National

American democracy is under attack—from cybercriminals and foreign adversaries seeking to undermine trust in our elections. As members and support staff of The National Task Force on Election Crises, we have seen firsthand how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has helped build a crucial line of defense, protecting our election infrastructure from cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and physical threats. Yet, at a time when these threats are escalating, the federal government is pulling back its support, putting the integrity of our elections at greater risk. CISA was established to help secure critical infrastructure, including elections, against cyber threats and foreign interference. Its work has been instrumental in ensuring election officials on all levels have the resources, intelligence, and technical support needed to combat an increasingly sophisticated landscape of threats. It is deeply troubling that the current administration appears to be dismantling key efforts to combat election threats that we cannot afford to lose. Read Article

National: Trump Is Trying to Gain More Power Over Elections. Is His Effort Legal? | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

President Trump pushed on Tuesday to hand the executive branch unprecedented influence over how federal elections are run, signing a far-reaching and legally dubious order to change U.S. voting rules. The executive order, which seeks to require proof of citizenship to register to vote as well as the return of all mail ballots by Election Day, is an attempt to upend centuries of settled election law and federal-state relations. The Constitution gives the president no explicit authority to regulate elections. Instead, it gives states the power to set the “times, places and manner” of elections, leaving them to decide the rules, oversee voting and try to prevent fraud. Congress can also pass election laws or override state legislation, as it did with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Read Article

National: Trump’s executive order on elections is far-reaching. But will it actually stick? | Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking broad changes to how elections are run in the U.S. is vast in scope and holds the potential to reorder the voting landscape across the country, even as it faces almost certain litigation. He wants to require voters to show proof that they are U.S. citizens before they can register for federal elections, count only mail or absentee ballots received by Election Day, set new rules for voting equipment and prohibit non-U.S. citizens from being able to donate in certain elections. A basic question underlying the sweeping actions he signed Tuesday: Can he do it, given that the Constitution gives wide leeway to the states to develop their own election procedures? Read Article

National: Trump’s voting rights order targets anybody who’s ‘not white,’ advocates say | Trevor Hughes Deborah Barfield Berry/USA Today

President Donald Trump’s new executive order aimed at tightening up election administration has triggered a wave of concern among voting-rights advocates who say it will likely make casting a ballot harder for millions of American citizens. Liberal-leaning advocates are also concerned Trump’s order gives the federal government unusually broad power to dictate how elections are managed, a process that’s typically run by county-level officials and overseen by secretaries of state. Conservative activists welcomed Trump’s order as a necessary step to ensuring the sanctity of American elections, though studies have consistently shown that very few non-citizens cast illegal ballots. Read Article

National: Supreme Court confronts another challenge to the Voting Rights Act | Nina Totenberg/NPR

Race and politics were front and center at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday as the justices took up a voting rights case involving Louisiana’s congressional redistricting after the 2020 Census. The case is nearly identical to a case the Supreme Court ruled on two years ago from Alabama, though the outcome could make it more difficult for minorities to prevail in redistricting cases. Louisiana’s population is roughly 30% Black, but after the 2020 Census, the state legislature drew new congressional district lines that provided for only one majority-Black district in a state that has six congressional seats. That’s the same thing Alabama did after the Census, only to be slapped down by the Supreme Court two years ago when a narrow court majority ruled that the state had illegally diluted the Black vote in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Read Article

National: Republican National Committee asks states for details about their voter files, part of a larger effort to question elections | Christine Fernando and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The Republican National Committee on Tuesday launched a massive effort to probe voter registration lists nationwide amid a broader strategy to seize on voter rolls to question the integrity of elections. RNC sent public records requests asking for documents related to voter roll list maintenance to the top election officials in 48 states and the District of Columbia, asserting that the public should know how states are removing ineligible people from voter rolls, including dead people and non-citizens. The move came the same day President Donald Trump took sweeping executive action seeking major changes to U.S. elections, including requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. It also coincides with common misinformation narratives about non-citizens and dead people voting, cases of which are exceedingly rare and are largely caught and prosecuted when it does occur. Read Article

National: Trump Anti-Voting Order Draws Furious Pushback | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

After President Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday that experts said could potentially disenfranchise millions, Democratic election officials and voting rights advocates swiftly vowed to fight it. “This is not a statute. This is an edict by fiat from the executive branch, and so every piece of it can be challenged through the regular judicial process,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said in an interview with Democracy Docket. Fontes called Trump’s order a “cheap substitute” for the SAVE Act — the GOP’s nationwide proof of citizenship bill — that he doesn’t think will pass through the Senate, but also offered a particularly nefarious reading of its true purpose: setting up a way to cancel the 2026 midterm elections. Read Article

Trump wants to ‘go back to paper ballots.’ Most of America already uses them. | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

President Donald Trump recently repeated his calls for exclusively using paper ballots, lauding them before the first cabinet meeting of his second term. For the sake of honest elections, he said, “We have to go back to paper ballots.” In reality, the overwhelming majority of the country already uses paper ballots. Most states use one of two methods: either voters hand-mark a paper ballot that is then read by a machine, or they use a ballot-marking device that prints a summary of their choices on a sheet of paper for verification before it’s fed into a tabulator. Read Article

National: Federal cuts to information-sharing groups may damage nation’s security posture, warn officials | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Current and former government officials told StateScoop they’re concerned by cuts at two information sharing organizations widely used by state and local governments to protect IT and election systems from cyberattacks. Pamela Smith, the president and chief executive of Verified Voting, argued that given the current threat environment, support for cybersecurity services should be expanding, not shrinking. “First it was cuts at CISA because they didn’t want to have them to have anything to do with mis- and disinformation,” she said. “But if you’ve cut funding for something like EI-ISAC, it goes to the question of whether elections are still considered critical infrastructure. If the improvement of security and resilience of critical infrastructure on which Americans rely is no longer a goal of the department literally named Homeland Security, then they should explain that. I think the American public deserves to know.” Read Article

National: Democrats push Justice Department to keep Election Threats Task Force amid rollbacks Edward Graham/Nextgov/FCW

Senate Democrats are sounding the alarm about the future of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force in the wake of the Trump administration’s moves to curtail or disband other federal election security initiatives. In a March 17 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, 31 senators — led by Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill. — called for the DOJ to continue the work of the task force, which was launched following the 2020 presidential election to investigate threats of violence made against election officials and workers. Since its creation, the group has probed thousands of extremist messages and acts targeting officials and has successfully taken enforcement actions against individuals who sought to harm election administrators. The letter’s signatories warned that “these threats have not only continued but escalated” since the task force’s establishment. Read Article

National: What’s next for cybersecurity, election info sharing? | Chris Teale/Route Fifty

Information sharing on cybersecurity and election threats may become a whole lot harder after the Department of Homeland Security ended some federal funding for two partnerships used by thousands of state and local governments. A spokesperson for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed it terminated a $10 million partnership with the Center for Internet Security for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, and the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. That figure is less than half of the funding CISA provides, the spokesperson noted. The spokesperson said MS-ISAC and EI-ISAC, which allow state, local, tribal and territorial governments to share threat information and best practices while providing tools and other services for free or at a reduced cost, “no longer effectuates department priorities.” Read Article

US suspends some efforts to counter Russian sabotage as Trump moves closer to Putin | Erin Banco and Mari Saito/Reuters

Several U.S. national security agencies have halted work on a coordinated effort to counter Russian sabotage, disinformation and cyberattacks, easing pressure on Moscow as the Trump Administration pushes Russia to end its war in Ukraine. Former President Joe Biden last year ordered his national security team to establish working groups to monitor the issue amid warnings from U.S. intelligence that Russia was escalating a shadow war against Western nations. However, since Trump took office on Jan. 20 much of the work has come to a standstill, according to eleven current and former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss classified matters. Reuters is the first to report on the full extent of the Biden administration effort and how multiple different U.S. agencies have since paused their work on the issue. Read Article

National: NIST’s vulnerability database logjam is still growing despite attempts to clear it | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

Despite goals set last year by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to process a backlog of unanalyzed cybersecurity vulnerabilities, the agency said it’s not expecting a slowdown anytime soon. The National Vulnerability Database — NIST’s cornerstone repository for researchers who use its contents and measuring tools to assess the dangers of cyber exploits — has been backed up with unanalyzed vulnerabilities since February last year. The scientific standards agency was projected to clear the logjam this month based on rates observed this past summer, Nextgov/FCW previously reported. But NIST said Wednesday that vulnerability submissions increased 32% in 2024 and prior processing rates from spring and early summer last year are no longer sufficient to keep up with incoming submissions. The backlog is still growing as a result. Read Article

National: Top DC prosecutor, who promoted false 2020 voter fraud claims, forms ‘election accountability’ unit | Alanna Durkin Richer and Ali Swenson/Associated Press

The top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital, who promoted President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, has formed a “special unit” to investigate election offenses, according to an email sent to lawyers in his office on Monday. Martin, who is awaiting Senate confirmation to permanently take the position, was involved in the “Stop the Steal” movement, which was animated by lies about fraud after Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Martin also served on the board of a nonprofit that raised money for Capitol riot defendants and their families and legally represented at least three defendants in Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot criminal cases, including a Proud Boys member who pleaded guilty to felony charges. Read Article

National: Trump’s Plan to Control Elections Is Coming Into Focus | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has many times outlined his extreme vision for U.S. elections. In the first cabinet meeting of his second administration, he falsely asserted that U.S. elections are “extremely dishonest” and called for restrictive voting reforms, like eliminating early voting. During a meeting with governors, Trump called on state leaders to pass laws eliminating mail and electronic voting while falsely claiming they are sources of election fraud. Now, Trump and his allies are acting on his words. In recent weeks, the administration has pulled back on efforts to fight racial discrimination in voting, weakened protections against foreign interference in our voting systems, and potentially laid the groundwork to increase Trump’s personal control over independent agencies, among other steps. Read Article

‘Bloody Sunday’ 60th anniversary marked in Selma with remembrances and concerns about the future | Kim Chandler and Sifiyah Riddle/Associated Press

On Sunday, Selma, Alabama marked the 60th anniversary of the clash that became known as Bloody Sunday. The attack shocked the nation and galvanized support for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The annual commemoration pays homage to those who fought to secure voting rights for Black Americans and brought calls to recommit to the fight for equality. For those gathered in Selma, the celebration comes amid concerns about new voting restrictions and the Trump administration’s effort to remake federal agencies they said helped make America a democracy for all. Speaking at the pulpit of the city’s historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened in Selma changed the nation. He said the 60th anniversary comes at a time when there is “trouble all around” and some “want to whitewash our history.” But he said like the marchers of Bloody Sunday, they must keep going. Read Arfticle

National: Election officials face limited options as federal security resources fall away | Jessica Huseman andJen Fifield/Votebeat

A nonprofit agency that suddenly lost some of the federal funds it used to provide crucial election security support to states gave more details about the effect of the cuts in an email sent to state government officials on Wednesday. In a memo the Center for Internet Security said it is evaluating the impact of the funding cuts and will continue providing many services as it does so, though it didn’t address how long that would continue. Those services include help responding to cybersecurity incidents such as hacking and ransomware attempts, and coordinated sharing of data about threats that can help election officials assess whether something is an isolated event or part of a larger attack. CIS promised regular updates as it works “to determine how best to support these critical services without federal funding.” Several states have passed laws in recent years banning private funding or support for election offices, limiting their ability to seek outside help. The CIS memo appears to acknowledge that some state and local officials might need to withdraw from services because of those laws. Read Article

National: The Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center loses federal support for threat intelligence, incident response | Colin Wood/StateScoop

The Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which has supported the cybersecurity operations of state and local governments since its creation in 2004, has lost some of its federal funding. On Wednesday, a CISA spokesperson clarified that some of the MS-ISAC’s work will continue, and that the $10 million in defunded activities is “less than half” of the funding it provides CIS. State and local government officials have for years praised the resources provided by both organizations, which included intelligence briefings on emerging cybersecurity threats, notices on the latest security patches, incident response support, penetration testing and hundreds of Albert sensors, devices that help election administrators detect anomalous network activity. Read Article

National: CISA halts support for states on election security, U.S. official confirms | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

The federal government has halted election security activities and ended funding for the system that alerts state officials of election security threats across state lines, a representative of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told state election officials last week. The March 3 email confirmed for secretaries of state and state election directors what they had read in news reports and noticed happening in practice: that President Donald Trump’s administration has suspended or dismantled federal support for election security, at least for now. Read Article

National: Trump administration halts funding for two cybersecurity efforts | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The Trump administration has cut millions of dollars in federal funding from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, has ended about $10 million in annual funding to the nonprofit Center for Internet Security, a CISA spokesperson said in an email Monday. It’s the latest move by Trump administration officials to rein in the federal government’s role in election security, which has prompted concerns about an erosion of guardrails to prevent foreign meddling in U.S. elections. Read Article

National: DOGE axes CISA ‘red team’ staffers amid ongoing federal cuts | Carly Page/TechCrunch

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fired more than a hundred employees working for the U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency CISA, including “red team” staffers, two people affected by the layoffs told TechCrunch. The people, who asked not to be named, said affected employees were axed immediately when their network access was revoked with no prior warning. The layoffs, which happened in late February and early March, are the latest round of staff cuts to hit the federal cybersecurity agency since the start of the Trump administration. Read Article

National: Newsmax agreed to pay Smartmatic $40M in settlement with the voting machine company | Zoë Richards/NBC

Newsmax agreed to pay Smartmatic $40 million as part of a settlement last year following the voting technology company’s election defamation lawsuit against the right-wing news outlet, according to a new regulatory filing. The settlement, reached in September, included a cash payment and an option to purchase stock in Newsmax, the media company said in its filing. Newsmax said payments totaling $20 million have already been made, with the rest coming before July. “Management believes the settlement with Smartmatic will, subject to the payment of all consideration in a timely manner, eliminate future legal expenses the Company would have expected to bear related to this suit, which could have included costly appellate legal actions and other matters,” Newsmax wrote. Read Article

Opinion: Trump Is Still Trying to Undermine Elections | Sue Halpern/The New Yorker

So far, it’s a tossup which of the Trump Administration’s wrecking balls will prove most destructive: the one that accelerates global warming, the one that abandons our allies, the one that torches the economy, or the one that compromises public health. Yet all of these are distractions from the President’s long-standing pet project: decimating free and fair elections. It may be that we have become so accustomed to hearing Donald Trump’s false claims about rigged elections and corrupt election officials that we have become inured to them, but in the past seven weeks he has pursued a renewed multilateral program to suppress the vote, curtail the franchise, undermine election security, eliminate protections from foreign interference, and neuter the independent oversight of election administration. And, as with the rest of Trump’s calamitous agenda, he is doing it in full view of the American people. Read Article

National: “We Are Effectively Flying Blind:” Election Officials Say Cuts to CISA Are Affecting Operations | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

Ever since President Donald Trump’s victory in November, election officials at every level and voting rights advocates have worried that he would gut the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — the little-known federal agency responsible for the nation’s cybersecurity and protecting critical infrastructure from digital threats. And now that those cuts have come to fruition, election officials are already experiencing the loss of crucial CISA resources they said are integral to voting security. In the seven years since CISA’s creation, it’s become a crucial agency to help secure elections from foreign and domestic cybersecurity threats. Among the agency’s routine functions are sending cybersecurity experts to local election offices to recommend upgrades and best practices, training election officials to spot foreign interference and connecting offices with law enforcement agencies — a crucial practice as violence and threats to election officials significantly grew in the past decade. Read Article

Can VotingWorks’ publicly viewable software boost faith in voting machines? | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

At a recent gathering of election officials in Washington, D.C., a technology vendor called VotingWorks demonstrated the systems that it has submitted for federal certification this year. The group says its mission is to make voting equipment everyone can trust “through transparency, simplicity, and demonstrable security.” It’s the first technology company to seek federal certification for a voting system relying on publicly available code. “I think it’s a big deal,” said Pamela Smith, CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections, who sees the election technology industry moving toward more transparency. “I think it’s a good step forward.” Read Article

National: Trump’s federal shake-up sparks concerns among election security experts | Julia Mueller and Caroline Vakil/The Hill

Election experts are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s wide-reaching changes to the federal bureaucracy, which is impacting the cybersecurity agency responsible for protecting the nation’s critical cyber and physical infrastructure. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has paused its election security work while it conducts a review of all election security related funding, products, activities, and personnel. “Faced with limited resources, state and local election officials across the country rely on CISA’s expertise,” nonpartisan election watchdog Verified Voting’s president and CEO Pamela Smith said in a statement calling on DHS to keep CISA’s “essential” election security work in place. “Any reduction in these critical resources could make our elections more vulnerable and leave officials with fewer tools to protect our democratic process. Election security is national security — something every American has a stake in.” Read Article

National: Election security aid on the chopping block, rattling local officials | Kevin Collier/NBC

State and local election officials who have grown to rely on the federal government’s cybersecurity assistance fear that the Trump administration may permanently block that aid by Thursday. Such funding, which began in President Donald Trump’s first term and is funnelled through the country’s top domestic security body, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), stopped in February. Those programs include free on-site and remote security testing of election machines and the websites that report election results, and ad hoc “situation rooms” where election officials can virtually gather and discuss security tactics in real time. Read Article

National: Trump Bid to Take Over Postal Service Could Threaten Mail Voting | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

President Donald Trump may soon attempt to absorb the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), an independent agency, into his administration by issuing an executive order that reportedly would dissolve the service’s leadership. The order could allow the Trump administration to make mail voting — which was used by tens of millions of voters last year — more difficult. Trump has repeatedly said he’d like to end the practice, falsely claiming it allows for widespread fraud. “Taking over the Postal Service just kind of opens up a whole Pandora’s box of mischief,” said Barbara Smith Warner, the executive director of National Vote at Home Institute, a nonprofit which works to increase voters’ access to and confidence in mail voting. Read Article

National: Judge finds Mike Lindell in contempt for failing to turn over documents in Smartmatic defamation case | Laura Romero and Soo Rin Kim/ABC

A federal judge in Minnesota has found MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell in contempt of court for failing to provide discovery and financial documents in the defamation case brought by voting machine company Smartmatic. Smartmatic sued Lindell for defamation in 2022, alleging that he lied about the company’s role in the 2020 presidential election for his own financial gain. In a filing on Thursday, Judge Jeffrey M. Bryan said Lindell failed to produce analytics data for his company’s website and financial records to show Lindell’s financial condition for the years 2022 and 2023. Read Articles

National: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves | Elisabeth Bumiller/The New York Times