Among the records that Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to shield from Jan. 6 investigators are a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines and a document titled “Remarks on National Healing.” POLITICO has reviewed both documents. The text of the draft executive order is published here for the first time. The executive order — which also would have appointed a special counsel to probe the 2020 election — was never issued. The remarks are a draft of a speech Trump gave the next day. Together, the two documents point to the wildly divergent perspectives of White House advisers and allies during Trump’s frenetic final weeks in office. It’s not clear who wrote either document. But the draft executive order is dated Dec. 16, 2020, and is consistent with proposals that lawyer Sidney Powell made to the then-president. On Dec. 18, 2020, Powell, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump administration lawyer Emily Newman, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne met with Trump in the Oval Office. In that meeting, Powell urged Trump to seize voting machines and to appoint her as a special counsel to investigate the election, according to Axios.
National: Rejected Mail Ballots Are Showing Racial Disparities | Mike Baker/The New York Times
Among the thousands of mail-in ballots that were rejected in Washington State during the 2020 election, auditors have found that the votes of Black residents were thrown out four times as often as those of white voters. The rejections, all of them because of problematic signatures, disqualified one out of every 40 mail-in votes from Black people — a finding that already is causing concern amid the national debate over voter access and secure balloting. Washington, a state with broad experience in mail-in balloting, found that rejection rates were also elevated for Native American, Hispanic, and Asian and Pacific Islander voters. State officials said there were no signs that ballots cast by Black or other minority voters were knowingly singled out by poll workers, or that any of the ballots were deliberately falsified; the rejections were a result of signatures that were missing or did not match those on file, a possible result, the officials said, of voter inexperience, language problems or other factors. “It’s not acceptable, quite frankly,” said State Auditor Pat McCarthy, a Democrat, whose office conducted the audit. She urged election officials to take steps to address the disparities. The findings in Washington State mirror mail-ballot research that has been conducted in other states in recent years, including Georgia and Florida. But they are crucial in a state like Washington, which in 2011 became the second state to adopt all-mail balloting, behind Oregon. Mail-in voting has been an option for all statewide elections since 1991.
National: Trump followers zero in on secretary of state campaigns | Zach Montellaro/Politico
Donald Trump’s pick to become Arizona’s top elections official raised more campaign cash in 2021 than his two potential Democratic opponents combined — a sign of MAGA-world’s deep engagement in taking over under-the-radar positions in charge of running battleground state elections. State Rep. Mark Finchem, whom Trump endorsed for Arizona secretary of state in September of last year, has made the former president’s lies about the 2020 election results a cornerstone of his campaign. Finchem has said repeatedly, and without providing legitimate evidence, that the election was tainted by fraud, and he was a major backer of the GOP-led review of the vote in Maricopa County, which election experts and the county’s own Republican officials trashed as an unprofessional fishing expedition. Drafting off Trump’s endorsement, Finchem brought in more than $660,000 for his campaign in 2021, according to new campaign finance reports. That’s more than the combined fundraising totals of the two leading Democrats, former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes and state House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding, who respectively raised about $385,000 and $200,000 for the year. Another Republican with business ties actually raised even more than Finchem. But the financial haul from Trump’s pick, which included thousands of donations under $100 that poured in from around the country, points to a broader trend across the states.
Full Article: Trump followers zero in on secretary of state campaigns - POLITICONational: Federal prosecutors looking at 2020 fake elector certifications, deputy attorney general says | Evan Perez and Tierney Sneed/CNN
Federal prosecutors are reviewing fake Electoral College certifications that declared former President Donald Trump the winner of states that he lost, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told CNN on Tuesday. "We've received those referrals. Our prosecutors are looking at those and I can't say anything more on ongoing investigations," Monaco said in an exclusive interview. The fake certificates falsely declaring Trump's victory were sent to the National Archives by Trump's allies in mid-December 2020. They have attracted public scrutiny amid the House's January 6 investigation into the pressure campaign that sought to reverse Trump's electoral defeat. Monaco did not go into detail about what else prosecutors are looking at from the partisan attempt to subvert the 2020 vote count. She said that, more broadly, the Justice Department was "going to follow the facts and the law, wherever they lead, to address conduct of any kind and at any level that is part of an assault on our democracy." This is the first time that the Justice Department has commented on requests from lawmakers and state officials that it investigate the fake certifications.
Trump Supporters Left Death Threats for Election Workers. We Called Back. | Madeleine May/Vice
“Well, Tennessee is watching you, Mr. Rick,” a voicemail said. “I'm just right over the border. We're watching you all closely.” Another one had a similar message: “Hey Rick, watching this video of you on YouTube. You need to get your act together or people like me really may go after people like you.” And yet another: “I hope they hang your fucking ass.” After the 2020 presidential election, hundreds of threatening messages, emails, and voicemails were left for elections workers across the country. This is especially true in election hotspots like Georgia’s Fulton County, where officials were harassed for months over the phone and by email. Local law enforcement has not held anyone accountable, and some workers fear continued harassment in future elections. Importantly, these calls weren’t anonymous. Instead, they were made by people from across the country who believe the false conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump—and that election workers in Fulton County were to blame for massive electoral fraud. VICE News called them back. These messages were sent without shame: Of the threatening messages reviewed by VICE News, almost all contained the phone numbers, email addresses, or names of the people who had sent or left them. None regretted leaving threatening messages or expressed remorse that their words had caused election workers to fear for their lives.
Full Article: Trump Supporters Left Death Threats for Election Workers. We Called Back.
National: Election officials renew push for more financial assistance | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop
A group of current and former election officials said Tuesday that state and local administrators continue to need more financial resources to improve voting processes, particularly audits verifying the accuracy of elections at a time when disinformation and distrust are rising. During a virtual event hosted by the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a Chicago nonprofit made up of technologists and data analysts, speakers said states, counties and municipalities that run elections still face significant expenses. “Equipment costs, those are major for counties,” said Chris Hollins, the former clerk of Harris County, Texas. The county, which contains Houston, purchased 12,000 new voting machines — touchscreen interfaces that print paper records — in early 2021 for about $54 million. But, Hollins noted that Harris — home to 2.4 million voters — “is fortunate to be well resourced.” Full Article: Election officials renew push for more financial assistanceNational: Jan. 6 Panel and State Officials Seek Answers on Fake Trump Electors | Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer/The New York Times
Law enforcement officials, members of Congress and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are digging deeper into the role that fake slates of electors played in efforts by former President Donald J. Trump to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election. In recent days, the state attorneys general in Michigan and New Mexico have asked the Justice Department to investigate fake slates of electors that falsely claimed that Mr. Trump, not Joseph R. Biden Jr., had won their states. Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, wrote to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Friday demanding an investigation into the same issue in his state. And this week, members of the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 riot said that they, too, were examining the part that the bogus electoral slates played in Mr. Trump’s scheme to overturn the election. “We want to look at the fraudulent activity that was contained in the preparation of these fake Electoral College certificates, and then we want to look to see to what extent this was part of a comprehensive plan to overthrow the 2020 election,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “There’s no doubt that those people were engaged in a constitutional fraud on the public and on the democracy,” he added in a separate interview, referring to the bogus electors.
National: Pro-Trump death threats prompt bills in 3 states to protect election workers | Peter Eisler/Reuters
In Vermont, lawmakers are considering bills to make it easier to prosecute people who threaten election officials. In Maine, proposed legislation would stiffen penalties for such intimidation. In Washington, state senators voted this month to make threatening election workers a felony. The measures follow a Reuters series of investigative reports documenting a nationwide wave of threats and harassment against election administrators by Donald Trump supporters who embrace the former president’s false voting-fraud claims. Sponsors and supporters of the legislation in all three states cited Reuters reporting as an impetus for proposing tougher enforcement. Washington state Senator David Frockt, a Seattle Democrat, said the reports “gave us more evidence” to build support for legislation to hold accountable those who threaten election officials. In Maine, a bill authored by Democratic state Representative Bruce White would enhance penalties for anyone who “intentionally interferes by force, violence or intimidation” with election administration. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows cited the Reuters reporting in testimony supporting the bill. “This is unacceptable,” she said, noting that two municipal clerks in Maine were threatened with violence.
Full Article: Pro-Trump death threats prompt bills in 3 states to protect election workers | ReutersNational: Defending 2022 Elections from Misinformation, Cyber Threats | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology
With the anniversary of the misinformation-fueled Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack just weeks in the past, and the 2022 midterms looming, Congress members called a hearing last week to examine the nation’s election security needs. Cyber threats are becoming ever more sophisticated, presenting a constant challenge — especially for local governments with slim resources. Meanwhile, mis- and disinformation drum up public ire against elections officials, threaten residents’ abilities to vote freely and encourage those public officials who buy into the false narratives to tamper with elections, according to witnesses, whose backgrounds included areas like voting rights, cybersecurity and public policy. State and local election officials can only achieve so much cybersecurity without federal help, said Matt Masterson, former senior cybersecurity advisor for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Certain threats — like a hypothetical software supply chain compromise impacting election systems software — are too advanced, he said. There is currently no federal framework to guide state and local officials’ efforts to procure secure election software, said Brennan Center for Justice senior counsel Gowri Ramachandran. She said Congress can encourage a safer election IT market by restricting federal procurement to only those vendors meeting certain standards — thus creating a financial incentive. But even vendors’ abilities are limited against the kinds of sophisticated attacks that breached SolarWinds, said Masterson. Full Article: Defending 2022 Elections from Misinformation, Cyber ThreatsNational: Republicans Want New Tool in Elusive Search for Voter Fraud: Election Police | Michael Wines/The New York Times
Reprising the rigged-election belief that has become a mantra among their supporters, Republican politicians in at least three states are proposing to establish police forces to hunt exclusively for voter fraud and other election crimes, a category of offenses that experts say is tiny at best. The plans are part of a new wave of initiatives that Republicans say are directed at voter fraud. They are being condemned by voting rights advocates and even some local election supervisors, who call them costly and unnecessary appeasement of the Republican base that will select primary-election winners for this November’s midterms and the 2024 presidential race. The next round of voting clashes comes after the apparent demise of Democratic voting rights legislation in Washington on Thursday. It is a reminder that while the Democratic agenda in Washington seems dead, Republican state-level efforts to make voting harder show no sign of slowing down. Supporters say the added enforcement will root out instances of fraud and assure the public that everything possible is being done to make sure that American elections are accurate and legitimate. Critics say the efforts can easily be abused and used as political cudgels or efforts to intimidate people from registering and voting. And Democrats say the main reason Republican voters have lost faith in the electoral system is because of the incessant Republican focus on almost entirely imagined fraud. The most concrete proposal is in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the State Legislature last week for $5.7 million to create a 52-person “election crimes and security” force in the secretary of state’s office. The plan, which Mr. DeSantis has been touting since the fall, would include 20 sworn police officers and field offices statewide.
National: Dominion sees no chance of settling suits against pro-Trump lawyers Giuliani, Powell | Jan Wolfe and Helen Coster /Reuters
Dominion Voting Systems Corp has told a court there is "no realistic possibility" that the voting machine manufacturer will reach settlements in its billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, lawyers who worked for former President Donald Trump. Dominion and another voting software firm, Smartmatic, have brought several lawsuits against people who spread conspiracy theories related to their voting machines after the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to President Joe Biden. "Given the devastating harm to Plaintiffs, the lack of remorse shown by Defendants, and the fact that many of them continue to double down on their lies, Plaintiffs do not believe any realistic possibility of settlement exists," Denver-based Dominion said in a filing on Monday in federal court in Washington. Lawyers for Giuliani and Powell said in the same filing that their clients may be open to settlement talks once the exchange of evidence, or "discovery," is complete. "Powell and Giuliani have nothing to show remorse for and dispute that they have lied about anything," the defense lawyers said.
Full Article: Dominion sees no chance of settling suits against pro-Trump lawyers Giuliani, Powell | ReutersEditorial: Democrats, Want to Defend Democracy? Embrace What Is Possible. | Larry Diamond/The New York Times
Like many scholars of democracy, I have strongly supported both the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Both are necessary (though not sufficient) to secure the most precious rights in any democracy — the right to vote and the right to have one’s vote counted fairly and accurately. Most supporters of these bills believed the urgent need for them justified lifting the Senate filibuster and passing them on a purely partisan vote. But with the refusal of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (or any Republican senators) to vote to suspend the filibuster, it’s clear that these bills will not pass this Congress. The only remaining option is to pare back the reform cause to a much narrower agenda that can command bipartisan support. Democrats must recognize that politics is the art of the possible, and democratic responsibility demands that we not sacrifice what is valuable and possible on the altar of the unattainable. That means supporting the bipartisan efforts to reform the Electoral Count Act. This work is now taking shape in bipartisan negotiations among moderate senators convened by Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. The new bill would fix some of the most dangerous vulnerabilities in the 1887 Electoral Count Act — some of which we saw in the 2020 election — that could enable a future Congress (or a rogue vice president) to reverse the vote of the Electoral College in certain states or to plunge the process of counting electoral votes into such chaos that there would be no way of determining a legitimate winner. Such a deadlock could precipitate a far larger and more violent assault on the democratic order than what we saw on Jan. 6. Reducing the risk of such a calamity is a democratic imperative.
Full Article: Opinion | Democrats, Want to Defend Democracy? Embrace What Is Possible. - The New York TimesGeorgia and Voting Rights: Deep Distrust Over a Plan to Close Polling Places | Richard Fausset/The New York Times
The showdown over voting rights in the U.S. Senate may be over for now. But the issue is still smoldering in a stretch of Northeast Georgia countryside where local officials recently introduced a plan to close seven polling sites and consolidate them into one. The proposal in Lincoln County has attracted the attention and ire of major voting rights groups and suspicion among some Black residents who say the effort is just the latest example of voter suppression in a state where Republicans recently passed a restrictive new law. Hundreds of upset residents have filed protest petitions that could cause local officials to scale it back. But local officials say the current polling spots are in need of modernization — and that in a county where about two-thirds of the 7,700 residents are white, the plan is simply an effort to make it easier to manage elections. The remaining site would be located close to the polling place that currently serves the county’s one majority-Black precinct. “They seem to think that I’m trying to stop Black people from voting,” said the elections director, an African American woman named Lilvender Bolton. She would administer the plan that was under consideration last week by a mostly Republican-appointed board of two Black members and three white ones. In Georgia, a state where razor-thin voting margins have helped swing the White House and control of the Senate, any effort to change the process of voting has become fiercely contested. And after recent efforts by Republicans in Georgia and around the country to restrict voting, suspicions are high.
National: Manchin, Sinema join with GOP in rejecting attempt to change filibuster rules, effectively killing Democratic voting bill | Mike DeBonis/The Washington Post
Full Article: Manchin, Sinema join with GOP in rejecting attempt to change filibuster rules, effectively killing Democratic voting bill - The Washington PostNational: A New Digital Army Is Counting Votes to Prove Trump’s Big Lie | David Gilbert/Vice
Once you had to sit in an empty auditorium for weeks counting millions of paper ballots to take part in a sham “audit” of the 2020 election. Now, all you need is a laptop and an internet connection. That’s all thanks to a new digital platform recruiting volunteers to act as judge and jury over the validity of votes cast in the 2020 election. The platform is called Polaris Recount, and anyone can now simply sign up to become a “citizen adjudicator” and look at digital images of votes cast in the election and decide if minor smudges, errant fold lines, or slightly askew ballots are evidence of some enormous sinister plot to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. Digital ballot images are routinely reviewed as part of the official election audit process, typically done by automated software looking to corroborate the results of a specific race. But in the case of Polaris, the process is being conducted on a nationwide scale, with hundreds of amateur sleuths trying to prove a conspiracy theory about widespread election fraud. Launched in late November, the platform has seen signups “gaining exponentially” in recent weeks, according to the man behind the system, who told VICE News that around 1,000 volunteers—who come from all corners of the U.S. and some even from overseas—are now spending their days looking at digital images of ballots cast in Lea County, New Mexico, which is the race currently being assessed on the platform. Full Article: A New Digital Army Is Counting Votes to Prove Trump’s Big LieNational: Bipartisan U.S. Senate group discusses scaled-back elections bill | David Morgan/Reuters
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is discussing a scaled-back law focused on safeguarding election results and protecting election officials from harassment following Democrats' twin defeats on a voting-rights bill. Lawmakers led by Republican Senator Susan Collins and including conservative Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are due to meet virtually on Friday to discuss reform of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, sometimes called the ECA, which allows members of Congress to dispute presidential election results. The ECA provided the basis for an effort by former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies to overturn the presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and interrupted the certification of election results. Collins, who said her group includes six Democrats, told reporters that the aim is "an election reform bill that is truly bipartisan, that would address many of the problems that arose on Jan. 6 and that would help restore confidence in our elections."
Full Article: Bipartisan U.S. Senate group discusses scaled-back elections bill | ReutersNational: House subcommittee questions election security, voting rights | Michael Korsh/UPI
With the 2022 midterm elections 10 months away, members of a House homeland security subcommittee on Thursday questioned the security of the 2020 presidential election and the upcoming midterms. During the hearing of the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Innovation Subcommittee, Chairwoman Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y, cited two statistics that she said point to a precarious election landscape for 2022: One in three voters questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election according to a recent University of Massachusetts-Amherst survey, and one in three election officials feel unsafe in their job from a June survey by the Brennan Center for Justice. Clarke said she defines election security as "making sure that every eligible voter who wants to cast a vote is able to cast it and making sure that vote is counted as it was cast." She said she plans to introduce legislation that would authorize the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to further monitor and respond to misinformation and disinformation threats through efforts like the agency's Rumor Control website. Full Article: House subcommittee questions election security, voting rights - UPI.comNational: As Giuliani coordinated plan for Trump electoral votes in states Biden won, some electors balked | Beth Reinhard, Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey, Emma Brown and Rosalind S. Helderman/The Washington Post
Full Article: As Giuliani coordinated plan for Trump electoral votes in states Biden won, some electors balked - The Washington PostNational: Rise of right-wing apps seen worsening midterm disinformation | Gopal Ratnam/Roll Call
A growing constellation of right-wing social media apps and sites are seeing their user bases grow, creating an echo chamber that experts fear will promote disinformation and outright lies about the midterm elections. A major concern: increased calls for violence. What began in the past few years as fringe and sparsely populated alternatives to established social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has become a torrent. While apps like Parler and Gab have been around for about four years, positioning themselves as conservative alternatives to Twitter, more sites and apps have launched in the last year — since President Donald Trump left office while fanning the political flames with his false claims of a “stolen” election. Rumble, which went public through a special purpose acquisition company, positions itself as an alternative to YouTube. Gettr, launched by Trump’s post-presidency aide Jason Miller, who was an informal adviser to the 45th president, is a Twitter-like platform. And Trump himself has announced plans to launch a new social media platform called Truth Social. Full Article: Rise of right-wing apps seen worsening midterm disinformation - Roll CallNational: How an ‘Ethical’ Hacker Convention Is Fueling Trump’s Big Lie | Spenser Mestel/Vice
Nineteen tables are spread across a ballroom the size of an Olympic swimming pool, each with its own set of voting machines. Hackers crowd around them, tinkering, unscrewing, and more or less destroying anything with a power button. This is the Voting Village at DEFCON, the annual “ethical hacker” conference in Las Vegas and one of the few places where pretty much anyone has permission to do whatever they please to equipment that would otherwise be locked away. At the last in-person DEFCON, in 2019, well before “Stop the Steal,” the “audit” in Maricopa County, and the conspiracy theory that Nancy Pelosi’s husband owns one of the country’s largest voting machine manufacturers, attendees packed the village. Now, two years later, the issue has become even more of a national obsession. DEFCON is a meeting place for the different stakeholders in the world of cybersecurity: grungy hackers, nerdy academics, security researchers, election officials, voting machine manufacturers, and representatives from the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the federal agency whose security guidelines nearly every state relies on to some extent. For a few days, DEFCON enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists gather together and race to see who can prove voting machines are insecure. With its made-to-be-shared antics, the village regularly produces viral tweets and national headlines. It also has quick impact: Following demonstrations at the convention in 2017, Virginia’s Department of Elections recommended decertifying some of its machines effective immediately. “Multiple types of DREs, some of which are currently in use in Virginia, were hacked, according to public reports from DefCon,” the agency wrote.
Full Article: How an ‘Ethical’ Hacker Convention Is Fueling Trump’s Big Lie
National: Senate Democrats Press Ahead With Debate on Voting Rights Bill | Catie Edmondson/The New York Times
Senate Democrats plan to press ahead this week with an effort to push new voting rights protections through Congress, in an all but doomed attempt to enact a key piece of President Biden’s agenda that has been undercut by members of his own party. The Senate on Tuesday will begin to debate legislation that combines two separate bills already passed by the House — the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — and folds them into an unrelated measure. The move would allow the Senate to bring the bill directly to the floor, avoiding an initial filibuster. But that strategy would still allow Republicans to block it from coming to a final vote, and Democrats lack the unanimous support needed in their party to change Senate rules to muscle through the legislation themselves. Still, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said late last week that Democrats would forge ahead anyway, forcing Republicans to publicly declare their opposition to the bill. “We all have to be recorded at this moment in time about where are we in protecting the right to vote,” Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “Right now, it doesn’t look like it has the votes to pass, but we’re going to cancel our Martin Luther King Day recess and be there this week because we think it’s so important for the country.”
Full Article: Senate Democrats Press Ahead With Debate on Voting Rights Bill - The New York TimesNational: Secretary of state races come under red-hot focus | Julia Manchester/The Hill
Republicans and Democrats are increasingly setting their sights on installing their candidates in top election posts across the country as the issue of voting rights takes center stage in Washington. The focus is likely to turn secretary of state races across the country into high-profile battles as both parties see the power the position has over election practices as critical. Republicans are pushing the issue of election integrity, while Democrats are seeking to roll back voting restrictions. And both parties are bringing cash to the fight. The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which handles secretary of state races among other state-level contents, and its strategic policy partner, the State Government Leadership Foundation, raised a record $14.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, bringing the groups’ annual total to $33.3 million in the off-election year. “National liberals are ramping up their investments in secretary of state races because they see control of these offices as a way to change the rules to compensate for their inability to win elections with their failed socialist agenda,” said RSLC communications director Andrew Romeo. “The RSLC is focused on continuing to accelerate our fundraising efforts so we can stop them,” he added. On the other side of the aisle, the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) raked in $1 million during the first six months of 2021, a marked improvement from raising $202,000 in the first half of 2019, according to a report released on Wednesday from the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice. Full Article: Secretary of state races come under red-hot focus | TheHillNational Archives received forged letters from Arizona and Michigan claiming Trump won election, report says | Gustaf Kilander/The Independent
The National Archives received fake certificates of ascertainment that then-President Donald Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence had won Michigan and Arizona in the 2020 election, according to a report. The secretaries of state in those states have passed along the forgeries to the House Select Committee investigating 6 January, Politico reported. Communications between state officials and the National Archives have also been shared with the panel. Democratic secretaries of state Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Katie Hobbs of Arizona met with the committee in November. “They mostly discussed election administration in Arizona, the 2020 elections, threats/harassment directed toward the office, and the Cyber Ninja’s partisan ballot review,” Murphy Hebert, a spokesperson for Ms Hobbs, told Politico. Tracy Wimmer, a spokesperson for Ms Benson, told the outlet that she and her staff answered the committee’s questions about the 2020 election and events in the run-up to the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021. Full Article: National Archives received forged letters from Arizona and Michigan claiming Trump won election, report says | The IndependentNational: Biden will endorse changing Senate rules to pass voting rights legislation | Katie Rogers/The New York Times
President Biden will endorse changing Senate rules to pass new voting rights protections during a speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, the most significant step he will have taken to pressure lawmakers to act on an issue he has called the biggest test of America’s democracy since the Civil War. Mr. Biden will not go so far as to call for full-scale elimination of the filibuster, a Senate tradition that allows the minority party to kill legislation that fails to garner 60 votes, according to a senior administration official who previewed the speech. But Mr. Biden will say he supports a filibuster “carve-out” in the case of voting rights, the official said. Citing “repeated obstruction” by Republicans, Mr. Biden will endorse changing the Senate rules, the official said. The president will contend that the filibuster has protected “extreme attacks on the most basic constitutional right.” “This is one of those defining moments,” Mr. Biden told reporters on Tuesday, before departing for Georgia. “People are going to be judged, where were they before and where were they after the vote. History is going to judge this. And so the risk is making sure people understand just how important this is.”
Full Article: Biden to Endorse Changing Filibuster to Pass Voting Rights Laws - The New York TimesNational: GOP push for hand-counting paper ballots is latest effort to cast doubt on elections | Kelly Mena/CNN
After more than a year of baselessly questioning the results of the 2020 election, some Republicans are casting doubt on how ballots are counted, part of a broader movement inspired by former President Donald Trump's lies about election fraud that is undermining confidence in America's vote. In at least three states -- Utah, New Hampshire and Texas -- Republicans have pushed for banning traditional ballot scanning machines in favor of hand-counting paper ballots, an antiquated process that experts fear could inject error into an election system where very little has been found. Critics also worry that the inevitable delay in results from hand counting would be an opportunity for those looking to sow doubt about the outcome of future contests. Republicans have already seized on Trump's unfounded claims to launch partisan audits and enact restrictive voting laws ahead of this year's midterms. And now they're targeting the tabulation of votes by suggesting, without evidence, that there's a problem -- even in places where Trump or down-ballot Republicans won in 2020. One GOP county chair in Texas, for example, said he has "concerns" about the election, even though Trump won the Lone Star State by more than 630,000 votes, and there's no evidence that fraud or irregularities influenced results there or anywhere else.