National

A team of international observers invited by the Trump administration has issued a preliminary report giving high marks to the conduct of last week’s elections–and it criticizes President Trump for making baseless allegations that the outcome resulted from systematic fraud. A 28-member delegation from the Organization of American States followed events in several locations across the U.S., including in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan, both remotely and with observers at polling stations and counting centers. “While the OAS Mission has not directly observed any serious irregularities that call into question the results so far, it supports the right of all contesting parties in an election, to seek redress before the competent legal authorities when they believe they have been wronged,” the report said. “It is critical however, that candidates act responsibly by presenting and arguing legitimate claims before the courts, not unsubstantiated or harmful speculation in the public media.” The OAS assessment followed similar findings by an election observation team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions,” Michael Georg Link, leader of the short-term OSCE observer mission, said last week.

Full Article: No Evidence of Systematic Fraud in U.S. Elections, International Observer Mission Reports – WSJ.com

National: Shock and frustration inside Justice Dept. over Barr’s vote-investigation memo | Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post

Current and former Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were stunned and frustrated by Attorney General William P. Barr’s move to loosen internal restrictions on how and when federal prosecutors investigate certain election-fraud cases before the results are certified — and worried that Barr was aiding President Trump’s effort to cast doubt on his defeat. The blow to morale was felt most acutely in the Justice Department’s criminal division, which is typically a key player in prosecuting election-related offenses and setting department policy in that area, people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal Justice Department deliberations. Some weeks ago, when Barr had first proposed the move, officials in the criminal division — including political leadership — had pushed back vigorously and thought they had dissuaded the attorney general from taking such a step, the people said. Then, without warning, Barr’s memo hit their email inboxes Monday night. Within hours, the head of the department’s election-crimes branch, Richard Pilger, told colleagues he was stepping down from that job and taking a lesser position at the department, citing the new guidance, as others privately seethed.

Full Article: Barr election-fraud memo angers Justice Department officials – The Washington Post

National: Trump’s Legal Blitz Isn’t Contesting Enough Votes to Win | David Voreacos, Greg Stohr and Mark Niquette/Bloomberg

President Donald Trump’s hopes of reversing the outcome of the 2020 election in the courts are running into the reality that the numbers just aren’t there in terms of votes he can dispute — at least not yet. In their most advanced legal challenge, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party are trying to have the U.S. Supreme Court toss Pennsylvania ballots that arrived after Nov. 3. But, with all but four of 67 counties reporting, state officials have only logged 7,800 such ballots, said Jacklin Rhoads, spokeswoman for Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania stood at more than 45,000 votes Monday afternoon, not including the late-arriving ballots at issue. “If those ballots couldn’t change the election to make any difference to how Pennsylvania will be decided, then he doesn’t have a claim he can bring,” said Deborah Hellman, a University of Virginia law professor.

Full Article: Trump’s Legal Blitz Isn’t Contesting Enough Votes to Win (1)

National: The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump’s election lies | Lois Beckett and Julia Carrie Wong/The Guardian

The networks have made their calls, world leaders have begun paying their respects, and even Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s other media outlets appear to have given up on a second term for Donald Trump. But in a video posted on Facebook on 7 November and viewed more than 16.5m times since, NewsMax host and former Trump administration official Carl Higbie spends three minutes spewing a laundry list of false and debunked claims casting doubt on the outcome of the presidential election. “I believe it’s time to hold the line,” said Higbie, who resigned from his government post over an extensive track record of racist, homophobic and bigoted remarks, to the Trump faithful. “I’m highly skeptical and you should be too.” The video, which has been shared more than 350,000 times on Facebook, is just one star in a constellation of pro-Trump misinformation that is leading millions of Americans to doubt or reject the results of the presidential election. Fully 70% of Republicans believe that the election was not “free and fair”, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted since election day. Among those doubters, large majorities believe two of Trump’s most brazen lies: that mail-in voting leads to fraud and that ballots were tampered with. Trump himself is the largest source of election misinformation; the president has barely addressed the public since Tuesday except to share lies and misinformation about the election. But his message attacking the electoral process is being amplified by a host of rightwing media outlets and pundits who appear to be jockeying to replace Fox News as the outlet of choice for Trumpists – and metastasizing on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

Full Article: The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump’s election lies | US news | The Guardian

National: Posts falsify ties between election tech firm and Democrats | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

As poll workers tallied votes from the U.S. presidential election, many social media users interpreted a clerk’s error in a small, Republican-leaning Michigan county as vote-rigging because it wrongly favored Joe Biden before being fixed. A week later, that misinterpreted mistake has snowballed into a deluge of false claims that Democrats have deep ties to Dominion Voting Systems, the company that supplies election equipment to Michigan and dozens of other states nationwide. Claims that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Clinton Foundation have interest or influence in Dominion are all unsubstantiated. But that didn’t stop tens of thousands of social media users from amplifying them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram this week.

Full Article: Posts falsify ties between election tech firm and Democrats

National: U.S. Tried a More Aggressive Cyberstrategy, and the Feared Attacks Never Came | David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes/The New York Times

From its sprawling new war room inside Fort Meade, not far from Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland, United States Cyber Command dived deep into Russian and Iranian networks in the months before the election, temporarily paralyzing some and knocking ransomware tools offline. Then it stole Iran’s game plan and, without disclosing the intelligence coup behind the theft, made public a part of Tehran’s playbook when the Iranians began to carry it out. Now, nearly a week after the polls closed, it is clear that all the warnings of a crippling cyberattack on election infrastructure, or an overwhelming influence operation aimed at American voters, did not come to pass. There were no breaches of voting machines and only modest efforts, it appears, to get inside registration systems. Interviews with government officials and other experts suggest a number of reasons for the apparent success. One may be that the United States’ chief adversaries were deterred, convinced that the voting infrastructure was so hardened, Facebook and Twitter were so on alert, and Cyber Command and a small group of American companies were so on the offensive that it was not worth the risk. But there is another explanation as well: In the 2020 election the distinction between foreign and domestic interference blurred. From early in the campaign, President Trump did more to undermine confidence in the system’s integrity than America’s rivals could have done themselves.

Full Article: U.S. Tried a More Aggressive Cyberstrategy, and the Feared Attacks Never Came – The New York Times

National: Barr Hands Prosecutors the Authority to Investigate Voter Fraud Claims | Katie Benner and Michael S. Schmidt/The New York Times

Attorney General William P. Barr, wading into President Trump’s unfounded accusations of widespread election irregularities, told federal prosecutors on Monday that they were allowed to investigate “specific allegations” of voter fraud before the results of the presidential race are certified. Mr. Barr’s authorization prompted the Justice Department official who oversees investigations of voter fraud, Richard Pilger, to step down from the post within hours, according to an email Mr. Pilger sent to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Barr said he had authorized “specific instances” of investigative steps in some cases. He made clear in a carefully worded memo that prosecutors had the authority to investigate, but he warned that “specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries.” Mr. Barr’s directive ignored the Justice Department’s longstanding policies intended to keep law enforcement from affecting the outcome of an election. And it followed a move weeks before the election in which the department lifted a prohibition on voter fraud investigations before an election. “Given that voting in our current elections has now concluded, I authorize you to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions,” Mr. Barr wrote. A Justice Department official said that Mr. Barr had authorized scrutiny of allegations about ineligible voters in Nevada and backdated mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. Republicans have circulated both claims in recent days without any evidence emerging to back them.

Full Article: Barr Hands Prosecutors the Authority to Investigate Voter Fraud Claims – The New York Times

National: No, Software Glitches Are Not Affecting Vote Counts | Nicole Perlroth and Jack Nicas/The New York Times

President Trump and many of his supporters complained over the weekend that “software glitches” undermined the vote counts in Michigan and Georgia and argued that the problems portended wider issues in other counties and states that used the same software. But issues in the unofficial vote counts in Michigan’s Antrim and Oakland counties were caused by human error, not software glitches, according to reviews by the Michigan Department of State, county clerks and election security experts. Officials concluded that they were isolated cases that did not signal wider issues with vote counts elsewhere. And in Georgia, software issues only affected how poll workers checked-in voters in two counties and delayed the reporting of results in another. The issues did not affect the counts. “Anyone trying to falsely connect the situations in the two states is spreading misinformation in an effort to undermine the integrity of our elections system,” said Tracy Wimmer, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of State. In Antrim County, Mich., a Republican stronghold, unofficial results initially showed President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. beating Mr. Trump by roughly 3,000 votes — a sharp reversal from Mr. Trump’s performance there in 2016. Local officials caught and fixed the error. In the revised count, Mr. Trump beat Mr. Biden by roughly 2,500 votes. The problem, election security experts and state officials concluded, was that an election worker had configured ballot scanners and reporting systems with slightly different versions of the ballot, which meant some results did not line up with the right candidate when officials loaded them into the system.

Full Article: No, Software Glitches Are Not Affecting Vote Counts – The New York Times

National: Top Republicans back Trump’s efforts to challenge election results | Amy Gardner, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Emma Brown/The Washington Post

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans on Monday backed President Trump’s efforts to contest his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, despite the lack of evidence of significant fraud and sharp rebukes from election officials who defended the integrity of the vote. McConnell (R-Ky.) said from the floor of the Senate that the president is “100 percent within his right” to pursue recounts and litigation. McConnell did not repeat Trump’s baseless assertions that fraud had cost him the election, but he said he had met with Attorney General William P. Barr earlier in the day and supports the president’s right to investigate all claims of wrongdoing. “We have the tools and institutions we need to address any concerns,” McConnell said. “The president has every right to look into allegations and request recounts under the law.” Separately, Barr on Monday gave federal prosecutors a green light to pursue allegations of voting irregularities in certain cases before results are certified. The memo appeared to reverse previous Justice Department guidance that prosecutors generally should not take overt steps in cases involving alleged voter fraud until results are in and official.

Full Article: Top Republicans back Trump’s efforts to challenge election results – The Washington Post

National: False News Targeting Latinos Trails the Election | Patricia Mazzei and Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times

The posts proliferated on election night before anything remotely definitive was known about the results of the presidential race. “Robado,” they falsely repeated again and again in Spanish: President Trump was being robbed of a victory. He had won Arizona. George Soros was funding violent “antifa riots.” The baseless social media messages to Latinos trying to delegitimize the election and the results for Joseph R. Biden Jr. circulated online on Tuesday night and into Wednesday, part of a disinformation campaign to undermine Latino confidence in the vote as it unfolded. Ahead of Election Day, false news in Spanish tried to turn Latinos against Black Lives Matter and tie Mr. Biden to socialism, tactics that experts said could depress the Hispanic vote. Now that voting is complete, the rampant falsehoods have only garnered larger audiences — including among immigrants less familiar with the institutions of American democracy. The gist of the falsehoods is that the election is “rigged” against Mr. Trump. “These misinformation narratives are helping plunge the country further into chaos and confusion,” said Fadi Quran, a director at Avaaz, a nonprofit that tracks disinformation. He called the disinformation campaigns a “democratic emergency.” “The most vulnerable communities in the country are paying the highest price,” he said. For weeks, officials and election security experts braced for what was widely expected to be an election marred by hacking and misinformation. They zeroed in on familiar adversaries in Russia, which weeks earlier had been caught hiring people in Mexico and Venezuela to push out Instagram and Facebook conten

Full Article: False News Targeting Latinos Trails the Election – The New York Times

National: Trump faces long odds in challenging state vote counts | Maryclaire Dale/Associated Press

Republican surrogates for President Donald Trump resumed their legal fight Monday to try to stop the vote count in key battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, but faced long odds given the Electoral College tally and recent court rulings that found no evidence of widespread vote fraud. While some Republican officials invoked the Trump mantra that only “legal votes” should be counted, others emerged to counter the campaign narrative and urge voters, and perhaps the president, to support the results. “The process has not failed our country in more than 200 years, and it is not going to fail our country this year,” said Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who won her reelection bid and has congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his victory. Still, Trump lawyers soldiered on six days after the election, just as personal counsel Rudy Giuliani had promised they would during a surreal weekend press conference outside a landscaping storefront in northeast Philadelphia.

Full Article: Trump faces long odds in challenging state vote counts

National: Election breathes new life into false ‘dead voter’ claims | Arijeta Lajka/Associated Press

As President Donald Trump continued to assert without evidence Tuesday that the presidential election was undermined by voter fraud, social media users falsely claimed that people had cast extra votes using the identities of dead people in Pennsylvania and Michigan. There’s no evidence that this happened. The false claim that deceased voters cast votes “comes up every election,” said Jason Roberts, a professor of political science at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Experts told The Associated Press that it is common for state voter rolls to include voters with birthdates that make them appear impossibly old, but these are usually explained by human error, software quirks or voter confidentiality issues.

Full Article: Election breathes new life into false ‘dead voter’ claims

National: Most Republican lawsuits challenging election results in battleground states haven’t gone far. Here’s why. | Kevin McCoy, Donovan Slack and Dennis Wagner/USA Today

Even before Democrat Joe Biden was projected to be the winner of the presidential election, President Donald Trump’s campaign and Republican allies started pursuing lawsuits over voting and ballot counting. Cases filed in five key states alleged ballots had errors because voters were required to use Sharpies, observers didn’t have enough access to monitor ballot counting, and that late-arriving mail ballots were improperly mixed with legal votes. Judges have dismissed most cases quickly, often for lack of evidence. However, the U.S. Supreme Court could issue a ruling at any time on the Republican Party of Pennsylvania’s request for an emergency injunction to block processing of mail and absentee ballots that were received during the three days after the normal deadline on Election Day. The high court could also decide to conduct a full review of GOP arguments that the deadline extension was unconstitutional. And Monday evening, the Trump campaign filed a federal suit in Pennsylvania alleging voters were treated differently depending on whether they voted by mail or in person, creating an unconstitutional, “two tiered” system.

Full Article: Republican lawsuits challenging voting haven’t gone far. Here’s why.

Connecticut: Officials say if absentee voting becomes the norm, system needs overhaul | Julia Bergman/The Day

There were little problems at the polls in Connecticut on Election Day, but if the state is to see large numbers of voters cast absentee ballots in the future, as it did this election, an overhaul of its voting system would be needed, election officials say. A day after the election, during which Connecticut saw record voter turnout spurred in large part by the more than 650,000 voters who cast an absentee ballot, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill announced that she will propose an amendment to the state’s Constitution to allow voters to cast an absentee ballot without an excuse. This year, any Connecticut voter could cast an absentee ballot, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m more convinced than ever that offering more options for people in terms of voting is the way to go,” Merrill said in an interview last week. “And it’s better for the people administering the election too. It puts pressure off that one day.” Currently 44 states allow their residents to vote prior to Election Day either through in-person early voting or no-excuse absentee balloting or both. “We did this as a one-time experiment, but now we’ve got the experience with it and I think it’s largely very positive,” Merrill said.

Full Article: The Day – Officials say if absentee voting becomes the norm in Connecticut, system needs overhaul – News from southeastern Connecticut

Texas: Lawmakers will revisit election code in upcoming legislative session | Cayla Harris/San Antonio Express-News

After an election season unlike any other — one that saw dozens of lawsuits concerning voter access and a record 11.4 million Texans casting ballots — state legislators are preparing for a partisan battle over laws that govern early voting, absentee ballots and related matters during the upcoming legislative session. Monday was the first day to pre-file bills for the 87th session, scheduled to begin Jan. 12. As of 5:30 p.m., more than 550 bills had been filed in both chambers — and thousands more are expected over the next several weeks. While just a small fraction of those bills will make it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, the influx of legislation gives an early hint at the priorities weighing on lawmakers’ minds this year, with dozens of bills addressing health care, racial injustice, abortion, redistricting and election law. The voting bills come from both sides of the aisle, with Democrats generally trying to expand voter access and Republicans limiting options in the name of election security. Democratic Reps. Lina Ortega of El Paso and Terry Meza of Irving, alongside Sen. José Menéndez of San Antonio, for example, introduced a bill that would give all registered voters the option to cast mail-in ballots during early voting. On the other side, Republican Rep. Valoree Swanson of Spring introduced a bill that would prohibit state officers and employees from distributing applications for early voting ballots. Rep. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park introduced several measures to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting, including a bill that would require the secretary of state to check databases at least twice a year for noncitizens who have been improperly allowed to register.

Full Article: Lawmakers will revisit Texas election code in upcoming legislative session – ExpressNews.com

National: George W. Bush congratulates Biden on his victory. | Peter Baker/The New York Times

Former President George W. Bush congratulated President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Sunday, becoming the highest-profile Republican to publicly declare the election over in defiance of President Trump’s refusal to accept the results. “I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night,” Mr. Bush said in a statement released after he spoke with Mr. Biden by telephone. “I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency. Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country.” He added: “I want to congratulate President Trump and his supporters on a hard-fought campaign. He earned the votes of more than 70 million Americans — an extraordinary political achievement. They have spoken, and their voices will continue to be heard through elected Republicans at every level of government.” Mr. Bush, the only living former Republican president, put his stamp on the outcome even as many of his party’s elected leaders held back either out of loyalty to Mr. Trump or out of fear of crossing the outgoing president. Mr. Trump has falsely asserted that the election was stolen without any evidence, leaving his party in the awkward position of following a president refusing to accept the reality that other Republicans have, even if they do not say so out loud.

Full Article: George W. Bush congratulates Biden on his victory. – The New York Times

National: Guns seen outside vote-counting centers becoming increasingly normal | Associated Press

The most turbulent and norm-breaking presidential election of a lifetime has led to an extraordinary spectacle in the United States over the past three days: armed protesters gathering nightly outside offices where workers are counting the votes that will decide who wins the White House. Some carry shotguns. Some have handguns. Often, they carry black, military-style semiautomatic rifles. The protesters with weapons are a small minority of the demonstrators. There have been no reports of anyone getting shot, and the laws in Arizona, Nevada and Michigan — where guns have been seen outside vote-tabulation centers in recent days — allow people to openly carry firearms in public. But in a nation increasingly inured to weapons at rallies – most often carried by right-wing demonstrators, though also sometimes by left-wing protesters – experts warn that the guns create a dangerous situation that could be seen as intimidation or tip easily into violence. “The more we see, the more people see it as a normal reaction – even though it’s not. There’s nothing normal about it,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University who studies extremism. “The potential for violence becomes normalized.”

Full Article: Guns seen outside vote-counting centers becoming increasingly normal – pennlive.com

‘We will not allow anyone to stop us’: Day and night, under historic scrutiny, the nation’s vote counters carried on | Amy Gardner, Reis Thebault, Hannah Knowles and Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post

A burst pipe in the ceiling of Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, where Fulton County election officials had set up their vote-counting command center this fall, was perhaps the easiest of the challenges the staff faced in this singular year. Water splattering on the floor halted counting for two hours on Election Day, but it didn’t damage any ballots. And it was nothing compared to the seemingly Augean task of processing nearly 150,000 mail ballots, the unfounded accusations of fraud, the physical threats and the online harassment — and the distinctly racial overtones of mostly White protesters outside the building hurling unfounded accusations of wrongdoing as a largely Black staff of election officials inside methodically counted ballots. In the background was an anxious nation hitting “refresh” on their devices for the latest vote tallies, desperate to know who the next president would be, their eyes trained on Georgia and a handful of other states like no election in history. “I knew there was going to be more scrutiny here,” said Fulton County Elections Director Richard Barron. “I’ve learned to expect it, and you just deal with the pressure as it comes.”

Full Article: Election workers carried on vote count under historic scrutiny – The Washington Post

National: With No Evidence of Fraud, Trump Fails to Make Headway on Legal Cases | Jim Rutenberg, Nick Corasaniti and Alan Feuer/The New York Times

President Trump’s bellicose pledge to fight the outcome of the election in the courts crashed on Friday into skeptical judges, daunting Electoral College math and a lack of evidence for his claims of fraud. On a day that began with vote tallies in Georgia and Pennsylvania tipping in Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s favor, Mr. Trump’s campaign declared, “This election is not over,” as the Republican National Committee announced it had activated “legal challenge teams” in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And the Trump forces named a new general to lead the effort, the hardened conservative political combatant David Bossie. But none of the dozen or so lawsuits they had brought in battleground states appeared to be gaining any traction in the courts. And in any case, none seemed likely to give Mr. Trump the edge he would need in vote counts in the states that will determine the outcome. In seeking to foment widespread doubt about the legitimacy of the election, Mr. Trump and his surrogates seemed less focused on substantive legal arguments that could hold up in court than on bolstering the president’s political narrative, unsupported by the facts, that he was somehow being robbed of a second term.

Full Article: Trump’s Election Fraud Claims Make No Headway on Legal Cases – The New York Times

National: The Big Success Story of the Election Is the One You Didn’t Hear – Government employees were the unsung heroes of the voting process. | Tom Shoop/Government Executive

The central story of the 2020 election was the one you heard over the weekend: Joe Biden was declared the winner and is president-elect of the United States. But it was the story you probably didn’t see, hear or read that was at least as impressive: At all levels of government, dedicated, patriotic civil servants and local volunteers made sure the election went off without significant disruption. Biden acknowledged as much in his victory speech Saturday night. “To all those who volunteered, worked the polls in the middle of this pandemic, local election officials—you deserve a special thanks from this nation.” They’re not the only ones owed a debt of gratitude: There were the U.S. cyber operators who went on the offensive against Iranian hackers seeking to meddle in the election. The postal workers who moved mountains to deliver millions of mail-in ballots in time to be counted. The local officials who worked tirelessly in the weeks before the election to swat down misinformation. And many more.

Full Article: The Big Success Story of the Election Is the One You Didn’t Hear – Government Executive

National: Federal judge keeps pressure on USPS to deliver remaining mail-in ballots by state deadlines | Dinah Voyles Pulver/USA Today

Former Vice President Joe Biden won the race for the White House on Saturday, but the counting of mail-in ballots cast in the tightly contested presidential election goes on. The U.S. Postal Service must continue searching its processing facilities twice a day for missing mail-in ballots in states where they are still being accepted, under a federal judge’s orders aimed at making sure every eligible ballot gets delivered in time. Those ballots are not expected to change the outcome of the election but will be included in each state’s final, certified tally. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan began issuing the orders earlier this week after the USPS reported low delivery scores and ballots that appeared to have entered their facilities but perhaps not exited them. Since then, the USPS has found and delivered thousands of ballots. Sullivan also directed the agency to continue reporting the number of ballots found in the sweeps as well as other performance measures. The sweeps must continue until the state deadlines pass.

Full Article: Judge presses USPS to deliver remaining ballots by state deadlines

National: Trump’s wild claims test limits of Republican loyalty | Steve Peoples and Jill Colvin/Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s wild and unsupported claims of voter fraud have emerged as a high-stakes Republican loyalty test that illustrates the tug of war likely to define the future of the GOP whether he wins or loses the presidency. There is a pervasive sense among current and former GOP officials that the president’s behavior is irresponsible if not dangerous, but a divide has emerged between those influential Republicans willing to call him out publicly and those who aren’t. Driving their calculus is an open acknowledgement that Trump’s better-than-expected showing on Election Day ensures that he will remain the Republican Party’s most powerful voice for years to come even if he loses. That stark reality did little to silence the likes of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a second-term Republican who has not ruled out a 2024 White House bid. He described the president’s claims as “dangerous” and “embarrassing.”

Full Article: Trump’s wild claims test limits of Republican loyalty

National: After Warnings It Could Go Off the Rails, the Election Actually Ran Smoothly | Reid J. Epstein/The New York Times

In Georgia, a high school senior organized her classmates to be poll workers so voters would not have to wait hours in line like they did back in June. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee officials leased the whole floor of a downtown office building to serve as the headquarters to count a record number of absentee ballots. And in Michigan, the secretary of state organized three shifts of more than 700 people each in Detroit who counted twice as many ballots as they had for the August primary in just over half as much time. Even as the nation waited for the call designating the winner — Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the victor on Saturday morning — it had reason to breathe a sigh of relief. Despite warnings of violence, threats of foreign interference, rampant disinformation, cuts to the Postal Service, President Trump’s sowing of distrust and a pandemic that forced the relocation of thousands of polling places, the machinery of American democracy adapted and held up this past week. The result was a relatively smooth election free of the hourslong lines and vote-suppressing shenanigans that have characterized the voting experience in recent years, particularly during the primaries of the coronavirus era.

Full Article: After Warnings It Could Go Off the Rails, the Election Actually Ran Smoothly – The New York Times

More states now have paper trails to verify votes were correctly counted | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

When all the votes are counted this year, Americans should have far more confidence their votes were tallied correctly than in 2016. After that contest was upended by Russian interference, states vastly increased the number of votes that are cast with paper records that can be audited later. More than 90 percent of votes will have a paper record this year compared with about 80 percent in 2016. States have also significantly improved how often and how scrupulously they perform post-election audits. The changes have been especially significant in some of the states still counting ballots and where the Trump campaign has already launched legal challenges. Georgia and Pennsylvania have both shifted from having paper records for few or none of their voters in 2016 to having paper records for all votes cast in their states — a protection security experts say is a bare minimum to ensure votes weren’t altered by hackers or miscounted because of a technology failure. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada also probably are performing more rigorous audits of their results this year, though officials haven’t finalized plans in all cases. Edison Research has projected that Biden will win Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump is leading in Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina and Biden is leading in Nevada and Arizona, with many votes still to be counted. … “The country is making distinct progress toward an election system in which every voter is able to verify that their ballot is marked correctly and election officials are able to verify that ballots are counted correctly,” Mark Lindeman, interim co-director of Verified Voting, told me. He added that “2020 is by no means the promised land, but we’re certainly much closer.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: More states now have paper trails to verify votes were correctly counted – The Washington Post

Fears Rise for Safety of Election Workers in Battleground States | Jeff Seldin/VoA News

Source: Fears Rise for Safety of Election Workers in Battleground States | Voice of America – English

Tensions over the still undecided U.S. presidential election are prompting some state and local officials to increase security for those charged with counting the remaining votes. Supporters of Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden have increasingly focused their attention on states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, where slim margins have made calling the race nearly impossible. And the tensions have grown as allegations of irregularities in the vote-counting process have sparked protests outside buildings where the tally is going on. “I am concerned for the safety of my staff,” said Joe Gloria, registrar of voters in Clark County, Nevada, on November 5, after about 75 people, some wearing Trump T-shirts, chanted “Stop the Steal” and protested outside the county’s election center the night before.

National: Pro-Trump threats, protests rattle elections officials in several states | Norman Merchant and Tim Sullivan/Associated Press

Election officials in several states said Thursday they are worried about the safety of their staffs amid a stream of threats and gatherings of angry protesters outside their doors, drawn by President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the race for the White House. “I can tell you that my wife and my mother are very concerned for me,” said Joe Gloria, the registrar in Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas. He said his staff was bolstering security and tracking vehicles coming and going from the election offices. But he added that he and others would not be stopped from “doing what our duty is and counting ballots.” Groups of Trump supporters have gathered at vote tabulation sites in Phoenix, Detroit and Philadelphia, decrying counts that showed Democrat Joe Biden leading or gaining ground. While the protests have not been violent or very large, local officials were distressed by the crowds and concerned about the relentless accusations. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel tweeted a plea to “stop making harassing & threatening calls” to her staff.

Full Article: Election officials worried by threats and protesters

National: Judges in two states reject Trump campaign lawsuits as the president continues to press unsubstantiated claims of fraud | Amy Gardner, Jon Swaine, Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Emma Brown/The Washington Post

President Trump and his allies pressed their claims Thursday that election officials have allowed ballot fraud to infect the counting process in the battleground states poised to decide the presidency, but they offered no evidence of irregularities and met with two immediate defeats in court. In Georgia, a local judge in Chatham County, home of Savannah, denied the Trump campaign’s effort to disqualify about 50 ballots that a Republican poll watcher claimed may have arrived after the 7 p.m. deadline on Election Day. In court, the poll watcher offered no evidence that the ballots had arrived late, and county election officials testified that they had arrived on time. And in Michigan, a Court of Claims judge said she would deny the campaign’s request for an emergency halt to the counting of votes in the state. She noted that the request made little sense, given that the counting has essentially been finished in the state, with former vice president Joe Biden ahead by about 150,000 votes. He has been declared the winner of the state by national news organizations. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office described Trump’s request as an “attempt to unring a bell.” Meanwhile, the Trump campaign announced its intent to file a lawsuit in another state where counting is continuing apace: Nevada. At a chaotic news conference in Las Vegas, campaign officials said that they plan to file a suit in federal court to stop the counting of what they called “improper votes.”

Full Article: Judges in two states reject Trump campaign lawsuits as the president continues to press unsubstantiated claims of fraud – The Washington Post

National: Officials on alert for potential cyber threats after a quiet Election Day | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Election officials are cautiously declaring victory after no reports of major cyber incidents on Election Day. “After millions of Americans voted, we have no evidence any foreign adversary was capable of preventing Americans from voting or changing vote tallies,” Christopher Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said in a statement Wednesday. But the long shadow of 2016, when the U.S. fell victim to extensive Russian interference, has those same officials on guard for potential attacks as key battleground states tally up remaining ballots. Agencies that have worked to bolster election security over the past years are still on high alert during the vote-counting process, noting that the election is not over even if ballots have already been cast. “I think while it’s fantastic that yesterday was quiet, that tells you that the work is paying off. But we know the nature of the threats in the cybersecurity landscape don’t go away, and you don’t get to say, ‘Oh, we’re good.’ You see the commitment and the effort and that has to continue,” Election Assistance Commission Chairman Benjamin Hovland, who was nominated by President Trump, told The Hill on Wednesday.

Full Article: Officials on alert for potential cyber threats after a quiet Election Day | TheHill

National: Trump, in White House address, continues to level unfounded charges of election fraud | Matthew Choi/Politico

President Donald Trump on Thursday evening listed a string of unfounded conspiracy theories to accuse state election officials of plotting to steal the election from him. Taking the White House lectern for his first public address since election night, Trump offered no evidence for his assertions that officials are rigging the tallies or for his characterization of mail-in ballots as somehow illegitimate. The address came as his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, expands his lead to secure the presidency and as Trump’s path to a second term hinges on winning four key states. Those states have yet to finish counting their ballots amid an unprecedented number of mail-in voting because of the coronavirus pandemic. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump said. “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in late — we‘re looking at them very strongly, but a lot of votes came in late.” State elections officials have resoundingly denied they are counting “illegal votes“ and have assured voters that this year’s election was hardly the chaos many feared due to Covid-19. Despite the occasional technical glitch and extended polling-site hours, there were no reports of major issues or interference. Though counting is taking longer this year, there is no support for the position that mailed-in ballots were part of a mass fraud.

Full Article: Trump, in White House address, continues to level unfounded charges of election fraud – POLITICO

National: Whether the GOP Can Stop Voters From Legally Fixing Rejected Mail-In Ballots Could Decide the Election | ProPublica