National

The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol presented evidence on Thursday that Donald Trump was told his last-gasp attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election was unlawful but forged ahead anyway. Trump then pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject a tally of state electors as part of a plot that brought the country “dangerously close to catastrophe”, the panel heard. With live witnesses and recorded depositions from its yearlong investigation, the panel offered a dramatic accounting of the days and hours that preceded the assault. Chilling new evidence also detailed the frantic moments after rioters stormed the Capitol, as Pence was rushed from the Senate chamber to a secure underground location. “Approximately 40 feet – that’s all there was – 40 feet between the vice-president and the mob,” said the California congressman Pete Aguilar, a Democrat who led the panel’s third hearing. “Make no mistake about the fact that the vice-president’s life was in danger.” The committee spent the majority of the hearing dissecting the “completely nonsensical and antidemocratic” theory, devised by the conservative law professor John Eastman and embraced by Trump, that suggested Pence had the authority to reverse the results of the 2020 election. The vice-president has no such power.

Full Article: Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel says | January 6 hearings | The Guardian

National: Across the US, 2020 election deniers seek to run the polls | Daniel Jackson/Courthouse News Service

When Nevada holds its primary election on June 14, GOP voters will consider candidates for secretary of state, typically a sleepy contest over who can out-administrate the other. One thinks Nevada voters have not actually elected anyone for the last 16 years. Appearing on a podcast in January, Jim Marchant claimed that because of a conspiracy financed by billionaire George Soros, “we haven’t in Nevada elected anybody since 2006. They have been installed by the deep state cabal.” Merchant’s failed 2020 campaign for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District ended with him filing a lawsuit alleging election irregularities that asked the judge to order a new election. The judge dismissed his claims, saying she lacked jurisdiction. Ever since, Marchant has claimed he was the victim of election fraud and has vowed to “overhaul” the election system in the state. ... According to Mark Lindeman, director of Verified Voting, some of the policy questions raised are subjects on which reasonable people can disagree, such as whether a state should hold a period of early voting. “What’s not normal is the frame of some of these campaigns of rejecting the legitimacy of the 2020 election. That is radical,” Lindeman said. Lindeman said democracy depends on election officials acting impartially, and if officials say they have the right to overturn the election, the election cannot be free and fair.

Full Article: Across the US, 2020 election deniers seek to run the polls | Courthouse News Service

National: Republicans Who Deny 2020 Election Outcome Press Closer to Power Over Future Elections | Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The potential for far-right Republicans to reshape the election systems of major battleground states is growing much closer to reality. As the halfway point nears of a midterm year that is vastly friendlier to Republicans, the party’s voters have nominated dozens of candidates for offices with power over the administration and certification of elections who have spread falsehoods about the 2020 presidential contest and sowed distrust in American democracy. The only way to restore trust, these candidates say, is by electing them. In Michigan, Pennsylvania and now Nevada, Republican voters have elevated candidates who owe their political rise to their amplification of doubts about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, and who are now vying in elections for governor, secretary of state and attorney general — offices that will hold significant sway over the administration of the 2024 presidential election in critical swing states. The rise of election deniers is far from over. Primary contests coming later this month in Colorado and in early August in Arizona and Wisconsin will provide more clarity on the depth of Republican voters’ desire to rally behind candidates devoted to the false idea that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump.

Full Article: Republicans Who Deny 2020 Election Outcome Press Closer to Power Over Future Elections - The New York Times

National: Justice Department secures first guilty plea for threats to election workers | David Nakamura/The Washington Post

A Nebraska man pleaded guilty Thursday on charges that he threatened an election official over social media last year, marking the first conviction for a Justice Department task force charged with protecting poll workers. Federal authorities said Travis Ford, 42, of Lincoln, Neb., posted multiple hostile messages on an Instagram page associated with the official, who was not named in a Justice Department news release. “Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t. Do you think Soros will/can protect you?” Ford wrote in one August 2021 message, apparently referring to Democratic megadonor George Soros, who has long been the subject of false conspiracies from far-right and anti-Semitic groups. In another posting, Ford wrote: “Your security detail is far too thin and incompetent to protect you. This world is unpredictable these days … anything can happen to anyone.” He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 6 and faces up to two years in prison, the Justice Department said. “The Justice Department will not tolerate illegal threats of violence against public officials,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Threats of violence against election officials are dangerous for people’s safety and dangerous for our democracy.”

Full Article: Travis Ford pleads guilty to threatening elections official on Instagram - The Washington Post

National: Some of Trump’s nuttiest election lies were around voting machines | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The master narrative of yesterday’s Jan. 6 hearing was that former president Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies helped prod the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and are continuing to press politics in a dangerous direction. Even some Trump campaign and administration officials didn’t buy his baseless attacks, which have riven the nation for nearly two years now. Those officials watched with alarm and dismay after the election as the president embraced easily disprovable conspiracy theories and ignored evidence, according to video testimony. Some of Trumps most unbelievable claims were around voting machines. Barr called the Trump-embraced conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems machines had been manipulated to flip votes to Biden “idiotic” and “disturbing.” He said Trump allies promoted the allegations with “zero basis.” Yet, despite their absurdity, the false claims caught fire among Trump supporters — surging distrust in election machines and election workers. Barr told Trump the theories did not hold water, he said. But to no avail. “[The claims] were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people,” Barr said. They prompted widespread belief “that there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn’t count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense.” Trump campaign aide Alex Cannon disputed the phony claims in a conversation with Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, Cannon told investigators. He also pointed to a report by state and federal officials finding the 2020 election was the most secure in history, which had been touted by then-Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency [CISA] Director Chris Krebs. The response: “I believe Mr. Navarro accused me of being an agent of the ‘deep state’ working with Chris Krebs against the president,” Cannon said.

Full Article: Some of Trump's nuttiest election lies were around voting machines - The Washington Post

National: Senators urge feds to alert police to threats against election workers | Linda So/Reuters

A group of Democratic U.S. senators this week urged federal law enforcement agencies to alert local police to rising threats against election officials, according to a memo seen by Reuters on Thursday. "The onslaught of threats against election workers is unacceptable and raises serious concerns about state and local governments’ ability to recruit and retain election workers needed to administer future elections," Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Dick Durbin told the federal agencies on Wednesday in the previously unreported memo. Klobuchar and Durbin were joined by 20 other Democratic senators asking the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to distribute a public service announcement to local and state police about increased threats against election workers, according to the memo. "We have heard that in many cases when election officials report threats, local law enforcement agencies treat them as isolated incidents, instead of as part of a growing nationwide trend," the senators said. A DHS spokesperson said it has enhanced collaboration with government partners by "sharing timely and actionable information" on threats. The FBI confirmed it received the memo.

Full Article: U.S. senators urge feds to alert police to threats against election workers | Reuters

Do Ballot Barcodes Threaten Election Security? | William T. Adler/Center for Democracy and Technology

Bogus conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been repeatedly debunked. But that hasn’t stopped election conspiracy theorists from attempting to gain influence in election administration, either as low level poll workers or as top state election officials. The infiltration of election deniers into positions of power in administering elections poses a grave danger to American democracy: the possibility that an insider will manipulate election systems in order to bring about a desired election outcome. This elevated insider threat makes it more important than ever that our voting systems are resilient to attack and manipulation. Many 2020 conspiracy theories concerned the voting systems in Georgia, where President Trump focused intensely on discrediting the results. That year, Georgia used ballot marking devices (BMDs) for the first time, for all in-person voters. BMDs are touch screen computers that print out a paper ballot—a major improvement over the paperless machines Georgia had previously been using. Now, voters could physically inspect the record of their vote, rather than be forced to trust the machines to record the votes accurately. BMDs are widely used in U.S. elections and offer several benefits over hand-marked paper ballots (HMPBs). For instance, because they have a variety of user interface options, BMDs enable voters with visual or motor disabilities to vote independently and privately when they might otherwise be unable to do so with a HMPB. But all computerized systems are susceptible to attack. Therefore, the use of BMDs—particularly by large numbers of voters who do not require them for accessibility reasons—has been criticized as posing a serious security threat to elections. The balance between these benefits and risks should be carefully considered. Full Article: Do Ballot Barcodes Threaten Election Security? - Center for Democracy and Technology

Activists say cyber agency weakens voting tech advisory | Kate Brumback/Associated Press

The nation’s leading cybersecurity agency released a final version Friday of an advisory it previously sent state officials on voting machine vulnerabilities in Georgia and other states that voting integrity activists say weakens a security recommendation on using barcodes to tally votes. The advisory put out by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has to do with vulnerabilities identified in Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X touchscreen voting machines, which produce a paper ballot or record votes electronically. The agency said that although the vulnerabilities should be quickly mitigated, the agency “has no evidence that these vulnerabilities have been exploited in any elections.” Dominion’s systems have been unjustifiably attacked since the 2020 election by people who embraced the false belief that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. The company has filed defamation lawsuits in response to incorrect and outrageous claims made by high-profile Trump allies. The advisory CISA released Friday is based on a report generated by University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, an expert witness in a long-running lawsuit that is unrelated to false allegations stemming from the 2020 election. The machines are used by at least some voters in 16 states, according to a voting equipment tracker maintained by watchdog Verified Voting. In most of those places, they are used only for people who can’t physically fill out a paper ballot by hand. But in some places, including Georgia, almost all in-person voting is done on the affected machines.

Source: Activists say cyber agency weakens voting tech advisory | AP News

National: The GOP drive to install thousands of poll workers sets off alarms | Fredreka Schouten and Kelly Mena/CNN

State and local election officials in Michigan and other political battlegrounds are gearing up to deal with a new element in this year's elections: a large influx of Republicans seeking to become poll workers, recruited by the Republican National Committee and other conservative organizations to play an active role in administering the midterm elections. The development -- and a recent story in Politico detailing GOP recruitment sessions and how some of these would-be poll workers cling to debunked claims about fraud in the 2020 election -- have raised alarms that Republican election deniers could infiltrate official election operations and undermine the process.

The surge in interest also comes against the backdrop of efforts by former President Donald Trump's allies, such as Steve Bannon, to carry out what he calls a "precinct committee strategy," with the goal of installing Trump loyalists in local Republican Party positions and election posts. "It is jarring to know that there is a political party, or a cohort of a political party, that is feeding folks misinformation and will use that as motivation to potentially interfere with our elections and with citizens' right to vote," Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, told Fredreka in a recent interview. Benson, who said she has been following the uptick in GOP poll worker applications for weeks as part of her regular discussions with local election officials, met Monday with the state attorney general's office, the Michigan State Police and local officials to discuss, among other topics, how to protect against election interference, her aides said.

Full Article: The GOP drive to install thousands of poll workers sets off alarms - CNNPolitics

National: How Influential Election Deniers Have Fueled a Fight to Control Elections | Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

Key figures in the effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election have thrown their weight behind a slate of Republican candidates for secretary of state across the country, injecting specious theories about voting machines, foreign hacking and voter fraud into campaigns that will determine who controls elections in several battleground states. The America First slate comprises more than a dozen candidates who falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump. It grew out of meetings held by a conspiracy-mongering QAnon leader and a Nevada politician, and has quietly gained support from influential people in the election denier movement — including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, and Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com executive who has financed public forums that promote the candidates and theories about election vulnerabilities. Members of the slate have won party endorsements or are competitive candidates for the Republican nomination in several states, including three — Michigan, Arizona and Nevada — where a relatively small number of ballots have decided presidential victories. And in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the secretary of state, State Senator Doug Mastriano, who is aligned with the group, easily won his primary for governor last month. The candidates cast their races as a fight for the future of democracy, the best chance to reform a broken voting system — and to win elections.

Full Article: How Influential Election Deniers Have Fueled a Fight to Control Elections - The New York Times

National: Trump allies explored using armed workers to seize vote data | Sarah D. Wire/Los Angeles Times

Supporters on the fringes of former President Trump’s circle explored seeking sweeping authority after the 2020 election to enlist armed private contractors to seize and inspect voting machines and election data with the assistance of U.S. marshals, according to a draft letter asking the president to grant them permission. The previously undisclosed “authorizing letter” and accompanying emails were sent on Nov. 21, 2020, from a person involved in efforts to find evidence of fraud in the election that year. The documents, which were reviewed by The Times, are believed to be among those in the possession of the House Jan. 6 committee, which is scheduled to begin public hearings Thursday. The letter appears to be one of the earliest iterations of a draft executive order presented to the then-president in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, by then- Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com Chief Executive Patrick Byrne in an effort to take control of voting machines. The email and attached draft letter were sent to Cyber Ninjas Chief Executive Doug Logan and cybersecurity expert Jim Penrose by Andrew Whitney, a British technology entrepreneur who made his way inside Trump’s circle in 2020 after he sought the president’s support for Oleandrin, a toxic botanical extract Whitney claimed was a miracle cure for COVID-19. Logan, who went on to conduct a partisan “audit” of election results in Maricopa County, Ariz., and Penrose worked for weeks after the 2020 election with a group including Powell, Flynn and Byrne that sought access to voting machines in an attempt to find proof of election fraud. Full Article: Trump allies explored using armed workers to seize vote data - Los Angeles Times

National: The Supreme Court may take territories off the map of the US | Stephen Kinzer/The Boston Globe

May the United States rule foreign territories without granting their inhabitants constitutional rights? Yes, according to landmark Supreme Court decisions in the “Insular Cases” more than a century ago. Without those decisions, our overseas territorial empire could not have existed. Suddenly that decision is under fierce attack from within the Court itself. The fate of America’s five populated colonies — Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands — may hang in the balance. In April the Supreme Court decided what seemed to be an abstruse case about federal benefits owed to Puerto Ricans. But Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion began with a startling passage. He asserted that the United States has no business deciding anything for Puerto Rico because our ownership of that island — and by extension other US colonies — is unconstitutional. “A century ago in the Insular Cases, this Court held that the federal government could rule Puerto Rico and other territories largely without regard to the Constitution,” Gorsuch wrote. “It is past time to acknowledge the gravity of this error and admit what we know to be true: the Insular Cases have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes. They deserve no place in our law. . . . And I hope the day comes soon when the Court squarely overrules them.”

Full Article: The Supreme Court may take territories off the map of the US - The Boston Globe

No evidence of exploitation of Dominion voting machine flaws, CISA finds | Ellen Nakashima and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

The federal government has found no evidence that flaws in Dominion voting machines have ever been exploited, including in the 2020 election, according to the executive director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, has notified election officials in more than a dozen states that use the machines of several vulnerabilities and mitigation measures that would aid in detection or prevention of an attempt to exploit those vulnerabilities. The move marks the first time CISA has run voting machine flaws through its vulnerability disclosure program, which since 2019 has examined and disclosed hundreds of vulnerabilities in commercial and industrial systems that have been identified by researchers around the world. (The program is aimed at helping companies and consumers better secure devices from breaches. The security of Dominion voting machines has become a flash point in the fraught politics of the 2020 election with supporters of former president Donald Trump claiming that the results were tainted by machines that were manipulated, while election officials — including Georgia’s Republican secretary of state and governor — insisted that there was no evidence of breaches or altered results.

Full Article: No evidence of exploitation of Dominion voting machine flaws, CISA finds - The Washington Post

‘It’s going to be an army’: Tapes reveal GOP plan to contest elections | Heidi Przybyla/Politico

Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys. The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts. “Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger,” said Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers in a meeting with GOP activists in Wayne County last Nov. 6. It is one of a series of recordings of GOP meetings between summer of 2021 and May of this year obtained by POLITICO. Backing up those front-line workers, “it’s going to be an army,” Seifried promised at an Oct. 5 training session. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

Full Article: ‘It’s going to be an army’: Tapes reveal GOP plan to contest elections - POLITICO

National: Cyber agency: No evidence the flaws in the Dominion Voting Systems’ equipment have been exploited to alter election results | Kate Brumback/Associated Press

Electronic voting machines from a leading vendor used in at least 16 states have software vulnerabilities that leave them susceptible to hacking if unaddressed, the nation’s leading cybersecurity agency says in an advisory sent to state election officials. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, or CISA, said there is no evidence the flaws in the Dominion Voting Systems’ equipment have been exploited to alter election results. The advisory is based on testing by a prominent computer scientist and expert witness in a long-running lawsuit that is unrelated to false allegations of a stolen election pushed by former President Donald Trump after his 2020 election loss. The advisory, obtained by The Associated Press in advance of its expected Friday release, details nine vulnerabilities and suggests protective measures to prevent or detect their exploitation. Amid a swirl of misinformation and disinformation about elections, CISA seems to be trying to walk a line between not alarming the public and stressing the need for election officials to take action. CISA Executive Director Brandon Wales said in a statement that “states’ standard election security procedures would detect exploitation of these vulnerabilities and in many cases would prevent attempts entirely.” Yet the advisory seems to suggest states aren’t doing enough. It urges prompt mitigation measures, including both continued and enhanced “defensive measures to reduce the risk of exploitation of these vulnerabilities.” Those measures need to be applied ahead of every election, the advisory says, and it’s clear that’s not happening in all of the states that use the machines.

Source: Cyber agency: Voting software vulnerable in some states | AP News

National: They Insisted the 2020 Election Was Tainted. Their 2022 Primary Wins? Not So Much. | Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

This spring, when Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama was fighting to win over conservatives in his campaign for Senate, he ran a television ad that boasted, “On Jan. 6, I proudly stood with President Trump in the fight against voter fraud.” But when Mr. Brooks placed second in Alabama’s Republican primary last week, leaving him in a runoff, he said he was not concerned about fraud in his election. “If it’s a close race and you’re talking about a five- or 10-vote difference, well, then, it becomes a greater concern,” he said of his primary results. “But I’ve got more important fish to fry. And so, at some point, you have to hope that the election system is going to be honest.” Mr. Brooks was one of 147 Republican members of Congress who voted on Jan. 6, 2021, to object to the results of the 2020 presidential election. Hundreds more Republican state legislators across the country took similar action in their own capitals. President Biden’s victory, they said, was corrupted by either outright fraud or pandemic-related changes to voting. Now, many of those Republicans are accepting the results of their primaries without complaint. Already this year, 55 of the lawmakers who objected in 2020 have run in competitive primaries, contests conducted largely under the same rules and regulations as those in 2020. None have raised doubts about vote counts, even as Mr. Trump has begun to spread unfounded claims. No conspiracy theories about mail ballots have surfaced. And no one has called for a “forensic audit” or further investigations of the 2022 primary results.

Full Article: Republicans Accept Primary Wins Despite Election Fraud Claims in 2020 - The New York Times

National: ‘The horse and buggy era’: Attacks on voting machines set off fresh worries about election subversion | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Despite warnings that ditching voting machines would delay election results and likely violate the law, county commissioners in a rural slice of western Colorado this year voted to stop paying the licensing fee on the county's devices. Commissioners in Nye County, Nevada, meanwhile, want local election officials to begin hand-counting paper ballots in this year's elections. And in Arizona, two Trump-aligned candidates for statewide office have gone to court in a long-shot bid to bar the use of machines to record and count votes in a battleground state with more than 4 million voters -- and key Senate and gubernatorial races this year. These pockets of resistance to voting machines mark another attempt by Republicans sold on former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud to transform how US elections are run. So far, most efforts have been thwarted at the state level. But critics warn that the moves, if successful in just a handful of localities, would result in delays and chaos and potentially open the door to election subversion efforts.

Fulll Article: 'The horse and buggy era': Attacks on voting machines set off fresh worries about election subversion - CNNPolitics

National: Lawyer Who Plotted to Overturn Trump Loss Recruits Election Deniers to Watch Over the Vote | Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

In a hotel conference center outside Harrisburg, Pa., Cleta Mitchell, one of the key figures in a failed scheme to overturn Donald J. Trump’s defeat, was leading a seminar on “election integrity.” “We are taking the lessons we learned in 2020 and we are going forward to make sure they never happen again,” Ms. Mitchell told the crowd of about 150 activists-in-training. She would be “putting you to work,” she told them. In the days after the 2020 election, Ms. Mitchell was among a cadre of Republican lawyers who frantically compiled unsubstantiated accusations, debunked claims and an array of confusing and inconclusive eyewitness reports to build the case that the election was marred by fraud. Courts rejected the cases and election officials were unconvinced, thwarting a stunning assault on the transfer of power. Now Ms. Mitchell is prepping for the next election. Working with a well-funded network of organizations on the right, including the Republican National Committee, she is recruiting election conspiracists into an organized cavalry of activists monitoring elections. In seminars around the country, Ms. Mitchell is marshaling volunteers to stake out election offices, file information requests, monitor voting, work at polling places and keep detailed records of their work. She has tapped into a network of grass-root groups that promote misinformation and espouse wild theories about the 2020 election, including the fiction that President Biden’s victory could still be decertified and Mr. Trump reinstated.

Full Article: Lawyer Who Plotted to Overturn Trump Loss Recruits Election Deniers to Watch Over the Vote - The New York Times

Georgia: There’s no evidence of election hacks but still plenty to worry about | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Georgia’s voting machines recorded votes properly – but they have hacking vulnerabilities that went undiscovered for years. The findings are from a recent review of the voting machines and represent a mixed bag for people concerned about foreign and domestic interference in U.S. elections. First, the good news: There’s no evidence any of the vulnerabilities have been used to alter votes in any elections, as my colleagues Ellen Nakashima and Amy Gardner report. Most of the vulnerabilities are also quite difficult to exploit, requiring hands-on access to the voting machines. And they’re likely to be caught by standard security protocols in election offices. But: The vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting Systems-brand machines remained undetected for years. They might not have been discovered now if not for a long-running lawsuit over the security of Georgia’s machines during which University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman was given a chance to examine the machines on behalf of the plaintiffs in the case. Such independent reviews are still relatively rare — and election security advocates warn vulnerabilities in other voting systems could still be waiting out there undiscovered. Halderman’s findings were verified by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is in the process of notifying more than a dozen states that use the machines about the vulnerabilities and mitigation measures they should take, according to Ellen and Amy who got an advance look at the CISA advisory.

Full Article: There's no evidence of Georgia election hacks but still plenty to worry about - The Washington Post

American Democracy Isn’t Ready for Online Voting | Spenser Mestel/The Atlantic

This weekend, Australians will vote in the country’s federal elections. The process will likely be seamless, transparent, and punctuated by countless civic-minded barbecues affectionately known as sausage sizzles. This is how elections generally go in Australia, but for those in New South Wales, that wasn’t the case late last year. The state had encouraged a significant number of voters to move to an internet-voting system called iVote. In December, it melted down so badly that the New South Wales Electoral Commission not only discontinued its use but also asked a court to nullify the results of three city-council elections. It was an embarrassing failure for e-voting. More than 650,000 online votes were cast—probably a world record, says Vanessa Teague, an election-security expert and a professor at the Australian National University. Teague has been warning governments about vulnerabilities in e-voting for years, as have cybersecurity researchers in the U.S., where systems like iVote are being expanded in at least nine states. Letting people vote from home with the click of a button is an appealing idea, especially in the U.S., where turnout is abysmal. The problem, the American Association for the Advancement of Science says, is that there’s no “evidence that any internet voting technology is safe or can be made so in the foreseeable future … All research to date demonstrates the opposite.”

Full Article: American Democracy Isn't Ready for Online Voting - The Atlantic

National: A PDF File Is Not Paper, So PDF Ballots Cannot Be Verified | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

A new paper by Henry Herrington, a computer science undergraduate at Princeton University, demonstrates that a hacked PDF ballot can display one set of votes to the voter, but different votes after it’s emailed – or uploaded – to election officials doing the counting. For overseas voters or voters with disabilities, many states provide “Remote Accessible Vote By Mail,” or RAVBM, a system that allows voters the ability to download and print an absentee ballot, fill it out by hand on paper, and physically mail it back. Some states use commercial products, while others have developed their own solutions. In general, this form of RAVBM can be made adequately secure, mainly because the voters make their own marks on the paper. In some forms of RAVBM, the voter can fill out the ballot using an app on their computer before printing and mailing it. This is less secure: if malware on the voter’s computer has “hacked” the voting app, what’s printed out may differ from what the voter indicated on the screen, and voters are not very good at reviewing the printouts and noticing such changes. The most dangerous form of RAVBM is one that allows electronic ballot return, in which the voter uploads or emails a PDF file. Thirty states allow overseas voters to do electronic ballot return, either by email, fax, or web-portal upload, as shown in Table 5 (pages 34-35) of Herrington’s longer paper, Ballot Acrobatics: Altering Electronic Ballots using Internal PDF Scripting. Full Article: A PDF File Is Not Paper, So PDF Ballots Cannot Be Verified

National: Security chiefs scramble to prevent Russian interference in midterms | Tom Rees/The Telegraph

US security chiefs are scrambling to prevent Russian interference in the midterm elections as they are "very concerned" about the Kremlin using cyber warfare and online disinformation. Jen Easterly, US director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the US has been forced to beef up its election cybersecurity after the Kremlin was accused of influencing the 2016 vote to help Donald Trump win. Joe Biden and the Democrats are heading into a difficult midterms and a recent Ipsos MORI poll found that more than half of Americans are concerned about Russia spreading misinformation online in this year’s election. Ms Easterly said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that US officials are “very concerned” but have “raised the bar” on election infrastructure cybersecurity. “I'm projecting myself into November because obviously we are very concerned about foreign [influence],” Ms Easterly said. “I frankly, don't think that Russia needs to do anything to create chaos in our elections.” Ms Easterly said she is “much more concerned about physical threats to election officials and disinformation threats to the American people's confidence.” Full Article: US security chiefs scramble to prevent Russian interference in midterms

National: How Trump’s 2020 Election Lies Have Gripped State Legislatures | Nick Corasaniti, Karen Yourish and Keith Collins/The New York Times

At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a review of legislative votes, records and official statements by The New York Times. The tally accounts for 44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided. In each of those states, the election was conducted without any evidence of widespread fraud, leaving election officials from both parties in agreement on the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr. The Times’s analysis exposes how deeply rooted lies and misinformation about former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat have become in state legislatures, which play an integral role in U.S. democracy. In some, the false view that the election was stolen — either by fraud or as a result of pandemic-related changes to the process — is now widely accepted as fact among Republican lawmakers, turning statehouses into hotbeds of conspiratorial thinking and specious legal theories.

Full Article: How Trump’s 2020 Election Lies Have Gripped State Legislatures - The New York Times

National: This nonprofit will use big data to fight voter suppression in the midterm elections | Adele Peters/Fast Company

After the presidential election in 2020, when Georgia launched runoff elections for the state’s two Senate seats, officials in Cobb County on the outskirts of Atlanta announced that they were going to shut down several early voting sites in diverse neighborhoods. But a recently launched nonprofit stepped in, using anonymized cell phone data to show the impact that the change would have on voters. “We were able to use the data we had already collected to show how shutting down those specific polling locations would disproportionately impact voters of color,” says Daniel Wein, cofounder and head of partnerships at the nonprofit, called the Center for New Data. “And in two days, that information was published and was circulated in the community. Stacey Abrams tweeted about it. And Cobb County reversed several of the poll closures.” The nonprofit, part of the current cohort at the impact tech accelerator Fast Forward, makes use of the type of data typically used by advertisers—location data from smartphones—to understand how long voters have to wait in line; in 2020, the nonprofit said it would receive voter wait time data from the November 3 election, collected by location-data mining companies X-Mode Social and Veraset, as soon as November 4. The methodology for using this data to analyze disparities at polling places came from a study, published in 2019, that analyzed anonymous location data from 10 million smartphones at 93,000 polling places to create a detailed picture of wait times. In Black neighborhoods, voters waited 29% longer to vote than those in white neighborhoods, per that study. They were also 74% more likely to end up waiting more than half an hour.

Full Article: This nonprofit will use big data to fight voter suppression in the 202

Editorial: America’s billionaire class is funding anti-democratic forces | Robert Reich/The Guardian

Decades ago, America’s monied interests bankrolled a Republican establishment that believed in fiscal conservatism, anti-communism and constitutional democracy. Today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America – backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting and even questioning the value of democracy. Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech financier who is among those leading the charge, once wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel is using his fortune to squelch democracy. He donated $15m to the successful Republican Ohio senatorial primary campaign of JD Vance, who alleges that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy has meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” Thiel has donated at least $10m to the Arizona Republican primary race of Blake Masters, who also claims Trump won the 2020 election and admires Lee Kuan Yew, the authoritarian founder of modern Singapore. The former generation of wealthy conservatives backed candidates like Barry Goldwater, who wanted to conserve American institutions. Thiel and his fellow billionaires in the anti-democracy movement don’t want to conserve much of anything – at least not anything that occurred after the 1920s, which includes Social Security, civil rights, and even women’s right to vote.

Full Article: America’s billionaire class is funding anti-democratic forces | Robert Reich | The Guardian

Misinformation, violence and a paper shortage threaten midterm elections, officials say | Jacob Fischler/Idaho Capital Sun

Members of a U.S. Senate panel and election administrators raised a bevy of concerns Thursday about the challenges elections officials will face this fall, saying problems ranging from a lack of paper to coordinated misinformation campaigns could affect confidence in U.S. democracy. A bipartisan panel of current and former elections officials and experts told the Senate Rules and Administration Committee that state officials face threats of physical violence, while dealing with misinformation, supply chain challenges and funding shortfalls — making the administration of this year’s midterm elections more difficult. Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, listed those developments at the start of the hearing. She highlighted threats that have led Colorado officials to receive active shooter training and obtain bullet-proof vests, with morale among elections administrators nationwide worryingly low. “In light of these challenges, we must support the election officials working on the front lines of our democracy,” Klobuchar said. In addition to relatively new concerns related to holding elections in a pandemic, ranking Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri noted foreign and domestic adversaries persist in targeting election infrastructure and spreading online misinformation. Full Article: Misinformation, violence and a paper shortage threaten midterm elections, officials say - Idaho Capital Sun

Effort to recruit poll workers relaunches amid fears of shortage | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Power the Polls, an effort backed by major civic groups and businesses that recruited hundreds of thousands of people to serve as poll workers in 2020, is relaunching its efforts ahead of the midterms. The program relaunch, shared first with POLITICO, comes amid some early signs that some jurisdictions are struggling to recruit enough poll workers to staff primaries and the general election. “We’re seeing already in the early primaries that there have been places that polling locations have been closed due to poll worker shortages, or there’s been the threat of closing polling locations,” said Jane Slusser, the effort’s program manager, in an interview. Recruiting poll workers was one of the biggest challenges for election officials during the 2020 election. And a rise in conspiracy theory-fueled threats to election workers, from secretaries of state on down, have worried some in the field, who say the environment makes it more difficult to recruit and retain enough workers this election cycle. Slusser said Power the Polls would look to reengage the 700,000 people who signed up to be potential poll workers in 2020, encouraging them to get in touch with their local election offices to work again. She said Power the Polls would place a particular emphasis on recruiting workers who have specialized skill sets, like knowing multiple languages, that local officials need to run elections smoothly.

Full Article: Effort to recruit poll workers relaunches amid fears of shortage - POLITICO

National: Midterm Stakes Grow Clearer: Election Deniers Will Be on Many Ballots | Reid J. Epstein/The New York Times

Republican voters in this week’s primary races demonstrated a willingness to nominate candidates who parrot Donald J. Trump’s election lies and who appear intent on exerting extraordinary political control over voting systems. The results make clear that the November midterms may well affect the fate of free and fair elections in the country. In Pennsylvania, Republican voters united behind a nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano, who helped lead the brazen effort to overturn the state’s 2020 election and chartered buses to the rally before the Capitol riot, and who has since promoted a constitutionally impossible effort to decertify President Biden’s victory in his state. In North Carolina, voters chose a G.O.P. Senate nominee, Representative Ted Budd, who voted in Congress against certifying the 2020 results and who continues to refuse to say that Mr. Biden was legitimately elected. And in Idaho, which Mr. Trump won overwhelmingly in 2020, 57 percent of voters backed two Republican candidates for secretary of state who pushed election falsehoods, though they lost a three-way race to a rival who accepts Mr. Biden as president. The strong showings on Tuesday by election deniers, who have counterparts running competitively in primaries across the country over the coming months, were an early signal of the threat posed by the Trump-inspired movement. “It’s a big problem,” said former Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, who added that the G.O.P. needs “to show an alternative vision for the party. I don’t think we’re seeing enough of that right now.”

Full Article: Midterm Stakes Grow Clearer: Election Deniers Will Be on Many Ballots - The New York Times

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

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

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