National

There is growing concern that election workers will leave their posts in droves following a 2020 presidential contest that saw an unprecedented rise in violent threats against administrators. Election workers had their homes broken into. Their private information was maliciously posted online. Some fled with their families into hiding. Others faced down armed crowds outside their workplaces and homes. And nearly nine months after Election Day, the threats persist. “It’s absolutely going to lead to an unprecedented exodus of a whole generation, I think, of professional election administrators,” David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told The Hill. Nearly 1 in 6 local election workers received threats of violence, and almost 1 in 3 said they feel unsafe because of their job, according to an April survey by the Brennan Center for Justice. Although no central database tracks departures among the nation’s estimated 8,000 local election workers, one expert told The Hill that there is now a “perfect storm of low morale and high turnover.”

Source: Threats of violence spark fear of election worker exodus | TheHill

National: Experts raise alarms over fundraising for GOP ballot reviews | Christina A. Cassidy and Marc Levy/Associated Press

The first donation came in early May, for $50, and with a message: “GOD BLESS THE USA!!” In just over a month, the crowdfunding page dedicated to bringing an Arizona-style review of the 2020 presidential election to Pennsylvania had collected $15,339 from 332 donors. Today, the effort has morphed into a full-fledged campaign to “Audit the Vote PA.” The website offers a six-week course on the Constitution and encourages supporters to become a “walking billboard for a forensic audit” by purchasing various hats and T-shirts. Still prominent is the “donate” button. But unlike the initial crowdfunding page, it’s hard to tell how much money the group is bringing in or how the money is being spent. Multiple requests for information sent to an email listed on the site received no replies. Efforts to expand Arizona’s controversial, Republican-led review of the 2020 election to other states are growing, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of victory and funded by a network of groups operating with little oversight. Election officials and experts have raised the alarm about these private fundraising efforts and what they see as a broader push by candidates to raise money off conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. “It has become profitable both politically and financially for people to lie about the election and denigrate American democracy,” said Matt Masterson, a top election security official during the Trump administration. “The sad part is that they are doing this by lying to voters and folks who have concerns about our democracy, and they are taking their money in pursuit of their lies.”

Full Article: Experts raise alarms over fundraising for GOP ballot reviews

National: New spotlight on secretaries of state as electoral battlegrounds | Reid Wilson/The Hill

Democrats and Republicans are preparing to pour millions of dollars into races for secretary of state in half the states next year amid a new recognition that those who oversee the electoral process can play pivotal roles in deciding an election’s outcome. The focus follows former President Trump’s pressure campaign on state leaders to overturn the results of last year’s election, and as Republican-controlled state legislatures advance and pass electoral reform bills that would limit access to absentee ballots, drop boxes and other avenues to voting. “These offices used to be kind of sleepy offices, they were personality contests and the people who ran for them were paper-pushers,” said Michael Adams (R), Kentucky’s secretary of state and the vice chair of the Republican Secretaries of State Committee, a group that will back GOP candidates. “We’re going to be uniquely a focus in a way that we never have been before. Our side is going to be prepared for that.” Candidates are already drawing battle lines in contests that will determine which party controls the electoral experience voters will face in the next presidential election.

Full Article: New spotlight on secretaries of state as electoral battlegrounds | TheHill

National: Donoghue notes show Trump pressing Rosen, Justice on election-fraud claims | Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

President Donald Trump pressed senior Justice Department officials in late 2020 to “just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me” and Republican lawmakers, according to stunning handwritten notes that illustrate how far the president was willing to go to prevent Joe Biden from taking office. The notes, taken by Justice Department official Richard Donoghue, were released to Congress this week and made public Friday — further evidence of the personal pressure campaign Trump waged as he sought to stay in the White House. In one Dec. 27 conversation, according to the written account, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department “can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election.” The president replied that he understood but wanted the agency to “just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” according to the notes written by Donoghue, a participant in the discussion. The documents show the extent to which senior Justice Department officials “were on a knife’s edge” in late 2020 as Trump sought to prevent Biden from becoming president, said David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official. “These notes reveal that a sitting president, defeated in a free and fair election, personally and repeatedly pressured Justice Department leaders to help him foment a coup in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power,” Laufman said. “And that should shock the conscience of every American, regardless of political persuasion.” He credited Rosen and Donoghue with devising “a mechanism to allow Trump to vent and spew his desired schemes to enlist their help to overturn the election without undertaking any course of action that would have facilitated that scheme.”

Full Article: Donoghue notes show Trump pressing Rosen, Justice on election-fraud claims – The Washington Post

National: Voting rights push reinvigorates as House Democrats tee up new bill next week | Nicholas Wu and Zach Montellaro/Politico

House Democrats are set to introduce new voting rights legislation named for the late Rep. John Lewis — a bill likely to include some key provisions of their more sweeping but stalled election reform proposal — by the end of next week, party leaders said Friday. They aim to ensure all congressional Democrats can get behind the legislation as the bigger voting bill faces a near-impossible path forward in the Senate, despite a high-profile White House meeting set for Friday to discuss a possible path forward. But even the Lewis-named bill faces an uphill climb in the upper chamber, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has questioned the need for the legislation. The Lewis-named bill, a top priority of the Congressional Black Caucus, aims to restore provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013. Democrats are revising the legislation in an effort to stave off future legal scrutiny and address an early-July Supreme Court decision that could limit the scope of forthcoming voting rights challenges. POLITICO first reported in June that the Black Caucus and Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), who chairs a key subpanel overseeing federal elections, pushed for the Lewis bill’s consideration to be moved up.

Full Article: Voting rights push reinvigorates as House Dems tee up new bill next week – POLITICO

National: The Big Money Behind the Big Lie | Jane Mayer/The New Yorker

It was tempting to dismiss the show unfolding inside the Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, as an unintended comedy. One night in June, a few hundred people gathered for the première of “The Deep Rig,” a film financed by the multimillionaire founder of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne, who is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump. Styled as a documentary, the movie asserts that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen by supporters of Joe Biden, including by Antifa members who chatted about their sinister plot on a conference call. The evening’s program featured live appearances by Byrne and a local QAnon conspiracist, BabyQ, who claimed to be receiving messages from his future self. They were joined by the film’s director, who had previously made an exposé contending that the real perpetrators of 9/11 were space aliens. But the event, for all its absurdities, had a dark surprise: “The Deep Rig” repeatedly quotes Doug Logan, the C.E.O. of Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based company that consults with clients on software security. In a voice-over, Logan warns, “If we don’t fix our election integrity now, we may no longer have a democracy.” He also suggests, without evidence, that members of the “deep state,” such as C.I.A. agents, have intentionally spread disinformation about the election. Although it wasn’t the first time that Logan had promoted what has come to be known as the Big Lie about the 2020 election—he had tweeted unsubstantiated claims that Trump had been victimized by voter fraud—the film offered stark confirmation of Logan’s entanglement in fringe conspiracies. Nevertheless, the president of the Arizona State Senate, Karen Fann, has put Logan’s company in charge of a “forensic audit”—an ongoing review of the state’s 2020 Presidential vote. It’s an unprecedented undertaking, with potentially explosive consequences for American democracy.

Source: The Big Money Behind the Big Lie | The New Yorker

National: Justice Department Warns States on Voting Laws and Election Audits | Katie Benner/The New York Times

The Justice Department on Wednesday sent another warning shot to Republican state legislatures that have initiated private audits of voting tabulations broadly viewed as efforts to cast doubt on the results of the presidential election. The department warned that auditors could face criminal and civil penalties if they destroy any records related to the election or intimidate voters in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and federal laws prohibiting voter intimidation. The admonishment came in election-related guidance documents issued as part of the department’s larger plan to protect access to the polls, announced by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in June. Another document released on Wednesday outlined federal laws on how ballots are cast and said that the department could scrutinize states that revert to prepandemic voting procedures, which may not have allowed as many people to vote early or by mail. The warning was the Justice Department’s latest effort to alert state lawmakers that their audits could run afoul of federal law. Department officials cautioned the Republican-led Arizona State Senate in May that its audit and recount of the November election in Maricopa County, widely seen as a partisan exercise to fuel grievances over Donald J. Trump’s election loss, may be in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

Full Article: Justice Dept. Warns States on Voting Laws and Election Audits – The New York Times

National: Department of Justice launches task force to address violent threats against election workers | John Kruzel/The Hill

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday launched a task force aimed at combating violent threats against election workers following a spike in such incidents tied to the 2020 presidential election. The announcement comes after the DOJ last month indicated that criminal law enforcement would play a key role in the Biden administration’s push to protect voting rights and safeguard elections. “A threat to any election official, worker, or volunteer is a threat to democracy,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who will lead the effort. “We will promptly and vigorously prosecute offenders to protect the rights of American voters, to punish those who engage in this criminal behavior, and to send the unmistakable message that such conduct will not be tolerated.” The Hill has reached out to the DOJ requesting a tally of ongoing investigations, charges filed and any convictions secured. An April survey of local election workers for the Brennan Center for Justice found that nearly 1 in 6 respondents received threats of violence, and almost 1 in 3 said they feel unsafe because of their job. The surge in violent threats, fueled in large part by former President Trump’s repeated lies about the 2020 election being stolen, has prompted growing alarm among Democratic lawmakers and voting rights advocates that election workers could leave their posts in droves.

Full Article: DOJ launches task force to address violent threats against election workers | TheHill

National: Justice Department warns states to follow federal law in election audits and voting changes | Pete Williams/NBC

The Department of Justice notified states Wednesday that they must follow federal law when conducting post-election audits or changing election procedures. “We are concerned that if they are going to conduct these so-called audits, they have to comply with federal law and can’t conduct them in a way that’s going to intimidate voters,” a senior department official said. In two guidance documents, the Justice Department also said states should not assume that reverting to pre-pandemic voting procedures provides them a safe harbor from potential legal challenges. “States should not conclude that because they ran a voting system in a certain way before the pandemic, they’re free to go back to it, even if doing so has a racially discriminatory impact or is motivated by racial reasons,” the official said.

Full Article: Justice Dept. warns states to follow federal law in election audits and voting changes

National: As Trump pushed for probes of 2020 election, he called acting Attorney General Rosen almost daily | Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett/The Washington Post

President Donald Trump called his acting attorney general nearly every day at the end of last year to alert him to claims of voter fraud or alleged improper vote counts in the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the conversations. The personal pressure campaign, which has not been previously reported, involved repeated phone calls to acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen in which Trump raised various allegations he had heard about and asked what the Justice Department was doing about the issue. The people familiar with the conversations spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal and political issues that are not yet public. Rosen told few people about the phone calls, even in his inner circle. But there are notes of some of the calls that were written by a top aide to Rosen, Richard Donoghue, who was present for some of the conversations, these people said. Donoghue’s notes could be turned over to Congress in a matter of days, they added, if Trump does not file papers in court seeking to block such a handover. In addition, both Rosen and Donoghue could be questioned about the conversations by congressional committees examining Trump’s actions in the days after the election. The Justice Department recently notified Rosen, Donoghue and others who were serving there during the end of Trump’s presidency that the agency would not seek to invoke executive privilege if they are asked about their contacts with the president during that period. That posture — which the letter to Rosen calls a departure from normal agency practice — means that individuals who are questioned by Congress would not have to say the conversations with the president were off-limits. They would be able to share details that give a firsthand account of Trump’s frantic attempts to overturn the 2020 election and involve the Justice Department in that effort.

Full Article: Trump called acting AG Jeffrey Rosen repeatedly over false election claims – The Washington Post

National: Republican Legislators Curb Authority of County, State Election Officials | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

Republican lawmakers this year passed an unprecedented bevy of bills targeting the authority of state and local election officials, a power grab that might allow partisan legislators to overturn future election results by claiming there was fraud. GOP legislators in at least 14 states have enacted 23 new laws that empower state officials to take control of county election boards, strip secretaries of state of their executive authority, or make local election officials criminally or financially liable for even technical errors, according to Protect Democracy, a left-leaning Washington, D.C.-based voting rights nonprofit. Secretaries of state and county election officials around the country, many of them Republican, resisted pressure from former President Donald Trump and his allies to decertify the November 2020 results and reject huge swaths of mail-in ballots to turn the presidential election in his favor. Eight months later, there is growing concern among those officials that these new laws may cut a path for successful efforts in the future. “Some elected officials didn’t like the results, so they’re trying to rewrite the rules,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. “This is a breakdown of what it means to live in the United States. It’s an attack on the democracy. It’s an attack on the idea that Americans get to choose their elected officials.” Trump, without evidence, continues to falsely assert that widespread fraud cost him reelection. Election security experts and top national security officials have said voter fraud is rare and that the last election was the most secure in U.S. history. Nevertheless, GOP lawmakers say their changes are necessary to protect the integrity of future elections.

Full Article: Republican Legislators Curb Authority of County, State Election Officials | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: House Democrats push leadership to vote on slimmed-down voting bill | Leigh Ann Caldwell/NBC

A group of House Democrats is launching an internal push on voting legislation, urging their leaders to focus on a few elements, according to a letter obtained by NBC News. A group of 34 House Democrats, all of whom were among the 49 elected in 2018 and many of whom face tough re-election campaigns, asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to bring up new votes, even if the bills wouldn’t be able to get enough support to become law. A group of Senate Democrats voiced optimism this week that they are nearing a deal on a voting bill that could be released as early as next week. The Democrats’ sweeping For the People Act has been stalled in the Senate since Senate Republicans blocked it last month. The signers of the House letter, led by moderate Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and joined by Texas Reps. Colin Allred and Veronica Escobar, want a new, tailored version of a voting bill to focus on “pre-empt[ing] harmful laws already passing in state houses across the country,” the letter says. They suggest reinstating protections under the Voting Rights Act and other proposals, such as same-day voter registration, voting by mail, 15 days of early voting and requirements for provisional ballots. They suggest eliminating proposals not directly related to ballot access, such as campaign finance.

Full Article: House Democrats push leadership to vote on slimmed-down voting bill

National: Native Americans are targets of voter suppression too | Frederick E. Hoxie and Dennis Aftergutt/heHill

“The land was ours before we were the land’s.” With those words, Robert Frost began his poem, “The Gift Outright,” at President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration. Had Frost been speaking to Native Americans, he might have said, “The land was yours before we were the land’s.” Today, we occupy one nation — “theirs” and “ours” — one people under a single national flag. Admittedly, native peoples were often recruited by force to participate in the United States. But they were also persuaded by leaders like Thomas Jefferson, who invited them to “unite yourselves with us, join our Great Councils and form one people with us and we shall all be Americans.” Sadly, foes of Native American rights undercut such promises — and democracy. These efforts endure. Montana Republicans’ new vote restriction legislation could easily suppress the Indian vote. The new measure forbids an individual from delivering another person’s absentee ballot to the polls. That delivery method is essential for home-bound voters in places without mail service — the situation on many Montana reservations and others across the country. And many elderly Indians living on reservations do not have cars. The Republicans controlling Montana’s legislature know that subtracting small numbers of votes can change election outcomes. In 2018, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester “won seven of eight Montana counties containing the headquarters of a federally recognized tribe and received 50.3 percent of the vote statewide.”

Source: Native Americans are targets of voter suppression too | TheHill

National: ‘A hit man sent them.’ Police at the Capitol recount the horrors of Jan. 6 as the inquiry begins. | Luke Broadwater and Nicholas Fandos/The New York Times

One officer described how rioters attempted to gouge out his eye and called him a traitor as they sought to invade the Capitol. Another told of being smashed in a doorway and nearly crushed amid a “medieval” battle with a pro-Trump mob as he heard guttural screams of pain from fellow officers. A third said he was beaten unconscious and stunned repeatedly with a Taser as he pleaded with his assailants, “I have kids.” A fourth relayed how he was called a racist slur over and over again by intruders wearing “Make America Great Again” garb. “All of them — all of them were telling us, ‘Trump sent us,’” Aquilino A. Gonell, a U.S. Capitol Police sergeant, said on Tuesday as he tearfully recounted the horrors of defending Congress on Jan. 6, testifying at the first hearing of a House select committee to investigate the attack. One by one, in excruciating detail, Sergeant Gonell and three other officers who faced off with the hordes that broke into the Capitol told Congress of the brutal violence, racism and hostility they suffered as a throng of angry rioters, acting in the name of President Donald J. Trump, beat, crushed and shocked them. More than six months after the assault, the accounts of the four uniformed officers — as precise as they were cinematic — cut through a fog of confusion, false equivalence and misdirection that Republicans have generated to try to insulate themselves politically and placate Mr. Trump.

Full Article: Capitol Police Officers Testify As Jan. 6 Inquiry Begins – The New York Times

National: ‘A medieval battle’: Officers reveal horrors they faced defending Capitol on Jan. 6 | Nicholas Wu/Politico

Four police officers who defended the Capitol from a Jan. 6 riot by Donald Trump supporters spoke out Tuesday during the first hearing of the select committee investigating the attack, sharing harrowing details of their physical and mental trauma. As the riot fades from public memory amid a new wave of Republican revisionism, select panel members aimed to cast the hearing — the first time Congress has heard publicly from law enforcement on the front lines of the response to Jan. 6 — as a vivid reminder of what happened. “Some people are trying to deny what happened — to whitewash it, to turn the insurrectionists into martyrs,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the panel, said in his opening statement. “But the whole world saw the reality of what happened on January 6. The hangman’s gallows sitting out there on our National Mall. The flag of that first failed and disgraced rebellion against our union, being paraded through the Capitol.” Thompson was followed by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), appointed to the panel alongside Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) after top House Republicans shunned the committee. Cheney said the panel should pursue every facet of the facts about Jan. 6 but also dig into “every minute of that day in the White House,” a subtle but unmistakable shot at the former president who she lost her GOP leadership spot for criticizing. “I have been a conservative Republican since 1984,” Cheney said, and has “disagreed sharply on policy and politics” with all Democratic members of the select panel, but “in the end we are one nation under God.”

Full Article: ‘A medieval battle’: Officers reveal horrors they faced defending Capitol on Jan. 6 – POLITICO

National: DOJ tells former Trump officials they can testify about efforts to overturn election | Pete Williams/NBC

The Department of Justice has told several former Trump administration officials that they can answer questions from Congress about efforts by President Donald Trump or DOJ officials to challenge, stop the counting or overturn the results of the presidential election. The letters are being sent to former officials who were asked to testify or answer further questions from the House Oversight and Senate Judiciary committees, according to Justice Department and congressional officials. The Senate committee, for example, has notified witnesses that it is looking into reports of “an alleged plot between then-President Donald Trump and then-acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division Jeffrey Bossert Clark to use the Department of Justice to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Full Article: DOJ tells former Trump officials they can testify about efforts to overturn election

National: Jan. 6 select committee to open investigation amid political chaos and controversy | Karoun Demirjian/The Washington Post

The House select committee envisioned to be the ultimate arbiter of what led President Donald Trump’s supporters to invade the U.S. Capitol in January is scheduled to begin its work this week under a cloud of controversy that threatens to compromise the investigation from the outset. Republican leaders, who declared a boycott after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week rejected two of their picks for the panel, have signaled to the GOP’s rank and file that there could be consequences for anyone who participates. As of Sunday, two have agreed to do so anyway, and Pelosi has hinted that there could be others. It’s unclear when a roster may be finalized, and Democrats running the committee have yet to articulate specific plans or timelines for their investigation. Nevertheless, on Tuesday, four police officers — two from the Capitol’s protection squad and two from D.C. police — are set to provide the first public testimony before the select committee. They are expected to testify about their experiences of both physical and verbal abuse on Jan. 6, as they tried to protect the Capitol from a swelling horde of demonstrators determined to stop Congress’s efforts to certify the 2020 electoral college results and declare Joe Biden the next president. Their stories will be familiar to those who have followed the riot’s fallout via related congressional investigations, ongoing federal court cases and Trump’s second impeachment trial. All four have given interviews about their experience. Some were even involved in lobbying members of Congress to create an independent commission to examine the attack — an effort that failed this spring, when the Senate fell shy of a filibuster-proof majority needed to impanel what was supposed to be bipartisan group of outside experts.

Full Article: Jan. 6 select committee to open investigation amid political chaos and controversy – The Washington Post

National: Republicans poised to rig the next election by gerrymandering electoral maps | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Ten years ago, Republicans pulled off what would later be described as “the most audacious political heist of modern times”. It wasn’t particularly complicated. Every 10 years, the US constitution requires states to redraw the maps for both congressional and state legislative seats. The constitution entrusts state lawmakers with the power to draw those districts. Looking at the political map in 2010, Republicans realized that by winning just a few state legislative seats in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, they could draw maps that would be in place for the next decade, distorting them to guarantee Republican control for years to come. Republicans executed the plan, called Project Redmap, nearly perfectly and took control of 20 legislative bodies, including ones in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Then, Republicans set to work drawing maps that cemented their control on power for the next decade. Working behind closed doors, they were brazen in their efforts. In Wisconsin, lawmakers signed secrecy agreements and then drew maps that were so rigged that Republicans could nearly hold on to a supermajority of seats with a minority of the vote. In Michigan, a Republican operative bragged about cramming “Dem garbage” into certain districts as they drew a congressional map that advantaged Republicans 9-5. In Ohio, GOP operatives worked secretly from a hotel room called “the bunker”, as they tweaked a congressional map that gave Republicans a 12-4 advantage. In North Carolina, a state lawmaker publicly said he was proposing a map that would elect 10 Republicans to Congress because he did not think it was possible to draw one that would elect 11.

Full Article: Republicans poised to rig the next election by gerrymandering electoral maps | US voting rights | The Guardian

National: One-third of states have passed restrictive voting laws this year | Reid Wilson/TheHill

One in every three states across the nation have passed new laws restricting access to the ballot in the wake of the 2020 elections, a torrid pace that showcases the national battle over election reform. Voting rights experts and advocates say they have never seen such an explosion of election overhauls: Legislatures in 18 states have passed 30 bills that would in some way curtail a voter’s access, according to a tally maintained by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a voting rights advocacy organization. “What is clear is that there is a wave of state laws that make it harder for Americans to vote, and in a really unprecedented manner. We haven’t seen the volume of these bills at all in a year,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, counsel to the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “This is reflecting a real concerted effort in states across the country to make it harder for Americans to vote, to carve Americans out of the electorate rather than politicians trying to win over those voters.” The overhauls vary widely by state. Six states have shortened the time period during which a voter can request a mail-in ballot. Four states have limited the number or availability of mail ballot drop boxes. Seven states have given election administrators more leeway or new requirements in purging inactive voters from the rolls. Six states have limited the help someone can offer a voter in returning their ballot. The measures have sharply divided the two parties: Every new restriction has been passed in states where Republicans own total control of the legislature. All but four of the states where new restrictions have passed are also run by Republican governors, with the exception of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada and Kansas.

Full Article: One-third of states have passed restrictive voting laws this year | TheHill

National: Personal threats, election lies and punishing new laws rattle election officials, raising fears of a mass exodus | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Maribeth Witzel-Behl had run elections in Madison, Wisconsin, for 15 years when the 2020 election arrived, bringing challenges like no other: a global pandemic, a crushing workload, lawsuits and a recount. Then the threats started. Wisconsin rules require the initials of the municipal clerk to appear on absentee ballots, but during a recount last November, people noticed her initials and seized on them as a sign that some kind of mischief must have occurred. An online discussion thread began weighing the weapons and ammunition to use against her, Witzel-Behl said. There was also discussion of lynching. So, when it came time to renew her employment contract, she struggled. “Every day for over a year, I just kept going back and forth,” the 47-year-old said recently. “Is it worth it? Is it time to do something else where there is less stress, more reasonable work hours and certainly no death threats?” Last month, Witzel-Behl decided to commit to another five years in her post. But her dilemma underscores the difficult choices election supervisors face as they increasingly become political targets in an era of widespread falsehoods about election fraud. Experts in the field fear a massive exodus of administrators that would change how elections are run — and threaten democracy itself. In all, more than 8,000 local officials oversee US elections, according to the Elections and Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. There’s no central tally of departures, but researchers see warning signs.

Full Article: Personal threats, election lies and punishing new laws rattle election officials, raising fears of a mass exodus – CNNPolitics

National: Eighteen states have enacted new laws that make it harder to vote | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Eighteen states have enacted 30 new laws that make it harder to vote, according to a new tally by the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice that tracks state activity through July 14. Among the most common provisions, according to Brennan’s researchers: Measures in seven states that either expand officials’ ability to purge voters from the registration rolls or put voters at risk at having their names improperly removed. Those laws were enacted in Arizona, Iowa, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas and Utah, the center found. Three of the 18 states with new voting restrictions have passed sweeping, omnibus bills that cover a broad range of voting activity: Florida, Georgia and Iowa. Republican attempts to pass an omnibus bill in Texas have been thwarted by Democratic state lawmakers who fled the state to deny Republican lawmakers from obtaining the quorum needed to conduct business. But their departure is likely to only delay action. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has promised to call more special sessions to advance Republicans’ election proposals. Brennan’s tally of individual statutes that restrict voting shows Arkansas and Montana leading the way, with four new laws apiece. Arizona was in second place with three new laws, including one that makes it harder to remain on the state’s absentee voting list.

Full Article: Voting rights: Eighteen states have enacted new laws that make it harder to vote – CNNPolitics

National: Sparse Voter-Fraud Cases Undercut Claims of Widespread Abuses | Blomberg Law

Prosecutors across the country found evidence of voter fraud compelling enough to take to court about 200 times since the November 2018 elections, according to a 50-state Bloomberg canvass of state officials. Republican and Democratic election and law enforcement officials contacted in 23 of the states were unable to point to any criminal voting fraud prosecutions since the November 2018 midterm elections. Despite the escalating claims from former President Donald Trump of rampant misdeeds, nearly all of the instances found by state officials were insignificant infractions during a timeframe when hundreds of millions of people participated in thousands of elections around the country. Yet, misinformation about the topic has become a driving force of political debate. Fabricated claims of fraud damages confidence in elections and can encourage partisans to demand that vote totals be changed to the outcome they want, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University Moritz College of Law professor who studies disputed elections. If losing political parties feel emboldened to pressure elected officials to undo fair outcomes, then “we have to worry about the capacity to count votes honestly,” he said in an interview. The danger, he said, is “not that there will be any infinitesimal amount of dishonest ballots cast. The real risk is that due to partisan motivations people won’t count them honestly.”

Full Article: Sparse Voter-Fraud Cases Undercut Claims of Widespread Abuses

National: Tabletop exercise tests election security | GCN

Federal, state, local and officials recently participated in tabletop election security exercise with private-sector partners, working through hypothetical scenarios that might impact election operations and sharing best practices around cyber and physical incident planning, preparedness, identification, response and recovery and information coordination. The fourth annual Tabletop the Vote event, hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in coordination with the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, drew more than 1,000 participants. Attendees learned how to plan, prepare and respond to various situations through modules that helped them identify their election processes’ strengths and weaknesses.

Full Article: Tabletop exercise tests election security — GCN

Editorial: Bad-faith election audits are sabotaging democracy across the nation | Matthew Germer and Gowri Ramachandran/The Hill

When Justice Louis Brandeis referred to the states as “laboratories of democracy” almost a century ago, he was looking at the way reforms can be tested in individual states, and the effective ones can spread throughout the country state-by-state. Unfortunately, when bad ideas spread in this fashion, they can be used to undercut democracy itself. Take, for example, the so-called “election audit” in Maricopa County, Arizona. While this partisan review of election results drags on, the effort to unearth nonexistent evidence of widespread voter fraud is spreading to other parts of the country. Under the guise of ensuring “election integrity,” Republican activists doggedly pursue new evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. They continue to contort science and logic on the taxpayer’s dime, even as we approach the Biden administration’s seventh month in office. This is madness. And it must stop. Yet recently, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) announced plans to conduct a Maricopa-style election review of his state’s 2020 election results, requesting access to ballots and election equipment from three counties, including Philadelphia. In fact, this would be the Senator’s second such partisan review this year. Just after the election, Mastriano hired Wake TSI, a company with no verifiable elections auditing experience, to review the ballots of Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Rather than proving election fraud, the investigation — funded by a group led by notorious Trump-affiliate Sidney Powell — found that the election was “well run.” Further, the so-called “auditors” mishandled the election equipment and taxpayers may now need to pay for new voting machines.

Full Article: Bad-faith election audits are sabotaging democracy across the nation | TheHill

National: The fight for voting rights intensifies as the nation marks one year since John Lewis died | Nicquel Terry Ellis/CNN

The fight for voting rights intensified this week with a Black woman lawmaker being arrested while protesting, Texas House Democrats fleeing the state to block Republicans from passing voter restrictions, and Black civil rights leaders blasting President Joe Biden for falling short of their demand to discuss ending the filibuster in his speech. On Friday, 20 Black women organizers met with Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss their concerns about the nationwide assault on voting rights and the urgent need for support from the White House. The leaders of several Black civil rights groups met with Biden last week about the same issues. It all comes as the nation marks the one-year anniversary of the death of John Lewis, an icon who fought tirelessly for equal voting rights throughout his life. Civil rights leaders say Lewis’ life should serve as an example of how to win as activists push Congress to pass federal legislation that would protect voting access and counter the growing list of state-level laws that restrict voters. Lewis marched in the streets and fought in Congress for voting rights, but he never lost his patience or his faith, civil rights leader Andrew Young said. “He struggled with the same process, the same issues, but he never gave up, he never gave in,” Young said. “He never got angry.” Lewis will be honored Saturday at a candlelight vigil at Black Lives Matter Plaza in DC. Texas House Democrats who traveled there earlier this week to protest voter restrictions in Texas and lobby for federal laws are expected to attend. Members of the Texas Democratic Legislature submitted a letter to Biden on Friday requesting a meeting to discuss the attack on voting rights in their state.

Full Article: The fight for voting rights intensifies as the nation marks one year since John Lewis died – CNN

National: Voting Rights: A Legal Battle Is Under Way Across the U.S. as Election-Related Litigation Surges | Laura Kusisto/Wall Street Journal

Voting laws passed in the wake of the 2020 election are facing a wave of court challenges, setting up a series of legal battles this year that could help reshape the rules around voting for years to come. At least two dozen states have passed laws this year that either expand voting rules or tighten them, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, a public-policy think tank. At least 30 lawsuits are aimed at laws in 11 states that opponents say restrict voting access with measures such as shortening the time period for mail-in and early voting, increasing verification requirements and placing limits on providing food or water to people waiting in line to vote. Mostly liberal groups have challenged these new bills on grounds that they violate aspects of the Voting Rights Act, the First and 14th Amendments and the Americans with Disabilities Act. In Georgia, which has become the epicenter of the fight, groups have filed nine lawsuits over legislation that was passed in late March, according to the Brennan Center. A lawsuit filed by the Justice Department last month against Georgia added firepower to the legal battle over the new voting laws.

Full Article: Voting Rights: A Legal Battle Is Under Way Across the U.S. as Election-Related Litigation Surges – WSJ

National: Why resolving election disputes in the U.S. is so much harder than in other developed democracies. | Joseph Klaver/The Washington Post

Former president Donald Trump and several Republican-led state legislatures continue to try to discredit the 2020 presidential election. Although many countries find it challenging to resolve electoral disputes, doing so is much more difficult and uncertain in the United States than elsewhere. That’s for several reasons. Congress has an unusual role and functions under a vague federal law. What’s more, the United States has a complicated web of local, state and national laws and practices that could make fairly adjudicating future disputes even more difficult. Here’s what you need to know about the rules of the game, here and abroad, for resolving contested elections. Formal disputes over election outcomes are common around the globe. Various academic projects regularly recognize numerous countries’ election systems as better-run than those in the United States — and even these regularly find their election results challenged. For example, Germany handled 275 disputes challenging the results of its 2017 legislative election, encompassing both complaints from one of its 299 electoral districts and complaints about the hundreds of seats distributed using proportional representation. In 2018 and 2019, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal of Costa Rica adjudicated 738 disputes about municipal and national elections. And in 2017, after the French National Assembly elections, voters and candidates filed hundreds of disputes, and the Constitutional Council invalidated the results of eight races. But French election results are often canceled and so were not unexpected. The process is orderly; that’s probably part of the reason the V-Dem Institute regards France’s electoral democracy more highly than that of the United States.

Full Article: Why resolving election disputes in the U.S. is so much harder than in other developed democracies. – The Washington Post

National: Here is the latest baseless voter fraud allegation, brought to you by Trump and Tucker Carlson | Philip Bump/The Washington Post