National

The legal battle against disinformation from right-wing media outlets is expanding. Smartmatic, an election technology firm that became a target of pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential race, sued Newsmax and One America News Network on Wednesday for defamation, demanding that the conservative cable networks face jury trials for spreading falsehoods about the company. The new lawsuits add to a growing suite of litigation by Smartmatic and another election technology provider, Dominion, which found itself mired in the same conspiracy theories. In February, Smartmatic sued Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and several Fox anchors on similar grounds, as well as two of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani. “We are holding them accountable for what they tell their audience,” J. Erik Connolly, a lawyer for Smartmatic, said in an interview. Dominion has sued Fox, Newsmax, One America News, Ms. Powell, Mr. Giuliani, and Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow. Smartmatic and Dominion were both accused by pro-Trump forces, without evidence, of rigging vote tallies in key states to swing the election to Joseph R. Biden Jr., part of a large-scale effort by Mr. Trump’s allies to cast doubt on the 2020 results. Those conspiracies have only expanded in the year since Mr. Biden won, as leading Republican officials and media personalities have continued to raise doubts about Mr. Trump’s defeat.

Full Article: Smartmatic Sues Newsmax and One America News Network for Defamation – The New York Times

National: The 2020 vote and its aftermath have left many election workers beleaguered | Ashley Lopez/NPR

Isabel Longoria runs elections in Harris County, which is where Houston is. She says she loves her job and thinks most people who do that kind work feel the same way. “I am an election nerd and I don’t know a single other elections administrator who is not an election nerd,” Longoria says. “We geek out, literally, on having the coolest job in America that we get to run the founding principles of this country — which is free and fair elections.” But since the 2020 presidential election, and amid the false allegations that followed claiming it was stolen, local election officials have faced increased scrutiny. Some have been harassed and gotten death threats. Some are leaving the job altogether. Longoria is not. She started her job as the county’s elections administrator in 2020, during the worst of the pandemic and ahead of a contentious election. She came up with a lot of ideas on how to make voting safer — ideas that were later criticized and prohibited by Republican state lawmakers. Longoria says she’s been doing what she can to help people understand what she does, but she’s finding that some people cannot be satisfied.

Full Article: The 2020 vote and its aftermath have left many election workers beleaguered : NPR

National: Senate GOP blocks John Lewis voting rights bill | Jordain Carney/The Hill

Republicans on Wednesday blocked the Senate from starting debate on a voting rights bill named after the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), marking the latest setback for Democrats in their push for new elections legislation. Senators voted 50-49 on whether to bring up the bill, falling short of the 60 votes needed to move forward. Vice President Harris presided over part of the vote. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) voted no, a procedural step that lets him bring the bill back up in the future for another vote. Unlike this year’s previous failed election reform votes, which were on bills that stretched well beyond bolstering the Voting Rights Act, Democrats picked up a GOP supporter: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). Murkowski and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) signed on to a revised version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act on Tuesday after weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiating. “Ensuring our elections are fair, accessible and secure is essential to restoring the American people’s faith in our Democracy. That’s why my colleagues and I have come together to introduce the bipartisan John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” Manchin said in a statement.

Source: Senate GOP blocks John Lewis voting rights bill | TheHill

National: Cyberattacks Threaten Voter Confidence in Election Systems | Lisbeth Perez/MeriTalk

While several aspects in the electoral system may be at risk, election officials at the Federal and state level agreed that cyberthreats have routinely and at larger numbers attacked voters’ confidence in the system with the spread of misinformation. Misinformation and disinformation about election systems and officials are demoralizing and take a tremendous amount of time and effort to combat. Judd Choate, the elections director for the state of Colorado, said during NextGov’s Election Security Summit on Nov 3, he and his team find themselves spending a significant amount of time playing defense against this misinformation and not enough time building up systems to fight off possible attacks. “We are getting hundreds of calls regarding misinformation. And a lot of the time, we find ourselves playing defense because there really is a limit in the things that we can do,” Choate said. Yet, according to Choate, partnerships with nonprofit organizations and Federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have “created this incredible infrastructure to try and secure our election systems against these cyber threats.”

Full Article: Cyberattacks Threaten Voter Confidence in Election Systems – MeriTalk

National: Meet the Obscure Think Tank Powering Trump’s Biggest Lies| Cameron Joseph/Vice

As Vice President Mike Pence and his team hid in the basement of the Capitol from rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” on Jan. 6, President Donald Trump’s attorney John Eastman emailed one of Pence’s staffers to blame him for the violence. “The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman told Pence adviser Greg Jacob. The insurrection came after Trump, with Eastman’s help, tried to bully Pence into blocking Congress from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s election win—what Jacob called “bullshit” legal advice that had left them “under siege”—then whipped his supporters into a frenzy that led to the violent ransacking of the U.S. Capitol. Eastman, the director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, is also the man who wrote the memo that said Pence should try to block Biden’s election certification. And he wasn’t the only Claremont Institute leader involved in that harrowing episode—and in subsequent efforts to undermine democracy. “Have been on Capitol Hill all day. We are in a constitutional crisis and also in a revolutionary moment,” Brian Kennedy, the president emeritus and senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, tweeted on Jan. 5. “We must embrace the spirit of the American Revolution to stop this communist revolution. #HoldTheLine.”

Full Article: Meet the Obscure Think Tank Powering Trump’s Biggest Lies

National: After attacks on the 2020 election, secretary of state races take on new urgency | Stephen Fowler/NPR

Primary challenges are a normal part of politics, but normally low-key races to be a state’s chief election official are taking on a different tone after the 2020 election. At a recent rally held by former President Donald Trump in Perry, Ga., Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., stumped for his campaign to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “It is my deep conviction that Brad Raffensperger has massively compromised the right of the people at the ballot box,” he said. “He has opened wide the door for all sorts of irregularities and fraud to march into our election system, and it is time that we take charge of this.” Hice, who objected to Georgia’s Electoral College votes after the insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol in January, is running on a platform that promises to “aggressively pursue voter fraud,” “renew integrity” and replace the state’s $100 million ballot-marking system that was rolled out just last year. He is one of several pro-Trump Republican candidates in secretary of state races in swing states like Georgia, Arizona and Michigan who have embraced falsehoods about the systems they now want to oversee — attacking the 2020 election results and spreading misleading claims about voting machines and absentee ballots. Many elections officials who currently run things have faced the wrath of Trump for defending last November’s election — none more so than Raffensperger, who notably refused Trump’s request to “find” enough votes for him to win Georgia. Georgia’s narrow margins were counted three separate times, including once by hand in a risk-limiting audit. But more than a year later, baseless claims of fraud and wrongdoing persist.

Full Article: After attacks on the 2020 election, secretary of state races take on new urgency : NPR

Editorial: The long-dead ‘2020 was stolen’ claim gets more nails in its coffin | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

It was one year ago Wednesday that the “crime of the century” occurred, according to former president Donald Trump: The 2020 presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden and Democrats. And yet the anniversary of that contest dawned with that ridiculous assertion newly undermined — to the extent that something with literally no foundation can be undermined further. The theory as postulated by Trump and his allies goes something like this: Some group linked to the political left conducted a campaign to systematically submit votes on behalf of dead voters or people who hadn’t chosen to cast a ballot. Others used electronic voting machines to alter vote totals. This occurred not just across multiple states but within county-level voting systems that are all run independently. It occurred in such a way that Biden earned just enough votes in just enough places to carry the electoral college, suggesting both coordination and a sophisticated ability to track election results that seem to conflict with how we generally understand elections to be run. This rampant effort left all sorts of statistical fingerprints according to Trump’s allies, markers that emerge only following complicated calculations about vote totals and turnout, in the way that you might finally figure out the reason it makes sense to have a cookie for dessert despite your diet. Despite this rampant theoretical evidence that something iffy happened, no direct evidence of fraudulent efforts has been uncovered, no person has come forward to admit involvement in a scheme that would require at least hundreds of participants, and no physical evidence has been offered demonstrating how this effort was supposed to have worked.

Full Article: The long-dead ‘2020 was stolen’ claim gets more nails in its coffin – The Washington Post

Voting machine company Smartmatic sues OAN, Newsmax over election claims | Maureen Breslin/The Hill

Smartmatic, a company that creates election and voting technology and support services, is suing conservative news outlets One American News Network (OAN) and Newsmax for alleged slander and libel about its voting systems, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Smartmatic’s complaint against OAN and Newsmax has not yet been posted to the courts, according to Reuters, citing court records. Smartmatic had previously filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, Fox News hosts, as well as attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, accusing them of harming the company’s brand with their accusations of the voting machines’ role in alleged widespread election fraud. Fox News and its hosts have stated that these cases should be dismissed, claiming that former President Trump‘s allegations were newsworthy, even if false, and that outlets should be allowed to report on them. OAN rose to fame following the 2020 election as it promoted far-right political viewpoints and reported with affinity for Trump, covering his rallies and featuring hosts who praise the former president and his policies.

Full Article: Voting machine company Smartmatic sues OAN, Newsmax over election claims | TheHill

National: CISA promotes election cybersecurity platform debunking misinformation | Jonathan Greig/ZDNet

CISA has published a trove of information about election cybersecurity and misinformation for Election Day. Voters in dozens of states are heading to the polls today, with crucial gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia as well as pivotal mayoral elections in Atlanta, New York City, Buffalo and Boston. The cybersecurity body reiterated that there is “no specific, credible threat to election infrastructure” but noted that they are “ready to provide cyber incident response and expertise if needed.” CISA created an “Election Security Rumor vs Reality” page to debunk rumors and misinformation that float around the internet. The agency has been forced to address numerous conspiracy theories and misinformation — sometimes from elected officials themselves — since the 2020 presidential election. CISA said that with more than 30 states voting on a variety of positions and referendums, they decided to host an election situational awareness room that allows them to “coordinate with federal partners, state and local election officials, private sector election partners, and political organizations to share real-time information and provide support as needed.” “CISA has supported state and local election officials to help secure their systems and push back against malicious actors seeking to disrupt our democratic process and interfere in our elections,” CISA election security initiative director Geoff Hale said. “We look forward to continuing this work in collaboration with our election partners to ensure the security and resilience of elections in 2021 and beyond.”

Full Article: CISA promotes election cybersecurity platform debunking misinformation | ZDNet

National: House select committee targets 134-year-old law in effort to prevent another January 6 | Jeremy Herb and Pamela Brown/CNN

Members of the January 6 committee are working on potential legislation to tighten the process of certifying a presidential election in an effort to eliminate contentious avenues that spurred the January 6 riot, sources tell CNN. The legislation would give the committee a focus on developing a law as part of the investigation, undercutting a legal argument that former President Donald Trump has made that the committee has no true legislative purpose for seeking his White House documents. The effort is still in its early stages, but a proposed bill could offer more specific instructions for when Congress can overturn a state’s slate of electors, and more clearly define the role the vice president plays in counting the votes — after Trump and his allies pressured Mike Pence to try to block President Joe Biden’s win, the sources say. Specifically, members are focused on making changes to a 19th Century law known as the Electoral Count Act that was intended to give Congress a process by which to certify the Electoral College votes submitted by the states. It’s a mundane but crucial part of the presidential election machinery, one that Trump and his allies attempted to exploit last year.

Full Article: Electoral Count Act: House select committee targets 134-year-old law in effort to prevent another January 6 – CNNPolitics

National: Republicans want more eyes on election workers. Experts worry about their intent | Miles Parks/NPR

For anyone hoping that voting and elections post-2020 would become less polarized, the recent Take Back Virginia rally outside Richmond was not a good sign. It opened with those in attendance pledging allegiance to a flag that was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the building to stop the official counting of Electoral College votes in the belief that they could prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. For many of the speakers at the event, election integrity was at the top of their priority list — and not just opposition to ballot drop boxes or voting by mail. Instead, the emphasis was for direct involvement by regular voters and activists to monitor election workers. The push for more poll watchers is a clear outgrowth of the lies and disinformation spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Just a third of Republicans trust U.S. elections are fair, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released on Monday.

Full Article: Following Trump, Republicans push for more poll watchers : NPR

National: ‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidency | Ed Pilkington/The Guardian

On 4 January, the conservative lawyer John Eastman was summoned to the Oval Office to meet Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence. Within 48 hours, Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election would formally be certified by Congress, sealing Trump’s fate and removing him from the White House. The atmosphere in the room was tense. The then US president was “fired up” to make what amounted to a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results and snatch a second term in office in the most powerful job on Earth. Eastman, who had a decades-long reputation as a prominent conservative law professor, had already prepared a two-page memo in which he had outlined an incendiary scenario under which Pence, presiding over the joint session of Congress that was to be convened on 6 January, effectively overrides the votes of millions of Americans in seven states that Biden had won, then “gavels President Trump as re-elected”. The Eastman memo, first revealed by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book Peril, goes on to predict “howls” of protest from Democrats. The theory was that Pence, acting as the “ultimate arbiter” of the process, would then send the matter to the House of Representatives which, following an arcane rule that says that where no candidate has reached the necessary majority each state will have one vote, also decides to turn the world upside down and hand the election to the losing candidate, Donald Trump. Eastman’s by now notorious memo, and the surreal encounter in the Oval Office, are among the central twists in the unfolding story of Trump’s audacious bid to hang on to power. They form the basis of what critics argue was nothing less than an attempted electoral coup.

Full Article: ‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidency | US elections 2020 | The Guardian

National: ‘It’s been a barrage every day’: US election workers face threats and harassment | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Before he leaves his house to walk his dog these days, Rick Barron’s 12-year-old-daughter reminds him that he needs to keep an eye out because she worries her dad could be the target of an attack. Barron, 55, is the director of voting and elections in Fulton county, which includes Atlanta and is the most populous county in Georgia. For the last year, he’s been subject to a barrage of voicemails and emails with threats, including some threatening violence and death, as Donald Trump and his allies have falsely claimed the election was stolen. “You will be served lead,” someone said on a voicemail left for Barron in recent months. It’s an experience being shared by state and local officials across the United States. For decades, those officials have largely been invisible, working out of the public spotlight to ensure the machinery of elections runs smoothly. But as Trump and allies target that machinery as part of an effort to insist something was amiss in 2020, those officials have been thrust into the national spotlight and subject to vicious harassment. Nearly one in three election officials feel unsafe in their job, according to an April survey commissioned by the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s been a barrage every day,” Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, told the Guardian. She said the threats have bombarded virtually every part of her office, including services that have nothing to do with elections.

Full Article: ‘It’s been a barrage every day’: US election workers face threats and harassment | US voting rights | The Guardian

National: Officials on alert for cyber threats ahead of election day | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Officials are on alert for threats to elections ahead of Election Day in states including Virginia on Tuesday, one year after a contentious 2020 presidential election. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) put out a statement Monday announcing that it would set up an election situational awareness room to monitor elections in over 30 states. This space will serve to coordinate election security efforts between CISA, the key agency responsible for election security, and election officials at the state and local levels, along with representatives from political organizations and other private sector groups. CISA stressed Monday that while preparations were underway to monitor for any security concerns, there is currently “no specific, credible threat to election infrastructure.” “CISA has supported state and local election officials to help secure their systems and push back against malicious actors seeking to disrupt our democratic process and interfere in our elections,” Geoff Hale, the director of CISA’s Election Security Initiative, said in a statement Monday. “We look forward to continuing this work in collaboration with our election partners to ensure the security and resilience of elections in 2021 and beyond.” The agency is also again using its “rumor control” page to help push back against election disinformation and misinformation. The page was created by the agency ahead of the 2020 presidential election, and was a key factor behind President Trump’s decision to fire former CISA Director Christopher Krebs in the days after the election, as CISA and election officials sought to stress the accuracy of the 2020 election results.

Full Article: Officials on alert for cyber threats ahead of election day | TheHill

National: ‘It’s absolutely getting worse’: Secretaries of state targeted by Trump election lies live in fear for their safety and are desperate for protection | Isaac Dovere and Jeremy Herb/CNN

“I am a hunter — and I think you should be hunted,” a woman can be heard saying in a voicemail left for Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in September. “You will never be safe in Arizona again.” Or there’s the man who spit, “Die you bitch, die! Die you bitch, die!” repeatedly into the phone, in another of several dozen threatening and angry voicemails directed at the Democratic secretary of state and shared exclusively with CNN by her office. Officials and aides in secretary of state offices in Arizona and other states targeted by former President Donald Trump in his attack on last year’s election results told CNN about living in constant terror — nervously watching the people around them at events, checking in their rearview mirrors for cars following them home and sitting up at night wondering what might happen next. Law enforcement has never had to think much about protecting secretaries of state, let alone allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars in security, tracking and follow-up. Their jobs used to be mundane, unexciting, bureaucratic. These are small offices in a handful of states with enormous power in administering elections, from mailing ballots to overseeing voting machines to keeping track of counted votes.

Full Article: Secretaries of state targeted by Trump election lies live in fear for their safety and are desperate for protection – CNNPolitics

National: Elections Officials Are Still Receiving Death Threats and Harassment About the 2020 Election. They’re Asking Congress For Help. | Kate Elizabeth Queram/Route Fifty

Full Article: Elections Officials Are Still Receiving Death Threats and Harassment About the 2020 Election. They’re Asking Congress For Help. – Route Fifty

Two weeks after the 2020 presidential election, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the home of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state. “Katie, come out and play,” they chanted. “We’re watching you.” The threats, which also targeted Hobbs’ children and husband, came from far-right voters who believed former President Donald Trump’s false assertions that the election was stolen from him in states like Arizona, Hobbs said this week at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. And they’ve reached far beyond her, she added. “What concerns me more is the near-constant harassment faced by the public servants who administer our elections,” said Hobbs, a candidate for governor in Arizona. “These are people who truly make our government work. They never ran for office or appeared in political ads. But nearly every day they are on the receiving end of abusive phone calls and emails. We’re seeing high turnover among elections staff, and I fear that many more will reach a breaking point and decide that this line of public service is no longer worth it.” The hearing, held Tuesday, gave state and local election officials the opportunity to brief lawmakers on the continued threats and harassment directed their way, most stemming from the failed legal challenges and torrent of misinformation that followed last year’s election. Their testimony urged Congress to pass a suite of voting rights legislation, including a bill that would strengthen protections for election administrators during the voting, counting and certification processes.

National: Election officials don’t need to report cyber incidents to the feds. That could soon change. | AJ Vicens/CyberScoop

Security personnel charged with the challenging and high-stakes work of protecting election systems from digital threats might soon have another task on their to-do list: reporting any cyber incidents to the federal government. That’s if election technology, designated critical infrastructure in 2017, falls under proposed rules requiring critical infrastructure owners and operators to notify federal officials about cyber incidents, such as attempted hacks and ransomware attacks. The idea has surfaced again in a recent Stanford Internet Observatory paper authored by a former high ranking election security official who offered recommendations for election administration reform, ranging from increased funding to centralizing election IT infrastructure at the state level. The proposals are consistent with multiple bills under consideration in Congress, where momentum is building to require operators of critical infrastructure — pipeline owners, electrical grids, and other industries key to U.S. interests — to disclose yet-to-be defined cyber “incidents” to the Department of Homeland Security, FBI or officials who can quickly respond to cyberattacks. It remains unclear whether the federal government could mandate that the roughly 10,000 election jurisdictions — ranging from small towns to counties to states — report cyber incidents. And if it could, questions abound about who should hold that responsibility at a time when partisan politics are testing trust in the electoral system.

Full Article: Election officials don’t need to report cyber incidents to the feds. That could soon change.

National: Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Dominion Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump. But there was a problem for the Trump team, according to court documents released on Monday evening. By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and the separate software company, Smartmatic. The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue. The court papers, which were initially filed late last week as a motion in a defamation lawsuit brought against the campaign and others by a former Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, contain evidence that officials in the Trump campaign were aware early on that many of the claims against the companies were baseless. The documents also suggest that the campaign sat on its findings about Dominion even as Sidney Powell and other lawyers attacked the company in the conservative media and ultimately filed four federal lawsuits accusing it of a vast conspiracy to rig the election against Mr. Trump.

Full Article: Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Dominion Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows – The New York Times

National: Biden administration expected to name GOP official who challenged Trump’s lies to key election security role | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

The Biden administration is expected to name Kim Wyman, a Republican secretary of state who challenged former President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud, to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to protect future elections from foreign and domestic interference, multiple people familiar with the matter tell CNN. The move would put Wyman in a prominent role working with election officials across the country at a time when many members of her party have baselessly cast doubt on the integrity of elections. Federal officials have for weeks been in talks with Wyman, who is Washington state’s secretary of state, to serve as the election security lead for DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The sources said Wyman’s selection would not be official until all administrative paperwork is cleared with the White House and the administration announces her appointment. As a Republican secretary of state, Wyman repeatedly refuted Trump’s false assertions that mail-in ballots invite fraud. Trump’s proclamations, she said, were undermining US democracy. And in a May interview with CNN’s “New Day,” Wyman sharply criticized the sham “audit” of 2020 election results commissioned by Arizona Republicans.

Full Article: Kim Wyman: Biden administration expected to name GOP official who challenged Trump’s lies to key election security role – CNNPolitics

National: Election Cybersecurity: Protecting Against Election Cyber Attacks | Phil Muncaster/Government Teechnology

Election cybersecurity is one of the hottest topics in the country today. It dominated both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and most likely will continue to do so until state and local governments can demonstrate that their voting infrastructure and solutions are as secure and tamper-proof as possible. When voters go to the polls, they might not realize the complex blend of components that power today’s democratic system. Secure these, and you stand a much better chance of mitigating the threat from external actors. Electronic voting is quicker, faster and more accurate than manual voting and counting by hand. But because intelligent systems can be used to gather data and communicate with other systems, they could be exposed to cyber threats. For example, potential vulnerabilities in the machines used to supply registration data might allow unauthorized individuals to manipulate voter information.

Full Article: Election Cybersecurity: Protecting Against Election Cyber Attacks

National: How to Fight False Election Information and Other Problems | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology

With 2021 municipal races days away, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director Chris Krebs discussed the challenges to retaining voter trust in the face of mis- and disinformation, during a Harvard Kennedy School event Thursday. Protecting election systems from cyber and physical attacks was only one battle within the election security war in 2020 — the other, more difficult conflict was defending mindsets against false narratives about what had taken place. “We spent three and a half years working on threat modeling, trying to figure out every possible disruption that could be launched against the election,” Krebs said. ”We were thinking through, ‘You know, it’s not the technical attacks that are keeping us up at night, because we think we’ve got a pretty resilient system with good indicators’ … It came down to the perception hack that we were most worried about.” … As fear spreads, it can quickly transform into real-world threats, with this summer’s ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline serving as a prime example, Krebs said. When the pipeline shut down, a panicked public made runs on gas supplies, accelerating shortages and exacerbating the problem.

Full Article: How to Fight False Election Information and Other Problems

National: Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff | Hunter Walker/Rolling Stone

As the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack heats up, some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent. Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also the first account detailing their purported role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence. The two sources, both of whom have been granted anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, describe participating in “dozens” of planning briefings ahead of that day when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol as his election loss to President Joe Biden was being certified. “I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”

Full Article: Two Jan. 6 Planners Cooperate With Committee, Name MAGA Congress Members – Rolling Stone

National: Ahead of Jan. 6, Willard hotel in downtown D.C. was a Trump team ‘command center’ for effort to deny Biden the presidency | Jacqueline Alemany, Emma Brown, Tom Hamburger and Jon Swaine/The Washington Post

They called it the “command center,” a set of rooms and suites in the posh Willard hotel a block from the White House where some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal lieutenants were working day and night with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 election. The Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse and the ensuing attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob would draw the world’s attention to the quest to physically block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory. But the activities at the Willard that week add to an emerging picture of a less visible effort, mapped out in memos by a conservative pro-Trump legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to pull off what they claim was a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term. They were led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was an occasional presence as the effort’s senior political adviser. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was there as an investigator. Also present was John Eastman, the scholar, who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. They sought to make the case to Pence and ramp up pressure on him to take actions on Jan. 6 that Eastman suggested were within his powers, three people familiar with the operation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Their activities included finding and publicizing alleged evidence of fraud, urging members of state legislatures to challenge Biden’s victory and calling on the Trump-supporting public to press Republican officials in key states.

Full Article: Willard hotel was Trump team ‘command center’ for denying Biden presidency ahead of Jan. 6 – The Washington Post

National: GOP uses voters to push election reforms in unlikely states | Marc Levy/Associated Press

Republicans have succeeded this year in passing a range of voting restrictions in states they control politically, from Georgia to Iowa to Texas. They’re not stopping there. Republicans in at least four states where Democrats control the governor’s office, the legislature or both — California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania — are pursuing statewide ballot initiatives or veto-proof proposals to enact voter ID restrictions and other changes to election law. In another state, Nebraska, Republicans control the governor’s office and have a majority in the single-house legislature, but are pushing a voter ID ballot measure because they have been unable to get enough lawmakers on board. Republicans say they are pursuing the changes in the name of “election integrity,” and repeat similar slogans — “easier to vote, harder to cheat.” Democrats dismiss it as the GOP following former President Donald Trump’s false claims that widespread fraud cost him the election. They say Republicans have tried to whip up distrust in elections for political gain and are passing restrictions designed to keep Democratic-leaning voters from registering or casting a ballot. “It’s depressing that this is the way that (the Trump) wing of the Republican Party thinks they have to win, instead of trying to win on issues or beliefs,” said Gus Bickford, the Democratic Party chairman in Massachusetts. “They just want to suppress the vote.”

Full Article: GOP uses voters to push election reforms in unlikely states

National: Democrats weigh changes in filibuster to pass voting rights legislation after GOP opposition | Matthew Brown/USA Today