National

The past few elections have shown that American voters can be sore losers when the election doesn’t go their way, and sometimes the winners turn out to be disingenuous when it does. On one hand, after years of making spurious allegations, those promoting election conspiracy theories on the right have been notably silent about Donald Trump’s clear win in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. On the other hand, certain people on the left — who have been raging about their faith in democracy for the past eight years — are grumbling about the possibility that something went wrong on Election Day. Read Article

National: Multiple election offices report receiving mailed ballots misdirected from other states | Christina A. Cassidy, John Hanna and Amy Beth Hanson/Associated Press

Terry Thompson had an election to run for voters in Cascade County, Montana. Why then, she thought, was her office in Great Falls being sent mailed ballots completed by voters in places such as Wasilla, Alaska; Vancouver, Washington; and Tampa, Florida? It was only about a dozen ballots total from voters in other states. But she said it still raised concerns about the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to deliver election mail and whether the errant ballots would ever be counted. While a stray ballot ending up in the wrong place can happen during election season, the number of ballots destined for other states and counties that ended up at Thompson’s office is unusual. The Associated Press found it wasn’t an anomaly. Election offices in California, Louisiana, New Mexico and elsewhere also reported receiving completed ballots in the mail that should have gone to other states. Read Article

National: DARPA-backed voting system for soldiers abroad savaged | Thomas Claburn/The Register

In February, VotingWorks, a non-profit election technology developer, showed off a prototype of an encrypted voting system. With funding support from DARPA, the project aims to make it easier for service personnel to vote in US elections when stationed outside of the United States. Their proposed system – dubbed CACvote in reference to military smart ID cards called “Common Access Cards” – consists of four elements: voting kiosks at military bases for military personnel; a computer system that receives ballots from those kiosks; a cryptographic protocol for encoding and transmitting ballots, which also get printed and mailed; and a risk-limiting audit (RLA) protocol intended to detect integrity violations (eg, hacking) that alter an election outcome, and to correct the outcome. The latter two elements – the cryptographic protocol and the RLA – collectively are known as MERGE, which stands for Matching Electronic Results with Genuine Evidence. Paper ballots represent said evidence. According to an analysis paper from Andrew Appel, professor of computer science at Princeton University, and Philip Stark, professor of statistics at UC Berkeley, MERGE “contains interesting ideas that are not inherently unsound” but isn’t realistic given the legal, institutional, and practical changes necessary to make it work. Read Article

National: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the 2024 Election | Julia Edinger/Government Technology

During a Congressional Internet Caucus Academy briefing this week, experts argued the impact of artificial intelligence on the 2024 election was less extreme than predicted — but deepfakes and misinformation still played a role. There were major concerns leading up to the 2024 election that AI would disrupt elections through false information; overall, the impact was less extreme than experts had warned it could be. However, AI still had an effect, as seen by way of deepfakes, like the Biden robocall and misinformation from AI-powered chatbots. Read Article

National: Certifying this year’s presidential results begins quietly, in contrast to the 2020 election | Christina A. Cassidy and Ali Swenson/Associated Press

Local officials are beginning to certify the results of this year’s presidential election in a process that, so far, has been playing out quietly, in stark contrast to the tumultuous certification period four years ago that followed then-President Donald Trump’s loss. Georgia was the first of the presidential battleground states to start certifying, with local election boards voting throughout the day Tuesday. As counties certified their results without controversy, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hailed Georgia’s election as “free, fair and fast.” Trump won Georgia and the six other presidential battleground states, after losing six of them to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. County certification meetings are scheduled later in the week in several other swing states — Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Read Article

National: Election officials knock down Starlink vote rigging conspiracy theories | Melissa Goldin/Associated Press

“It is not possible that Starlink was used to hack or change the outcome of the US presidential election,” David Becker, founder and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation and Research, wrote in an email. “This, quite simply, did not happen, and could not happen, thanks to the security measures we have in place, and these conspiracy theories echo other disinformation we’ve heard over the past several years.” Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, agreed that the idea that Starlink was used to rig the election is absurd. “While Starlink provided connectivity in a number of jurisdictions for electronic poll books (EPBs) in this election, neither Starlink nor other types of communication networks play any role in counting votes,” she wrote in an email. “Our elections produce huge quantities of physical evidence. A satellite system like Starlink cannot steal that.” Read Article

National: As Trump Refers to Third Term, Democrat Wants to Leave No Constitutional Loophole | Annie Karni/The New York Times

When President-elect Donald J. Trump met with House Republicans on Wednesday morning, he suggested he might need their help to try to circumvent the Constitution and run for a third term in the future — a comment that was met with laughter by his friendly audience. “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out,’ ” Mr. Trump told Republicans, who appeared to take it as a joke. One Democrat is moving quickly to make sure that cannot happen. Representative Dan Goldman of New York plans on Thursday to introduce a resolution clarifying that the Constitution’s two-term limit for presidents applies even if the terms are not consecutive. It asserts that the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which states that a person who has been elected president twice cannot run again, “applies to two terms in the aggregate” and leaves no loophole. In other words, Mr. Trump — who served from 2017 to 2021 and is slated to assume the presidency again in January — could not seek another term in the future. Read Article

National: 2020’s debunked election fraud claims are coming back due to Trump’s 2024 victory | Shannon Bond/NPR

Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory is fueling claims of fraud on both sides of the political divide. His right-wing supporters claim the outcome vindicates their debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. To a smaller degree, those on the left are circulating their own baseless claims casting doubt on this year’s results. The narrative twist emerging in the wake of Election Day shows how the movement is continuing to sow doubt about the voting process even after their preferred candidate won. The new claims center on comparing popular vote totals in 2020 and 2024: Four years ago, Joe Biden received around 81 million votes; as of Friday afternoon Vice President Harris’ total stood at 69 million, according to the Associated Press. Election deniers have framed the difference as “missing” Democratic ballots that validate their suspicions about cheating in 2020. Read Article

National: Partnerships Helped Secure Election Day Against New Threats | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology

Election Day saw officials fend off threats that ranged from familiar cyber attacks to a new trend: fake bomb threats. But cybersecurity tools, long-running preparations and new collaborations helped thwart attempts to disrupt the vote. In the end, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly expressed confidence in how election processes ran, saying there was “no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.” Indeed, there was a wide range of threats this year, everything from threats of physical violence against poll workers, to cyber attacks targeting election infrastructure, to foreign government-linked deepfakes, said John Cohen, executive director of the Center for Internet Security (CIS)’s Program for Countering Hybrid Threats. Read Article

National: Primary reform and ranked choice voting had a rough election | Ashley Lopez/NPR

Statewide efforts to adopt open and nonpartisan primaries, as well as ranked choice voting, failed in this year’s election, delivering a stinging setback to the election reform movement. The measures sought to reduce political polarization in U.S. politics. And while an overwhelming share of Americans say they are unhappy with the country’s democratic systems, these initiatives were voted down in states across the country this week. Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota had ballot measures that would have replaced party primaries with nonpartisan contests and/or created a ranked choice voting system in their elections. A majority of those measures sought to implement both. Read Article

National: After a bruising 4 years, a hope for normalcy in American elections | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

America’s voting system was under siege for four years. Former President Donald Trump’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election exposed the people who operate our elections to threats and harassment in the run-up to this one. They fortified their offices against potential violence, adjusted to last-minute, politically driven changes in election laws, and fought a relentless stream of lies and disinformation. Going into Election Day, officials and pro-democracy advocates braced for the worst. What a difference a day — and a result — makes. Aside from a few hiccups, the U.S. voting process went smoothly this year. The winner of the presidential election was declared early the next morning, few people claimed widespread voter fraud, and the losing candidate conceded defeat. Read Article

National: How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts | Steven Lee Myers and Julian E. Barnes/The New York Times

In the final days before Tuesday’s vote, Russia abandoned any pretense that it was not trying to interfere in the American presidential election. The Kremlin’s information warriors not only produced a late wave of fabricated videos that targeted the electoral process and the Democratic presidential ticket but also no longer bothered to hide their role in producing them. What impact Russia’s information campaign had on the outcome of this year’s race, if any, remains uncertain. There is no doubt, though, that it reflected an increasingly brazen effort by the Kremlin, one that has left the American government with little to do to except to rebut the falsehoods as they gain popularity. Read Article

National: Election day ends with reports of vote counting tech challenges, text scams in several states | Sophia Fox-Sowell and Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

As the 2024 Election Day winds down, several states have reported challenges such as issues with the tech powering absentee ballot counting, text message-based disinformation campaigns, printer issues and more physical security threats. During the Election Protection Coalition’s second online media briefing Tuesday, representatives from the nonpartisan voting rights organization told reporters that states in the Midwest were facing technical difficulties and legal impairments in counting absentee ballots. Read Article

National: This Time, Few Complaints If Any Around Election Management | Carl Smith/Governing

Tuesday’s elections saw near-record turnout. Nonetheless, despite the controversies that surround voting and election administration in this era, the voting process was smooth for millions of people across the country. This outcome was the result of years of work, a multifaceted response to distrust and harassment of election officials that reached unprecedented levels during the 2020 election and have been kept alive since then by repeated claims that the contest had been “stolen.” “This election was stress tested like never before,” says Cara Ong Whaley, director of election protection at Issue One, a bipartisan group that promotes sound election management. “It held strong because of the dedication, professionalism and resilience of election officials and their staff, and that is worth celebrating.” Read Article

National: Voting tech isn’t perfect, but so far it’s holding up | Cath Virginia/The Verge

The technology that powers Election Day has hit some expected hiccups, but as of early afternoon on Tuesday, nonpartisan groups say that the voting system is mostly holding up. Where it has faltered, they stress, there are robust backup plans that will ensure voters can still cast their ballots and that their votes will be counted. “Like any type of technology, equipment can sometimes fail, but what’s important are the resilience processes in place to keep voters voting in real time,” says Pamela Smith, president and CEO of the nonprofit Verified Voting. Smith says there have been some reports of polling places where voting machines were down and voters were told to come back later. She says voters should not need to make a second trip to the polls in this sort of situation — they’re entitled to request a paper emergency ballot (distinct from a provisional ballot) to fill out and cast their vote. Read Article

National: Trump reverted to familiar playbook, sowing doubts about the voting until results showed him winning | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

President-elect Donald Trump and his Republican allies had spent months seeding doubt in the integrity of American voting systems and priming supporters to expect a 2024 election riddled with massive and inevitable fraud. The former president continued laying that groundwork even during a mostly smooth day of voting Tuesday, making unsubstantiated claims related to Philadelphia and Detroit and highlighting concerns about election operations in Milwaukee. Yet Trump’s grim warnings abruptly ended in the later hours of the evening as early returns began tipping in his favor. During his election night speech, the president-elect touted a “magnificent victory” as he claimed ownership for the favorable results and expressed love for the same states he’d questioned hours earlier. Read Article

National: Republican election denial claims take a hiatus with Trump’s victory | Amy Gardner , Colby Itkowitz , Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

A remarkable thing happened Tuesday night on an “election integrity” discussion page on the social media platform X, as it became clear that former president Donald Trump was headed to a decisive victory against Vice President Kamala Harris. It got quiet. Created by X owner Elon Musk’s America PAC, the page had provided a platform viewed by millions of users for rapid-fire updates about power outages causing poll closures, Russia-linked bomb threats and unsubstantiated accusations that run-of-the mill voting problems were the work of devious Democrats trying to steal the election. Around midnight, however, interest in the forum plummeted. With Trump winning back the White House, the urgency to investigate wrongdoing subsided. In its place came a spike of self-congratulation as those who believe Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was riddled with fraud took credit for preventing similar corruption this year. Read Article

National: Bomb threats sully otherwise uneventful voting across the country on Election Day | Carrie Levine andJessica Huseman/Votebeat

Election Day was relatively tame around the country, though it was marred by a string of bomb threats against polling places in swing states that law enforcement officials linked to Russia. The threats forced some temporary evacuations and extensions of polling place hours. Election officials, braced for disruptions and, forewarned by intelligence officials that foreign adversaries would attempt to create problems, responded quickly to reassure voters and minimize interruptions to voting. In Georgia, Secretary Brad Raffensperger said “noncredible” bomb threats targeted polling places in the Democratic strongholds of Fulton, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties, forcing an extension of hours at multiple voting sites. In Arizona, a threat forced the evacuation of the election office in La Paz County and targeted polling places in Navajo County. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said voters were safe. “No one is under threat as we know it right now,” Fontes said at a press conference. There were also bomb threats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Read Article

National: The election system is secure. But human nature is a vulnerability | David Klepper and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Hacking a local election system in the United States wouldn’t be easy, and secretly altering votes on a scale massive enough to change the outcome of the presidential race would be impossible, election officials have said, thanks to decentralized systems, paper records for nearly all ballots, exhaustive reviews, legal due process and decades of work by American election officials, volunteers and citizens. But foreign actors and domestic extremist groups looking to meddle in next week’s election can target a much weaker link: voters’ perceptions and emotions. Those intent on undermining confidence in U.S. democracy don’t have to change any votes if they can convince enough Americans not to trust the outcome. It’s a possible scenario particularly concerning to intelligence analysts and officials tasked with protecting America’s election: An adversary tries to hack a state or local election system and then releases a document — perhaps a fake one or even material that is publicly available — and suggests it’s evidence of vote rigging. Read Article

National: Monitors, Once Meant to Prevent Election Fraud, Now Seek to Prove It | Alexandra Berzon and Michael Wines/The New York Times

The civics-textbook description of a poll monitor’s job is straightforward enough: to be a watchdog of the vote, so candidates, political parties and the public can have confidence that elections are both honest and transparent. But the work has changed in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race, when Donald J. Trump and his allies used information gathered by Republican monitors as part of their attempts to overturn the election results. This year, the party and its allies have recruited an expanded group of monitors — volunteers chosen to observe voting firsthand inside polling places. They include many who believe the 2020 election was stolen and have been trained to be aggressive in the search for fraud. Read Article

National: Extremists inspired by conspiracy theories pose major threat to 2024 elections, U.S. intelligence warns | Brandy Zadrozny/NBC

U.S. intelligence agencies have identified domestic extremists with grievances rooted in election-related conspiracy theories, including beliefs in widespread voter fraud and animosity toward perceived political opponents, as the most likely threat of violence in the coming election. In a Joint Intelligence Bulletin that was not distributed publicly but was reviewed by NBC News, agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warn state and local law enforcement agencies that domestic violent extremists seeking to terrorize and disrupt the vote are a threat to the election and throughout Inauguration Day. Read Article

National: Election Skeptics Target Voting Officials With Ads in Swing States | Phoebe Petrovic and Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

Earlier this month, subscribers to the Wisconsin Law Journal received an email with an urgent subject: “Upholding Election Integrity — A Call to Action for Attorneys.” The letter began by talking about fairness and following the law in elections. But it then suggested that election officials do something that courts have found to be illegal for over a century: treat the certification of election results as an option, not an obligation. The large logo at the top of the email gave the impression that it was an official correspondence from the respected legal newspaper, though smaller print said it was sent on behalf of a public relations company. The missive was an advertisement from a new group with deep ties to activists who have challenged the legitimacy of recent American elections. Read Article

National: A baseless voting claim is being amplified by a network of social media accounts | Huo Jingnan/NPR

A network of accounts on the social media site X is claiming to be foreign nationals who have illegally voted in the U.S. presidential election, according to new research from the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The accounts have multiple signatures that suggest they are coordinated, drawing the attention of researchers in the final stretch of election. Some of the accounts have shared images of ballots alongside passports, including from countries that no longer exist, including the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Prussia, the disinformation and extremism research organization reported. The accounts are reinforcing baseless narratives about voter fraud promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies. The most popular post, sporting an image of a French passport, has racked up more than 12 million views on X, formerly Twitter. Read Article

National: As Election Day nears, emergency officials prep for possible violence | Sarah D. Wire/USA Today

The bushes in front of city hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin, have been removed. On election night, the street out front will be blocked off. These “hardening” measures were suggested by the city police chief to protect the ballots being counted inside, said Celestine Jeffreys, Green Bay’s city clerk. As threats against election workers have grown more violent, election officials across the country have spent months coordinating to protect voters, ballots and poll workers at an unprecedented level with emergency management agencies. Amid that coordination, the centralized locations where ballots are counted on election night have emerged as a key place needing protection. More than a dozen county and city election officials spoke with USA TODAY about what they are doing to make sure they can count ballots at central ballot counting locations once polls close, no matter what happens outside. Read Article

National: Ballot drop boxes, long a target of misinformation, face physical threats | Layla Ferris/CBS News

With Election Day nearing, authorities in Oregon and Washington have opened investigations and stepped up security measures after two ballot drop boxes were set ablaze on Monday. Three ballots were damaged after an incendiary device was found inside a ballot box in Portland, Oregon, on Monday. And on the same day, officials feared hundreds of ballots were damaged by a fire in a ballot box in nearby Vancouver, Washington. Police said a “suspicious device” was found next to the box. Ballot drop boxes have historically been targets of misinformation, according to experts, who say the false claims surged in 2020 when then-President Donald Trump raised doubts about the security of mail-in ballots. Drop boxes are now facing growing physical threats, according to election officials and internal U.S. government warnings. Read Article

National: Republican lawsuits over overseas and military voting hit setbacks in 3 swing states | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

Three Republican legal challenges to the legitimacy of ballots cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, including U.S. military members, have hit setbacks this month.On Tuesday, a federal judge tossed one of three lawsuits that GOP groups filed in swing states in recent weeks. That case was brought by six Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. A Michigan state judge dismissed a similar case last week, when a North Carolina judge also rejected the Republican National Committee’s request for the court to order that returned ballots of some overseas voters be set aside and not counted until the voters’ eligibility can be confirmed. Read Article

National: ‘Firehose’ of election conspiracy theories floods final days of the campaign | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

In the final days of the presidential election, lies about noncitizens voting, the vulnerability of mail-in ballots and the security of voting machines are spreading widely over social media. Fanned by former President Donald Trump and notable allies such as tech tycoon Elon Musk, election disinformation is warping voters’ faith in the integrity of the democratic process, polls show, and setting the stage once again for potential public unrest if the Republican nominee fails to win the presidency. At the same time, federal officials are investigating ongoing Russian interference through social media and shadow disinformation campaigns. The “firehose” of disinformation is working as intended, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that advocates for responsible use of technology in elections. “This issue is designed to sow general distrust,” she said. “Your best trusted source is not your friend’s cousin’s uncle that you saw on Twitter. It’s your local election official. Don’t repeat it. Check it instead.” Read Article

National: Bulletproof vests, snipers and drones: Election officials beef up security at the polls | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Election officials across the country are ramping up their security measures at polling places with voting underway in the presidential race, from beefing up law enforcement presence to donning bulletproof vests to deploying drones for surveillance amid an increasingly hostile environment. The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Read Article

National: Trump’s Allies Revive Debunked Voting Machine Theories | Danny HakimNick Corasaniti and Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

It has been nearly four years since a parade of judges dismissed wild claims from Donald J. Trump and his associates about hacked election machines and a year and a half since a leading machine company obtained a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News over the debunked conspiracy theories. But Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and his closest allies are again trotting out the theories as part of a late-campaign strategy to assert that this year’s election is rigged — although this time Mr. Trump’s campaign appears to be largely acting behind the scenes. The theories are rampant on social media and widely embraced by activists. Read Article

National: What to Know About the Looming Election Certification Crisis | Jim Rutenberg/The New York Times