National

National: Election Officials Steel Themselves for Threats as Midterm Season Gears Up | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

Forrest Lehman, the elections director in Pennsylvania’s Lycoming County, was brought up short earlier this year by a poll worker’s question: What should I do if I get a death threat? “I never would have had a question like that before 2020,” said Mr. Lehman, expressing relief that he knew of no such threats in his largely rural county. “I don’t expect that to happen,” he added, “but it’s illustrative that it’s on their mind now.” Long accustomed to working out of the spotlight, a number of election administrators say threats and harassment have become a constant undertone to their work since the contentious aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, when then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, and his allies began spreading unsupported claims of widespread fraud after his defeat. Offices in some jurisdictions have implemented new security measures as they prepare for the 2022 midterms, the biggest test of the country’s voting system since then and a crucial proving ground for what could be sharp challenges surrounding the 2024 presidential vote. Primary contests are already in full swing, including high-profile races in Pennsylvania and North Carolina on Tuesday.

Full Article: Election Officials Steel Themselves for Threats as Midterm Season Gears Up – WSJ

National: A pro-Trump film suggests its data are so accurate, it solved a murder. That’s false | Tom Dreisbach/ NPR

A conservative “election integrity” group called True The Vote has made multiple misleading or false claims about its work, NPR has found, including the suggestion that they helped solve the murder of an eight-year-old girl in Atlanta. The claims appear in a new pro-Trump film called “2,000 Mules,” which purports to have “smoking gun” evidence of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election in the form of digital device location tracking data. Former president Donald Trump has embraced the film, which has gained popularity on the political right, along with the claim about the murder case. Trump’s official spokesperson, Liz Harrington, said True The Vote “solved a murder of a young little girl in Atlanta. I mean, they are heroes.” Fans of the film have echoed that message on social media. That claim is false. Authorities in Georgia arrested and secured indictments against two suspects in the murder of Secoriea Turner in August 2021. In response to NPR’s inquiries, True The Vote acknowledged it had contacted law enforcement more than two months later, meaning it played no role in those arrests or indictments. It’s not the only false or misleading claim that True The Vote and Dinesh D’Souza, the director behind “2,000 Mules,” have made, NPR found. Fact-checkers from the Associated Press and PolitiFact have examined the central voter fraud allegations in “2,000 Mules” and found that the film makes many dubious claims. A Washington Post analysis summarized the film’s allegations as a leap of faith – “we’re just asked to trust that True the Vote found what it says it found.”

Full Article: Dinesh D’Souza film ‘2000 Mules’ Falsely Implies Data Solved A Murder : NPR

National: In key battlegrounds, races for secretary of state take on new weight | Simon Montlake/CSMonitor

Most voters can’t name the secretary of state where they live. Traditionally a low-profile office, it doesn’t often merit much in the way of media coverage or fundraising when on the ballot, as it is in 27 states this fall. In Georgia, however, GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has become a household name. His now-famous refusal to “find” 11,780 more votes for former President Donald Trump – and his insistence on the accuracy of the 2020 results in his state – made him both a hero to Democrats and a villain to many Trump supporters. “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated,” President Trump told Mr. Raffensperger in a recorded phone call that was later made public, after he’d recertified Joe Biden’s victory. Now Mr. Raffensperger is facing a tough four-way GOP primary on May 24, in a contest that will test Republican voters’ concerns about “election integrity” and the salience of Mr. Trump’s disproven claims of widespread fraud. Whoever wins the primary, which polls suggest could go to a runoff, will face a Democratic opponent in November’s midterms. Candidates hewing to Mr. Trump’s “election fraud” narrative are running for secretary of state in 17 of the 27 states where the office will be on the ballot in the fall, according to a nonpartisan watchdog group, the States United Democracy Center. And Trump-endorsed candidates are running in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona, all states where Mr. Trump contested the 2020 results.

Full Article: In key battlegrounds, races for secretary of state take on new weight – CSMonitor.com

National: Klobuchar, Warren introduce bill to provide $20 billion for election administration | The Hill

Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to provide $20 billion in federal funding to help states and localities to administer elections, train poll workers and eliminate barriers to voting. The legislation, which is co-sponsored by nine other Senate Democrats, would secure election infrastructure by upgrading voting equipment and registration systems, help recruit and train nonpartisan election officials and poll workers, protect election officials from threats and increase ballot access for minorities, voters with disabilities and those who live overseas or on Indian lands. “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, but in recent years we have seen a barrage of threats seeking to undermine our elections,” said Klobuchar. “It is critical that we respond to these threats head-on by ensuring that state and local governments have the resources needed to strengthen the administration of our elections, protect election officials on the frontlines, and provide all eligible voters with the opportunity to make their voices heard,” she said. Klobuchar called on the Biden administration to prioritize election security funding in his 2023 budget proposal, something the administration later did.

Full Article: Klobuchar, Warren introduce bill to provide $20 billion for election administration | The Hill

Election officials in Arizona, other battleground states, stand up against restrictive voting laws | KiraLerner/AZ Mirror

When Georgia legislators pushed through a restrictive voting bill during the 2021 session, Bartow County election supervisor Joseph Kirk said he felt frustrated and sidelined. Lawmakers largely didn’t take election officials’ views into account, he said, and what resulted was a law that included a number of provisions that he said election officials believe are “to the detriment of voters.”So when Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature tried to pass another voting bill in the session this year that included provisions he didn’t agree with, Kirk made sure to speak out. “Whatever I could do, I did do,” said Kirk, who serves as the treasurer of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials. Across the country, election officials this legislative season made their voices heard in hearings and through appeals to lawmakers, urging them not to enact voting laws that they saw as unfeasible or unnecessary, or that would ultimately make their jobs more difficult. In crucial battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, and Florida, they succeeded in defeating legislation that would have hurt voting access or the integrity of elections. In Georgia, Kirk disagreed with a portion of the 2022 bill that would have changed chain-of-custody requirements for ballots and would have required what he saw as unnecessary security precautions, so he spoke to his lawmakers and in front of committees and sent in written statements.

Full Article: Election officials in Arizona, other battleground states, stand up against restrictive voting laws

Paper Ballots Helped Secure the 2020 Election — What Will 2022 Look Like? | Derek Tisler and urquoise Baker/Brennan Center for Justice

Even with unpre­ced­en­ted chal­lenges and historic turnout in 2020, elec­tion offi­cials across the coun­try admin­istered an elec­tion that the federal govern­ment’s cyber­se­cur­ity agency called the “most secure in Amer­ican history.” Many factors led to this result, from close coordin­a­tion and prepar­a­tion between federal, state, and local agen­cies, to the expan­sion of voting options that reduced stress on elec­tion systems. But one of the most signi­fic­ant was the rapid trans­ition in recent years to voting on paper ballots, a trend that is set to continue into the 2022 and 2024 elec­tions. Experts widely recog­nize paper ballots as one of the most import­ant secur­ity meas­ures that states can adopt. When selec­tions are recor­ded on paper, voters can easily verify that their ballot accur­ately reflects their choices. Paper ballots also facil­it­ate post-elec­tion audits, where elec­tion work­ers can check the paper records against elec­tronic vote totals to confirm that voting machines are work­ing as inten­ded. For example, by repla­cing paper­less voting machines before the 2020 elec­tion, Geor­gia was able to conduct a hand-count of every ballot cast, confirm­ing the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion outcome and dispelling conspir­acy theor­ies about the state’s voting machines. This would not have been possible in Geor­gia as recently as 2018.

Full Article: Paper Ballots Helped Secure the 2020 Election — What Will 2022 Look Like? | Brennan Center for Justice

National: U.S. groups urge social media companies to fight ‘Big Lie,” election disinformation | Reuters

Social media companies including Facebook (FB.O), Twitter , YouTube and TikTok must act now to blunt the effect of false information – including Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that his 2020 defeat was the result of fraud – in this year’s U.S. midterm congressional elections, rights groups said on Thursday. Social media platforms backed away from policies designed to fight election disinformation after the 2020 presidential race won by Democratic President Joe Biden, more than 100 advocacy groups, led by Common Cause, said in a letter to social media executives. A surge of disinformation then led to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Trump and that disinformation continues to multiply, they said, citing research and public reporting. “High-profile disinformation spreaders and other bad actors are continuing to use social media platforms to disseminate messages that undermine trust in elections,” read a letter sent to chief executives and signed by more than 100 groups lead by Common Cause.

Full Article: U.S. groups urge social media companies to fight ‘Big Lie,” election disinformation | Reuters

National: Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republicans, Including McCarthy | Luke Broadwater and Emily Cochrane/The New York Times

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued subpoenas on Thursday to five Republican members of Congress, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, a significant escalation as it digs deeper into the role Republicans played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The panel’s move was an extraordinary step in the annals of congressional investigations — a committee targeting sitting lawmakers, including a top party leader, who have refused to cooperate in a major inquiry into the largest attack on the Capitol in centuries. It reflected the belief among investigators that a group of Republican members of Congress loyal to former President Donald J. Trump had played crucial roles in the events that led to the assault on their own institution, and may have hidden what they know about Mr. Trump’s intentions and actions before, during and after the attack. Mr. McCarthy, the Californian who is in line to be speaker if his party wins the House majority in November, had a heated phone call with Mr. Trump during the riot, in which he implored the president to call off the mob invading the Capitol in his name. When Mr. Trump declined, according to Representative Jaime Herrera Buetler, a Washington Republican who has said Mr. McCarthy recounted the exchange to her, Mr. Trump sided with the rioters, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

Full Article: Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republicans, Including McCarthy – The New York Times

States struggle to add paper trails to voting machines | Eric Geller/Politico

In a midterm election season where many Republicans are running for Congress on the false premise that the last presidential election was stolen, voters in eight states still vote on machines that don’t keep a hack-proof record of who they voted for — and progress on replacing those machines has been slow. After the extremely close 2000 election, which showed the pitfalls of relying on paper punchcard ballots, many jurisdictions turned to paperless electronic voting machines. But cybersecurity experts objected, warning that paperless machines undermined election security by making it impossible to reliably audit the results. Russia’s interference in the 2016 election galvanized a move back to paper records, albeit with new electronic machines that print out ballots. Since then, seven states have replaced paperless machines with devices that security experts consider safer.

Full Article: States struggle to add paper trails to voting machines

National: Evidence mounts of GOP involvement in Trump election schemes | Farnoush Amiri/Associated Press

Rioters who smashed their way into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, succeeded — at least temporarily — in delaying the certification of Joe Biden’s election to the White House. Hours before, Rep. Jim Jordan had been trying to achieve the same thing. Texting with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a close ally and friend, at nearly midnight on Jan. 5, Jordan offered a legal rationale for what President Donald Trump was publicly demanding — that Vice President Mike Pence, in his ceremonial role presiding over the electoral count, somehow assert the authority to reject electors from Biden-won states. Pence “should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all,” Jordan wrote. “I have pushed for this,” Meadows replied. “Not sure it is going to happen.” The text exchange, in an April 22 court filing from the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot, is in a batch of startling evidence that shows the deep involvement of some House Republicans in Trump’s desperate attempt to stay in power. A review of the evidence finds new details about how, long before the attack on the Capitol unfolded, several GOP lawmakers were participating directly in Trump’s campaign to reverse the results of a free and fair election.

Full Article: Evidence mounts of GOP involvement in Trump election schemes | AP News

National: Republican election-deniers elevate races for secretary of state | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Add one more group of contests to the white-hot races for Congress and governor that will dominate this year’s midterm elections: secretaries of state. Former President Donald Trump’s attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election and his subsequent endorsements of candidates for state election offices who are sympathetic to his view have elevated those races to top-tier status. At stake, say Democrats and others concerned about fair elections, is nothing less than American democracy. “If they win the general election, we’ve got real problems on our hands,” said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who has pushed back against the false claims made by Trump and his allies about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. “This is an effort to replace the people who oversee these races – to change the rules to make the results come out the way they want them to.” The primary season begins in force in the coming week with elections in Ohio and Indiana. Ohio voters will decide which candidate will emerge from the Republican primary for secretary of state, with the winner favored to eventually win the office in the GOP-dominated state.

Full Article: Republican election-deniers elevate races for secretary of state

National: DHS watchdog says Trump’s agency appears to have altered report on Russian interference in 2020 election in part because of politics | Priscilla Alvarez and Zachary Cohen/CNN

Former President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security delayed and altered an intelligence report related to Russian interference in the 2020 election, making changes that “appear to be based in part on political considerations,” according to a newly released watchdog report. The April 26 Homeland Security inspector general’s assessment provides a damning look at the way DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis dealt with intelligence related to Russia’s efforts to interfere in the US, stating the department had deviated from its standard procedures in modifying assessments related to Moscow’s targeting of the 2020 presidential election. The conclusion that Trump’s appointee appeared to have tried to downplay Russian meddling in a key intelligence report is the latest example of how his aides managed his aversion to any information about how Russia might be helping his election prospects. According to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Trump officials tried to avoid the topic during meetings and at hearings, because he would become enraged and upset when Russian meddling came up. The US intelligence community announced during the 2020 campaign that Russia was actively meddling in the election to weaken then-candidate Joe Biden. At the time, Trump downplayed those findings and promoted false claims about Biden that aligned with Russia’s disinformation efforts. The IG report addresses past suspicions that Trump appointees distorted some intelligence reports to foster a more Trump-friendly narrative.

Full Article: DHS watchdog says Trump’s agency appears to have altered report on Russian interference in 2020 election in part because of politics – CNNPolitics

National: NSA, Cyber Command tap new election security leaders | Martin Matishak/The Record

U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency have named the newest leaders of a joint election security task force that will play a central role in keeping the 2022 midterm elections free of foreign interference. The task force, originally dubbed the Russia Small Group, was established in 2018 by Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who helms both Cyber Command and the NSA, to protect the 2018 midterms from meddling by Moscow. It was rechristened the Election Security Group (ESG) ahead of the 2020 presidential election, and its mandate was tweaked to include threats from countries including China, North Korea, and Iran, as well as non-state actors. “The band is already back together,” Nakasone said Wednesday at Vanderbilt University’s Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats, noting the group’s scope had been changed because “we have broader issues than just one nation.” “We’re less than 200 days before our nation goes to vote for our midterm elections,” Nakasone added. “And I assure you that we are ready, we will be ready, going forward.”

Full Article: NSA, Cyber Command tap new election security leaders – The Record by Recorded Future

National: Democrats urge Biden to use presidential powers, ‘whatever means necessary’ to protect voters | Deborah Barfield Berry USA Today

With federal voting rights legislation stalled in Congress, Democratic lawmakers and civil rights activists are calling on the Biden administration to issue a new executive order aimed at better protecting voters against restrictive state election laws. Democrats and activists are increasingly disappointed with the lack of progress on passing sweeping voter protection legislation. And with high-stakes midterms elections looming, there’s also growing concern about ballot access for voters of color — historically a key voting bloc for Democrats. Rep. Joyce Beatty, , an Ohio Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the Biden administration should “do whatever is necessary, whether that’s an executive order, whether that is us figuring out a legislative approach that we can get through.” White House officials said they haven’t ruled out any avenues. “Everything’s on the table,’’ Cedric Richmond,  senior advisor to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement told USA TODAY. He added: “Where there’s constitutional things we can do you can look for us to do them.”

Full Article: Voting rights: Biden urged to consider executive order to protect voters

Trump allies breach U.S. voting systems in search of ‘evidence’ | Alexander Ulmer and Nathan Layne/Reuters

Eighteen months after Donald Trump lost the White House, loyal supporters continue to falsely assert that compromised balloting machines across America robbed him of the 2020 election. To stand up that bogus claim, some Trump die-hards are taking the law into their own hands – by attempting, with some success, to compromise the voting systems themselves. Previously unreported surveillance video captured one such effort in August in the rural Colorado town of Kiowa. Footage obtained by Reuters through a public-records request shows Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, the county’s top election official, fiddling with cables and typing on his phone as he copied computer drives containing sensitive voting information. Schroeder, a Republican, later testified that he was receiving instructions on how to copy the system’s data from a retired Air Force colonel and political activist bent on proving Trump lost because of fraud. That day, Aug. 26, Schroeder made a “forensic image of everything on the election server,” according to his testimony, and later gave the cloned hard drives to two lawyers. Schroeder is now under investigation for possible violation of election laws by the Colorado secretary of state, which has also sued him seeking the return of the data. Schroeder is defying that state demand and has refused to identify one of the lawyers who took possession of the hard drives. The other is a private attorney who works with an activist backed by Mike Lindell, the pillow mogul and election conspiracy theorist.

Full Article: Trump allies breach U.S. voting systems in search of ‘evidence’

National: Talk of martial law, Insurrection Act draws notice of Jan. 6 committee | Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger/The Washington Post

Full Article: Talk of martial law, Insurrection Act draws notice of Jan. 6 committee – The Washington Post

National: Trump’s lies helped prompt one critical election reform | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Full Article: Trump’s lies helped prompt one critical election reform – The Washington Post

National: GAO: EAC Can Decide on State Funding for Election Officials’ Security | Lisbeth Perez/MeriTalk

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has been given full discretion to decide if states can allocate funds from the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) to provide security services for state or local election officials, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In December 2021, the EAC reached out to GAO to determine whether states may use certain grant funds made available to them under HAVA to provide “physical security services and social media threat monitoring” in connection with election activities. HAVA authorizes the use of grant funds for states to improve the administration of elections for Federal office. However, the law does not explicitly authorize nor prohibit the use of funds for security services. GAO stated in its decision that “if not otherwise specified in the law, an expense is authorized where it bears a reasonable, logical relationship to the purpose of the appropriation to be charged.” “Here, a decision to allow the use of grant funds for the physical security services and social media threat monitoring would be within EAC’s legitimate range of discretion,” the report says. “Congress vested in EAC the authority to administer the HAVA grants [but] also vested in EAC the authority to determine whether a particular grant expenditure helps ‘improv[e] the administration of elections for Federal office.’”

Full Article: GAO: EAC Can Decide on State Funding for Election Officials’ Security – MeriTalk

National: Digital Response launches new election program | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

The U.S. Digital Response, the nonprofit civic-tech group that sprung up during the COVID-19 pandemic to assist local governments with online service delivery, is adding a new program focused on developing tools to help election officials. The effort will see the organization’s engineers and managers work with county- and local-level election administrators on using open-source technologies to build products like poll-location search tools, election information websites and applications that help officials manage poll workers. “What we specialize in is simple tools that make an impact that are quick,” Priya Garg, one of the heads of the organization’s new elections program, told StateScoop. U.S. Digital Response has offered its assistance to election administrators since its founding in 2020, when it developed poll-locator tools for tribal voters in Arizona and built an app for Harris County, Texas, to recruit and organize poll workers in the country’s third-biggest voting jurisdiction. The beefed-up elections program is the product of a major grant USDR recently received from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit group of election-minded technologists that received $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, in 2020. U.S. Digital Response leaders declined to disclose the value of the grant, only saying that it was a “multi-million-dollar” award capable of sustaining the group’s work for several years.

Full Article: U.S. Digital Response launches new election program

National: Cyber agency director says election security a top priority ahead of midterms | The Hill

Jen Easterly, the head of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told lawmakers on Thursday that election security is a top priority for her agency, as it anticipates Russian interference in the upcoming midterm elections. Easterly, who was testifying before the House Committee on Appropriations on the agency’s budget request, said midterm election security “is obviously one of our top priorities,” adding CISA was focused on guiding states and localities to combat disinformation campaigns — a tactic the Russians are expected to deploy. “We are here to help and make sure that all state and local election directors have the resources that they need to ensure the integrity of their election security,” Easterly said. Easterly was responding to a question from Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), who asked how the agency plans to defend the integrity of the election given previous attempts from Russians to penetrate voter registration databases and steal personal data.

Full Article: Cyber agency director says election security a top priority ahead of midterms | The Hill

National: Mark Meadows’ 2,319 text messages reveal Trump’s inner circle communications before and after January 6 | Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stuart/CNN

Full Article: Mark Meadows’ 2,319 text messages reveal Trump’s inner circle communications before and after January 6 – CNNPolitics

National: GOP lawmakers were deeply involved in Trump plans to overturn election, new evidence suggests | Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu/Politico

Republican members of Congress were heavily involved in calls and meetings with former President Donald Trump and his top aides as they devised a strategy to overturn the election in December 2020, according to new evidence filed in federal court late Friday. Deposition excerpts filed by the Jan 6. select committee — part of an effort to force former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to appear for an interview — suggest that some of Trump’s top allies in Congress were frequently present in meetings where a handful of strategies to prevent then-President-elect Joe Biden from taking office were discussed, including efforts to replace the leadership of the Justice Department with figures who would sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election. Lawmakers who attended meetings, in person or by phone, included Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and numerous members of the House Freedom Caucus, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows who provided key testimony about the conversations and meetings Meadows had in December 2020.

Full Article: GOP lawmakers were deeply involved in Trump plans to overturn election, new evidence suggests – POLITICO

National: New Details Underscore House G.O.P. Role in Jan. 6 Planning | Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Full Article: New Details Underscore House G.O.P. Role in Jan. 6 Planning – The New York Times

National: In election misinformation fight, ‘2020 changed everything’ | Amanda Seitz/Associated Press

Beth Bowers grew up in the 1960s and 1970s with parents who marched in protests, wrote letters to members of Congress and voted in elections big and small. Her father, a World War II veteran, and her mother, an educational counselor, did not use social media sites in their lifetimes. But Bowers is sure they would be disheartened to see how easily falsehoods about the U.S. elections are disseminated online to millions and millions of people. That’s why the Evanston, Illinois, mom spends a few hours each week scouring Facebook groups for conspiracy theories or lies as part of a nationwide volunteer effort to debunk misinformation about voting. “The good thing about this work is, it’d be so easy to become incredibly cynical and hopeless, but I think we feel like this is something we can do and make a difference,” Bowers, 59, said in a phone interview. As voters ready for hundreds of elections of local and national importance this year, officials and voting rights advocates are bracing for a repeat of the misinformation that overwhelmed the 2020 presidential race and seeded distrust about the legitimacy of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. It culminated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by angry supporters of then-President Donald Trump who believed his lies that the election was stolen from him.

Full Article: In election misinformation fight, ‘2020 changed everything’ | AP News

Russian Cyberattack Could Capitalize on Election Doubts | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

As the war in Ukraine continues, the United States is warning that Russia and aligned criminal groups may launch cyberattacks against critical American infrastructure, potentially including election systems ahead of November’s midterms. Election officials and cybersecurity experts worry that a disruption from Russia or other foreign actors may capitalize on plummeting confidence in election integrity among American voters, fueled by myths and disinformation that have saturated the country. Even with new protections, heightened awareness and information-sharing across all levels of government, widespread skepticism about election integrity makes a potential Russian cyberattack more concerning, said Noah Praetz, cofounder of the Elections Group, which consults with state and local election officials. An attack on a key jurisdiction, such as a county in a swing state, could put enough doubt in voters’ minds that the results can’t be trusted, even if votes weren’t changed in the attack, he said. The consequences of a cyber event, even if backup plans work, are probably worse than they were four years ago because confidence in elections is down,” said Praetz, who previously ran elections in Cook County, Illinois. “It’s a pretty precarious situation for our country right now.”

Full Article: Russian Cyberattack Could Capitalize on Election Doubts | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: Democrats ask officials in Florida, Arizona, Texas and Ohio details about election disinformation | Jacqueline Alemany/The Washington Post

Full Article: Democrats ask officials in Florida, Arizona, Texas and Ohio details about election disinformation – The Washington Post

National: Trump Allies Continue Legal Drive to Erase His Loss, Stoking Election Doubts | Maggie Haberman, Alexandra Berzon and Michael S. Schmidt/The New York Times

A group of President Donald J. Trump’s allies and associates spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election based on his lie that he was the true winner. Now, some of the same confidants who tried and failed to invalidate the results based on a set of bogus legal theories are pushing an even wilder sequel: that by “decertifying” the 2020 vote in key states, the outcome can still be reversed. In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Mr. Trump — including the lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. Some of those allies are casting their work as a precursor to reinstating the former president. The efforts have failed to change any statewide outcomes or uncover mass election fraud. Legal experts dismiss them as preposterous, noting that there is no plausible scenario under the Constitution for returning Mr. Trump to office.

Full Article: Trump Allies Are Still Feeding the False 2020 Election Narrative – The New York Times

National: Trump-Aligned Sheriffs Target Election Officials | Jessica Pishko/Bolts

Christopher Schmaling, the sheriff of Racine County, Wisconsin, told the reporters gathered in his office on October 28, 2021 that he’d called a press conference “so that our citizens can better understand how the election law was broken.” Standing at a podium with large screens behind him blaring “ELECTION INTEGRITY”, Schmaling warned that the allegations might be difficult to follow at first. “This isn’t your typical criminal investigation, it’s complex—to be quite frank, it’s a bit challenging to understand at first,” he told the room full of reporters. But Schmaling promised that by the end of his office’s presentation, the public would “see firsthand that the election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered by the members of the W.E.C., the Wisconsin Elections Commission.” Schmaling and Michael Luell, a sergeant in the sheriff’s office who had investigated a complaint about election malfeasance, spent more than an hour running reporters through a PowerPoint presentation, outlining what they claimed was devastating proof that state election commissioners had committed a crime. At first, the press event, which the sheriff’s office streamed live on its Facebook page, sounded more like a civics lesson than a criminal case, as Schmaling explained the makeup of the state’s election commission—six commissioners serving staggered five year terms, appointed by either legislative leaders or the governor.

Full Article: Trump-Aligned Sheriffs Target Election Officials | Bolts

National: Election Officials Face Their Biggest Threat Yet — Jail Time | Ryan Teague Beckwith/Bloomberg

Over the last two years, local elections officials across the U.S. have faced a deadly pandemic, shortages of funding and workers, false claims of election fraud and even death threats. Now they could face prison, too. Under a spate of laws proposed or passed in at least 10 states, elections administrators could see criminal charges and penalties that include thousands of dollars in fines or even prison time for technical infractions of election statutes. In Arizona, a new law makes it a felony, punishable by up to 2 1/2 years in prison, followed by loss of voting rights or gun ownership, for an elections official to send a mail-in ballot to any voter who has not requested one. It’s now a felony in Kentucky, with a possible five-year prison term, for an official to accept a donation or “anything of value” to assist with an election. In Florida, elections officials could face up to $25,000 in fines if they leave a ballot drop box unsupervised. Broad new laws in Iowa and Texas make it a felony, with prison terms of up to five years in Iowa and up to two years in Texas, for elections officials who fail to follow a number of election procedures, while similar bills are pending in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Full Article: Republican Voter Laws Threaten U.S. Election Officials With Jail Time – Bloomberg

National: Voting rights for disabled people under attack from new election laws | Deborah Barfield Berry and Rick Rouan/USA Today

Teri Saltzman said she took her time to look over her ballot at home in Pflugerville, Texas, during the state’s recent primary, using specialized glasses that magnified the small print. But Saltzman, who is legally blind, still missed the lines on the envelope flap that required her to fill in identification numbers needed for election officials to count her vote. “To this day, I am unsure that my vote was counted,” said Saltzman, 59. The addition of the lines was among the election changes lawmakers approved last year in Texas – one of several states where advocates say new laws could have an outsized impact on voters with disabilities. They worry that stricter identification requirements, restrictions on voting by mail, reducing the number of drop boxes and other changes could hurt access for people with disabilities in local and midterm elections. “We’re not usually the target of voter suppression. Often people with disabilities just get caught in the crosshairs,’’ said Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager for the National Disability Rights Network. Concerns about the fallout from those new laws come after turnout among voters with disabilities surged in the 2020 election. As election officials took steps to make the election safer during the pandemic, they also made it easier for people with disabilities to vote.

Full Article: Voting rights for disabled people under attack from new election laws