National: House Democrats Introduce John Lewis Voting Rights Legislation | Nicholas Fandos/The New York Times

Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a long-awaited linchpin of their drive to protect voting rights, introducing legislation that would make it easier for the federal government to block state election rules found to be discriminatory to nonwhite voters. House leaders expect to pass the bill, named the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act after the late civil rights icon, during a rare August session next week. They say it would restore the full force of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after a pair of adverse Supreme Court rulings and that it would help combat a wave of restrictive new election laws in Republican-led states. “Today, old battles have become new again as we face the most pernicious assault on the right to vote in generations,” said Representative Terri Sewell, the bill’s chief author and a Democrat from Alabama’s civil rights belt, where Mr. Lewis and others staged a national campaign for voting rights in the 1960s. “It’s clear: federal oversight is urgently needed.” But like other voting rights legislation to come before Congress this year, its chances of passing the evenly divided Senate are exceedingly narrow. Only one Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, is likely to support the legislation, leaving Democrats far short of the 60 votes they would need to break a Republican filibuster and send the bill to President Biden’s desk. Senate Republicans already blocked Democrats’ other marquee voting rights bill, the For the People Act, which would establish national mandates for early and mail-in voting and end gerrymandering of congressional districts. And while Democratic leaders in the Senate have vowed more votes on the matter in September, unless all 50 Democrats unite in a long-shot bid to change Senate filibuster rules, they are headed for an identical outcome.

Full Article: House Democrats Introduce John Lewis Voting Rights Legislation – The New York Times

National: As Democrats Renew Voting Rights Push, Offsetting Roberts Court Is Top of Mind | Carl Hulse/The New York Times

When Judge John G. Roberts Jr. faced the Senate for his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in September 2005, critics sounded the alarm about his longstanding skepticism toward the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which many view as crucial to the political gains of Black Americans over the last half century. “I fear that if Judge Roberts is confirmed to be chief justice of the United States, the Supreme Court would no longer hear the people’s cries for justice,” Representative John Lewis, the civil rights leader from Georgia, said in urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject the nomination. Judge Roberts was easily confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate despite pleas from Mr. Lewis and other civil rights activists. He went on to oversee the court in rulings that weakened the Voting Right Acts, compromising its decades-long role as a protector of minority access to the ballot box across much of the South. Mr. Lewis died last July, just months before Republican state legislatures enacted an onslaught of voting restrictions after the 2020 elections. But it is not only those legislatures that Democrats see as their adversaries on election issues. “We are also up against a Supreme Court that is keen on destroying our nation’s most consequential voting rights law,” Representative Terry A. Sewell, Democrat of Alabama, said this week during a Democratic call celebrating the anniversary of women’s right to vote.

Full Article: As Democrats Renew Voting Rights Push, Offsetting Roberts Court Is Top of Mind – The New York Times

National: How Eric Coomer Became the ‘Perfect Villain’ for Voting Conspiracists | Susan Dominus/The New York Times

It was already late on Nov. 9 when Eric Coomer, then the director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, left his temporary office on Daley Plaza in Chicago and headed back to the hotel where he’d been staying for the previous few weeks. Both the plaza and the hotel had the eerie post-apocalyptic feel of urban life during the pandemic, compounding the sense of disorientation and apprehension he felt as he made his way up to his room. Earlier that evening, a colleague sent him a link to a video of Coomer speaking at a conference with a menacing comment below it. “Hi Eric! We know what you did,” the commenter wrote. That link eventually led Coomer to a second video, which he watched in his hotel room. What he saw, he quickly realized, was something that was likely to wreck his life, hurt his employer and possibly erode trust in the electoral process. Over the past decade, Coomer, 51, has helped make Dominion one of the largest providers of voting machines and software in the United States. He was a gifted programmer, known to be serious about his work but informal about almost everything else — prone to profanities, with a sense of humor that could have blunt force. Coomer, who traveled around the world for competitive endurance bike races, would have blended in on the campus of Google, just one in a crowd of nonconformist tech types. In the more corporate business of elections, he stood out for the full-sleeve tattoos on his arms (one of Francis Bacon’s “Screaming Popes,” some Picasso bulls) and the half-inch holes in his ears where he once wore what are known as plugs.

Full Article: How Eric Coomer Became the ‘Perfect Villain’ for Voting Conspiracists – The New York Times

Experts: False claims on voting machines obscure real flaws | Kate Brumback/Associated Press

The aftermath of the 2020 election put an intense spotlight on voting machines as supporters of former President Donald Trump claimed victory was stolen from him. While the theories were unproven — and many outlandish and blatantly false — election security experts say there are real concerns that need to be addressed. In Georgia, for example, election security expert J. Alex Halderman says he’s identified “multiple severe security flaws” in the state’s touchscreen voting machines, according to a sworn declaration in a court case. Halderman told The Associated Press in a phone interview that while he’s seen no evidence the vulnerabilities were exploited to change the outcome of the 2020 election, “there remain serious risks that policymakers and the public need to be aware of” that should be addressed immediately to protect future elections. Trump loyalists — pushing the slogan “Stop the Steal” — held rallies, posted on social media and filed lawsuits in key states, often with false claims about Dominion Voting Systems voting machines. Almost all of the legal challenges casting doubt on the outcome of the election have been dismissed or withdrawn and many claims of fraud debunked. State and federal election officials have said there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. And Dominion has fought back forcefully, filing defamation lawsuits against high-profile Trump allies. As an election security researcher, it’s been frustrating to watch the proliferation of misinformation, said Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University. For years, he said, concerns raised by election security experts were dismissed as unimportant. “All of a sudden, people are going the other way, saying the existence of a flaw not only is something that should be fixed, it means the election was actually stolen,” he said. “That’s not true either.”

 

Full Article: Experts: False claims on voting machines obscure real flaws

‘We are in harm’s way’: Election officials fear for their personal safety amid torrent of false claims about voting | Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

In preparation for a vote on local tax assessments last week in Houghton County, Mich., county clerk Jennifer Kelly took extraordinary precautions, asking election staff in this remote northern Michigan community to record the serial numbers of voting machines, document the unbroken seals on tabulators and note in writing that no one had tampered with the equipment. In the southeastern part of the state, Michael Siegrist, clerk of Canton Township, followed similar steps, even organizing public seminars to explain how ballots are counted. Despite their efforts, they said they could not fend off an ongoing torrent of false claims and suspicions about voting procedures that have ballooned since President Donald Trump began his relentless attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election last year. “People still complained about our Dominion voting machines, about the need for more audits, and most of all they complained about the use of Sharpies,” Siegrist said, referring to the widely used pen, which has become the focus of a conspiracy theory gripping Trump supporters in Arizona and other states.

Full Article: ‘We are in harm’s way’: Election officials fear for their personal safety amid torrent of false claims about voting – The Washington Post

National: Election officials face complex challenges looking to 2022 | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

State election officials say they are confronting a myriad of challenges heading into the 2022 midterm elections, from threats of foreign interference and ransomware to changes of election laws and concerns of physical safety — all while still dealing with a wave of misinformation and disinformation surrounding last year’s presidential election. The nation’s secretaries of state have been meeting with the goal of building relationships across states, sharing best practices and hearing from experts. The long list of challenges, outlined in various panel discussions over their association’s four-day conference, might seem daunting but election officials said preparations have already begun. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,” said Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican. “For us to be able to get together and talk with one another, compare notes, even commiserate on a human level a little bit about some of the drama over the last year and a half is a good experience. It’s a useful thing, and we learn a lot from each other.” Heading into the 2020 presidential election, the focus for election officials was shoring up cybersecurity around the nation’s voting systems after Russia four years earlier had probed for vulnerabilities and, in a small number of cases, breached voter registration systems. Then the pandemic happened, and state election officials had to scramble to ensure they could handle an onslaught of mail ballots from voters wary of crowded polling places while also dealing with shortages of poll workers and other staff triggered by the coronavirus.

Full Article: Election officials face complex challenges looking to 2022

National: New intel reports indicate fresh efforts by Russia to interfere in 2022 election | Katie Bo Williams, Natasha Bertrand and Alex Marquardt/CNN

The Biden administration is receiving regular intelligence reports indicating Russian efforts to interfere in US elections are evolving and ongoing, current and former officials say, and in fact, never stopped, despite President Joe Biden’s warnings to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the summer and a new round of sanctions imposed in the spring. Biden made deliberate mention of Russia’s operations two weeks ago when he revealed in public remarks to the intelligence community that that he had received fresh intelligence about “what Russia’s doing already about the 2022 election and misinformation” in his daily intelligence briefing that day. “It’s a pure violation of our sovereignty,” Biden said at the time. One of the people familiar with the matter confirmed that there have been recent intelligence reports about what the Russians are up to, particularly their efforts to sow disinformation on social media and weaponize US media outlets for propaganda purposes. There are some indications that Moscow is now attempting to capitalize on the debate raging inside the US over vaccines and masking, other sources told CNN.

Full Article: New intel reports indicate fresh efforts by Russia to interfere in 2022 election – CNNPolitics

National: Senate Democrats unveil bill to protect election officials, prevent election subversion | Celine Castronuovo/The Hill

A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) unveiled legislation Thursday aiming to combat efforts to undermine election results and install new protections for election workers, who have received a rise in violent threats since the 2020 election. The bill, titled the Protecting Election Administration from Interference Act, would extend existing prohibitions on threats to election officials to include individuals involved in ballot-counting, canvassing and certifying election results. The legislation also calls for strengthened protections for federal election records and election systems to “stop election officials or others from endangering the preservation and security of cast ballots,” and allowing the Justice Department to bring lawsuits to enforce compliance with election records requirements.

Full Article: Senate Democrats unveil bill to protect election officials, prevent election subversion | TheHill

National: It’s still practically impossible to secure your computer (or voting machine) against attackers who have 30 minutes of access | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

It has been understood for decades that it’s practically impossible to secure your computer (or computer-based device such as a voting machine) from attackers who have physical access. The basic principle is that someone with physical access doesn’t have to log in using the password, they can just unscrew your hard drive (or SSD, or other memory) and read the data, or overwrite it with modified data, modified application software, or modified operating system. This is an example of an “Evil Maid” attack, in the sense that if you leave your laptop alone in your hotel room while you’re out, the cleaning staff could, in principle, borrow your laptop for half an hour and perform such attacks. Other “Evil Maid” attacks may not require unscrewing anything, just plug into the USB port, for example. … More than twenty years ago, computer companies started implementing protections against these attacks. Full-disk encryption means that the data on the disk isn’t readable without the encryption key. (But that key must be present somewhere in your computer, so that it can access the data!) Trusted platform modules (TPM) encapsulate the encryption key, so attackers (even Evil Maids) can’t get the key. So in principle, the attacker can’t “hack” the computer by installing unauthorized software on the disk. (TPMs can serve other functions as well, such as “attestation of the boot process,” but here I’m focusing on their use in protecting whole-disk encryption keys.) So it’s worth asking, “how well do these protections work?” If you’re running a sophisticated company and you hire a well-informed and competent CIO to implement best practices, can you equip all your employees with laptops that resist evil-maid attacks? And the answer is: It’s still really hard to secure your computers against determined attackers.

Full Article: It’s still practically impossible to secure your computer (or voting machine) against attackers who have 30 minutes of access

National: How Trump tried to pressure Georgia officials to overturn the 2020 election | Marshall Cohen, Jason Morris and Christopher Hickey/CNN

Prosecutors in Georgia are still investigating whether former President Donald Trump broke any laws when he tried to overturn his 2020 defeat in the hotly contested state. The probe ramped up earlier this year, with a grand jury convening in Atlanta. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has said the criminal investigation includes potential “solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.” Months after the election, new information is still coming to light about Trump’s potentially unlawful effort to overturn the results. Recent reports indicate that he considered installing a loyalist as acting attorney general at the Justice Department — someone who agreed with Trump’s false claims about voter fraud and was prepared to pressure election officials in Georgia to overturn the results. Trump has claimed he didn’t do anything wrong and that the state investigation is politically motivated. Willis, who is a Democrat, was elected to her post last year.

Full Article: How Trump tried to pressure Georgia officials to overturn the 2020 election

National: The Trump administration’s top election defender is calling out Republicans who support the ‘big lie’ | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Chris Krebs, who led the federal government’s election security efforts during the Trump administration, yesterday lit into elected Republicans who are still contesting the former president’s defeat. “This is a power play and this is about fundraising and that’s all this is,” Krebs told my colleague Ellen Nakashima during a Washington Post Live interview. “Shame on those that continue to push the ‘big lie,’” he said, referring to baseless claims that Trump won the election. The comments are among the harshest from a former Trump administration official about the continuing efforts to call Joe Biden’s victory into question through dubious and partisan audits in Arizona and elsewhere. They reflect a growing frustration among officials who spent years ensuring the election was as secure as possible. They’re upset the 2020 results are being called into question by people with little or no experience in election security and audits. In Maricopa County, Ariz., officials conducted two rigorous audits that verified Biden’s victory there. But the GOP-controlled state Senate commissioned yet another audit against the county’s will. The firm leading the audit, Cyber Ninjas, has no auditing experience and its CEO has spread pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Not surprisingly, the result has been a slew of unforced errors and cybersecurity flubs. Yet officials are pursuing similarly partisan audits in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere. “There are certified, approved audit processes out there. … It’s not like audits just fell off the back of a turnip truck,” Krebs said. “We need more of them, in fact, but with a transparent methodological process, not what is happening in Arizona and is threatening to spread to other states.”

 

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: The Trump administration’s top election defender is calling out Republicans who support the ‘big lie’ – The Washington Post

National: Threats of violence spark fear of election worker exodus | John Kruzel/The Hill

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