National

Federal cyber leadership doubled down on the need to continue to fortify election security at both the local and national level as threats from foreign and domestic actors will still be a problem ahead of the 2024 presidential election. “We face continuing threats from a growing number of foreign state sponsored threat actors intent on targeting our election infrastructure and voters through cyber activity and malign foreign influence operations,” Kim Wyman, the senior advisor for election security at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said during a panel discussion hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles, on Friday. Wyman said that in the wake of the tumultuous 2016 presidential election, the security of the digital election infrastructure of the U.S. has made “incredible progress” in improving voting systems’ resiliency. She also noted that while law enforcement and regulatory bodies saw “no evidence” of deleted or lost votes within the 2022 election, state-sponsored threats were documented. “We did however, see activity from sophisticated state sponsored threat actors that is cause for continued vigilance,” she said. “Our adversaries continue to see our elections as opportunities for interference and influence.”

Full Article: CISA: Election Security Still Under Threat at Cyber and Physical Level – Nextgov

National: Election conspiracy movement grinds on as 2024 approaches | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

One by one, the presenters inside the crowded hotel ballroom shared their computer screens and promised to show how easy it is to hack into voting systems across the U.S. Drawing gasps from the crowd, they highlighted theoretical vulnerabilities and problems from past elections. But instead of tailoring their efforts to improve election security, they argued that all voting machines should be eliminated — a message that was wrapped in conspiracies about elections being rigged to favor certain candidates. “We are at war. The only thing that’s not flying right now is bullets,” said Mark Finchem, a Republican candidate for secretary of state in Arizona last year who continues to contest his loss and was the final speaker of the daylong conference. Finchem was among a group of Republican candidates running for governor, secretary of state or state attorney who disputed the outcome of the 2020 election and who lost in a clean sweep last November in important political battleground states, including Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Yet deep distrust about U.S. elections persists among Republicans, skepticism fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims and by allies who have been traveling the country meeting with community groups and holding forums like the one recently just outside Nashville, attended by some 250 people.

Full Article: Election conspiracy movement grinds on as 2024 approaches | AP News

National: Election Officials Call for Action to Protect Democracy | Suzanne Potter/Public News Service

American democracy is in mortal danger as the 2024 election approaches, according to experts at a conference held at the University of California, Los Angeles on Friday. Millions of Americans still believe the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, and the insurrection that took place on January 6th of 2021 proves that some are willing to resort to violence. UCLA Law Professor Rick Hasen organized the conference and said some groups are actively working against the will of the voters. “Elections deniers won office in non-swing states, and many are in Congress,” said Hasen. “Local election officials have shared voting machine code with conspiracy theorists, and some local election boards have tried to require the hand count of ballots or refuse to certify election results.” In December, Congress passed reforms to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 – a rare bipartisan move to make it harder to attempt to overturn the results of a presidential election, as former President Trump did in 2020. Republicans have defeated Democratic proposals to reduce the influence of money in politics and expand access to voting.

Full Article: Election Officials Call for Action to Protect Democracy / Public News Service

National: Trump-commissioned report undercut his claims of dead and double voters | Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

When Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in a now-infamous bid to overturn the 2020 election, he alleged that thousands of dead people had voted in the state. “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters,” he said, without citing his study. But a report commissioned by his own campaign dated one day prior told a different story: Researchers paid by Trump’s team had “high confidence” of only nine dead voters in Fulton County, defined as ballots that may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. They believed there was a “potential statewide exposure” of 23 such votes across the Peach State — or 4,977 fewer than the “minimum” Trump claimed. In a separate failed bid to overturn the results in Nevada, Trump’s lawyers said in a court filing that 1,506 ballots were cast in the names of dead people and 42,284 voted twice. Trump lost the Silver State by about 33,000 votes. The researchers paid by Trump’s team had “high confidence” that 12 ballots were cast in the names of deceased people in Clark County, Nev., and believed the “high end potential exposure” was 20 voters statewide — some 1,486 fewer than Trump’s lawyers said.

Full Article: Trump-commissioned report undercut his claims of dead and double voters – The Washington Post

National: Florida Election Fraud Police Spur Copycats in Republican-Led States | Ryan Teague Beckwith/Bloomberg

Four Republican-led states are working to add new police agencies specifically to target voter fraud, following the example set by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Florida’s elections cop squad has faltered in its most high-profile cases since launching in July. But that hasn’t slowed down state legislators in Texas, Missouri, Ohio and Arkansas who have proposed bills that would create new police agencies to investigate voter fraud, an exceedingly rare crime typically handled by local police and elections officials. The proposals under consideration in the legislatures follow national moves by Republican lawmakers over the last three years to criminalize elections law by imbuing prosecutors with new powers, expanding the list of election-related crimes and beefing up punishments for technical violations. In Missouri and Ohio, the bills would create election police as part of the office of the secretary of state, currently both Republicans. In Arkansas, they would report to the attorney general, a Republican. In Texas, three different bills would create a statewide network of election marshals. Virginia’s Republican attorney general created an Election Integrity Unit last fall as well without the need of legislation.

Full Article: DeSantis’s Election Fraud Police Spur Copycats in Republican-Led States – Bloomberg

National: Where Dominion v. Fox Could Lead | Amy Davidson Sorkin/The New Yorker

Contested elections can have unexpected legacies. After the recount of the 2000 Presidential election results in Palm Beach County, Florida, a Canadian electrical engineer named John Poulos was struck, like most people, by what a mess it was. These were the days of the so-called Brooks Brothers riot and a Supreme Court fight that awarded Florida’s electoral votes to George W. Bush. Poulos was unimpressed by the voting technology, which featured poorly designed punch-card ballots that yielded hanging and dimpled chads, and overcounts and undercounts. During the next couple of years, he worked on building a better voting machine. He founded a company and, looking for a name, turned to the Dominion Elections Act of 1920, which had enfranchised many Canadian women. “We thought that would be a nice homage to helping voters vote,” he told Fortune. Dominion Voting Systems is now reaching a decisive stage in a defamation lawsuit it has filed against Fox News and its parent, Fox Corporation, whose chairman is Rupert Murdoch. Dominion has asked for compensatory damages of as much as $1.6 billion—a figure that may change—saying that Fox and its on-air personalities promoted an “inherently improbable and demonstrably false preconceived narrative” that it had been involved in a grand scheme to rig the 2020 Presidential election. A Delaware Superior Court judge, Eric Davis, will hear arguments for summary judgment this week. If the case moves forward, a trial should begin in April. In many ways, it’s puzzling that Fox has allowed the case to proceed this far. The evidence that has been made public in pre-trial filings, including internal texts and e-mails, could hurt its standing with almost every imaginable constituency, including its core audience. In one text, the host Tucker Carlson said of Donald Trump, “I hate him passionately.”

Full Article: Where Dominion v. Fox Could Lead | The New Yorker

National: Supreme Court urged by DOJ and other parties to sidestep independent state legislature dispute | Ariane de Vogue/CNN

As the Supreme Court deliberates behind closed doors over a case that many believe could be one of the most consequential voting rights disputes ever to reach the high court, the Justice Department and some other parties involved are suggesting the case be dismissed due to major developments since oral arguments. If the justices were to ultimately remove the case from the docket it would sidestep a major dispute over the so-called the Independent State Legislature theory pushed by conservatives and supporters of former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election for now. The case has captured the nation’s attention, because Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are asking the justices to adopt a long dormant legal theory and rule that state courts and other state entities have a limited role in reviewing election rules established by state legislatures when it comes to federal elections. Critics say the Independent State Legislature theory could revolutionize electoral politics going forward if fully adopted and could lead to state legislatures having absolute authority in the area without the necessary judicial oversight.

Full Article: Supreme Court urged by DOJ and other parties to sidestep independent state legislature dispute | CNN Politics

National: Moving to Evidence-Based Elections | Barbara Simons and Poorvi Vora/National Academies

In most jurisdictions things went relatively smoothly in the November 2022 midterms, but serious issues, both technical and political, remain. As we discuss below, elections may be made more transparent and secure through the use of voter-marked paper ballots and rigorous postelection audits. The midterm elections were not as contentious as many had feared, but harassment of election officials and poll workers of both political parties has persisted. For example, on election night Bill Gates, the Republican chair of the Maricopa County (AZ) governing board, had to go into hiding because of threats. In Cobb County, GA, a suspect was arrested for interfering with poll workers and slapping a voter. Police were called in Cascade County, MT, because protesters were circling outside waiting for election officials. And an Arizona judge ordered masked and armed “observers” to keep some distance from ballot drop boxes. Safety fears have triggered election official resignations and made recruitment of poll workers more difficult. In addition, unanticipated technical problems occurred and are likely to continue to occur in every large election. Fast and accurate information is needed to explain both the problems and, where feasible, the workarounds. For example, in Maricopa County, some polling place printers produced blank ballots (for voters to mark by hand) that were too faint for the polling place scanners to read (they were readable by central scanners). Although the printing problem generated conspiracy theories among some, election officials and the press quickly informed voters that they could deposit their completed ballots in ballot boxes for later tabulation. Or they could vote at a different location if they first surrendered their marked ballot.

Full Article: Moving to Evidence-Based Elections | National Academies

National: How the backbone of American elections is being upended | Zach Montellaro/Politico

A bipartisan behind-the-scenes organization that helps states maintain their voter rolls is facing an uncertain future, after several Republican-led states left the group. The board of the Electronic Registration Information Center — or ERIC — is meeting on Friday, as the remaining members of the organization try to chart the organization’s path following the high-profile departures of Florida, West Virginia and Missouri earlier this month. Some officials fear more states are eyeing the door. The division roiling ERIC is just the latest example of a previously apolitical organization involved in fostering cooperation on the mechanics of running elections, finding life a lot more dramatic in the post-Trump world. At risk: the upending of the backbone of the nation’s electoral system. Over the last year, five states with Republican chief election officials — Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia, Missouri and Florida — all left ERIC. Some states have used outwardly conspiratorial-minded reasons for leaving — citing a secretive plot by liberals to take control of voter rolls. Other complaints are more about the structure of the organization bubbling to the surface, which defenders of the organization say is being used as a false pretense to leave.

Full Article: How the backbone of American elections is being upended – POLITICO

National: At center of Fox News lawsuit, Sidney Powell and a ‘wackadoodle’ email | Sarah Ellison and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

A day after major news organizations declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential race, a Sunday-morning guest on Fox News was holding forth on exotic and baseless claims of election fraud — allegedly deceased voters, ballots supposedly lacking an option to vote for Donald Trump, an “affidavit” from a postal worker claiming to have postdated mail-in ballots — when host Maria Bartiromo pressed for more details. “Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software,” Bartiromo said on the Nov. 8, 2020, broadcast. “I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that.” The guest was Sidney Powell, a Texas-based lawyer who would soon be ambiguously connected to the Trump legal team mustered to challenge the election results. She stared stiffly into the lights of a satellite TV studio but answered without hesitation. “That’s putting it mildly,” Powell replied. “The computer glitches could not and should not have happened at all. That’s where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist.”

Full Article: At center of Fox News lawsuit, Sidney Powell and a ‘wackadoodle’ email – The Washington Post

National: Half of 2020 GOP election deniers admit no ‘solid evidence’ for their belief | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

Sidney Powell has tacitly conceded that she didn’t have the proof of a stolen election that she claimed. Former Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis has now explicitly acknowledged that. And it turns out the GOP base as a whole is increasingly admitting it to themselves — that its continued belief in a stolen election is largely just about vibes. A new CNN poll shows the false belief that President Biden’s 2020 win over Donald Trump was illegitimate remains strong among Republicans and GOP-leaning voters; 63 percent continue to say that, while 37 percent acknowledge Biden’s legitimate victory. But as this question has been asked over time, something notable has happened: These voters have increasingly acknowledged there is no “solid evidence” for their belief. Shortly after such beliefs led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, 71 percent of Republican-leaning voters told CNN’s pollsters that Biden’s win was illegitimate — slightly higher than today.

Full Article: Half of 2020 GOP election deniers admit no ‘solid evidence’ for their belief – The Washington Post

National: Postal Service’s Election Mail Program Receives Top Honor | Marti Johnson/USPS

The U.S. Postal Service has received the Public Service Award for its Election Mail program from the nonpartisan Election Verification Network. The award is given every year to a public official or governmental unit for protecting and promoting election integrity and verifiable elections. “This award is further confirmation of the Postal Service’s deep commitment and great success in delivering the nation’s ballots securely and on time,” said Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy. “We take pride in the role our organization plays in the election process. The American people can continue to feel confident in using the U.S. Mail to fulfill their democratic duty to vote.” The Election Verification Network is comprised of election officials, researchers and advocates focused on secure, transparent and verifiable elections. “The award is additional recognition of the Postal Service’s successful processing and delivery of Election Mail, which has grown exponentially in recent years,” said Adrienne Marshall, the Postal Service’s director of election and government mail services. “Our 635,000 employees are proud to provide this service for customers who choose to use the U.S. Mail to participate in the democratic process.”

Full Article: Postal Service’s Election Mail Program Receives Top Honor – Newsroom – About.usps.com

National: Is anyone investigating Trump allies’ multi-state effort to access election systems? | Sarah D. Wire/Los Angeles Times

As news trickled out that former President Trump’s supporters had organized to access federally protected election machines, and copied sensitive information and software, election expert Susan Greenhalgh waited for FBI or Justice Department leaders to announce an investigation. “It just seemed so stunning that we thought, well of course there’s going to be a big reaction and the government is going to investigate,” said Greenhalgh, senior advisor on election security for the nonprofit Free Speech For People. When months passed with no such announcement, Greenhalgh and over a dozen other election experts wrote a 14-page letter to Justice Department leaders in December outlining what they called a “multi-state conspiracy to copy voting software” and asking the agency to open an investigation. Greenhalgh was baffled when she received a terse, noncommittal response from the FBI a month later that seemed to indicate no action had been or would be taken at the federal level.

Full Article: Who’s probing Trump allies’ effort to access voting systems? – Los Angeles Times

National: G.O.P. States Abandon Bipartisan Voting Integrity Group, Yielding to Conspiracy Theories | Neil Vigdor/The New York Times

First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama. Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media. Ohio may not be far behind, according to a letter sent to the group Monday from the state’s chief election official, Frank LaRose. Mr. LaRose and his counterparts in the five states that left the group are all Republicans. For more than a year, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization known as ERIC, has been hit with false claims from allies of former President Donald J. Trump who say it is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats that received money from George Soros, the liberal billionaire and philanthropist, when it was created in 2012. Mr. Trump even chimed in on Monday, urging all Republican governors to sever ties with the group, baselessly claiming in a Truth Social media post that it “pumps the rolls” for Democrats. The Republicans who announced their states were leaving the group cited complaints about governance issues, chiefly that it mails newly eligible voters who have not registered ahead of federal elections. They also accused the group of opening itself up to a partisan influence.

Full Artifcle: G.O.P. States Abandon Group That Helps Fight Voter Fraud – The New York Times

National: Some Election Officials Refused to Certify Results. Few Were Held Accountable. | Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

A week and a half after last November’s vote, members of the Board of Elections in Surry County, North Carolina, gathered in a windowless room to certify the results. It was supposed to be a routine task, marking the end of a controversial season during which election deniers harassed and retaliated against the county’s elections director. Not long into the meeting, however, a staffer distributed a letter from two board members stating that they were refusing to certify. According to the letter, the two members had decided — “with regard for the sacred blood shed of both my Redeemer and His servants” and “past Patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice”— that they “must not call these election results credible and bow to the perversion of truth.” In their view, a federal judge who’d struck down a North Carolina voter ID law for discriminating against minorities had transformed the state’s election laws into “a grotesque and perverse sham.” Tim DeHaan, one of the two board members who signed the letter, explained at the meeting, “We feel the election was held according to the law that we have, but that the law is not right.” This argument failed to win over the three Democratic board members, according to a recording of the meeting. DeHaan eventually agreed to join the three on a technicality, and the board certified the election with a 4-1 vote. Jerry Forestieri, the Republican board secretary who also signed the letter, held out.

Full Article: Some Election Officials Refused to Certify Results. Few Were Held Accountable. — ProPublica

National: Trump Lawyer Admits to Falsehoods in 2020 Fraud Claims | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who represented President Donald J. Trump after his loss in the 2020 election, admitted in a sworn statement released on Wednesday that she had knowingly misrepresented the facts in several of her public claims that widespread voting fraud led to Mr. Trump’s defeat. The admissions by Ms. Ellis were part of an agreement to accept public censure and settle disciplinary measures brought against her by state bar officials in Colorado, her home state. Last year, the officials opened an investigation of Ms. Ellis after a complaint from the 65 Project, a bipartisan legal watchdog group. The group accused her of professional misconduct in her efforts to help Mr. Trump promote his claims of voting fraud and undertake “a concerted effort to overturn the legitimate 2020 presidential election results.” An earlier complaint about Ms. Ellis had been filed by a lawyer, Benjamin Woods. According to the sworn statement on Wednesday, some of Ms. Ellis’s lies about election fraud were made during appearances on Fox News, several of whose top hosts and executives were recently shown to have disparaged Mr. Trump’s fraud claims in private even though they supported them in public. The revelations about these discrepancies have emerged in a series of court filings by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-machine company that filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox for promoting a conspiracy theory about its role in the election results.

Full Article: Trump Lawyer Admits to Falsehoods in 2020 Fraud Claims – The New York Times

National: Election conspiracies fuel dispute over voter fraud system | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

A bipartisan effort among states to combat voter fraud has found itself in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories fueled by Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election and now faces an uncertain future. One state has dropped out, a second is in the process of doing so and a handful of other Republican-led states are deciding whether to stay. The aim of the Electronic Registration Information Center, a voluntary system known as ERIC, has been to help member states maintain accurate lists of registered voters by sharing data that allows officials to identify and remove people who have died or moved to other states. Reports also help states identify and ultimately prosecute people who vote in multiple states. In Maryland, state election officials have received reports through the system identifying some 66,000 potentially deceased voters and 778,000 people who may have moved out of state since 2013. In Georgia, the system is credited with providing data to remove nearly 100,000 voters no longer eligible to vote in the state. Yet the effort to improve election integrity and thwart voter fraud has become a target of suspicion among some Republicans after a series of online posts early last year questioning its funding and purpose.

Full Article: Election conspiracies fuel dispute over voter fraud system | AP News

National: Failing at polls, election deniers focus on state GOP posts | Nicholas Riccardi and Joey Cappelletti/Associated Press

In a basement event space in the Denver suburb of Parker, Tina Peters surveyed a crowd of Colorado Republicans last week and made an unusual pitch for why she should become chair of their beleaguered party: “There’s no way a jury of 12 people is going to put me in prison.” Peters was referring to her upcoming trial on seven felony charges related to her role in allegedly accessing confidential voting machine data while she was clerk in western Colorado’s Mesa County. The incident made her a hero to election conspiracy theorists but unpopular with all but her party’s hardest-core voters. Peters, who condemns the charges as politically motivated, finished second in last year’s GOP primary for secretary of state, Colorado’s top elections position. Now Peters has become part of a wave of election deniers who, unable to succeed at the polls, have targeted the one post — state party chair — that depends entirely on those hardest-core Republicans. Embracing election conspiracy theories was a political albatross for Republicans in states that weren’t completely red last year, with deniers losing every statewide bid in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But the movement has focused on GOP state party chairs — positions that usually are selected by only dedicated activists and have the power to influence the party’s presidential nominating contest and some aspects of election operations, such as recruiting poll watchers.

Full Article: Failing at polls, election deniers focus on state GOP posts | AP News

National: DHS to require election security spending in homeland security grants | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

States that receive funding this year from the Department of Homeland Security’s main grant programming will be required to spend at least 3% of their awards on safeguarding elections, according to documents published Monday. A notice of funding opportunity for the fiscal 2023 iteration of the Homeland Security Grant Program stipulates that states and localities must now commit at least that much toward a slew of election-security concerns, including cybersecurity, physical protections for voting equipment and polling locations and prevention of harassment and threats against election workers. Cybersecurity continues to be a primary area of concern for many statewide and local election officials and federal cybersecurity authorities. At a recent gathering of the National Association of Secretaries of State, Cynthia Kaiser, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said that while last year’s election cycle was again free of any compromise by foreign malicious actors, officials remain wary of potential threats, particularly “more significant Chinese cyber activity against your states in the coming year.” And as hacking worries have lingered, election administrators have also in recent years grappled with a rise of insider threats — often motivated by baseless conspiracy theories about voting technology — and risks of physical violence and targeted harassment.

Full Article: DHS to require election security spending in homeland security grants | StateScoop

National: Supreme Court requests more briefs in case over independent state legislature theory | Melissa Quinn/CBS

The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered North Carolina Republican leaders, the Biden administration and voting rights groups to file additional briefs in a closely watched elections case it heard in December, at the center of which is a theory that would grant state legislatures near-exclusive power to set rules for federal elections. In a brief order, the court called for the parties involved in the dispute and the Justice Department to file “supplemental letter briefs” addressing the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over the case, given that the North Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to rehear the redistricting dispute at its center. On the one side of the legal fight are North Carolina Republican legislative leaders, and on the other side are voting rights groups, North Carolina voters and state elections officials. The Justice Department backed voting rights groups in the case. The court set a deadline of March 20 for the additional filings to be submitted.

Full Article: Supreme Court requests more briefs in case over independent state legislature theory – CBS News

National: Murdoch Acknowledges Fox News Hosts Endorsed Election Fraud Falsehoods | Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson/The New York Times

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, and that he could have stopped them but didn’t, court documents released on Monday showed. “They endorsed,” Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, according to a legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” he added, while also disclosing that he was always dubious of Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud. Asked whether he doubted Mr. Trump, Mr. Murdoch responded: “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up.” At the same time, he rejected the accusation that Fox News as a whole had endorsed the stolen election narrative. “Not Fox,” he said. “No. Not Fox.” Mr. Murdoch’s remarks, which he made last month as part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, added to the evidence that Dominion has accumulated as it tries to prove its central allegation: The people running the country’s most popular news network knew Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway in a reckless pursuit of ratings and profit.

Full Article: Murdoch Acknowledges Fox News Hosts Endorsed Election Fraud Falsehoods – The New York Times

National: The Fight Against Election Lies Never Ends for Local Officials | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

State and local election officials across the country have begun pursuing strategies to combat election lies ahead of the 2024 presidential election: They’re meeting with community organizations, posting social media videos and even inviting skeptics to visit election offices in efforts to “pre-bunk” falsehoods they know are coming. The threat, officials said, has not gone away since former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was rigged and tainted by widespread voter fraud. The next presidential election is more than a year away, but it’s never too early to invest in spreading the truth about elections, officials said. Election officials are still facing harassment and violent threats, as some candidates who lost in the midterms continue to make false claims, and election conspiracies involving ballot drop boxes and election equipment saturate social media. Some state lawmakers, wanting to capitalize on this misinformation, are attempting to strengthen their power to potentially overturn the outcomes of future elections.

Full Article: The Fight Against Election Lies Never Ends for Local Officials

Arizona county that challenged 2022 election gives near full control to election skeptic recorder | Jen Fifield/Votebeat Arizona

Full Article: Arizona county that challenged 2022 election gives near full control to election skeptic recorder – Votebeat Arizona – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting

Elections in Cochise County will now be run almost entirely by Recorder David Stevens, an election skeptic who has said he does not fully trust all of his county’s election procedures and believes the county can and should move to hand-counting ballots. The Board of Supervisors for the southern Arizona county voted 2-1 on Tuesday afternoon to transfer the board’s election oversight to Stevens, giving up their statutorily-prescribed control over the appointment of the county’s elections director, Election Day procedures, ballot counting and presentation of election results. Republicans Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd voted yes, and Democrat Chairwoman Ann English voted no. The supervisors moved forward despite a warning from the attorney general’s office they received on Monday night, in which the solicitor general wrote that he had serious concerns about the legality of the drafted agreement. “If you are aware of legal authority for the draft Agreement, please promptly provide it to us,” Solicitor General Joshua Bendor wrote.

National: Top Cybersecurity Leaders Warn Local Election Officials to Boost Security Ahead of 2024 | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

Some of the nation’s top cybersecurity leaders are warning state and local election officials of ongoing foreign and domestic national security threats to election systems, urging them to upgrade their defenses ahead of next year’s presidential election. At separate conferences this month, federal officials warned gatherings of the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors that they must be vigilant in securing their state’s elections systems and building resilience to prevent attacks. Many election officials, overworked and frightened by personal threats, left the field following President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020. In light of that turnover, national security officials wanted to emphasize that local election officials can use federal resources to build defenses and educate front-line staff. Although foreign cyberattacks did not disrupt November’s midterm elections, China, Iran, North Korea and Russia remain threats to U.S. election systems, said Cynthia Kaiser, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division.

Full Article: Feds Push Local Election Officials to Boost Security Ahead of 2024 | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: Are Open Source Elections More Secure? | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology

The 2024 elections are coming, and jurisdictions need to ensure their election administration and voting system technology stays ahead of the latest cyber threats and mis- and disinformation. But they also need to ensure residents have convenient, accessible voting experiences. Some researchers and election officials believe open source tools are the solution. Federal security officials determined that the last election was secure, but cyber threats continue to evolve and election doubters have seized upon even simple equipment glitches and operational hiccups — like a printer mishap — to question results. Open source software projects publish their source code under licenses that allow anyone to review and use it. Typically, volunteers develop and propose code modifications, like bug fixes and new features, to be considered for incorporation into the software. This transparency into the code could dispel rumors, by showing doubters exactly how the processes work, according to Greg Miller, co-founder and chief operating officer of OSET Institute, an open source election technology research and development nonprofit. “Generally, in an open source project, more people have access to view the code, which can lead to the discovery of vulnerabilities in the code sooner,” San Francisco stated in a 2018 assessment on the feasibility of the city creating its own open source voting system.

Full Article: Are Open Source Elections More Secure? (Part 1)

National: Five election deniers who are controlling state voting systems | Zachary Roth/News From The States

Americans concerned about the health of democracy breathed a sigh of relief when a pack of election deniers in 2022 lost their attempts to control voting in key battleground states — making it unlikely that a rogue state election official could subvert the 2024 presidential election. Candidates for secretary of state who denied the result of the 2020 presidential race were defeated in all three swing states where they were on the ballot — Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada. And in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the chief election official, an election-denier gubernatorial candidate also lost. But while battleground states may have dodged a bullet in their secretary of state races, Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota, and Wyoming all elected deniers — defined as officials who refused to publicly acknowledge the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory or backed court cases that could overturn the election. And the governor of Florida, the nation’s third-largest state, appointed a secretary of state who has refused, when asked, to say Biden won the election.

Full Article: Five election deniers who are controlling state voting systems | News From The States

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

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

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

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