The Justice Department said Monday that people âlionizingâ the Jan. 6 rioters are heightening the risk of future political violence. âIndeed, the risk of future violence is fueled by a segment of the population that seems intent on lionizing the January 6 rioters and treating them as political prisoners, heroes, or martyrs instead of what they are: criminals,â Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Roman wrote in a court filing, âmany of whom committed extremely serious crimes of violence, and all of whom attacked the democratic values which all of us should share.â The statement came as part of a 28-page argument supporting the pretrial detention of Cody Mattice, a defendant charged with ripping down metal barricades and assaulting police during the attack on the Capitol. Itâs an indirect broadside at Republicans who have sought to whitewash the violence committed by supporters of former President Donald Trump during the assault on the Capitol. Trump himself has argued alternately that his supporters were âhugging and kissingâ police â rather than committing the approximately 1,000 assaults prosecutors say occurred â and has baselessly claimed that left-wing agitators caused the violence.
National: House select committee targets 134-year-old law in effort to prevent another January 6 |Â 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.
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 â 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 : NPRNational: âA roadmap for a coupâ: inside Trumpâs 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 Bidenâs victory in the 2020 presidential election would formally be certified by Congress, sealing Trumpâs fate and removing him from the White House. The atmosphere in the room was tense. The then US president was âfired upâ 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 âgavels President Trump as re-electedâ. The Eastman memo, first revealed by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book Peril, goes on to predict âhowlsâ of protest from Democrats. The theory was that Pence, acting as the âultimate arbiterâ 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. Eastmanâs by now notorious memo, and the surreal encounter in the Oval Office, are among the central twists in the unfolding story of Trumpâs 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: âA roadmap for a coupâ: inside Trumpâs plot to steal the presidency | US elections 2020 | The Guardian
National: âItâs been a barrage every dayâ: US election workers face threats and harassment | Sam Levine/The Guardian
Before he leaves his house to walk his dog these days, Rick Barronâs 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, heâs 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. âYou will be served lead,â someone said on a voicemail left for Barron in recent months. Itâs 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. âItâs been a barrage every day,â Katie Hobbs, Arizonaâs 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: âItâs been a barrage every dayâ: US election workers face threats and harassment | US voting rights | The GuardianNational: 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 âno specific, credible threat to election infrastructure.â âCISA 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,â Geoff Hale, the director of CISAâs Election Security Initiative, said in a statement Monday. âWe look forward to continuing this work in collaboration with our election partners to ensure the security and resilience of elections in 2021 and beyond.â The agency is also again using its ârumor controlâ 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 Trumpâs 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 | TheHillNational: ‘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.
National: Elections Officials Are Still Receiving Death Threats and Harassment About the 2020 Election. Theyâre Asking Congress For Help. | Kate Elizabeth Queram/Route Fifty
Two weeks after the 2020 presidential election, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the home of Katie Hobbs, Arizonaâs secretary of state. âKatie, come out and play,â they chanted. âWeâre watching you.â The threats, which also targeted Hobbsâ children and husband, came from far-right voters who believed former President Donald Trumpâs 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 theyâve reached far beyond her, she added. âWhat concerns me more is the near-constant harassment faced by the public servants who administer our elections,â said Hobbs, a candidate for governor in Arizona. âThese 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. Weâre 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.â 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 yearâs 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.
Full Article: Elections Officials Are Still Receiving Death Threats and Harassment About the 2020 Election. Theyâre Asking Congress For Help. - Route FiftyNational: Election officials don’t need to report cyber incidents to the feds. That could soon change. |Â 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. Thatâs 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 â pipeline owners, electrical grids, and other industries key to U.S. interests â to disclose yet-to-be defined cyber âincidentsâ 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 â ranging from small towns to counties to states â 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 Partyâs 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. Trumpâs 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.
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.
National: Election Cybersecurity: Protecting Against Election Cyber Attacks |Â 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 AttacksNational: How to Fight False Election Information and Other Problems |Â 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 â the other, more difficult conflict was defending mindsets against false narratives about what had taken place. âWe spent three and a half years working on threat modeling, trying to figure out every possible disruption that could be launched against the election,â Krebs said. âWe were thinking through, âYou 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 indicatorsâ ⌠It came down to the perception hack that we were most worried about.â ... As fear spreads, it can quickly transform into real-world threats, with this summerâs 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 ProblemsNational: Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in âDozensâ 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 presidentâs 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 Trumpâs 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 Trumpâs 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 âdozensâ 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. âI remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,â the organizer says. âI remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.â Full Article: Two Jan. 6 Planners Cooperate With Committee, Name MAGA Congress Members - Rolling StoneNational: Ahead of Jan. 6, Willard hotel in downtown D.C. was a Trump team âcommand centerâ for effort to deny Biden the presidency | Jacqueline Alemany, Emma Brown, Tom Hamburger and Jon Swaine/The Washington Post
Full Article: Willard hotel was Trump team 'command center' for denying Biden presidency ahead of Jan. 6 - The Washington PostNational: 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. Theyâre not stopping there. Republicans in at least four states where Democrats control the governorâs office, the legislature or both â California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania â 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 governorâs 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 âelection integrity,â and repeat similar slogans â âeasier to vote, harder to cheat.â Democrats dismiss it as the GOP following former President Donald Trumpâs 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. âItâs 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,â said Gus Bickford, the Democratic Party chairman in Massachusetts. âThey just want to suppress the vote.â
Full Article: GOP uses voters to push election reforms in unlikely statesNational: Democrats weigh changes in filibuster to pass voting rights legislation after GOP opposition |Â Matthew Brown/USA Today
After another failed vote to advance voting rights legislation last week, Democratic lawmakers are debating the merits changes in the filibuster rule that many in the party see as essential. "The most important vote right now in the Congress of the United States is the vote to respect the sanctity of the vote, the fundamental basis of our democracy," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union." "If there were one vote that the filibuster could enable to go forward, that would be the vote," Pelosi said. In a CNN town hall Thursday, President Joe Biden said: âI also think weâre going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster. The idea, for example, my Republican friends say that weâre going to default on the national debt because theyâre going to filibuster that and we need 10 Republicans to support us is the most bizarre thing I ever heard." The shift in attitude toward the rule comes after Senate Republicans filibustered the Freedom to Vote Act, a pared-back voting rights package pushed by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who aggressively courted Republican votes for the bill. The failed vote was the third voting rights package filibustered by Republicans this year.
Full Article: Pelosi, Biden call for filibuster reform on voting rights billsNational: Supply Chain Issues, Poll Worker Shortages Worry States Ahead of Elections | Andrea Noble/Route Fifty
Poll worker shortages and supply chain issues are among the problems state and local elections officials are contending with as they prepare for the upcoming Nov. 2 elections. Ohio recruited and trained a record number of poll workers ahead of last yearâs presidential election, despite concern that the coronavirus pandemic had made it harder to find people for the job. But recruiting enough people to staff voting sites across the state has proven more difficult this year. Ohio is short about 17,000 workers from its 42,000-person goal, according to Secretary of State Frank LaRose. âAs this yearâs important November election approaches, weâre still a long way away from ensuring a full complement of poll workers to staff our thousands of polling locations across the state,â LaRose said in a public service announcement released this month to drum up support. âIf you volunteered to serve as a poll worker last year or have ever wondered what itâs like to serve your community and perform an important patriotic duty in a time of need, Ohio voters need you.â Ohio took several steps last year to increase recruitment, including implementation of a rule change that allows attorneys to earn continuing education credits by working the polls. The state also created an online poll tracker that shows the number of vacancies in each county that need to be staffed. Poll worker recruitment has also been a challenge in states, including New Jersey. To help, Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order boosting poll worker pay from $200 to $300 on Election Day. Lawmakers approved $400-a-day payments for poll workers to staff the primary election earlier this year.
Source: Supply Chain Issues, Poll Worker Shortages Worry States Ahead of Elections – Route Fifty
National: Plan to let troops cast ballots over the internet draws opposition from security experts |Â Leo Shane III/Air Force Times
A group of election security experts is urging lawmakers to drop plans in the annual defense authorization bill which would allow online ballot casting for troops serving overseas, saying the security concerns outweigh the potential benefits. âThere are solutions to improve military and overseas voting without expanding dangerously insecure voting technology,â the group wrote in a letter to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. âWe believe that servicemembers deserve the highest standard of safe and verifiable voting. For the foreseeable future, internet voting cannot meet that standard, and places military votersâ votes â and the trustworthiness of elections themselves â at risk.â The effort, which includes groups like Protect Democracy and the U.S. Vote Foundation as well as 27 former state election officials and academics, comes as the Senate is preparing to complete its draft of the massic defense policy bill in the next few weeks.
Full Article: Plan to let troops cast ballots over the internet draws opposition from security expertsNational: Senate Democrats ask for details on threats against election workers | Jordain Carney/The Hill
Senate Democrats are pushing the Department of Justice (DOJ) for details on threats against election workers and any related probes. Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and 19 other Democratic senators sent a letter to the Justice Department on Monday asking for updates from the Election Threats Task Force, which the DOJ formed earlier this year to combat threats against election workers.  "We must ensure that election workers are able to do their jobs free from threats, intimidation, or other improper influence. While Congress must pass stronger protections for election workers ... we also urge the Justice Department to take additional action under existing law," the senators wrote in the letter, which was obtained exclusively by The Hill ahead of its release. "It is for this reason that we respectfully request an update on the actions that the Departmentâs Task Force has taken so far and on its plans to facilitate the reporting, investigation, and prosecution of threats against election officials and election workers," they added. The Democratic senators are asking for details on the number of threats against election workers, volunteers or their family members and how many completed or ongoing investigations those threats have spawned.
Full Article: Senate Democrats ask for details on threats against election workers | TheHillNational: Biden: Fight for voting rights ‘far from over,’ a day after third bill fails in the Senate |Â Rebecca Morin/USA Today
“At the end of the day, if we don’t make this happen, it’s going to rest at the feet of not only the president but members of the Senate,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in an interview with USA TODAY. “Democrats need to stand up and protect our democracy, and anything less is a failure.” Senate Republicans this week blocked advancement and debate of the Freedom to Vote Act , which would have created federal rules to protect mail-in voting, expand early voting, ensure same-day voting registration and make Election Day a federal holiday. The bill failed by a 49-51 vote.It was the third time this year Republicans voted unanimously to block voting-rights legislation. “They’re afraid to even just debate the bills in the U.S. Senate, as they did again yesterday, even on a bill that includes provisions as they’ve traditionally supported,” Biden said Thursday. “It’s unfair. It’s unconscionable. It’s un-American.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said this week that Democrats will have to determine an “alternative path forward” after the defeat of the latest legislation, but did not offer any details as to what the path could be.
Full Article: Biden highlights voting rights during Martin Luther King ceremony
National: Democrats Plan Another Bid to Break G.O.P. Voting Rights Filibuster | Carl Hulse/The New York Times
Senate Democrats will try again next week to advance a voting rights measure, Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, announced on Thursday, though Republicans are expected to maintain their filibuster against the legislation backed by all Democrats. In a letter laying out the coming agenda for the Senate, Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said he would schedule a vote for next Wednesday to open debate on voting rights legislation that he and fellow Democrats say is needed to offset new restrictions being imposed by Republican-controlled state legislatures around the nation. âWe cannot allow conservative-controlled states to double down on their regressive and subversive voting bills,â Mr. Schumer said in the letter. âThe Freedom to Vote Act is the legislation that will right the ship of our democracy and establish common sense national standards to give fair access to our democracy to all Americans.â His decision intensifies pressure on Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who had initially been his partyâs lone holdout on a sweeping voting rights measure passed by the House. Mr. Manchin helped draft a compromise version that he said he hoped could draw bipartisan backing, and sought time to win over Republicans to support it, but there is little evidence that any G.O.P. senators have embraced the alternative. In the 50-50 Senate, it would take 10 Republicans joining every Democrat to muster the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster of any voting rights bill and allow it to be considered.
Texas: Trump won Hood County in a landslide. His supporters still hounded the elections administrator until she resigned. | Jeremy Schwartz/The Texas Tribune and Pro Publica
An elections administrator in North Texas submitted her resignation Friday, following a monthslong effort by residents and officials loyal to former President Donald Trump to force her out of office. Michele Carew, who had overseen scores of elections during her 14-year career, had found herself transformed into the public face of an electoral system that many in the heavily Republican Hood County had come to mistrust, which ProPublica and The Texas Tribune covered earlier this month. Her critics sought to abolish her position and give her duties to an elected county clerk who has used social media to promote baseless allegations of widespread election fraud. Carew, who was hired to run elections in Hood County two-and-a-half months before the contested presidential race, said in an interview that she worried that the forces that tried to drive her out will spread to other counties in the state. âWhen I started out, election administrators were appreciated and highly respected,â she said. âNow we are made out to be the bad guys.â Critics accused Carew of harboring a secret liberal agenda and of violating a decades-old elections law, despite assurances from the Texas secretary of state that she was complying with Texas election rules.
Full Article: Hood County elections administrator resigns after push from Trump loyalists | The Texas TribuneNational: ‘Cannot wait for Washington:’ Voting rights activists scramble to navigate new restrictions ahead of November elections |Â Fredreka Schouten, Dianne Gallagher and Wesley Bruer/CNN
When activist Tammye Pettyjohn Jones knocks on voters' doors in her rural corner of Georgia this month, she'll have a new tool in hand: a portable printer. AÂ sweeping voting law Georgia enacted this year now requires voters who do not have a driver's license or state ID to provide a copy of another form of identification with their absentee ballot application. So Pettyjohn Jones and other volunteers with Sisters in Service of Southwest Georgia plan to take photos of that identification and print them out on the spot for voters to submit along with their absentee ballot applications. "You don't have time to hem and haw about how hard it is" to vote, said PettyJohn Jones, who is working to turn out voters ahead of November's municipal elections in places like Americus, Georgia. "You've got to go into a problem-solving mode." In states from Georgia to Montana, activists are scrambling to help voters navigate the new restrictions passed largely in Republican-controlled states after record turnout in 2020 helped elect President Joe Biden and flipped control of the US Senate to Democrats. In Florida, for example, some organizations have taken iPads into the field so voters could use the devices to register to vote on their own, said Brad Ashwell of All Voting is Local Florida.
US election reviews have not appeased those who think the game is rigged | Sam Levine/The Guardian
Back in May, I spent some time with a small group of people who had gathered outside of Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix to express their support for the investigation into the election results in Maricopa county, the largest county in Arizona. Sitting under a tent in the desert heat, several people said the two official audits Maricopa county had authorized already werenât sufficient. I asked the group if they would accept that Biden was the winner if that was what the audit showed. âPersonally, I would, yes,â said Kelly Johnson, a 61-year-old who traveled to Phoenix from southern California. Iâve been thinking a lot about that conversation as I watched the Arizona review conclude, finding no evidence of fraud and affirming Bidenâs win. And I found myself returning to that conversation as I reported this week on similar efforts to investigate election results that are unfolding in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Texas. Those supporting the reviews have offered similar assurances that an inquiry can only lead to more trust in the election results. If people have questions, what harm can come from looking under the hood to make sure everything is OK? âIf there are things called into question, and there is not full confidence in the electoral process, providing audits and research and evidence that in fact these processes and procedures and the election results you can have confidence in, only supports that position where you can have confidence and here is why,â Wisconsin state senator Kathy Bernier told me last week.
Full Article: US election reviews have not appeased those who think the game is rigged | US news | The GuardianNational: Behind the Curtain of Post-Election Canvassing, Audits, and Certification | Matthew Weil and Christopher Thomas/Bipartisan Policy Center
Debates about voting policy tend to center on the parts of the process voters interact with most, such as the number of days of early voting or availability of mail voting options. It is, however, the way states approach the period that begins as polls close that can shape whether voters have confidence in election results. The canvassing and certification period is a black box for most Americans who rarely think about what goes into counting, certifying, and auditing ballots once they are cast. During an era of close contests and hyperpolarization, there is minimal room for error and ample opportunity for misinformation and misunderstanding. In 2021, the perceived need for further analysis of election results gave rise to a series of semi-private, unofficial audits.1 These audits cast doubt on the American voting process, despite being unable to find any evidence to support their claims of fraud. Perhaps the greatest threat to American elections is not any particular of election administration itself, but the decoupling of reality from perception. As the gap between the reality and perception of elections grows, we see private audits haphazardly attempt to achieve what election officials already do in the aftermath of each election: confirm the accuracy of the results. Yet unlike the official certification processes already in place, these circus-like audits are intended to usurp rather than instill voter confidence. Furthermore, many of the audits failed to uphold security best practices and threatened the integrity of voting systems â forcing some jurisdictions to invest millions in new technology, an unnecessary waste of already limited election office resources. Full Article: Behind the Curtain of Post-Election Canvassing, Audits, and Certification | Bipartisan Policy CenterNational: ‘Subverting Justice’: Senate panel details the 9 times Trump pressured Justice Department to overturn election results | Kevin Johnson/USA TODAY
On the very day that Attorney General William Barr left office in late December, then-President Donald Trump and top White House aides began a "relentless" pressure campaign aimed at interim Justice Department leaders, including acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a new Senate committee report. The effort included "near-daily outreach" to the department, such as nine calls and meetings with Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation found. The White House push continued right up to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters sought to block Congress' certification of President Joe Biden's election. According to the committee, then-acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark repeatedly sought to "induce Rosen into helping Trumpâs election subversion scheme" by telling Rosen that he would decline Trump's offer that he take Rosen's place if Rosen agreed to join. The report said Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, pressured Rosen on "multiple occasions" to launch election fraud investigations, "violating longstanding restrictions on White House intervention in DOJ law enforcement matters." According to the report, Meadows attempted to push Rosen to meet with Trumpâs outside lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was waging a parallel legal campaign in the courts, where he pressed debunked allegations of voter fraud in multiple states.
Full Article: Senate details Donald Trump's push at DOJ to overturn 2020 election