Stanford study. This disproportionately affects these communities, making 40% of them effectively invisible compared to 18% of white individuals. Locating these missing voters could impact the 2024 elections. Vendors supplement government lists with data, perpetuating exclusion and biases. Organizations are using workarounds like relational organizing and rejecting arbitrary vote propensity scores. However, responsibility should not solely lie with nonprofits. Political data vendors need transparency, campaigns should prioritize reaching missing voters, donors should reconsider metrics, and government authorities should end arbitrary purges. The erasure of Black and brown individuals from databases undermines democracy and requires urgent attention. Read Article

Editorial: Hand Counting Ballots in Arizona? Did our Legislature learn nothing from the Cyber Ninjas? / Laurie Roberts/Arizona Republic

The recently passed bill in Arizona allowing counties to conduct full hand counts of ballots in future elections is criticized in this piece. It raises concerns about the inefficiency and potential inaccuracies associated with hand counts, citing the failed attempt by Cyber Ninja auditors to accurately tally the 2020 election results. The author argues that hand counts are prone to human error, time-consuming, and may lead to delayed results. Instead, the article emphasizes the importance of relying on reliable tabulation machines for efficient and accurate election processes. Read Article

Editorial: The Great Missouri Hand-Count Swindle: How MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Conned Patrick Jones and Kevin Crye, Costing Shasta County Millions | R.V. Scheide/A News Cafe

Osage County Clerk/Election Authority Nicci Bouse has criticized a manual tally voting system promoted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, arguing that it is more costly, time-consuming, and less accurate than the current ballot tabulation machines in use. Bouse's conclusions were outlined in a letter to the editor published in a local newspaper, where she expressed concerns about the increased time, financial expenses, loss of volunteers, and decreased accuracy associated with hand counting. She also highlighted the smaller turnout of municipal elections compared to statewide and presidential elections, suggesting that developing a hand-count system as a backup to machines would be unnecessary. Read Article

Editorial: John Roberts Throws a Curveball | Richard L. Hasen/The New York Times

The Supreme Court’s voting rights ruling on Thursday in Allen v. Milligan is as shocking as it is welcome. The Voting Rights Act has lived to see another day, with implications for 2024 and beyond. The court ruled that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires Alabama to draw a second majority-Black congressional district in which its voters can elect the candidate of their choice. In an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Sonia Sotomayor, the court also reaffirmed Section 2’s constitutionality and beat back Alabama’s arguments that the race-conscious statute should be read in a race-neutral way. Read Article

Why we need to celebrate and protect our Black election officials | Veronica Degraffenreid/Philadelphia Inquirer

My grandmother, Carrie L. Williams, a teacher, was one of the first Black people to vote in rural Bertie County, N.C. She registered during a time in the state’s history where Black people were required to pass a literacy test, and my grandfather, who never attended formal school, could not join her in casting a ballot. Just a few decades later, I became the director of election operations in North Carolina. I wonder if Grandma Carrie could have imagined when she was headed to the ballot box for the very first time that one day her granddaughter would be helping to run elections in the very same state — working like many other Black election officials and poll workers to ensure that all eligible citizens, regardless of race, can participate in a truly representative democratic society. Read Article

Editorial: Unsealing the Halderman report would be Responsible Vulnerability Disclosure | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

A statement by computer security experts published on May 12he argues for the immediate unsealing and public release of a report on security flaws in Dominion voting machines, authored by Professors J. Alex Halderman and Drew Springall. It highlights the importance of responsible disclosure in the field of computer security, where vulnerabilities are reported to software vendors and subsequently made public after a set period to incentivize prompt fixes and improve overall security. The statement emphasizes that keeping vulnerabilities secret does not provide security, as others can discover them as well. It cites the industry norm of responsible disclosure and the benefits it brings in terms of prompt patching and informed decision-making by software users. The authors assert that the report in question should be released since the vendor has had ample time to address the vulnerabilities it highlights, and the public needs full information about the security of Dominion's voting machines. They also express concerns about the potential risks of unauthorized access or public leakage of the report, particularly close to the 2024 election. Read Statement

Sort the mail-in ballot envelopes, or don’t? | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

In the first of a four article series, Andrew Appel discusses the handling of mail-in ballot envelopes by local election officials and its impact on the cost of recounts and the security of elections. The two methods discussed are "sort-then-scan" and "scan-then-sort". In the sort-then-scan method, ballot envelopes are sorted by precinct number before opening and scanning the paper ballots. This method helps prevent cheating and makes recounts easier and less expensive. In contrast, the scan-then-sort method involves opening and scanning unsorted envelopes, which poses opportunities for cheating, leads to costly recounts, and requires additional expenses in ballot printing. Appel highlights the importance of adopting the sort-then-scan method to ensure the integrity and efficiency of mail-in voting processes. Read Article: Sort the mail-in ballot envelopes, or don’t? - Freedom to Tinker

Editorial: Why It’s Fine that Fox and Dominion Settled | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

What does the Fox (News) say? Not enough to save American democracy. But we never should have expected that a private defamation suit could have cured this country’s ongoing election panic anyways. Dominion Voting Systems had sued Fox for defamation after Fox hosts and guests lied about the supposed role of Dominion’s voting machines in the 2020 presidential election. (Specifically, they said that the company rigged the votes against Donald Trump and for Joe Biden.) Voting machine manipulation was one of many outlandish conspiracy theories—like those involving Italian space lasers or fake ballots coming in from China—that swirled across right wing cable television and social media as Donald Trump churned up the lies to try to overturn his loss. By the time the Dominion defamation case got to trial, Fox had a weak hand. Embarrassing depositions, emails, and other material from inside Fox showed that those at the top of the company knew the claims of a stolen election were a huge lie unsupported by any real evidence. The trial judge had already ruled, before trial, that the evidence indisputably showed that claims of Dominion voting machines being rigged were false, and that Fox was not merely reporting on such claims. The only real issue (aside from which Fox entities were liable and how much damage Dominion suffered) was whether Fox made false statements with “actual malice.” That standard, imposed by the Supreme Court to protect journalists and others reporting on public officials and public figures, requires proof that the speaker made the statements knowing they were false or with reckless disregard as to their truth or falsity. Full Article: Fox and Dominion settlement: It's actually fine there's no trial.

Editorial: Hand-counting ballots is a costly mistake for California county | San Luis Obispo Tribune

Some California counties have toyed with the idea of hand-counting election ballots, especially when denialism was at its peak following the 2020 election. In San Luis Obispo County, for example, Supervisor Debbie Arnold once tried to add manual tallies to a list of proposed election “reforms.” Fortunately, the suggestion went nowhere. But now one county has actually decided to make the switch — turning back the clock in a stunning show of bullheadedness. The Board of Supervisors in Shasta County, a pocket of right-wing extremism in Northern California, voted 3-2 to hand-count all ballots going forward — a process described as “exceptionally complex and error-prone” by the county’s top election official. It’s the first county in California to take that misbegotten step, which plays right into the hands of conspiracy theorists who will never concede that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Let’s hope it’s the last county to do so. Source: Hand-counting ballots is a costly mistake for California county | San Luis Obispo Tribune

Editorial: Mike Lindell is helping a California county dump voting machines. You should worry | Anita Chabria/Los Angeles Times

MyPillow guy Mike Lindell, known as much for his voter fraud conspiracy theories as for his two-for-one deals on bedding, has something to sell California. It’s a softer, gentler — and more dangerous — version of the “Big Lie” that fraud stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, and we need it about as much as his Giza Dreams™ bedsheets. Lindell is pushing for U.S. elections to stop using any electronic voting and return to hand-counted paper ballots. And as my colleague Jessica Garrison reported this week, he has one California county ready to bite. Lindell regularly talks about the dangers of electronic voting on his new social platform, Frank Speech, and anywhere else he can find people to listen. That includes this week at the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, where he announced his newest venture, the Election Crime Bureau (donations accepted), not to be confused with any actual government-related bureau. Full Article: Lies about Dominion are the real election threat in California - Los Angeles Times

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

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

Editorial: The U.S. Thinks ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’ It Already Has. | Jamelle Bouie/The New York Times

The move from democracy to autocracy isn’t a sudden shift. It is not a switch that flips from light to dark with nothing in between. But it’s also not quite right to call the path to authoritarianism a journey. To use a metaphor of travel or distance is to suggest something external, removed, foreign. It is better, in the U.S. context at least, to think of authoritarianism as something like a contradiction nestled within the American democratic tradition. It is part of the whole, a reflection of the fact that American notions of freedom and liberty are deeply informed by both the experience of slaveholding and the drive to seize land and expel its previous inhabitants. As the historian Edmund Morgan once wrote of the Virginians who helped lead the fight for Anglo-American independence, “The presence of men and women who were, in law at least, almost totally subject to the will of other men gave to those in control of them an immediate experience of what it could mean to be at the mercy of a tyrant.” Virginians, he continued, “may have had a special appreciation of the freedom dear to republicans, because they saw every day what life without it could be like.” Full Article: Opinion | The U.S. Thinks ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’ It Already Has. - The New York Times

Editorial: ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy | David Leonhardt /The New York Times

The United States has experienced deep political turmoil several times before over the past century. The Great Depression caused Americans to doubt the country’s economic system. World War II and the Cold War presented threats from global totalitarian movements. The 1960s and ’70s were marred by assassinations, riots, a losing war and a disgraced president. These earlier periods were each more alarming in some ways than anything that has happened in the United States recently. Yet during each of those previous times of tumult, the basic dynamics of American democracy held firm. Candidates who won the most votes were able to take power and attempt to address the country’s problems. The current period is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades. Full Article: ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy - The New York Times

Editorial: Congress’s first job right now: Safeguarding democracy | The Washington Post

Congress has a lot on its to-do list ahead of November’s midterm elections — confirming circuit-court judges, funding the government and possibly enshrining same-sex marriage protections along the way. But at least as important is a piece of business getting less attention: passing the Electoral Count Reform Act. The bipartisan bill would mend and modernize the archaic 1887 law that governs the counting and certifying of votes in presidential elections — the same law that President Donald Trump and his allies tried to exploit to overturn the legitimate 2020 presidential election results. Reform would protect the democratic process from future attacks from unprincipled politicians who would manipulate the system to install their favored candidates in the White House, regardless of the voters’ will. The reform bill was introduced to some fanfare over the summer, after months of negotiations led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). It’s essential that the measure not lose steam this fall, amid competing priorities and political tumult. The packed Senate schedule that Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his party must navigate is only one problem. Another is naysaying from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, which might soon issue its own recommendations. Certainly, tweaks to the bill — some of them under discussion as part of the Rules Committee’s work-up — would strengthen the proposal. Some of them are easy to make and should be uncontroversial. Others, sensible or not, could imperil the entire enterprise. These should be approached with caution. Full Article: Opinion | Congress must reform the Electoral Count Act, now - The Washington Post

Editorial: American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic | Louis Menand/The New Yorker

To look on the bright side for a moment, one effect of the Republican assault on elections—which takes the form, naturally, of the very thing Republicans accuse Democrats of doing: rigging the system—might be to open our eyes to how undemocratic our democracy is. Strictly speaking, American government has never been a government “by the people.” This is so despite the fact that more Americans are voting than ever before. In 2020, sixty-seven per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot for President. That was the highest turnout since 1900, a year when few, if any, women, people under twenty-one, Asian immigrants (who could not become citizens), Native Americans (who were treated as foreigners), or Black Americans living in the South (who were openly disenfranchised) could vote. Eighteen per cent of the total population voted in that election. In 2020, forty-eight per cent voted. Some members of the loser’s party have concluded that a sixty-seven-per-cent turnout was too high. They apparently calculate that, if fewer people had voted, Donald Trump might have carried their states. Last year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, legislatures in nineteen states passed thirty-four laws imposing voting restrictions. (Trump and his allies had filed more than sixty lawsuits challenging the election results and lost all but one of them.) In Florida, it is now illegal to offer water to someone standing in line to vote. Georgia is allowing counties to eliminate voting on Sundays. In 2020, Texas limited the number of ballot-drop-off locations to one per county, insuring that Loving County, the home of fifty-seven people, has the same number of drop-off locations as Harris County, which includes Houston and has 4.7 million people. Full Article: American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic | The New Yorker

Editorial: Preventing the Next Jan. 6 Riot | Wall Street Journal

Like a buried artillery shell from a long-ago war, the 1887 Electoral Count Act (ECA) was a law waiting to explode. By giving Congress a process for rejecting Electoral College votes, the ECA created a constitutional hazard that detonated on Jan. 6, 2021. This week 16 Senators, led by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Joe Manchin, unveiled legislation to overhaul the ECA and stop future electoral mischief. The bill isn’t perfect, but it’s worth passing. Source: Preventing the Next Jan. 6 Riot - WSJ