National

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

The false narrative of a stolen election that inspired hundreds of Americans to storm the U.S. Capitol in 2021 is now fueling a far more sophisticated movement, one that involves local and state election boards across the country. What was once the Stop the Steal movement is now the “voter integrity” movement. Its aim is to persuade the people who are responsible for certifying local elections of the false notions that widespread fraud is a threat to democracy and that they have the authority and legal duty to do something about it: Deny certification of their local elections. Read Article

National: Election officials fight a tsunami of voting conspiracy theories | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Voting machines reversing votes. More voters registered than people eligible. Large numbers of noncitizens voting. With less than two weeks before Election Day, a resurgence in conspiracy theories and misinformation about voting is forcing state and local election officials to spend their time debunking rumors and explaining how elections are run at the same time they’re overseeing early voting and preparing for Nov. 5. “Truth is boring, facts are boring, and outrage is really interesting,” says Utah’s Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who oversees elections in her state. “It’s like playing whack-a-mole with truth. But what we try to do is just get as much information out there as possible.” Read Article

National: Intelligence officials warn foreign disinformation from Russia may flood post-election period | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

The U.S. intelligence community is anticipating a potentially tumultuous post-election period this year, where foreign governments will seek to amplify domestic unrest to cast doubt about the legitimacy of the winner while undermining confidence in democracy. Officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence singled out Russia, using some of their strongest language to date to warn that leaders in Moscow are preparing a full-court press in the final weeks of the election and beyond. “The intelligence community is increasingly confident that Russian actors are considering — and in some cases implementing — a broad range of influence efforts timed to the election,” an ODNI official told reporters Tuesday. Read Article

National: American creating deep fakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show | /Catherine BeltonThe Washington Post

A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents show that John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government, was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. Some of the payments were made after fake news sites he created began to have difficulty accessing Western artificial intelligence systems this spring and he needed an AI generator — a tool that can be prompted to create text, photos and video. Read Article

National: Election experts worry about Republican poll watchers in swing states | Helen Coster, Alexandra Ulmer and Tim Reid/Reuters

Be aggressive,” Jim Womack, a local Republican Party chair in North Carolina, told the grid of faces who joined the Zoom training session for volunteers to monitor voting on Nov. 5. “The more assertive and aggressive you are in watching and reporting, the better the quality of the election.” During the two-hour session, conducted from a Republican Party office featuring a placard of an AR-15 rifle and photos of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Womack, 69, an army veteran and a retired information systems engineer, instructed 40 volunteers on how to spot “nefarious activity.” He mentioned a local clergyman who accompanied dozens of Latino parishioners to a voting site “like a shepherd leading a sheep.” Voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the United States – despite Trump’s false claim, supported by a majority of Republicans in Congress, that the 2020 election was stolen. US election experts worry about Republican poll watchers in swing statRead Article

‘People are scared’: Election workers brace for threats | Mike Wendling/BBC

A survey earlier this year by the Brennan Center found 38% of local election officials had experienced threats, harassment or abuse. More than half were concerned about the safety of their colleagues or staff, a level of anxiety that has remained more or less constant since the 2022 midterm elections. “People are scared,” says Melissa Kono, the elected town clerk in Burnside, Wisconsin. Ms Kono travels around Wisconsin delivering state-mandated election training to volunteer poll workers. She says the kinds of scenarios she’s being asked about have changed dramatically over the last five years, to the point where she’s increasingly included material in her sessions about dealing with threats. “I’m concerned for the clerks and the election workers,” she said. Read Article

National: What Trump keeps getting wrong about ‘paper ballots’ | Marshall Cohen/CNN

Trump’s insistence that the US switch to “paper ballots” is nonsensical. More than 98% of voters live in jurisdictions that produce fully auditable paper trails, according to data from Verified Voting, which tracks election equipment in every county. Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group, has spent the past two decades urging counties to move away from paperless voting in favor of in-person polling sites. (Vote-by-mail obviously incorporates a paper trail.) The people who run the group say they have accomplished their goal – despite claims from Trump and others that the US still needs paper ballots. “It’s really weird and I don’t understand it,” said Mark Lindeman, the group’s director for policy and strategy. “Almost everybody votes on paper ballots. Anyone who is convinced that we need paper ballots is very likely voting on paper ballots themselves.” Read Article

National: Republicans face backlash for lawsuits targeting overseas and military voting | Amy Gardner, Jacqueline Alemany and Dan Lamothe/The Washington Post

Republican lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina challenging the legitimacy of overseas ballots have prompted a backlash among military personnel, their spouses, veterans and elected officials. Scores of veterans and active-duty members of the armed forces have posted online or contacted their elected representatives out of concern that their votes might not be counted. Military and elected leaders, along with voting rights advocates, have decried the lawsuits as well, calling them a betrayal of the men and women serving the country overseas. “Literally, these are the people who are putting it all on the line for what we have in America,” said Allison Jaslow, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and now is chief executive of the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “And we’re going to compromise their ability to have a say in how they vote for who sends them to war? It’s just beyond the pale.” Read Article

National: Trump Escalates Threats to Political Opponents He Deems the ‘Enemy’ | Lisa Lerer and Michael Gold/The New York Times