National: How GOP-backed voting measures could create hurdles for tens of millions of voters | Amy Gardner, Kate Rabinowitz and Harry Stevens/Washington Post

The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, when Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved Black men, a Washington Post analysis has found. In 43 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee, according to data compiled as of Feb. 19 by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. Even more proposals have been introduced since then. Proponents say the provisions are necessary to shore up public confidence in the integrity of elections after the 2020 presidential contest, when then-President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud convinced millions of his supporters that the results were rigged against him. But in most cases, Republicans are proposing solutions in states where elections ran smoothly, including in many with results that Trump and his allies did not contest or allege to be tainted by fraud. The measures are likely to disproportionately affect those in cities and Black voters in particular, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic — laying bare, critics say, the GOP’s true intent: gaining electoral advantage.

Full Article: Voting laws proposed by Republicans in 43 states would limit voter access – Washington Post

National: Postal Service Delivered Vast Majority Of Mail Ballots On Time, Report Finds | Brian Naylor/NPR

As Americans continue to complain of late-arriving bills, birthday cards and other deliveries, there has been one bright spot in the U.S. Postal Service’s performance in recent months: the 2020 election. The vast majority of mail-in ballots sent during the election arrived on time, according to a report by the Postal Service’s inspector general. The report says the Postal Service processed almost 134 million pieces of election mail — ballots and voter registration materials — sent to and by voters from Sept. 1 through Nov. 3. Of that, 93.8% was delivered on time to meet the agency’s service standard for first class mail of two to five days. That’s an increase of 11% from the 2018 midterm elections. It’s also, the inspector general noted, 5.6% better than on-time delivery rates for all first class mail, a standard the Postal Service has not met for five years. The Post Office’s goal for on-time delivery of first class mail is 96%. Mail advertisements for candidates and issues fared slightly worse, being delivered on time 91.9% of the time, a decrease of 3% from 2018.

Full Article: Majority Of Mail Ballots Delivered On Time By Postal Service : NPR

National: Biden signs executive order promoting voting rights on 56th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ | Felicia Sonmez and  Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

President Biden on Sunday signed an executive order aimed at promoting voting rights amid a push by Republican-led state legislatures to roll back voting access in the wake of former president Donald Trump’s 2020 loss and his baseless effort to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections. The order comes on the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the day that state troopers violently beat hundreds of marchers, including John Lewis, the late civil rights icon who served as a Democratic congressman from Georgia, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. “Today, on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, I am signing an executive order to make it easier for eligible voters to register to vote and improve access to voting,” Biden said Sunday in a videotaped address to the Martin and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast. “Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have that vote counted. If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let the people vote.” The order directs federal agencies to develop a strategic plan for promoting voter registration and participation, including potentially applying to be a state-designated voter registration agency and providing recommendations on leave for federal employees to vote or to serve as poll workers.

Full Article: Biden signs executive order promoting voting rights on 56th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ – The Washington Post

Voting Machine Hashcode Testing: Unsurprisingly insecure, and surprisingly insecure | Andrew Appel and Susan Greenhalgh/Freedom to Tinker

The accuracy of a voting machine is dependent on the software that runs it. If that software is corrupted or hacked, it can misreport the votes.  There is a common assumption that we can check the legitimacy of the software that is installed by checking a “hash code” and comparing it to the hash code of the authorized software.  In practice the scheme is supposed to work like this:  Software provided by the voting-machine vendor examines all the installed software in the voting machine, to make sure it’s the right stuff. There are some flaws in this concept:  it’s hard to find “all the installed software in the voting machine,” because modern computers have many layers underneath what you examine.  But mainly, if a hacker can corrupt the vote-tallying software, perhaps they can corrupt the hash-generating function as well, so that whenever you ask the checker “does the voting machine have the right software installed,” it will say, “Yes, boss.”  Or, if the hasher is designed not to say “yes” or “no,” but to report the hash of what’s installed, it can simply report the hash of what’s supposed to be there, not what’s actually there. For that reason, election security experts never put much reliance in this hash-code idea; instead they insist that you can’t fully trust what software is installed, so you must achieve election integrity by doing recounts or risk-limiting audits of the paper ballots. But you might have thought that the hash-code could at least help protect against accidental, nonmalicious errors in configuration.  You would be wrong.  It turns out that ES&S has bugs in their hash-code checker:  if the “reference hashcode” is completely missing, then it’ll say “yes, boss, everything is fine” instead of reporting an error.  It’s simultaneously shocking and unsurprising that ES&S’s hashcode checker could contain such a blunder and that it would go unnoticed by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s federal certification process. It’s unsurprising because testing naturally tends to focus on “does the system work right when used as intended?”  Using the system in unintended ways (which is what hackers would do) is not something anyone will notice.

Full Article: Voting Machine Hashcode Testing: Unsurprisingly insecure, and surprisingly insecure

National: Voting Rights or the Filibuster? | David Leonhardt/The New York Times

It’s shaping up to be the most significant question about the new Democratic Senate: If forced to choose between the protection of voting rights and the protection of the filibuster, what will Democrats do? They are now almost certain to face that decision. Republican legislators in dozens of states are trying to make voting more difficult, mostly because they believe that lower voter turnout helps their party win elections. (They say it’s to stop voter fraud, but widespread fraud doesn’t exist.) The Supreme Court, with six Republican appointees among the nine justices, has generally allowed those restrictions to stand. “I don’t say this lightly,” Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, recently wrote. “We are witnessing the greatest roll back of voting rights in this country since the Jim Crow era.” The only meaningful way for Democrats to respond is through federal legislation, like the voting-rights bill that the House passed on Wednesday. Among other things, it would require states to register many eligible voters automatically; allow others to register on Election Day; hold at least 15 days of early voting; expand voting by mail; and allow people with completed criminal sentences to vote. The bill also requires more disclosure of campaign donations and restricts partisan gerrymandering. But the bill seems to have no chance of winning the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome a filibuster. The Senate is divided 50-50 between the two parties (including two independents, who usually vote with Democrats). The bill will pass only if all 50 Senate Democrats agree to scrap or alter the filibuster, as they have the power to do.

Full Article: Voting Rights or the Filibuster? – The New York Times

National: Taking names: Rep. Lofgren catalogs GOP colleagues’ election claims with a view toward discipline | Dareh Gregorian, Haley Talbot and Alex Moe/NBC

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has released a detailed examination of the social media accounts of Republican House members who voted to overturn the 2020 election results to analyze what role they might have played in inciting the deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “Like former President [Donald] Trump, any elected member of Congress who aided and abetted the insurrection or incited the attack seriously threatened our democratic government,” Lofgren wrote in the prologue to her 1,939 page “social media review.” “They would have betrayed their oath of office and would be implicated in the same constitutional provision cited in the article of impeachment” against Trump following the Capitol riot, she continued. The congresswoman, who was one of the House managers in Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial last year, suggested that Congress could act against such members. That Constitution “prohibits any person who has previously taken an oath as a member of Congress to support the Constitution but subsequently engaged in insurrection or rebellion from serving in Congress,” she wrote, referring to a section of the 14th Amendment.

Full Article: Taking names: Dem Rep. Lofgren catalogs GOP colleagues’ election claims with a view toward discipline

National: More hackers jump to take advantage of a widespread Microsoft security flaw | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

Government officials and cybersecurity experts are scrambling to stem the damage from a security flaw in Microsoft Exchange that has allowed hackers to infiltrate the servers of at least 30,000 U.S. organizations. The growing number of hackers taking advantage has just made that task much more difficult. Since Microsoft and cybersecurity firm Volexity first attributed the breach to Halfnium, a group of hackers they tied to China, cybersecurity researchers say there are more groups getting in on the action. “It’s a frenzy,” says Steven Adair, president of Volexity, which first discovered the problem. Adair described the race to take advantage of the tens of thousands of servers that have not yet been secured as “a golden opportunity.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: More hackers jump to take advantage of a widespread Microsoft security flaw – The Washington Post

National: America’s Patchwork of Election Laws Under Scrutiny | Rob Garver/VoA News

The Democrat-led U.S. House of Representatives this week passed a bill that would greatly expand access to voting in federal elections. Even though Senate passage is highly unlikely, Democrats are underscoring their commitment to making voting easier at a time when Republicans seek to limit voting access in many states. The bill was labeled House Resolution 1 in order to signal its importance to Democrats’ agenda, and it passed with no Republican support. Also known as the For the People Act, it would force sweeping changes to state election laws, with the aim of making it easier for eligible voters to cast a ballot. Among other things, H.R. 1 would create an automatic voter registration system and limit the ability of state officials to purge voters from the system. It would also require states to make early voting available and block limits on mail-in voting. In addition, it would require that congressional districts be drawn by non-partisan commissions to prevent state legislatures from drawing districts that unfairly disadvantage one party, a practice known as gerrymandering. Beyond measures aimed specifically at access to the ballot, the bill would attempt to reduce the power of big-money donors to influence elections by requiring politically active organizations to disclose the sources of their funding and by creating a federal system of matching grants that would allow lawmakers to campaign without relying on high-dollar donations. It would also strengthen ethics enforcement and election oversight.

Full Article: America’s Patchwork of Election Laws Under Scrutiny | Voice of America – English

National: Federal officials scramble to assess widening Microsoft Exchange Server fallout | Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop

The fallout from critical Microsoft software bugs exploited by suspected Chinese hackers deepened on Saturday as incident responders warned that state and local organizations across the U.S. could be exposed to the vulnerabilities. Federal officials rushed to get a better sense of the potential impact of the hacking amid multiple media reports that tens of thousands of organizations could be affected by vulnerabilities as other hacking groups, in addition to the alleged Chinese, moved to exploit bugs in widely used Microsoft technology. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency held phone briefings with state and local officials Friday and Saturday to assess the scope of the compromises, and the White House National Security Council urged vulnerable organizations to “take immediate measures” to determine if they were affected.  Two DHS officials said the agency was still gathering data on how many organizations might be breached. The malicious activity amounts to the second major set of cyber incidents facing the Biden administration, which is already coping with a suspected Russian hacking campaign that has exploited software made by federal contractor SolarWinds and other vendors.

Full Article: Federal officials scramble to assess widening Microsoft Exchange Server fallout

National: Supreme Court delivers final blow to Trump’s last election challenge | Chris Riotta/The Independent

The Supreme Court has tossed out former President Donald Trump’s last remaining challenge to the 2020 election after he lied about the results of the nationwide vote and urged states to wipe out thousands of ballots while promoting false claims of fraud. The court without comment rejected Mr Trump’s appeal, which challenged thousands of absentee ballots filed in Wisconsin, an election battleground that the former president lost by more than 20,000 votes.´It was the last of three petitions filed at the Supreme Court near the end of his presidency that the justices declined to take up. The court turned away Mr Trump’s other two appeals, including a second Wisconsin challenge and one relating to voting in Pennsylvania, another pivotal state he lost, last week. Lower courts previously had ruled against Mr Trump in those three cases. It already was clear that the high court, which includes three justices appointed by Mr Trump, had no intention to intervene in the cases and others filed by his allies because it did not act before Congress certified Mr Biden’s victory on January 6. 

Full Article: Supreme Court delivers final blow to Trump’s last election challenge | The Independent

National: New Executive Order Requires Pentagon to Track Military Absentee Ballots | Patricia Kime/Military.com

A new executive order signed by President Joe Biden and designed to expand voting rights requires the Pentagon to better track absentee and military ballots from overseas. Biden’s order, issued Sunday, comes as a voter rights and campaign finance bill passed the House last week in a 220-210 vote, with no support from Republicans. The legislation, H.R. 1, the “For The People Act,” faces obstacles in the Senate, where Republicans must join Democrats for legislation to be approved. Biden has urged the Senate to approve the legislation but used his authority as president to direct federal agencies to create strategies for promoting voter participation, including encouraging — via the agencies’ websites and social media accounts — people to register to vote. The order also calls for revamping the government’s voting information website, Vote.gov, within 200 days. For military personnel stationed around the world, the Defense Department will be required to work with the State Department, Military Postal Service Agency and the U.S. Postal Service to establish an “end-to-end tracking system” for all absentee ballots cast by military personnel and Americans living overseas.

Full Article: New Executive Order Requires Pentagon to Track Military Absentee Ballots | Military.com

National: Targeting State Restrictions, House Passes Landmark Voting Rights Expansion | Nicholas Fandos/The New York Times

House Democrats pushed through a sweeping expansion of federal voting rights on Wednesday over unified Republican opposition, opening a new front in a raging national debate about elections aimed at countering G.O.P. attempts to clamp down on ballot access. The bill, adopted 220 to 210 mostly along party lines, would constitute the most significant enhancement of federal voting protections since the 1960s if it became law. It aims to impose new national requirements weakening restrictive state voter ID laws, mandate automatic voter registration, expand early and mail-in voting, make it harder to purge voter rolls and restore voting rights to former felons — changes that studies suggest would increase voter participation, especially by racial minorities. The vote was the latest bid by Democrats to beat back Republican efforts in statehouses across the country to enact new barriers to voting that would consolidate power for the Republican Party amid false claims of rampant election fraud heralded by former President Donald J. Trump and many of his allies in Congress. But the measure, which is supported by President Biden, appears to be doomed for now in the Senate, where Republican opposition would make it all but impossible to draw the 60 votes needed to advance. Democratic leaders have vowed to put it up for a vote anyway, and progressives were already plotting to use Republican obstruction of the bill to build their case for jettisoning the legislative filibuster in the months ahead. “Everything is at stake. We must win this race, this fight,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said as Democrats rallied on the Capitol steps before the vote. “At the same time as we are gathering here to honor our democracy, across the country over 200 bills are being put together, provisions are being put forward to suppress the vote.”

Full Article: House Passes Landmark Voting Rights Bill – The New York Times

National: House passes sweeping voting rights bill over GOP opposition | Brian Slodysko/Associated Press

House Democrats passed sweeping voting and ethics legislation Wednesday over unanimous Republican opposition, advancing to the Senate what would be the largest overhaul of the U.S. election law in at least a generation. House Resolution 1, which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process, was approved on a near party-line 220-210 vote. It would restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a murky campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to anonymously bankroll political causes. The bill is a powerful counterweight to voting rights restrictions advancing in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s repeated false claims of a stolen 2020 election. Yet it faces an uncertain fate in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it has little chance of passing without changes to procedural rules that currently allow Republicans to block it. The stakes in the outcome are monumental, cutting to the foundational idea that one person equals one vote, and carrying with it the potential to shape election outcomes for years to come. It also offers a test of how hard President Joe Biden and his party are willing to fight for their priorities, as well as those of their voters. This bill “will put a stop at the voter suppression that we’re seeing debated right now,” said Rep. Nikema Williams, a new congresswoman who represents the Georgia district that deceased voting rights champion John Lewis held for years. “This bill is the ‘Good Trouble’ he fought for his entire life.”

Full Article: House passes sweeping voting rights bill over GOP opposition

National: House-passed election bill takes aim at foreign interference | Maggie Miller/The Hill

A sweeping elections bill passed by the House on Wednesday night would boost cybersecurity measures and focus on countering foreign interference efforts like the kind that affected the 2016 and 2018 elections. The bill, which the House passed on a mostly party-line vote of 220-210, marks a major effort by Democrats to tackle both voting reforms, such as increasing access to the polls through use of mail-in ballots, and cybersecurity upgrades. Among issues included in H.R. 1 is a requirement that states use voter-verified paper ballots as part of the election process, a move supporters have pointed to as a vital safety net to check votes in the event of election tampering. It also allocates funding to enable the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to give grants to states to replace outdated and potentially insecure voting machines, along with authorizing funds for states to carry out election audits. Further, states would be required to take steps to strengthen the security of voter registration databases against cyberattacks, test voting systems nine months before each federal general election, and mandate the director of national intelligence to submit a report to both Congress and each chief state election official detailing cybersecurity threats prior to federal elections. The White House would also be pulled into the effort to defend against threats to elections, with the president required to produce a national strategy to defend democratic institutions, and produce an implementation plan for this strategy, within 90 days of the bill becoming law.

Full Article: House-passed election bill takes aim at foreign interference | TheHill

National: Voting machines using wireless technology increase fears over hacking | Ryan Lovelace/The Washington Times

A federal elections panel recently adopted new voting equipment standards despite an outcry from cybersecurity professionals who warned that the changes will leave America’s digitized ballot boxes more vulnerable to hacks. The new standards from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which lawmakers also protested, did not prohibit embedding wireless communications hardware into voting machines as long as it is turned off. The prospect of a flip of a switch opening wireless access to the ballot box exacerbates widespread fears that the U.S. voting system is not safe or reliable. Two dozen cybersecurity, computer science and election integrity professionals organized by the nonprofit Free Speech for People wrote to the commission to warn that the public’s faith in voting would crater further if the commission allows the wireless technology, such as wireless radios, chips and modems, which are more capable of connecting to the internet. “Public concerns about the security of our election infrastructure are higher than ever before. It is crucial that our election systems be secure and that our citizens trust that election systems are secure,” the cybersecurity professionals wrote to the commission. “Permitting the inclusion of wireless radios will both increase the vulnerabilities of the voting system and diminish voter confidence in the security of our election systems. Neither is acceptable.”

Full Article: Voting machines using wireless technology increase fears over hacking – Washington Times

National: Republicans Move to Control Voting After Record 2020 Turnout | Kane Farabaugh/VoA News

Months after record-high U.S. voter turnout propelled Democrats to victory in the 2020 elections, giving them control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Republicans are attempting to reshape election laws in state legislatures across the nation. In state after state, Republicans seek to limit opportunities for early and absentee balloting that Americans flocked to last year — Democratic voters in particular. In America’s heartland, Iowa is among the first examples of the trend. More than 2 million Iowans were registered to vote in the 2020 general election, a record in a state with a population of just over 3.1 million. Of 1.7 million ballots ultimately cast in Iowa last November, more than 1 million were submitted through the mail as absentee ballots — also a record — as many voters shunned the polls during a pandemic. Former President Donald Trump, a Republican, won Iowa but lost the national election to Democrat Joe Biden. Now Republicans, who control Iowa’s state legislature, have passed a bill limiting early, in-person voting and shortening the time allotted for absentee ballot submissions. Republicans argue that expanded use of both could invite fraudulent balloting even if no evidence of widespread fraud emerged from the 2020 elections.

Full Article: Republicans Move to Control Voting After Record 2020 Turnout | Voice of America – English

National: A new government watchdog report highlights urgent federal cybersecurity risks | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

Government agencies could have caught a massive Russian hacking campaign sooner if they had implemented urgent cybersecurity recommendations from the federal government’s top watchdog. That’s the message the Government Accountability Office gave the House’s top oversight committee yesterday following the release of its biennial report listing government programs at highest risk of mismanagement and abuse. “It certainly would have led to an earlier discovery of the attack,” U.S. Comptroller General Eugene L. Dodaro told House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) when asked about the GAO findings. “It’s hard to say … but we would have been better postured to detect the attack ourselves and to take quicker action,” he said, referring to the fact the campaign was uncovered by private cybersecurity firm FireEye months after Russian hackers accessed government systems. The GAO report provides an early blueprint for how Congress and federal agencies can work to address the significant cybersecurity issues raised by the hack of SolarWinds software, which led to the compromise of at least nine federal agencies. “[A]nother silent battle is being fought in our IT networks by cyber attackers intent on stealing our intellectual property and undermining our national security,” Maloney said during her opening statement. “The SolarWinds breach that came to light last December, as well as escalating and targeted cyberattacks that have drained millions of dollars from struggling hospitals, are just two examples of the threats we know about.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: A new government watchdog report highlights urgent federal cybersecurity risks – The Washington Post

National: American City & County’s 2020 Exemplary Public Servant of the Year Award | Derek Prall/American City and County

Every year, American City & County selects an outstanding public servant to honor as a recipient of our annual Exemplary Public Servant of the Year award. In the past, this award has been given to leaders who showed courage in the face of adversity, who made tough decisions to better their communities, or whose innovative solutions averted disasters. However, this year, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of profiling one specific leader, this year’s Exemplary Public Servant of the Year award is going to the country’s county clerks and election officials for their work in preserving American democracy during what was one of the most challenging elections in our nation’s history. Not only was there a global pandemic to contend with, but trust in our election processes were severely eroded. Poll workers and officials were required to make critical last-minute decisions on how to best hold an election during the worst health crisis this country has seen in over a century, all the while being demeaned and undermined from all angles. It’s for this fortitude, perseverance and sacrifice that has made the decision to honor and uplift these individuals. You quite literally pulled democracy back from the precipice, and for that we all owe you a debt of gratitude. Ricky Hatch, the clerk and auditor for Weber County, Utah, says that every year, year after year, election officials work tirelessly to ensure American democratic processes are perceived, but this year was entirely different. “We face enormous pressure from multiple sources, but the biggest pressure is what we put on ourselves to do things right,” Hatch says. “In 2020, people questioned our competency, our intelligence, our morals, and sometimes our parentage. We faced unsubstantiated allegations, protests and threats of violence. My car was vandalized twice. We worked 18-hour days for weeks and months.”

Full Article: American City & County’s 2020 Exemplary Public Servant of the Year Award – American City and County

National: How Trump’s stolen election lies are shaping the future of US voting | Alex Woodward/The Independent

“We are legislating on lies.” On the floor of Georgia’s House of Representatives on 1 March, state Democratic Rep Bee Nguyen warned her colleagues that the bill in front of them – a 66-page, Republican-backed proposal to drastically roll back voting access across the state – followed a months-long campaign from Donald Trump and his GOP allies to undermine millions of voters with baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and a “stolen” election. “Lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories that have gone unchecked by many members of this body who stayed silent,” she said. “Members of this body aided and abetted a deliberate misinformation campaign to sow seeds of doubt among Georgia voters with absolutely no facts or evidence.” The bill would, among other things, cut mail-in voting and early voting access, strip elections oversight from the state’s Secretary of State, and limit voting access that would disproportionately target Black voters. After a massive voter registration and enfranchisement effort among voting rights groups in the state, Joe Biden defeated the incumbent, and voters elected two Democratic senators, shifting the balance of power in Congress and affirming Mr Trump’s ejection from the White House.

Full Article: How Trump’s stolen election lies are shaping the future of US voting | The Independent

Arizona: Supreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Voting Limits | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

The Supreme Court seemed ready on Tuesday to uphold two election restrictions in Arizona and to make it harder to challenge all sorts of limits on voting around the nation. In its most important voting rights case in almost a decade, the court for the first time considered how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to voting restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups. The court heard the case as disputes over voting rights have again become a flash point in American politics. The immediate question for the justices was whether two Arizona measures ran afoul of the 1965 law. One of the measures requires election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other makes it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.” Several members of the court’s conservative majority said the restrictions were sensible, commonplace and at least partly endorsed by a bipartisan consensus reflected in a 2005 report signed by former President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, who served as secretary of state under President George Bush. The Biden administration, too, told the justices in an unusual letter two weeks ago that the Arizona measures appeared to be lawful. But the letter disavowed the Trump administration’s position that the relevant section of the Voting Rights Act should not be widely used to keep states from enacting more restrictive voting procedures.

Full Article: Supreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Arizona Voting Limits – The New York Times

National: Stolen-Election Myth Fuels G.O.P. Push to Change Voting Laws | Michael Wines/The New York Times

Led by loyalists who embrace former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election, Republicans in state legislatures nationwide are mounting extraordinary efforts to change the rules of voting and representation — and enhance their own political clout. At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote. And although the decennial redrawing of political maps has been pushed to the fall because of delays in delivering 2020 census totals, there are already signs of an aggressive drive to further gerrymander political districts, particularly in states under complete Republican control. The national Republican Party joined the movement this past week by setting up a Committee on Election Integrity to scrutinize state election laws, echoing similar moves by Republicans in a number of state legislatures. Republicans have long thought — sometimes quietly, occasionally out loud — that large turnouts, particularly in urban areas, favor Democrats, and that Republicans benefit when fewer people vote. But politicians and scholars alike say that this moment feels like a dangerous plunge into uncharted waters.

Full Article: Stolen-Election Myth Fuels G.O.P. Push to Change Voting Laws – The New York Times

National: Democrats launch sweeping bid to overhaul US election laws | Brian Slodysko/Associated Press 

Stacey Abrams, whose voting rights work helped make Georgia into a swing state, exhorted Congress on Thursday to reject “outright lies” that have historically restricted access to the ballot as Democrats began their push for a sweeping overhaul of election and ethics laws. “A lie cloaked in the seductive appeal of election integrity has weakened access to democracy for millions,” Abrams, a Democrat who narrowly lost Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial race, said during a committee hearing for the bill, which was introduced as H.R. 1 to signal its importance to the party’s agenda. Democrats feel a sense of urgency to enact the legislation ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, when their narrow majorities in the House and Senate will be at risk. The bill, which good-government groups have championed, is advancing against a backdrop of Republican-controlled states seizing on former President Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election to push legislation that would make it more difficult to vote. Democrats argue that voters of color, a key constituency for the party, would be disproportionately affected. It also comes on the cusp of a once-in-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts, a highly partisan affair that is typically controlled by state legislatures. With Republicans controlling the majority of statehouse, the process alone could help the GOP win enough seats to recapture the House. The Democratic bill would instead require that the boundaries be drawn by independent commissions.

Full Article: Democrats launch sweeping bid to overhaul US election laws

National: U.S. faces ‘unprecedented assault on democracy,’ White House says, backing election reform bill | Trevor Hunnicutt/Reuters

The Biden administration backed Democrats’ efforts to overhaul voting rules and turn over the process of drawing congressional districts to independent commissions on Monday, weighing in on a political fight that is likely to dominate Washington in coming years. The United States is facing an “an unprecedented assault on our democracy, a never before seen effort to ignore, undermine, and undo the will of the people, and a newly aggressive attack on voting rights taking place right now all across the country,” President Joe Biden’s Office of Management and Budget said in a statement. The House of Representatives is set to vote and likely to pass a sweeping election reform bill, HR-1, as soon as this week. Biden’s fellow Democrats have a majority in the House, but the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, where the measure would need support from all 50 members of that party caucus, plus 10 Republicans. Republicans have said the law would take powers away from states and raise fraud concerns. Democrats have been fighting to expand access to the polls through early voting, vote-by-mail and other measures, efforts that expanded as the coronavirus pandemic raged. Republicans have been fighting those efforts and pursuing measures to curb access to the polls. Former President Donald Trump, in his first public speech after his stinging Nov. 3 election loss to Biden, on Sunday proposed limiting absentee voting and days when Americans can vote.

Full Article: U.S. faces ‘unprecedented assault on democracy,’ White House says, backing election reform bill | Reuters

National: Why Republicans Are Moving To Fix Elections That Weren’t Broken | Steve Inskeep/NPR

Republican-led legislatures in dozens of states are moving to change election laws in ways that could make it harder to vote. Many proposals explicitly respond to the 2020 election: Lawmakers cite public concerns about election security — concerns generated by disinformation that then-President Donald Trump spread while trying to overturn the election. The Brennan Center, a nonprofit that tracks voting laws, says that 43 states — including key swing states — are considering 253 bills that would raise barriers to voting, for example by reducing early voting days or limiting access to voting by mail. Lawmakers in a different set of 43 states have proposed expanding voter access, but Republicans have prioritized new security requirements and shorter voting periods. In Georgia, which President Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes, legislators are considering multiple bills to restrict voting. The most significant, House Bill 531, is before a committee chaired by Republican Rep. Barry Fleming. He said Democrat Stacey Abrams campaigned to expand voter access after losing a governor’s race in 2018, and now Republicans want their own changes. The bill is “an attempt to restore the confidence of our public,” he said, because “there has been controversy regarding our election system.”

Full Article: Why Republicans Are Moving To Fix Elections That Weren’t Broken : NPR

National: Some local GOP leaders fire up base with conspiracies, lies | Garance Burke, Martha Mendoza, Juliet Linderman, Larry Fenn/Associated Press

A faction of local, county and state Republican officials is pushing lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories that echo those that helped inspire the violent U.S. Capitol siege, online messaging that is spreading quickly through GOP ranks fueled by algorithms that boost extreme content. The Associated Press reviewed public and private social media accounts of nearly 1,000 federal, state, and local elected and appointed Republican officials nationwide, many of whom have voiced support for the Jan. 6 insurrection or demanded that the 2020 presidential election be overturned, sometimes in deleted posts or now-removed online forums. “Sham-peachment,” they say, and warn that “corporate America helped rig the election.” They call former president Donald Trump a “savior” who was robbed of a second term — despite no evidence — and President Joe Biden, a “thief.” “Patriots want answers,” they declare. The bitter, combative rhetoric is helping the officials grow their constituencies on social media and gain outsized influence in their communities, city councils, county boards and state assemblies. And it exposes the GOP’s internal struggle over whether the party can include traditional conservative politicians, conspiracy theorists and militias as it builds its base for 2022.

Full Article: Some local GOP leaders fire up base with conspiracies, lies

National: CPAC goes all in on Trump’s false election fraud claims | Jane C. Timm/NBC

The nation’s largest conference of conservative activists will prominently feature former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud weeks after his stolen election lie fueled a riot that led to the deaths of five people. The agenda for the Conservative Political Action Conference, the influential right-wing summit best known as CPAC taking place in Florida this weekend, provides attendees multiple forums that appear to perpetuate conservative mythmaking around the 2020 election as well as ways to discuss the new wave of voting restrictions pushed by the Republican Party. The featured speaker is the former president himself on Sunday. The event includes seven speeches and panels about “protecting elections” over the long weekend, with 2020-specific themes like “Other Culprits: Why Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence,” and “The Left Pulled the Strings, Covered It Up, and Even Admits It.”

Full Article: CPAC goes all in on Trump’s false election fraud claims

National: Supreme Court to again consider federal protections for minority voters | Robert Barnes/The Washington Post

With one contentious election behind it, the Supreme Court this week will consider the rules for the next and how federal law protects minority voters as states across the nation race to revamp their regulations. The court on Tuesday will review the shield provided by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), first passed in 1965 to forbid laws that result in discrimination based on race. The cases at the Supreme Court involve two voting regulations from Arizona that are in common use across the country. One throws out the ballots of those who vote in the wrong precinct. The other restricts who may collect ballots cast early for delivery to polling places, a practice then-President Donald Trump denounced as “ballot harvesting.” But the greater impact will be the test that the increasingly conservative court develops for proving violations of the VRA, as new laws are proposed and state legislatures begin redrawing congressional and legislative districts following the 2020 Census.

Full Article: Supreme Court to consider federal protections for minority voters – The Washington Post

National: Voting rights take center stage on Capitol Hill and at Supreme Court | Todd Ruger/Roll Call

To get a sense of the partisan and unsettled future of election laws in the United States, look no further than the debates on ballot collection teed up in Congress and at the Supreme Court this week. The House is expected to pass a sweeping election, campaign finance and ethics overhaul bill that includes a provision that would require states to allow voters to give their completed absentee ballots to someone else to drop off. Democrats generally consider laws that limit ballot collection alongside others that seek to disenfranchise minority voters who are more likely to vote for their candidates, such as requiring photo identification at polling places. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans already have balked at that provision on what they call “ballot harvesting,” and he highlighted it last week on the floor as allowing “paid operatives” to show up at polling places with “a big stack of filled-out ballots with other people’s names on them.” With Congress at an apparent partisan deadlock on federal legislation on the issue without a major change in Senate rules, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in a pair of cases about Arizona’s ballot collection ban.

Source: Voting rights take center stage on Capitol Hill and at Supreme Court

National: Election officials defended the 2020 vote. In 2022, they’ll have to defend themselves. | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Donald Trump transformed these once-obscure officials into either the enemies — or the saviors, as most would have it — of American democracy. Now, campaigns for secretary of state are becoming the next major arena of nationwide political combat. Sitting secretaries and political groups are preparing for a flood of candidates, money and attention into campaigns for the newly prominent positions in 2022. Voting rules have become a bigger cause for both political parties, while coronavirus-fueled election changes combined with Trump’s conspiracy theories to turn secretaries of state into pivotal characters in last year’s presidential election. The biggest battleground is likely to be Georgia, where Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is set to face dual challenges after Trump targeted him for certifying President Joe Biden’s victory there. Democrats are eager to take control of state election administration in Georgia, which has for years been at the center of national debates about voter suppression. But first, Raffensperger may see Trump endorse a primary opponent out of retribution for perceived slights. “This will be a true test of where the Republican Party is going,” said Jordan Fuchs, who ran Raffensperger’s 2018 campaign and is now deputy secretary of state in Georgia. “There’s some growing pains now that Trump is not the leader of the Republican Party. And these primary elections are going to be defining for us for a very long time.” Twenty-six states will have secretary of state elections next year, including five of the 10 closest states in the 2020 presidential election, and incumbents from both parties are preparing for tough battles. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat up for reelection in 2022, said she will likely have to raise more money than before — but she expects it to be easier now. “If anything, the change will be that I won’t have to spend as much time, perhaps, persuading someone or convincing someone of the importance of investing in these races, as you might have in years past,” Benson said.

Full Article: Election officials defended the 2020 vote. In 2022, they’ll have to defend themselves. – POLITICO

National: Election Assistance Commission loses another key staffer, Jerome Lovato | Tim Starks and Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop

Another top official is exiting the staff of the Election Assistance Commission, the third in recent months for the small agency that plays an outsized role in U.S. election security. Jerome Lovato, the testing and certification director for voting system certification at the EAC, is leaving that position next month, two sources told CyberScoop. And the commission began advertising the opening for the job he holds last week. His departure follows Josh Franklin leaving his job as EAC chief technology officer in December, and in November, Maurice Turner leaving as senior adviser to the executive director of the commission. The exits come at a sensitive time for the commission. The EAC this month voted to approve a long-awaited update to its widely-used voluntary voting system guidelines, nicknamed VVSG 2.0, and a perhaps years-long implementation period will follow. Those guidelines emphasize the value of risk-limiting audits that help verify election results, which were Lovato’s speciality both before he joined the EAC staff and during his time at the commission. It’s not the only transition for the EAC, either. The commission on Wednesday announced that Donald Palmer had begun his expected term as chairman, taking the gavel from Ben Hovland. Palmer, whom President Donald Trump nominated as a commissioner, will make “building a voluntary election system testing program for non-voting technology to increase the security of election systems” a priority, an EAC news release said. Lovato joined the EAC in 2017, and in 2019 took the role he’s now departing. Before that, he worked for the Colorado secretary of state.

Full Article: Election Assistance Commission loses another key staffer, Jerome Lovato