National: Right-Wing Leaders Mobilize Corps of Election Activists | Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

On the eve of a primary runoff election in June, a Republican candidate for secretary of state of South Carolina sent out a message to his supporters. “For all of you on the team tomorrow observing the polls, Good Hunting,” Keith Blandford, a candidate who promoted the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump, wrote on the social media app Telegram. “You know what you are looking for. We have the enemy on their back foot, press the attack.” The next day, activists fanned out to polling places in Charleston, S.C., demanding to inspect election equipment and to take photographs and video. When election workers denied their requests, some returned with police officers to file reports about broken or missing seals on the machines, according to emails from local officials to the state election commission. There were no broken or missing seals. After Mr. Blandford lost, the activists posted online a list of more than 60 “anomalies” they observed, enough to have changed the outcome of races, they said. They called the operation a “pilot program.” The episode is one of many that have election officials on alert as voting begins for midterm elections, the biggest test of the American election system since Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 results launched an assault on the democratic process.

Full Article: Right-Wing Leaders Mobilize Corps of Election Activists – The New York Times

National: Voting and vote-counting concerns grow ahead of midterms | Rick Klein, Averi Harper, and Alisa Wiersema/ABC

Almost 2 million people have already voted in this year’s general election — a level of participation reached earlier than ever in a midterm cycle, according to the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project. With 22 days — and what may be more than 100 million more ballots — to go before Nov. 8, the pace of voting is set to pick up even as questions grow around almost every aspect of voting: access to ballots, manpower running elections, the pace and integrity of vote counting and, of course, whether results will be accepted by losing Republicans up and down the ballot. Early voting starts Monday in Georgia, a state at the center of so many of 2020’s political storms and where additional voting restrictions have been imposed since then. Monday night’s debate between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams is likely to surface questions about 2022 in a high-profile way. Other key states, meanwhile, are already warning that vote counting could take days after Election Day to complete — and that if that happens, it doesn’t indicate there’s automatically something to mistrust about the results.

Full Article: Voting and vote-counting concerns grow ahead of midterms: The Note – ABC News

National: Poll Shows Voters See Democracy in Peril, but Saving It Isn’t a Priority | Nick Corasaniti, Michael C. Bender, Ruth Igielnik and Kristen Bayrakdarian/The New York Times

Voters overwhelmingly believe American democracy is under threat, but seem remarkably apathetic about that danger, with few calling it the nation’s most pressing problem, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. In fact, more than a third of independent voters and a smaller but noteworthy contingent of Democrats said they were open to supporting candidates who reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as they assigned greater urgency to their concerns about the economy than to fears about the fate of the country’s political system. The doubts about elections that have infected American politics since the 2020 contest show every sign of persisting well into the future, the poll suggested: Twenty-eight percent of all voters, including 41 percent of Republicans, said they had little to no faith in the accuracy of this year’s midterm elections. Political disagreements appear to be seeping into the fabric of everyday life. Fourteen percent of voters said political views revealed a lot about whether someone is a good person, while 34 percent said it revealed a little. Nearly one in five said political disagreements had hurt relationships with friends or family. “I do agree that the biggest threat is survival of our democracy, but it’s the divisiveness that is creating this threat,” said Ben Johnson, 33, a filmmaker from New Orleans and a Democrat. “It feels like on both sides, people aren’t agreeing on facts anymore. We can’t meet in the middle if we can’t agree on simple facts. You’re not going to be able to move forward and continue as a country if you can’t agree on facts.”

Full Article: Poll Shows Voters See Democracy in Peril, but Saving It Isn’t a Priority – The New York Times

How wireless modems in voting machines could endanger the midterms | Eric Geller/Politico

There’s a largely overlooked hacking target that could help those who want to sow doubt about vote tallies in the November midterms: cellular modems that transmit unofficial election-night results. The modems, which send vote data from precincts to central offices using cellphone networks, help election officials satisfy the public’s demand for rapid results. But putting any networking connection on an election system opens up new ways to attack it that don’t require physical access to machines, and security experts say the risks aren’t worth the rewards. “You’re counting on a bunch of infrastructure to deliver data back and forth, and it’s well within the capabilities of nation-state hackers to break into that infrastructure,” said Dan Wallach, a Rice University computer science professor who has repeatedly exposed flaws in election equipment. While tampering with unofficial results wouldn’t actually corrupt an election’s outcome, it could fuel misinformation about both the accuracy of the vote tally and the integrity of the process. That’s a particular concern since the 2020 election, in which then-President Donald Trump seized on large discrepancies between early returns and final vote counts to falsely allege widespread fraud.

Full Article: How wireless modems in voting machines could endanger the midterms – POLITICO

Hand-counting ballots would cause ‘downright chaos,’ experts say | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Cochise County officials are considering hand-counting all ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters this election, a radical measure for a county of its size that election experts say is also problematic and unnecessary. A hand count would produce inaccurate results, confuse voters, and consume extensive time, money, and labor, said C.Jay Coles, senior policy and advocacy associate at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for the responsible use of technology in elections. The county elections office estimated a hand count in Cochise would take 2,500 total hours of work. Election researchers and consultants generally advise against hand-counting ballots, because machine counts are proven to be more accurate and efficient. “It’s such an opportunity for confusion, and, really, downright chaos,” Coles said. The Republican-leaning county on the southern Arizona border is the latest to propose such an idea, part of a larger trend fueled by distrust of vote-counting machines that emerged after the 2020 election, when conspiracy theorists spread unfounded claims that the machines had been programmed to switch votes in favor of Joe Biden. In neighboring Nevada, a state judge recently ruled that Nye County could move forward with a similar plan that had been challenged by a progressive advocacy group, ruling that the state law doesn’t prohibit hand-counting ballots. Efforts to force hand counts in New Hampshire slowed down election results last month for the primary. And after the election, in El Paso County, Colorado, losing candidates called for their races to be recounted by hand, which is not allowed under state law. Less than one percent of registered voters in America live in jurisdictions where ballots are hand-counted, and many of them are small towns or precincts, according to research conducted by Verified Voting.

Full Article: Hand-counting ballots would cause ‘downright chaos,’ experts say

National: America First Secretary of State Coalition boosts Trump-aligned election deniers vying to oversee elections | Keith Newell/OpenSecrets

The America First Secretary of State Coalition, a coalition of Republican candidates touting disproven claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, raised more than $300,000 through a Nevada-based PAC called Conservatives for Election Integrity in an effort to exert control over election administration in battleground states, an OpenSecrets analysis of Nevada campaign finance records found. The coalition aims to elect candidates who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and will be positioned to influence the outcome of future elections, including the 2024 presidential race, according to the group’s founder, Jim Marchant, the GOP nominee in Nevada’s secretary of state race. The proliferation of misinformation about voting fraud and conspiracy theories have thrust secretary of state races into the forefront of American politics this year. Candidates for secretary of state have reported  raising over $51.8 million in the 2022 election cycle as of Oct. 13. The 12 election-denying candidates who received the GOP nomination for secretary of state have raised $6.2 million, an OpenSecrets analysis of campaign finance data shows. Marchant touted the coalition at a Trump rally in Minden, Nev., on Saturday, telling the crowd, “When my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re gonna fix the whole country, and President Trump is gonna be president again in 2024.” “All we have to do is influence it a little bit, and we win,” Marchant said in a September interview with Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Trump. “And we negate whatever ability they have to manipulate the system.”

Full Article: America First Secretary of State Coalition boosts Trump-aligned election deniers vying to oversee elections • OpenSecrets

National: Election workers in battleground states faced onslaught of malicious emails, researchers say | AJ Vicens/Cyberscoop

County election workers in Arizona and Pennsylvania were inundated with a “surge” in malicious emails ahead of those states’ August primaries, security researchers said Wednesday, highlighting the ongoing threat facing election officials weeks before contentious midterms. The malicious activity, which included password theft attempts and efforts to deliver malware via poisoned links, is particularly concerning considering that county election workers are often “the least sophisticated actors in terms of cybersecurity postures, but the most critical in actual electoral engagement with voters,” researchers with cybersecurity firm Trellix’s Advanced Research Center said Wednesday. Voting officials and poll workers nationwide have become much more security aware since the 2016 Russian election interference operations, but malicious activities remain a concern for all election workers who “have become targets of threats and intimidation in the physical realm,” the researchers said. Poll workers around the country have faced a growing number of threats ahead of the 2020 election and in the months after. Now, officials in multiple states are reporting new pressures ahead of the midterms. Some state officials have reported a deluge of records requests from “self-styled fraud investigators,” The New York Times reported recently, while others have been offered training designed to prevent violence through de-escalation, CNN reported Sept. 30.

Full Article: Election workers in battleground states faced onslaught of malicious emails, researchers say

National: Election offices tighten security for Nov. 8 midterms | Andy Sullivan and Julia Harte/Reuters

When voters in Jefferson County, Colorado, cast their ballots in the Nov. 8 midterm election, they will see security guards stationed outside the busiest polling centers. At an election office in Flagstaff, Arizona, voters will encounter bulletproof glass and need to press a buzzer to enter. In Tallahassee, Florida, election workers will count ballots in a building that has been newly toughened with walls made of the super-strong fiber Kevlar. Spurred by a deluge of threats and intimidating behavior by conspiracy theorists and others upset over former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat, some election officials across the United States are fortifying their operations as they ramp up for another divisive election. A Reuters survey of 30 election offices found that 15 have enhanced security in various ways, from installing panic buttons to hiring extra security guards to holding active-shooter and de-escalation training. Reuters focused on offices in battleground states and offices that had openly expressed a need for security improvements, for example in congressional testimony. While the survey does not speak to how widespread such moves are, it does show how election officials are responding to threats in parts of the country where the election will likely be decided.

Full Article: U.S. election offices tighten security for Nov. 8 midterms | Reuters

National: ‘Stop the steal’ supporters train thousands of U.S. poll observers | Ned Parker, Linda So and Moira Warburton/Reuters

Inside the El Paso County clerk’s office in Colorado, where officials had gathered in July to recount votes in a Republican nominating contest for this year’s midterms, dozens of angry election watchers pounded on the windows, at times yelling at workers and recording them with cell phones. In the hallway a group prayed for “evil to descend” on the “election team,” said the county’s Republican clerk Chuck Broerman. “It’s astonishing to me to hear something like that.” The election watchers had showed up to observe a five-day recount of votes for four Republican candidates who claimed the primary was fraudulent in a contest where they faced other Republicans. Protesters had mobilized outside the clerk’s office, holding signs with the signature “Stop the Steal” slogan of former President Donald Trump and demanding the county get rid of its voting machines. As the United States enters the final stretch to November’s midterm elections, Reuters documented multiple incidents of intimidation involving an expanding army of election observers, many of them recruited by prominent Republican Party figures and activists echoing Trump’s false theories about election fraud. The widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election as alleged by Trump and his supporters was never proven.

Full Article: ‘Stop the steal’ supporters train thousands of U.S. poll observers | Reuters

National: Republican National Committee seizes on political affiliations of poll workers in swing states | atrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

For months, conservative activists who tried to overturn the 2020 election results have urged Republicans to become poll workers so they can be on the front lines of watching for fraud. Yet for the August primary in Arizona’s Maricopa County, the number of Democrats working at the polls was 18 percent higher than the number of Republicans. Such a gap is typical and legal, county leaders say, but Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has seized on it in an effort to cast doubt on the way elections are run in the swing state’s most populous county, which encompasses Phoenix. That has angered county officials, many of them fellow Republicans, who see this as a new attempt to spread misinformation, erode faith in the voting process, lay the foundation to contest results should GOP candidates lose and unfairly focus attention on election workers, some of whom have endured threats and harassment after Joe Biden narrowly won the state in 2020. The RNC and the Arizona GOP filed two lawsuits this week that seek to make the county shorten shifts for poll workers to make the jobs more accessible and force the release of records about who worked the polls in the primary. McDaniel mischaracterized the scope of the lawsuits in a tweet Wednesday, falsely claiming that Arizona Republicans have been “shut out of the process.” The RNC did not respond to a request to explain how Republicans have been excluded.

Full Article: RNC seizes on political affiliations of poll workers in swing states – The Washington Post

National: Election Firm Konnech Knew Data Had Been Sent to China, Prosecutors Say | Stuart A. Thompson/The New York Times

When Eugene Yu’s small election software company signed a contract to help Los Angeles County organize poll workers for the 2020 election, he agreed to keep the workers’ personal data in the United States. But the company, Konnech, transferred personal data on thousands of the election workers to developers in China who were writing and troubleshooting software, according to a court filing that Los Angeles County prosecutors made on Thursday. The filing adds new details about the arrest last week of Mr. Yu, whose company has been the focus of groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election. Some of those groups have accused the company of storing information about poll workers on servers in China. Before the arrest, the company repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in statements to The New York Times. Los Angeles prosecutors initially accused Mr. Yu of embezzling public money by knowingly violating the terms of the company’s contract. Since searching Konnech’s offices and Mr. Yu’s home, the prosecutors have also accused him of conspiring with others to commit a crime, according to the new legal filing. It is rare for an executive to face criminal charges for potentially mishandling data. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday. In the filing, prosecutors said a project manager at Konnech had sent an internal email early this month saying the company would no longer send personal data to Chinese contractors. “We need to ensure the security privacy and confidentially,” the email said.

Full Article: Election Firm Knew Data Had Been Sent to China, Prosecutors Say – The New York Times

National: Election Officials Are on Alert for Cyber, Physical Attacks | David Uberti/Wall Street Journal

The array of potential threats to the 2022 midterms is “more complex than it has ever been,” a top U.S. official said Thursday, but Washington has yet to see specific or credible attempts by foreign governments to disrupt the Nov. 8 vote. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, warned of multipronged threats that could include hacking of computer networks, disinformation on social media and harassment campaigns that affect poll workers in the physical world. “The security challenges are intertwined,” Ms. Easterly said. “They can’t be viewed in isolation when you think about foreign interference.” CISA has taken an increasingly prominent role in recent years to coordinate security among the network of state and local agencies that hold elections across the U.S. While those efforts previously focused on countering digital interference by countries such as Russia, some cybersecurity experts say the Kremlin’s capacity for election meddling has shrunk. “Russian influence capabilities have very likely deteriorated as a result of the nation’s war against Ukraine,” cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said in a 2022 election report released Thursday. Instead, election officials this year have reported a surge in physical threats, largely from people angry about President Biden’s defeat of former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Full Article: U.S. Election Officials Are on Alert for Cyber, Physical Attacks – WSJ

Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every level | Sam Levine and Ed Pilkington/The Guardian

Item number 28 on the agenda for the March meeting of the county commission in rural southern Nevada seemed benign enough. But by the end of the hour-and-45-minute presentation Sandra Merlino, the longtime local clerk, felt sickened. One by one, a band of activists took to the podium to argue that Nye county should switch from electronic ballots to paper ones in forthcoming elections. They were led by Jim Marchant, a Las Vegas businessman who lost a 2020 House race but refused to concede, alleging fraud. He argued that the county couldn’t trust its electronic election equipment and that it should switch to a system in which it only used paper ballots and counted those ballots by hand. Three other speakers offered a flurry of complex-sounding analyses purporting to prove that the county’s voting equipment was vulnerable to hacking. They included Russell Ramsland, a Texas man who helped Donald Trump and allies push outlandish theories about fraud after the 2020 race, and Phil Waldron, a former army colonel who produced a 38-slide PowerPoint presentation after the 2020 race, urging Trump to seize control of voting equipment. Merlino was alarmed. She knew that what they were saying was bogus – the county’s election systems aren’t connected to the internet and there’s no evidence they were not secure. Counting ballots by hand was costly, not reliable, and would take a long time after the election to complete. “It’s so prone to error,” she said. “It just is a nightmare as far as I’m concerned.”

Full Article: Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every level | US news | The Guardian

National: Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft | Stuart A. Thompson/The New York Times

The top executive of an elections technology company that has been the focus of attention among election deniers was arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the possible theft of personal information about poll workers, the county said on Tuesday. Eugene Yu, the founder and chief executive of Konnech, the technology company, was taken into custody on suspicion of theft, the Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascón, said in a statement. Konnech, which is based in Michigan, develops software to manage election logistics, like scheduling poll workers. Los Angeles County is among its customers. The company has been accused by groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election with storing information about poll workers on servers in China. The company has repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in recent statements to The New York Times. Mr. Gascón’s office said its investigators had found data stored in China. Holding the data there would violate Konnech’s contract with the county.

Full Article: Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft – The New York Times

National: Hand-counting ballots may sound nice. It’s actually less accurate and more expensive | Miles Parks/NPR

It’s a common refrain from election deniers and the Republicans who support them this election cycle: Get rid of the machines. According to many conspiracy theorists, the 2020 election was stolen by an algorithm, therefore if you take computers out of the voting process you can further secure your election. At a county commission meeting in Nevada’s Nye County this past March, for instance, Jim Marchant, an election denier who is the GOP nominee to be that state’s secretary of state, implored local officials to ditch their vote-counting equipment. “It is imperative that you secure the trust of your constituents in Nye County by ensuring that you have a fair and transparent election and the only way to do that is to not use electronic voting or tabulation machines,” he said. It’s a false sentiment that has festered in far-right corners across the country, shepherded by election denial influencers like MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and his acolytes. In some cases, officials are listening. Nye County is planning to hand-count ballots, alongside machine tabulation, in this November’s midterm elections, and another county in Nevada, Esmeralda, spent more than seven hours hand-counting just 317 ballots as part of its certification of this summer’s primary election.

Full Article: Voting explainer: Why experts oppose hand-counting ballots : NPR

National: Hundreds of elections deniers running for office nationwide in 2022 pose ‘major threat’ to U.S. democracy | Phillip M. Bailey/USA Today

Republican Mark Finchem maintains that the 2020 presidential election wasn’t on the up-and-up in Arizona. During the 30-minute secretary of state debate against Democratic rival Adrian Fontes on Sept. 22, he continued to argue – without providing evidence – that some votes were “outside of the law.” But when asked by moderators if the state’s 2022 midterm primaries in August were also fair, the GOP nominee to be Arizona’s chief election officer was caught flat footed. “What changed? The candidates,” Finchem said. “I have no idea. We’ve not really dug into what happened with our processing of ballots. The machines were the same.” Yet Finchem isn’t the only candidate on the ballot this November who has peddled false claims about 2020 that election experts and pro-democracy groups warn could undermine the next presidential contest – and subvert American democracy.

Full Article: Hundreds of candidates who denied 2020 results running for office

National: Election officials brace for confrontational poll watchers | Hannah Schoenbaum and Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

The situation with the poll watcher had gotten so bad that Anne Risku, the election director in North Carolina’s Wayne County, had to intervene via speakerphone. “You need to back off!” Risku recalled hollering after the woman wedged herself between a voter and the machine where the voter was trying to cast his ballot at a precinct about 60 miles southeast of Raleigh. The man eventually was able to vote, but the incident was one of several Risku cited from the May primary that made her worry about a wave of newly aggressive poll watchers. Many have spent the past two years steeped in lies about the accuracy of the 2020 election. Those fears led the North Carolina State Board of Elections in August to tighten rules governing poll watchers. But the state’s rules review board, appointed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, blocked the new poll watcher regulations in late September, leaving election officials such as Risku without additional tools to control behavior on Election Day, Nov. 8. “It becomes complete babysitting,” Risku said in an interview. “The back and forth for the precinct officials, having somebody constantly on you for every little thing that you do — not because you’re doing it wrong, but because they don’t agree with what you’re doing.”

Full Article: Election officials brace for confrontational poll watchers | AP News

National: Election officials confront a new problem: Whether they can trust their own poll workers | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Election officials are growing concerned about a new danger in November: that groups looking to undermine election results will try to install their supporters as poll workers. The frontline election workers do everything from checking people in at voting locations to helping process mail ballots — in other words, they are the face of American elections for most voters. And now, some prominent incidents involving poll workers have worried election officials that a bigger wave of trouble could be on the horizon. Michigan, in particular, has been a hotspot: a far-right candidate for governor, who lost the GOP primary, encouraged poll workers to unplug election equipment if they believed something was wrong. A Michigan county GOP organization encouraged poll workers to ignore rules barring cell phones in polling places and vote-counting centers. And just last week, the clerk of Kent County, Mich., announced that a witness allegedly saw a poll worker inserting a USB drive into an electronic poll book — the list of registered voters that shows who has cast ballots — during the August primary, leading to a pair of felony charges. The Kent County Clerk’s office declined to comment beyond a statement issued by Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons last week, stressing that the “incident had no impact on the election,” and that that specific poll book would no longer be used in future elections.

Full Article: Election officials confront a new problem: Whether they can trust their own poll workers – POLITICO

National: US faces election worker shortage ahead of midterms due to rise in threats | Ines Kagubare/The Hill

Officials warn the U.S. is facing a shortage of election workers ahead of the November midterms due to a rise in threats against those performing such jobs that experts link to false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In an interview last month, Kim Wyman, senior election security lead at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said because of those threats 1 in 3 elections officials and poll workers have quit their positions over fears for their safety, and state officials are having a hard time hiring for such positions. Experts attribute this problem to inflammatory rhetoric stemming from unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and elections officials were complicit. “Our elections have become very contentious,” said Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. Jaffer said the country is witnessing a situation where conflict between political parties is now affecting the work of election workers, many of whom are retirees volunteering their time to count votes. “Instead of respecting that civic duty, now people are taking out their frustrations and anger in politics on these election workers,” Jaffer said. “And that’s a real problem.”

Full Article: US faces election worker shortage ahead of midterms due to rise in threats | The Hill

National: Who’s Bankrolling Election Deniers? | Amisa Ratliff, Janice Zhong, Michael Beckel and Neha Upadhyaya/Issue One

As a record amount of money flows into races for states’ top election officials across the country, a new Issue One analysis shows that election-denying secretary of state candidates have collectively raised more than $12 million for their campaigns this election cycle — including more than $5.8 million raised by election deniers who prevailed in their primaries and will be on the ballot this November. Election-denying candidates — who have promoted disinformation about the 2020 election — have emerged as the Republican Party’s nominees in roughly half of the 27 secretary of state races on the ballot this November. If individuals who deny the outcome of the 2020 presidential election are successful in their bids for election administration positions, they could overturn the will of the voters in future elections. Democrats and Republicans who do not deny the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election have also raised tens of millions of dollars for secretary of state contests across the country. Yet Issue One’s research shows that election-denying secretary of state candidates who secured the GOP nomination this year have so far significantly outraised their Democratic opponents in two states where secretary of state contests are considered competitive by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics (Arizona and Indiana) and in two Republican-leaning states (Alabama and South Dakota). And in Wyoming, there is no Democratic general election opponent, meaning the election denier nominated by the Republican Party in August after a competitive three-way primary is on a glide path to becoming the next secretary of state there.

Full Article: Who’s Bankrolling Election Deniers? – Issue One

Election workers train for battle against conspiracy theories | Arit John/Los Angeles Times

From his perch in an elementary school gym during last month’s Michigan primary, Grand Rapids City Clerk Joel Hondorp oversaw the electronic book of eligible voters, while first-time election workers Kimberly and Shayne Becher helped check people in and explain how to fill out ballots. Kimberly, a 59-year-old counselor from Greenville, said she and her husband wanted to get involved “to learn how this all works,” since neither is convinced that the 2020 presidential election hadn’t been stolen. “You just go to a Trump rally or go to a Biden rally, that will tell you … who won,” said Shayne, a 53-year-old carpenter. Hondorp hopes that the Bechers and others trained by his office, with a successful election behind them, will change their minds about the process. “Hopefully, they’re going to go back and talk to their friends and family … and say: ‘Hey, this is what we observed,’” Hondorp said. Across the country, election clerks have spent the last two years waging an information and public relations battle to restore faith in elections. They’re doing more TV interviews, giving more office tours and retooling their social media presences. They’re keeping up with legislation to overhaul elections and conspiracy theories spreading online. And they’re redoubling their efforts to explain the exhaustive steps they take to prevent fraud and run secure elections.

Full Article: Election workers train for battle against conspiracy theories – Los Angeles Times

How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target | Stuart A. Thompson/The New York Times

At an invitation-only conference in August at a secret location southeast of Phoenix, a group of election deniers unspooled a new conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential outcome. Using threadbare evidence, or none at all, the group suggested that a small American election software company, Konnech, had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government backdoor access to personal data about two million poll workers in the United States, according to online accounts from several people at the conference. In the ensuing weeks, the conspiracy theory grew as it shot around the internet. To believers, the claims showed how China had gained near complete control of America’s elections. Some shared LinkedIn pages for Konnech employees who have Chinese backgrounds and sent threatening emails to the company and its chief executive, who was born in China. “Might want to book flights back to Wuhan before we hang you until dead!” one person wrote in an email to the company. In the two years since former President Donald J. Trump lost his re-election bid, conspiracy theorists have subjected election officials and private companies that play a major role in elections to a barrage of outlandish voter fraud claims. But the attacks on Konnech demonstrate how far-right election deniers are also giving more attention to new and more secondary companies and groups. Their claims often find a receptive online audience, which then uses the assertions to raise doubts about the integrity of American elections.

Full Article: How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target – The New York Times

National: After victory in Nevada, election deniers increase calls to eliminate voting machines across the country | Soo Rin Kim and Laura Romero/ABC

Last month, an effort led by a rural county in Nevada handed election deniers a major victory: In November, several jurisdictions in the state will be hand-counting votes. The Nevada Secretary of State approved a proposal allowing jurisdictions to hand-count votes starting as soon as this fall’s midterm election, after Nye County, based on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, decided earlier this year to abandon the Dominion voting machines it had relied on for years. “Everyone said, ‘It’s not you, it’s not the officials,'” said Sandra “Sam” Merlino, who resigned her position as county clerk after the county in March this year decided to use a hand-count instead of voting machines. “But what people don’t understand is, I put my trust in those machines and how the process works.” Last week, Merlino’s successor, Mark Kampf — who himself has been echoing unsubstantiated claims of 2020 election fraud — took a step back and announced a plan to use both hand counting and the Dominion machines for the upcoming elections as a way to cross-check results between the two methods.

Full Article: After victory in Nevada, election deniers increase calls to eliminate voting machines across the country – ABC News

National: Congress’ latest House-Senate wrangle: Preventing the next Jan. 6 | Nicholas Wu, Marianne Levine, Jordain Carney and Kyle Cheney/Politico

Efforts to reform an obscure 135-year-old election law, which Donald Trump tried to utilize to subvert the 2020 election, are reviving a classic congressional rivalry: the House vs. the Senate. After signaling for months that they wanted to go further than the Senate’s proposed adjustments to the law, House members could vote as early as Wednesday on legislation to update the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 statute that Trump and his allies distorted in an attempt to seize a second term he didn’t win. Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), members of the Jan. 6 select committee, on Monday outlined a proposal aimed at preventing rogue state officials and members of Congress from any future attempt at subversion of the transfer of presidential power. That plan is likely to set up an intense period of wrangling with the Senate, which in July teed up a competing bill that boasts bipartisan support, including the 10 GOP co-sponsors necessary to overcome a filibuster. Their proposal reforms the 19th-century law, which sets out deadlines for states to certify their own presidential contests and a process to deliver electors to Washington. The Electoral Count Act then sets out a process for the vice president — acting as president of the Senate — to preside over the count, and outlines a procedure for lawmakers to challenge any electors they deem invalid. The House version is substantially similar to the Senate bill, though it proposes slight variations and lays out certain processes in more detail. House members’ insistence on releasing their own bill is the latest episode in the simmering tensions between the two chambers as they enter their final stretch of legislating in this Congress, with lower-chamber Democrats hoping to go from bill text to passage within a week and the Senate moving more slowly, expecting to hold a markup of their legislation — while retaining GOP support — next week.

Full Article: Congress’ latest House-Senate wrangle: Preventing the next Jan. 6 – POLITICO

National: Meadows texts reveal direct White House communications with pro-Trump operative behind plans to seize voting machines | Zachary Cohen/CNN

As allies of then-President Donald Trump made a final push to overturn the election in late-December 2020, one of the key operatives behind the effort briefed then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about his attempts to gain access to voting systems in key battleground states, starting with Arizona and Georgia, according to text messages obtained by CNN. Phil Waldron, an early proponent of various election-related conspiracy theories, texted Meadows on December 23 that an Arizona judge had dismissed a lawsuit filed by friendly GOP lawmakers there. The suit demanded state election officials hand over voting machines and other election equipment, as part of the hunt for evidence to support Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud. In relaying the news to Meadows, Waldron said the decision would allow opponents to engage in “delay tactics” preventing Waldron and his associates from immediately accessing machines. Waldron also characterized Arizona as “our lead domino we were counting on to start the cascade,” referring to similar efforts in other states like Georgia. “Pathetic,” Meadows responded. The messages, which have not been previously reported, shed new light on how Waldron’s reach extended into the highest levels of the White House and the extent to which Meadows was kept abreast of plans for accessing voting machines, a topic sources tell CNN, and court documents suggest, is of particular interest to state and federal prosecutors probing efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Full Article: Meadows texts reveal direct White House communications with pro-Trump operative behind plans to seize voting machines | CNN Politics

National: False claims, threats fuel poll worker sign-ups for midterms | Sudhin Thanawala/Associated Press

Outraged by false allegations of fraud against a Georgia elections employee in 2020, Amanda Rouser made a vow as she listened to the woman testify before Congress in June about the racist threats and harassment she faced.“I said that day to myself, ‘I’m going to go work in the polls, and I’m going to see what they’re going to do to me,’” Rouser, who like the targeted employee is Black, recalled after stopping by a recruiting station for poll workers at Atlanta City Hall on a recent afternoon. “Try me, because I’m not scared of people.”About 40 miles north a day later, claims of fraud also brought Carolyn Barnes to a recruiting event for prospective poll workers, but with a different motivation.“I believe that we had a fraudulent election in 2020 because of the mail-in ballots, the advanced voting,” Barnes, 52, said after applying to work the polls for the first time in Forsyth County. “I truly believe that the more we flood the system with honest people who are trying to help out, it will straighten it out.”Barnes, who declined to give her party affiliation, said she wants to use her position as a poll worker to share her observations about “the gaps” in election security and “where stuff could happen afterwards.”

Full Article: False claims, threats fuel poll worker sign-ups for midterms | AP News

National: Top State Judges Make a Rare Plea in a Momentous Supreme Court Election Case | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

“It’s the biggest federalism issue in a long time,” Chief Justice Nathan L. Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court said on the phone the other day. “Maybe ever.” He was explaining why the Conference of Chief Justices, a group representing the top state judicial officers in the nation, had decided to file a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in a politically charged election-law case. The brief urged the court to reject a legal theory pressed by Republicans that would give state legislatures extraordinary power. Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard, said the brief underscored how momentous the decision in the case could be. “It’s highly unusual for the Conference of Chief Justices to file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court,” he said. “It’s even rarer for the conference to do so in a controversial, ideologically charged case.” If the Supreme Court adopts the theory, it will radically reshape how federal elections are conducted by giving state lawmakers independent authority, not subject to review by state courts, to set election rules in conflict with state constitutions.

Full Article: Top State Judges Make a Rare Plea in a Momentous Supreme Court Election Case – The New York Times

Editorial: The 3 Types of Election-Denying Republicans Running for Secretary of State | Chris Geidner/The New York Times

Around a dozen election-denying Republican candidates secured their party’s nomination for secretary of state this fall. This is the reality, two years on, that Donald Trump’s election lies have created. There are three types of election-denying candidates, and each one poses distinct problems for civic integrity. There are the swing-state candidates getting lots of justified attention, running in places like Arizona and Michigan, because their elections could have pivotal, clear national implications in the 2024 presidential campaign. There are candidates like Chuck Gray in Wyoming, who is all but certain to take office in January, as Democrats didn’t field an opponent. Election-denying candidates in very red states aren’t getting as much attention now, but they likely will come January, when they are officeholders. They will help set policies in their states — many of which will also have Republican-led legislatures and governors — where extremist ideas could become law. And there are people like Dominic Rapini, Connecticut’s Republican secretary of state nominee, who are running in blue states and unlikely to win. Their campaigns, though, will have critical fallout effects. By virtue of their statewide platforms, even losing candidates can further damage the discourse — in their states and nationally — and increase the risks to our democracy. Election deniers in blue states can uniquely exacerbate Mr. Trump’s undermining of faith in our elections, and they, like their winning counterparts in red states, can set the stage for local election-denying candidates to win now or in the future.

Full Article: Opinion | The Dangers of Election-Denying Secretary of State Campaigns – The New York Times

National: House passes bill to prevent efforts to subvert presidential election results | Amy B. Wang/The Washington Post

The House voted Wednesday to pass an electoral reform bill that seeks to prevent presidents from trying to overturn election results through Congress, the first vote on such an effort since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob seeking to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win. The bill passed on a 229-203 vote, with just nine Republicans breaking ranks and joining Democrats in supporting the measure. None of those nine Republican lawmakers will be members of Congress next year — either because they lost their primaries or chose to retire. The Presidential Election Reform Act, written by Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), explicitly cites the Capitol attack as a reason to amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887, “to prevent other future unlawful efforts to overturn Presidential elections and to ensure future peaceful transfers of Presidential power.” “Legal challenges are not improper, but Donald Trump’s refusal to abide by the rulings of the courts certainly was,” Cheney said Wednesday during House debate on the measure. “In our system of government, elections in the states determine who is the president. Our bill does not change that. But this bill will prevent Congress from illegally choosing the president itself.”

Full Article: House passes bill to prevent efforts to subvert presidential election results – The Washington Post

House Passes Overhaul of Electoral Count, Moving to Avert Another Jan. 6 Crisis | Carl Hulse/The New York Times

The House on Wednesday took the first major step to respond to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, voting mostly along party lines to overhaul the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that former President Donald J. Trump tried to exploit that day to overturn his defeat. The bill was the most significant legislative answer yet to the riot and the monthslong campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the 2020 presidential election, but it also underscored the lingering partisan divide over Jan. 6 and the former president’s continuing grip on his party. It cleared a divided House, passing on a 229 to 203 vote. All but nine Republicans opposed the measure, wary of angering Mr. Trump and unwilling to back legislation co-written by Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and a leader of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 and what led to them. The partisan division could complicate future negotiations with the Senate, which is moving ahead with its own bipartisan version of the legislation that differs from the House bill in some significant respects. Lawmakers now say they do not expect final approval before Congress returns for a lame-duck session after the Nov. 8 midterm elections. The legislation is aimed at updating the law that governs Congress’s counting of the electoral votes cast by the states, the final step under the Constitution to confirm the results of a presidential election and historically a mostly ceremonial process. Democrats said that the aftermath of the 2020 election — in which Mr. Trump and his allies’ attempts to throw out legitimate electoral votes led to the violent disruption of the congressional count by his supporters on Jan. 6 — made clear that the statute needed to be changed.

Full Article: House Passes Overhaul of Electoral Count, Moving to Avert Another Jan. 6 Crisis – The New York Times