National

After more than a year of virtual meetings, Bill Ekblad showed up last week at eight southern Minnesota election offices to deliver a simple message to county election chiefs and information technology directors: You don’t need to face the massive cybersecurity threat alone. A Navy veteran who served 26 years as a cybersecurity strategist, Ekblad is Minnesota’s first cyber navigator, charged with helping local election offices defend against the ongoing menace from foreign foes. “Savvy adversaries are finding new ways to wreak havoc, and that could be leveraged in the election world,” he said from the road. “Counties don’t have to face these challenges by themselves.” If a phishing attempt targeted one county election official, it’s likely officials in one of the other 87 counties got a similar email, Ekblad said. Getting ahead of that threat by communicating with every election official around the state is essential, he added. Local election officials are on the front lines of election defense, but they often are underfunded or lack the technical knowhow to protect systems from cyber threats. Seeing this vulnerability, at least seven states—Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio—in recent years have launched cyber navigator programs that offer local election officials state-backed contacts to meet the challenge. Several other states are considering following suit. Mark Lindeman, an acting co-director of Verified Voting, an election security nonprofit, said cyber navigators are akin to personal trainers or financial advisers.

Full Article: Facing Foreign Election Foes, States Hire ‘Cyber Navigators’ | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: House passes bill bolstering landmark voting law | Brian Slodysko/Associated Press

House Democrats have passed legislation that would strengthen a landmark civil rights-era voting law weakened by the Supreme Court over the past decade, a step party leaders tout as progress in their quest to fight back against voting restrictions advanced in Republican-led states. The bill, which is part of a broader Democratic effort to enact a sweeping overhaul of elections, was approved on a 219-212 vote, with no Republican support. Its Tuesday passage was praised by President Joe Biden, who said it would protect a “sacred right” and called on the Senate to “send this important bill to my desk.” But the measure faces dim prospects in that chamber, where Democrats do not have enough votes to overcome opposition from Senate Republicans, who have rejected the bill as “unnecessary” and a Democratic “power grab.” That bottleneck puts Democrats right back where they started with a slim chance of enacting any voting legislation before the 2022 midterm elections, when some in the party fear new GOP laws will make it harder for many Americans to vote.

Full Article: House passes bill bolstering landmark voting law

National: U.S. Attorney General urges election officials to share threats | Linda So/Reuters

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland urged state and local election officials on Thursday to immediately provide the FBI any threatening communications they receive following a rise in threats against U.S. election administrators. “To help us help you, I urge that you preserve and immediately provide to the FBI any threatening communications you receive in any form,” Garland told a meeting of election officials that was also attended by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and senior Justice Department officials. In late June, the DOJ launched a task force with the FBI to investigate threats against election workers. “Our attention to this issue will not wane,” said Garland, according to a transcript of his remarks. “The Department is committed to investigating and prosecuting violations of federal law against election officials and election workers, and to supporting your safety and security.”

Full Article: U.S. Attorney General urges election officials to share threats | Reuters

National: How a Defunct Federal Provision Helped Pave the Way for New Voting Restrictions | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Georgia toughened identification requirements for absentee voting. Arizona authorized removing voters from the rolls if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years. Florida and Georgia cut back sharply the use of drop boxes for mail-in ballots. All of these new voting restrictions would have been rejected or at least softened if a federal civil rights protection from the 1960s were still intact, experts in election law said. For decades, the heart of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a practice known as preclearance, largely detailed under Section 5 of the statute. It forced states with a history of racial discrimination to seek approval from the Department of Justice before enacting new voting laws. Through preclearance, thousands of proposed voting changes were blocked by Justice Department lawyers in both Democratic and Republican administrations. In 2013, however, Section 5 was hollowed out by the Supreme Court, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a majority opinion that racial discrimination in voting no longer constituted a significant threat. As Republican-led state legislatures have tightened voting rules after the 2020 election, new restrictions have been enacted or proposed in four states that are no longer required to seek approval before changing voting laws: Georgia, Arizona, Texas and Florida. Those new restrictions would almost certainly have been halted, stalled or altered had Section 5 still been in use, according to interviews with former federal prosecutors and a review by The New York Times of past civil rights actions by the Justice Department.

Full Article: How a Defunct Federal Provision Helped Pave the Way for New Voting Restrictions – The New York Times

National: States Are Making It Harder for Disabled People to Vote | Sarah Katz/The Atlantic

It’s long been difficult for Americans with disabilities to vote. Inaccessible paths are an obstacle to people who use wheelchairs. Long lines are a huge hurdle to people with chronic pain. Voting machines without audio or large-print ballots are an impediment to those who are blind or who have low vision. But last year, something different happened: As states passed pandemic-driven reforms to make voting easier for everyone, they inadvertently made voting a lot easier for most people with disabilities.And vote, they did. Nearly 62 percent of Americans with disabilities voted in 2020, a surge of nearly 6 percentage points over 2016, or 1.7 million more voters. The number of disabled voters reporting difficulties while voting also dropped significantly; in 2020, 11 percent of disabled voters reported having problems, down from 26 percent in 2012, according to an Election Assistance Commission report. That’s not to say voting was suddenly simple: Mail-in ballots aren’t easier for everyone, including those with visual or cognitive disabilities. And in 2020, disabled Americans were still roughly 7 percent less likely to vote than nondisabled Americans. But the changes made a real difference. Now state policy makers want to turn back the clock. Citing exaggerated concerns about voter fraud, state legislators have passed a wave of new bills that will make it harder for disabled people to vote in future elections. Overall, lawmakers have introduced more than 400 bills in 49 states this year that would restrict access to voting for people with disabilities. At least 18 states have already passed such laws. These laws either target mail-in ballots, reduce the amount of time voters have to request or mail in a ballot, restrict the availability of drop-off locations, impose stricter signature requirements for mail-in voting, or enact new and stricter voter-ID requirements.

Full Article: States Are Making It Harder for Disabled People to Vote – The Atlantic

Arizona: Election officials are tearing into the Maricopa County audit | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Election administrators from both parties are making their case that the audit of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Ariz., was partisan and ham-handed, even before it’s released. They’re hoping to halt the momentum for efforts at similar audits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. The report from the Maricopa County audit was supposed to be delivered to Arizona’s GOP-controlled legislature yesterday. Parts of it were delayed, however, because three members of the five-person team leading the audit tested positive for the coronavirus and are “quite sick,” Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R) said. One of them is Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the firm conducting the audit and a vocal proponent of pro-Trump election conspiracy theories. It’s the latest in a string of delays for the audit, which was initially supposed to be completed in May, Rosalind S. Helderman reports. It was a shocking but not out-of-character turn for the audit. The controversial audit has been marked by cybersecurity bungles, a lack of adherence to basic auditing principles and myriad other self-inflicted wounds. “As a Republican and as an election administrator, I worry about our country and I worry about the future of my party,” Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state from Kentucky, said in a call with reporters. “I don’t want bad ideas like this spreading to other states.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Election officials are tearing into the Maricopa County audit – The Washington Post

National: Election officials call for audit guidelines after Trump-fueled surge | Yach Montellaro/Politico

The nation’s top election officials are calling for more stringent guidelines for post-election audits, as supporters of former President Donald Trump continue to relitigate his defeat in 2020. At the summer meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State, secretaries voted nearly unanimously on Monday to approve a series of recommendations for post-election audits on everything from a timeline, to chain of custody of election materials. The guidelines were shared first with POLITICO. During the vote, only two Republican secretaries present didn’t back it: West Virginia Secretary Mac Warner, who voted against it, and Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who abstained. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who was part of a bipartisan group of 8 secretaries who helped draft the guidelines, told POLITICO after the vote that they had been working in secret for months to come to an agreement, comparing the pact the secretaries took to not speak about their work until it was completed to the movie “Fight Club.” The vote came at the tail end of the group’s four-day conference, the first time the organization has gathered in person since before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Full Article: Election officials call for audit guidelines after Trump-fueled surge – POLITICO

National: Election officials are pushing back against partisan audits launched by Trump allies | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The battle lines are hardening between the vast majority of election officials who’ve spent months validating and defending the results of the 2020 election and former president Donald Trump’s supporters, who are still challenging those results without evidence and demanding new reviews. One such partisan and poorly run review started months ago in Maricopa County, Ariz., but it has not yet produced any results. Partisans are pushing other audits in Wisconsin and elsewhere. The coalition of top state election officials is pushing back by endorsing a how-to guide for post-election audits that criticizes reviews like Arizona’s that are run on a partisan basis and by private companies without ample experience in the field. Election officials fear the drumbeat of baseless allegations about election hacking and fraud from Trump allies will dampen faith in future election results and maybe in the democratic process itself. Ironically, the assault comes after a four-year election security surge that made 2020 by far the most secure against hacking in decades. “I’m terribly distressed about what this has done to the public’s perception of elections,” Ann S. Jacobs (D), chair of the state Elections Commission in Wisconsin, told me. “It erodes the faith of the electorate in their elected leaders. It justifies violence and threats of violence against election workers. America has always prided itself on its orderly transition of power and these fake accusations are undermining that.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Election officials are pushing back against partisan audits launched by Trump allies – The Washington Post

National: Election Officials Still Face Death Threats And Conspiracies | Miles Parks/NPR

It’s been more than nine months since Election Day 2020, but as the nation’s top election officials met in Iowa over the weekend, it was clear the shadow of that race will stretch far into the future of American democracy. The conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from former President Donald Trump has upended almost all aspects of election administration: Local officials who a decade ago would have gone about their bureaucratic business in relative anonymity are facing threats and intense pressure, and a large chunk of American voters have no confidence the system is fair. “This is the very unfortunate new normal,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, who had dozens of armed protesters visit her home in December after last year’s election. Elections are run in the U.S. at the state and local levels, so the top voting officials across the country are usually secretaries of state. They met this weekend in Des Moines for their first in-person gathering since January 2020.

Full Article: Election Officials Still Face Death Threats And Conspiracies : NPR

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

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

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.

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

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

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