National

As Pennsylvania voters begin casting perhaps two million-plus mail ballots, Democrats and Republicans are in furious legal combat over a once-overlooked aspect of voting remotely: which ballots are counted, which are rejected as defective and which ones voters are allowed to correct. Simple math explains why. In the 2020 presidential contest, Pennsylvania election officials rejected more than 34,000 mail ballots. In a tight 2024 election in the most coveted swing state, even a fraction of that many rejections could spell the difference between victory and defeat — not just in the presidential race, but also in any number of others. What’s true in Pennsylvania is true, to varying degrees, in other battleground states. Michigan rejected more than 20,000 mail ballots in 2020 and even more in 2022; Arizona turned down 7,700; Nevada 5,600; and Wisconsin about 3,000. Read Article

National: Election conspiracy theories fueled a push to hand-count votes, but doing so is risky and slow | Christine Fernando/Associated Press

Four years of Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election have kindled growing suspicion of voting machines among conspiracy theorists. One of their solutions is to replace the tabulators that count every vote with people who will do that by hand. Controversies over the issue have flared periodically in pockets of the country before the 2024 presidential election even though research has shown that hand-counting is more prone to error, costlier and likely to delay results. The few counties that have attempted the massive task have found the process more time-consuming, expensive and inaccurate than expected. Read Article

National: Election officials who back Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ stir concern in swing states | Joseph Tanfani and Nathan Layne/Reuters

In Michigan’s Macomb County, the Republican head of the board that will certify November’s election results called on former U.S. President Donald Trump to fight to stay in power after his election loss in 2020. In North Carolina’s Henderson County, a Republican election board member emailed legislators in August to claim, without evidence, that Democrats were flooding the state with illegal votes. And in Pennsylvania, considered a must win for both Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, Republican officials in six counties have voted against certifying results since 2020. Four years after Trump tried to overturn his election loss, his false conspiracy theories about voter fraud have become an article of faith among many Republican members of local election boards that certify results. Their rise raises the chances that pro-Trump officials in multiple jurisdictions will be able to delay or sow doubt over the Nov. 5 presidential election if Trump loses. Read Article

National: Election offices are preparing for a smooth voting process — and angry voters | /Derek B. JohnsonCyberScoop

Roughly a month out from Election Day, officials from across the country said they remain focused on carrying out a smooth voting process while bracing for the possibility that their offices could be overwhelmed by angry voters and false claims of election fraud. Speaking at a gathering in Washington D.C. hosted by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, a bipartisan group of election officials said that while they remain steadfastly confident in the integrity of past elections, they have had to put in place a host of new procedures over the past few years specifically to deal with claims of election malfeasance and fraud from local voters convinced by false claims of vote rigging by Republican candidate Donald Trump and his allies. Read Article

National: Russia, China and Iran Intend to Stoke False Election Claims, Officials Warn | Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

Foreign efforts to undermine American democracy will continue after Election Day, U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday, with covert influence campaigns focused on questioning the validity of election results after polls close. Adversaries believe that the possibility of a close presidential race and contested control of the Senate and House of Representatives offer opportunities to undermine trust in the election’s integrity, the officials said as part of an update one month before the vote. The officials said they were worried about foreign adversaries amplifying domestic concerns about voting irregularities, as well as manufacturing their own allegations. After the 2020 vote, Donald J. Trump’s campaign made false allegations about voting irregularities, and he and his supporters have already advanced similar claims ahead of this year’s vote, many of them echoed by Russian state media or Kremlin-friendly organizations. Read Article

National: How China is using X to influence local elections in 2024 campaign | Jeremy B. Merrill , Aaron Schaffer and Naomi Nix/The Washington Post

China is increasingly targeting downballot elections in America, according to a Washington Post analysis and senior U.S. intelligence officials, using fake accounts on social media to spread divisive and sometimes explicitly antisemitic claims and conspiracy theories about politicians — part of an effort to inflame tensions in the country just one month before the 2024 election. One covert influence operation has focused on Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), who is running to retain his House seat. A China-linked account on X called Moore “a Jewish dog” and claimed he won his primary because of “the bloody Jewish consortium,” among other derogatory tropes, according to a Post analysis of thousands of posts on X, of which about 75 concerned Moore. Moore, who recently backed new sanctions on Chinese officials, is not Jewish. Read Article

National: Judge Unseals New Evidence in Federal Election Case Against Trump | Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage/The New York Times

When told by an aide that Vice President Mike Pence was in peril as the rioting on Capitol Hill escalated on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump replied, “So what?” When one of his lawyers told him that his false claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud would not hold up in court, Mr. Trump responded, “The details don’t matter.” On a flight with Mr. Trump and his family after the election, an Oval Office assistant heard Mr. Trump say: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” Those accounts were among new evidence disclosed in a court filing made public on Wednesday in which the special counsel investigating Mr. Trump made his case for why the former president is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Read Article

National: Domestic extremists with ‘election-related grievances’ could turn to violence in final weeks of election, FBI and DHS warn | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are concerned that “election-related grievances,” such as a belief in voter fraud, could motivate domestic extremists to engage in violence in the weeks before and after the November election, as it did during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to a new intelligence bulletin from the agencies. Domestic violent extremists [DVEs] “continue to create, exploit, and promote narratives about the election process or legal decisions involving political figures, and we are concerned that these grievances could motivate some DVEs to engage in violence, as we saw during the 2020 election cycle,” the FBI and DHS said in the bulletin sent to state and local officials and private executives. Read Article

National: ‘Damning non-answer’: Vance refuses to acknowledge Trump lost the 2020 election | Ryan J. Reilly/NBC

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election during the vice presidential debate Tuesday and downplayed the seriousness of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which injured more than 140 law enforcement officers. He also declined to say whether he would seek to challenge the results of this year’s election. Toward the end of the debate, Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz asked Vance to affirm that Trump lost the last election. “Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked. “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied before he pivoted to press Walz about censorship on social media. “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said. “I’m pretty shocked by this. He lost the election. This is not a debate, it’s not anything anywhere other than in Donald Trump’s world.” Read Article

National: Trump Allies Bombard the Courts, Setting Stage for Post-Election Fight | Danny Hakim, Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Republicans have unleashed a flurry of lawsuits challenging voting rules and practices ahead of the November elections, setting the stage for what could be a far larger and more contentious legal battle over the White House after Election Day. The onslaught of litigation, much of it landing in recent weeks, includes nearly 90 lawsuits filed across the country by Republican groups this year. The legal push is already more than three times the number of lawsuits filed before Election Day in 2020. Read Article

National: Homeless People Have the Right to Vote — but Often Lack the Ability | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Governing

There’s no constitutional requirement to have a home in order to vote. In practical terms, however, it can sometimes feel like it. Individuals experiencing homelessness often struggle to meet voter ID requirements, stay on voting rolls or get to polling locations, among other obstacles. Although 54 percent of all eligible voters turned out back in 2012, only about 10 percent of homeless citizens voted. “If we could get that number up to 20 or 30 percent, it would make a big difference, especially with local elections,” said Donald Whitehead, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “When people are thinking about structuring voter rights laws, they should be thinking about every citizen, not just those who are affluent or who have means.” Read Article

National: Republicans’ non-citizen voting myth sets stage to claim stolen election | Rachel Leingang and Sam Levine/The Guardian

James Cozadd, a 49-year-old plumber born in Montgomery, Alabama, has no idea why he got a letter from Alabama’s top election official telling him he was potentially ineligible to vote. He was born in the US, yet the letter said he was suspected of being a non-citizen and he would have to prove his citizenship to vote. “I’ve been racking my brain to try to figure out how I ended up on the list of purged voters, but I have no clue,” Cozadd said in a court filing in September. He was one of more than 3,200 voters the secretary of state asked to prove their citizenship – part of a wave of actions amid heated rhetoric among Republicans over the idea that non-citizens could be voting in large numbers in US elections, a theory that runs counter to data. Read Article

National: To combat voter fraud claims, election officials try radical transparency | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

In this conservative bedroom community of Phoenix, where Donald Trump remains popular and his 2020 loss is viewed with suspicion, election falsehoods don’t fizzle. They fester and grow. So as Pinal County officials prepare for another election with the former president on the ballot, they are trying to combat that distrust with radical transparency. “When you know in your soul there is nothing to hide, being open about the process is a no-brainer,” said Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis (R), who helps oversee elections. “Even when you pull the curtain back, there are still people who lurk in the shadows, but we are going to continue to try with logic, accuracy and reason to combat the narrative of distrust in the elections process.” Read Article

National: Little-noticed statehouse races could reshape election policies next year | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

Americans agree the fate of democracy rests on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, even if they don’t agree on what that outcome should be. But they may be too focused on the top of the ticket. A small number of lower-profile state legislative races in districts around the country could shift partisan control of legislative chambers in several key swing states next year, potentially allowing state lawmakers to reshape how elections are run. “What’s really going to impact most voters when it comes to how they experience their elections — the timing of their elections, when ballots are counted, how things are processed, security and infrastructure changes — that’s all happening at the state level,” said Megan Boler Bellamy, vice president of law and policy at Voting Rights Lab, a nonprofit group that monitors state legislation on voting and elections.fit group that monitors state legislation on voting and elections. Read Article

National: Election experts raise alarms about vote counting delays in battleground states | Fredreka Schouten and Sara Murray/CNN

In Pennsylvania, officials are bracing for another presidential election in which the state could once again be the decisive battleground and take days to determine the winner. Seth Bluestein, a Republican city commissioner in vote-rich Philadelphia, put the odds of knowing the winner on election night at “almost zero.” In battleground Wisconsin, meanwhile, a final tally isn’t likely until the morning after the election, said Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who chairs the state’s election commission. Election observers worry that delays in counting mail ballots could give the public a false sense of who’s winning the election. That could create a potential “red mirage” – showing GOP candidates ahead initially before more Democratic-leaning absentee ballots are processed and added to the tally – and leave an opening for false narratives about election fraud to flourish as the country awaits results. Read Article

National: Several states are making late changes to election rules, even as voting is set to begin | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

In Georgia, election workers will have to hand count the number of ballots cast after voting is completed. In North Carolina, some students and university staff can use their digital IDs to vote. In Wisconsin, ballot drop boxes are newly legal again, although not every voting jurisdiction will use them. Across the country, including in some of the nation’s presidential swing states, new or recently altered state laws are changing how Americans will vote, tally ballots, and administer and certify November’s election. It can be a challenge to keep track of these 11th-hour changes, especially since state election processes already vary so widely. Even more changes are looming in some states, with Election Day on Nov. 5 now just weeks away. Several states already have started sending out mail ballots, and in some states, voters have begun casting ballots in person. Read Article

National: The R.N.C. Asked a Conspiracy Theorist to Train Poll Watchers. Here’s What He Told Them. | Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

A few years ago, Jack Posobiec was a fringe figure and a right-wing agitator best known for helping spread “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory about Democrats running a satanic child abuse ring underneath a Washington pizza parlor. This month, he was invited by the Republican National Committee to speak to a group of volunteers about how to monitor elections in Michigan. The invitation was one sign of how the party uses figures and fictions that were once considered out of bounds to energize its activists. The counsel that Mr. Posobiec delivered was another. He blasted elections in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, for example, joking that officials in Venezuela learned how to conduct their elections, widely seen as corrupt, by visiting the city and studying how it is done, according to a recording of the Sept. 4 meeting. Read Article

National: Overseas voters are the latest target in Trump’s false narrative on election fraud | Melissa Goldin/Associated Press

Donald Trump this week claimed without evidence that anyone living overseas can get a ballot mailed to them, even if they are not eligible to vote, falsely accusing Democrats of subverting a 1986 law to win in November. The former Republican president’s allegation focuses on the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA, which protects the rights of U.S. citizens living abroad, including members of the military and their families, to vote in federal elections by absentee ballot. “In over 25 years of working in elections, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and with election officials of both parties, I don’t recall any of them, or any elected leader from either party, ever denigrating this important program, until Trump’s false claims this week,” said David Becker, the founder and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation and Research. Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, agreed that “ensuring these voters can vote has never been controversial. I should say, never before.” Read Article

National: Newsmax and Smartmatic Settle Defamation Case Over 2020 Election | Katie Robertson/The New York Times

Smartmatic on Thursday settled its defamation lawsuit against Newsmax, the right-wing cable news channel that had spread false claims of election fraud, the companies said. The details of the settlement, reached as the jury was being selected before the trial, were not immediately disclosed. Smartmatic, an election technology company, had accused Newsmax of trying to entice viewers from its rival, Fox News, by airing false reports that Smartmatic helped swing the 2020 election for Joe Biden The lawsuit was filed in Delaware Superior Court in 2021. Read Article

National: Lawmakers’ concerns about mail ballots are fueled by other issues with mail service | John Hanna/Associated Press

Lawmakers said during a contentious congressional hearing Thursday they are uneasy about the U.S. Postal Service’s readiness for a crush of mail ballots for the November election because some of them feel burned by other Postal Service actions. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy sought to reassure a House Appropriations subcommittee that the Postal Service is well-positioned for an extraordinary effort to deliver mail ballots to election officials on time to be counted and that close to 100% will make it promptly. In recent weeks, DeJoy has pushed back on suggestions from state and local election officials that the Postal Service has not addressed problems that led to mail ballots arriving too late or without postmarks, disenfranchising those voters. Read Article

National: How U.S. Adversaries Undermine the Perception of Election Integrity | Max Lesser and Mark Montgomery/Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Hacking election infrastructure remains difficult, but attempts to hack people’s minds can be as easy as spinning up fake social media profiles and websites. While federal agencies and election officials repeatedly affirm the physical security and cybersecurity of U.S. elections,1 a significant vulnerability remains — the public’s belief in the integrity of elections. America’s adversaries — specifically China, Russia, and Iran — are seeking to cast doubt on the very value of democratic processes because America’s most enduring asset is the strength of its democracy. Exposing these malicious campaigns limits our adversaries’ ability to sow discord and spread lies about America’s political system. Read Article

National: Russian threat groups shift attention to Harris-Walz campaign, researchers find | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

It took a little while for Russian influence operation peddlers to shift their attention from the Biden campaign to the Harris campaign, Microsoft said in a report published Tuesday, but now Kremlin-affiliated groups are ratcheting up fake videos about the Democratic presidential ticket. In late August and September, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center observed two separate Russian groups pushing videos designed to discredit Vice President Kamala Harris in places like a fake San Francisco news website and on the social media platform X. The phony videos claimed Harris was involved in a fabricated hit-and-run accident, depicted an attack by alleged Harris supporters on a purported Trump rally attendee and showed a fake New York City billboard making false claims about Harris’ policies. Read Article

National: Election officials prepare for threats with panic buttons, bulletproof glass | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The election director in Cobb County, an Atlanta suburb where votes will be fiercely contested in this year’s presidential race, recently organized a five-hour training session. The focus wasn’t solely on the nuts-and-bolts of running this year’s election. Instead, it brought together election staff and law enforcement to strategize on how to keep workers safe and the process of voting and ballot-counting secure. Having a local sheriff’s deputy at early voting locations and panic buttons that connect poll managers to a local 911 dispatcher are among the added security steps the office is taking this year. Read Article

National: Suspicious mail sent to election officials in multiple states | Maegan Vazquez and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

Federal authorities are investigating several suspicious pieces of mail sent to election officials in at least 17 states, some of which contained a questionable substance and led to building evacuations this week. An image of one of the suspicious pieces of mail, shared with The Washington Post by an election official in a battleground state, showed that the sender was listed as the “United States Traitor Elimination Army” and it had a return address originating in Maryland. The piece of mail, a large yellow envelope, was addressed to the Nebraska Elections Division. The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said in a joint statement Tuesday that they are investigating what they referred to as “a series of suspicious mailings sent to election officials in several states.” Read Article

National: Russia goes all-out with covert disinformation aimed at Harris, Microsoft report says | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

The video was seen millions of times across social media but some viewers were suspicious: It featured a young Black woman who claimed Vice President Kamala Harris left her paralyzed in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco 13 years ago. In an emotional retelling from a wheelchair, the alleged victim said she “cannot remain silent anymore” and lamented that her childhood had “ended too soon.” Immediately after the video was posted on Sept. 2, social media users pointed out reasons to be wary. The purported news channel it came from, San Francisco’s KBSF-TV, didn’t exist. A website for the channel set up just a week earlier contained plagiarized articles from real news outlets. The woman’s X-ray images shown in the video were taken from online medical journals. And the video and the text story on the website spelled the alleged victim’s name differently. Read Article

National: US Senate Warns Big Tech to Act Fast Against Election Meddling | Dell Cameron/WIRED

Top officials from Google, Apple, and Meta testified Wednesday before the United States Senate Intelligence Committee about each of their company’s ongoing efforts to identify and disrupt foreign influence campaigns ahead of the country’s November elections. The hearing, chaired by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, served largely to impress upon the companies the need for more extensive safeguards against the disinformation campaigns being funded by foreign entities with an eye on influencing US politics. “This is really our effort to try to urge you guys to do more. To alert the public that this has not gone away,” Warner said. Read Article

National: Trump’s Talk of Prosecution Rattles Election Officials | Nick Corasaniti and Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

Donald J. Trump’s escalating calls to investigate and prosecute election officials he sees as “corrupt” are sounding alarms among democracy experts and the local and state workers preparing to run elections and tally millions of votes across the country. In recent social media posts, Mr. Trump has said that election officials “involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” Read Article

National: House Defeats Spending Bill Tied to New Rules Requiring Proof of U.S. Citizenship to Register to Vote | Carl Hulse/The New York Times

The House on Wednesday defeated a $1.6 trillion stopgap spending bill to extend current government funding into March and impose new proof-of-citizenship requirements on voter registration, as Republicans and Democrats alike rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposal to avert a shutdown at the end of the month. The bipartisan repudiation was entirely expected after several Republicans had made clear they would not back the spending plan and Democrats almost uniformly opposed the voting-registration proposal. The vote was 220 to 202, with 14 Republicans joining all but three Democrats in opposition. Two Republicans voted present. Read Article

National: In-person voting for the US presidential contest starts today in Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia | Steve Karnowski/Associated Press

The Democratic and Republican national conventions are just a memory, the first and perhaps only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is in the bag, and election offices are beginning to send out absentee ballots. Now come the voters. Friday is the start of early in-person voting for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, kicking off in Virginia, South Dakota and Minnesota, the home state of Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz. The first ballots being cast in person come with just over six weeks left before Election Day on Nov. 5. About a dozen more states will follow with early in-person voting by mid-October. Read Article

Illinois: Contractor’s unsecured databases exposed sensitive voter data in over a dozen counties | Andrew Adams/Capitol News Illinois