National

As lawmakers and election security experts try to counter President Trump’s assertion that voting by mail invites fraud, a senior official of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency dismissed the controversy as a “process” issue. “I mean, you got to keep in mind what our goal here is,” the senior CISA official said on a call with reporters today regarding the primary contests happening in eight states. “We’re supporting state and local officials as they implement their electoral, you know as they administer elections. We’re focused on the infrastructure, providing cybersecurity services to the infrastructure, back-end systems, on voting machines, those are all the things. The president’s concern is on the process side.” The official was answering a question about whether CISA was doing anything to publicly fact check May 26 tweets the president made claiming the use of mail-in ballots means “this will be a rigged election.” In an unprecedented move, Twitter labeled the tweets “misleading,” and noted their potential to sow confusion.

National: ‘Biggest threat to election security is the coronavirus,’ security expert warns | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

Although the rate of new infections appears to have slowed down in recent weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic remains the greatest challenge to ensuring that the 2020 presidential election runs accurately and securely, election security experts said Monday. Speaking on a webcast hosted by two members of the House Homeland Security Committee, Wendy Weiser of New York University’s Brennan Center for Law and Justice said election officials still need much more funding and support to make all the preparations for an election that will likely have to be conducted largely via mail, especially in states that have historically low rates of postal ballots. “By far the biggest threat to our election is the coronavirus,” Weiser said. “We are going to see substantial changes to how we run elections this year.” A potential preview of November is playing out Tuesday, with seven states and the District of Columbia holding their primary elections, including several that were delayed from March and April as the pandemic spread and kept voters cooped up under stay-at-home orders. In almost all those jurisdictions, election officials — Republican and Democratic — made efforts to expand their use of mail-in ballots.

National: ‘First Super Tuesday’ Of The COVID-19 Era: Voting Amid Protests, Pandemic | Miles Parks/NPR

Facing a pandemic that continues to spread through the United States and protests nationwide over the killing of another black man at the hands of police, voters headed to the polls Tuesday in more than half a dozen states. It’s a primary election date that was already going to be a challenge for election officials due to health concerns, even before nationwide unrest led to curfew orders in conflict with polling place hours in some places. In Washington, D.C., as well as the eight states voting Tuesday, the vast majority of ballots are expected to be mailed in. In Montana, for instance, election officials mailed every active registered voter a ballot. But the in-person voting options that are also required to be offered in many places create a unique problem. In Philadelphia, for instance, officials are trying to reassure voters they won’t be arrested for voting in the Pennsylvania primary if the city decides to extend a 6 p.m. curfew to Tuesday. Polling places will stay open in the city until 8 p.m. “Philly residents will not be arrested or prosecuted for going to or coming from voting tomorrow,” District Attorney Larry Krasner told NPR member station WHYY on Monday. “No curfew is going to interfere with any voter going to the polls. Please do not let these circumstances dissuade you.”

National: Mass upheaval and pandemic spell trouble for a megaday of primaries | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Holding an election in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic is tough. Holding an election as civil unrest sweeps across the country during that pandemic could be seriously problematic. Election officials will have to grapple with that challenge Tuesday, when voters in nine states and the District of Columbia vote by mail or head to the polls for primaries. Several cities set to hold an election have seen massive protests, at times spiraling into looting and violence. With widespread curfews keeping residents in their homes and some ballot-return locations shuttered, some voters could end up disenfranchised, voting rights activists warned. “We are particularly concerned about how the protests, and particularly the response to the protests, are going to affect voting,” said Suzanne Almeida, the interim executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania. She cited two particular stress points: curfews and an increased police presence.

National: As Trump attacks voting by mail, GOP builds 2020 strategy around limiting its expansion | Amy Gardner, Shawn Boburg and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

President Trump’s persistent attacks on mail-in voting have fueled an unprecedented effort by conservatives to limit expansion of the practice before the November election, with tens of millions of dollars planned for lawsuits and advertising aimed at restricting who receives ballots and who remains on the voter rolls. The strategy, embraced by Trump’s reelection campaign, the Republican National Committee and an array of independent conservative groups, reflects the recognition by both parties that voting rules could decide the outcome of the 2020 White House race amid the electoral challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Helping drive the effort is William Consovoy, a veteran Supreme Court litigator who also serves as one of Trump’s personal lawyers. Consovoy’s Virginia-based law firm is handling a battery of legal actions on behalf of the RNC, several state GOPs and an independent group called the Honest Elections Project, which is connected to a Trump adviser. The legal firepower and direct involvement of the national party reflect a major escalation in the conservative battle over voter fraud and voting rights, which until this year had primarily been waged by lesser-known groups with far fewer resources. The tactics of those organizations are now being embraced by new players with connections to influential figures in the president’s orbit. Thanks in part to Trump’s focus on the topic and his assertion that widespread mail balloting would harm Republicans, claims about the high risks of voter fraud have become central to the GOP’s 2020 playbook.

National: Voting by Mail to Face Biggest Test Since Pandemic Started | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

Voting by mail will face its biggest test since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic when seven states and Washington, D.C., hold primaries Tuesday. All eight locales have encouraged residents to vote by mail, even as President Trump has criticized mail voting in recent tweets. Some states delayed their primaries due to the pandemic, then scrambled to change procedures and put personnel in place to process an expected surge in mailed ballots. Tuesday’s presidential primaries—in Indiana, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Washington, D.C.—offer little suspense since each political party already has a presumptive nominee. But state and local races are on ballots. And the voting will be an early test of how states might attempt to conduct elections if the virus remains a threat through the November general election. Five states—Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah—conducted elections primarily by mail before the pandemic, with options for in-person voting and ballot drop-off sites as well. Last-minute court rulings and partisan fighting spread confusion leading up to Wisconsin’s primary in April, and there were delays for absentee ballots and hour-plus waits at a reduced number of polling places in Milwaukee.

National: Attorney General William Barr floats an implausible theory that foreign countries could interfere in the 2020 election by mass producing ‘counterfeit ballots’ | Grace Panetta/Business Insider

Attorney General William Barr floated a highly implausible theory that foreign adversaries will try to interfere in the 2020 election by making and sending out “counterfeit ballots” to voters. In an interview with The New York Times magazine published on Monday, Barr said the idea was “one of the issues that I’m real worried about,” claiming that “there are a number of foreign countries that could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in. And it’d be very hard to sort out what’s happening.” Barr’s comments come as President Donald Trump spreads conspiracies and misinformation about mail-in ballots just five months to go before election day. The social media platform Twitter recently labeled some of the president’s tweets about voting by mail as misleading. As states have moved over the past few months to increase absentee and mail-in voting, Trump – who voted by mail himself in Florida earlier this year – has falsely claimed that an expansion of absentee and mail-in voting will lead to massive fraud and corruption (rates of fraud are very low), that expanding mail-in ballot hurts Republicans (it confers no partisan advantage to either side), and on Friday, even raised a baseless conspiracy that children in California will go around stealing ballots out of mailboxes and forging them.

National: Coronavirus-Fueled Freeze on Citizen Oath Ceremonies Threatens Voter Registration for 2020 | Michelle Hackman and Eliza Collins/Wall Street Journal

A swelling backlog and extended wait times to become a U.S. citizen, compounded by a slowdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, threaten to leave hundreds of thousands of potential voters on the sidelines of the November election. The issue has drawn bipartisan concern in recent weeks since U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services closed its offices in March in response to the pandemic and canceled citizenship oath ceremonies, the public events that are the final step in the process, nationwide. Approximately 130,000 people who would have become citizens at these ceremonies are waiting for the events to restart, according to a Wall Street Journal calculation based on USCIS annual data. They are part of a larger backlog of permanent residents waiting to have their citizenship applications processed and unable to complete required in-person interviews. That group totaled about 650,000 people at the end of 2019. USCIS estimated in December, months before the pandemic, that their wait times would average about eight months, compared with less than six months at the end of 2015. Randy Capps, director of research for U.S. programs at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said that means most of the permanent residents who applied for citizenship at the start of this year likely won’t complete the process in time to register to vote.

National: Republicans Fear Trump’s Criticism of Mail Voting Will Hurt Them | Trip Gabriel/The New York Times

President Trump has relentlessly attacked mail voting, calling it a free-for-all for cheating and a Democratic scheme to rig elections. None of the charges are true. But as eight states and the District of Columbia vote on Tuesday in the biggest Election Day since the coronavirus forced a pause in the primary calendar, it is clear that Mr. Trump’s message has sunk in deeply with Republicans, who have shunned mail ballots. Republican officials and strategists warned that if a wide partisan gap over mail voting continues in November, Republicans could be at a disadvantage, an unintended repercussion of the president’s fear-mongering about mail ballots that could hurt his party’s chances, including his own. In Pennsylvania, Iowa, Indiana and New Mexico, all states voting on Tuesday that broadly extended the option to vote by mail this year, a higher share of Democrats than Republicans have embraced mail-in ballots. “If the Republicans aren’t playing the same game, if we’re saying we don’t believe in mail-in voting and are not going to advocate it,” said Lee Snover, the Republican chair of Northampton County in Pennsylvania, “we could be way behind.”

National: Some voters are scared coronavirus will stop them from casting ballot | Yelena Dzhanova/CNBC

Erica Friedle had not missed a vote in seven years. Then came the coronavirus pandemic. Friedle told CNBC she didn’t receive her absentee ballot for April’s Wisconsin presidential primary. And now she fears that a lack of preparation by state officials and the continued threat of the disease might force her to sit out the upcoming November election in the swing state. As health officials predict that the pandemic might last into the fall, many states are beginning to plan for the likelihood of people opting to vote by mail instead of showing up in person, where the risk of contracting and spreading the coronavirus is greater. For some people, the coronavirus has made voting a nerve-wracking action. Some Americans and voting rights groups are concerned that the pandemic is forcing voters to choose between avoiding contact with people to stay healthy and exercising their right to vote. Come November, these concerns might linger. “Are people going to want to stay in line to vote? Are people going to be requesting absentee ballots? Do people even have the technology to request a ballot online?” Friedle asked, listing out some of her immediate worries in an interview with CNBC. “There are so many unknowns right now.”

National: Americans doubt elections as Trump discredits voting systems | Evan Halper/Los Angeles Times

The diatribes are as unnerving and unrelenting as they are untrue: An incumbent president warning that the nation’s voting systems are cauldrons for fraud and ripe for rigging, seemingly setting the groundwork to discredit the results should he lose in November. But while such rhetoric lacks precedent in the Oval Office, scholars say it’s a familiar playbook that President Trump is using — and one that has already had a malignant impact on public trust in American democracy. Trump’s repeated warnings of mass robbing of ballots from mailboxes, rampant forgery and flocks of illegal immigrants being permitted to hijack elections have been debunked by voting officials across party lines. Nevertheless, evidence increasingly shows that Americans are losing faith in the integrity of the nation’s elections, putting the U.S. in unaccustomed company. “I have only ever thought about these things before in an authoritarian setting,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former senior intelligence officer who led the U.S. government’s strategic analysis on Russia and is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. “Now the same indicators are relevant here.”

National: As Trump rages, state officials quietly press forward with vote by mail | Kevin Collier/NBC

Judging solely by President Donald Trump’s recent diatribes, mail-in voting would seem to have become one of the nation’s most partisan flashpoints. But at the state level — where elections are actually administered — there’s little disagreement. Instead, most state officials are ignoring partisanship and quietly laying the groundwork for an effective, mail-heavy election, including in those states led by Republicans. “State election directors are aware of that conversation, but I think they’ve got their heads down,” said Ben Hovland, the chair of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which regularly videoconferences with state election chiefs and helps advise them in detail on how to deal with a surge of mailed ballots. “They focus on the job at hand. There’s more than enough to do without worrying about political fights that are taking place.” All but four states now offer every eligible voter the option to mail in their ballot, according to a new survey from the Open Source Election Technology Institute, a nonprofit that researches election technology. NBC News has collaborated with the institute since 2016 to monitor U.S. election-technology and voting issues. Of the states offering mail-in options, leadership is almost equally split: 24 have Democratic governors and 22 Republican.

National: Mail ballot surge places Postal Service under spotlight | Reid Wilson/The Hill

The coronavirus pandemic has pushed millions of voters to request their ballots by mail, a rapid increase that is likely to change the shape of the 2020 electorate and put incredible strain on an already limited United States Postal Service (USPS). Now, voting rights activists are raising questions about whether the Postal Service can handle the millions of ballots that will flood their processing centers in the days leading up to the presidential contest. The risk of errors, of voters who cannot receive ballots in time or ballots that do not reach elections administrators in time, could be cataclysmic. With the White House, the Senate and the House on the line, the prospects of finding a few tubs of ballots misplaced or overlooked could throw results of close races into question, adding to President Trump’s repeated efforts in recent days to delegitimize an election that has not yet taken place. The nightmare scenario has already played out twice this year. In a Supreme Court contest in Wisconsin in April, about 1,600 ballots were discovered the morning after Election Day in a mail processing facility in Chicago — 1,600 voters whose ballots did not count. Hundreds more who applied for absentee ballots did not receive them in time, according to a report by the state Board of Elections.

National: US Postal Service Faces Challenges With More Ballots Going In The Mail | Brian Naylor/NPR

Eight states and the District of Columbia are holding primary elections next week amid the coronavirus pandemic, and voters are expected to cast their ballots by mail in record numbers. It is likely to be a preview of what’s to come in the fall, and some worry whether the U.S. Postal Service is up to the challenge. A lot of people like the Postal Service; according to a recent Pew poll, 91% of Americans had a positive view, higher than any other branch of government. But it’s an agency with some big problems. To start, President Trump has called it a joke, demanded it raise its rates, and and made unfounded claims that mailed ballots will be “substantially fraudulent” and that mail boxes will be robbed.That’s a false assertion, says Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser to the Democracy Fund. She tells NPR that voters need options like voting by mail during this pandemic. “For many, many people this year, it’s going to be to get their ballot delivered to them by the United States Postal Service,” she says. “Now, calling that into question, saying that people will be taking mail out of mailboxes — that’s just not going to happen.”

National: Ballot-Collection Battles, Split by Partisanship, Move Through Courts | Brent Kendall and Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

With more citizens looking to avoid in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic, legal clashes are emerging over whether third parties should be allowed to help absentee voters by collecting and submitting their ballots. The cases, part of a broader battle over rules amid the public health crisis, break down along partisan lines. Democrats and their allies argue that collection can be a needed service for vulnerable voters who face difficulties navigating the system. Republicans say most voters can submit ballots on their own and describe collection practices by third parties as ballot harvesting, saying they are an invitation for fraud. “It is true there have been occasional ballot collection problems, the most prominent recently being North Carolina’s ninth congressional district in 2018, a legit scandal,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “It’s also true that during a pandemic time, ballot collection can be an absolute lifeline for some voters and save them from what would be a worrisome amount of exposure. Not everyone has reliable mail service right to their door.” Some amount of third-party assistance is permitted in a majority of states, though laws vary widely. In California, for example, ballot collection is broadly permissible, while other states, including Florida and Minnesota, cap the number of ballots any one agent can collect, which effectively limits large, organized campaigns to deliver ballots. Some states allow voters to have a relative, household member or caregiver submit their ballots, but not other third parties.

National: Voting rights, public health officials roll out guidelines to protect voters from COVID-19 | Maggie Miller/TheHill

A coalition of voting rights and public health groups on Thursday rolled out guidelines to help protect voters from catching and spreading COVID-19 while exercising their right to vote this year. The Healthy Voting Guidelines, rolled out initially for states holding primaries in June, are the product of the non-partisan coalition We Can Vote, and were drafted by groups including the American Public Health Association and the Center for Tech and Civic Life. According to the authors, the recommendations are the the nation’s first healthy voting guidelines, and details ways that voters can exercise their rights at the polls while taking steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The guidelines address both mail-in and in-person voting for more than a dozen states and the District of Columbia. Recommendations include wearing a mask and standing six feet apart from other voters if going to the polls in person, voting during less busy times and washing your hands after dropping off a mail-in ballot.

National: Trump’s Mail-In Voting Fraud Claims Draw Republican Critics | Shaun Courtney/Bloomberg

President Donald Trump‘s unsubstantiated claims that voting by mail will result in massive fraud in November has prompted worried protests from an increasing number of luminaries from within his own party. “It’s actually disappointing because it means you’re trying to sow the seeds of doubt in a process that has been so much a part of Americans’ history,” former Homeland Security Secretary and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge said about the president’s vote-by-mail tweets. “It flies in the face of what I think both parties should be focused in on, and that’s creating options that are safe and secure for all voters, particularly during the pandemic.” Ridge is the Republican face of VoteSafe, a bipartisan campaign to ensure that every U.S. state and territory has secure mail-in ballots and safe, in-person voting sites during the Covid-19 pandemic. The group, also led by former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, launched May 21. By politicizing access to voting for a perceived short-term political gain, Trump risks undermining one of the basic tenets of American democracy, Ridge and other former leaders of the Republican Party say.

National: Politicizing vote-by-mail efforts amid COVID-19 could disenfranchise some voters: Experts | Matthew Vann/ABC

Amid President Donald Trump’s charge that voting by mail is ripe with fraud potential, there are worries that such claims, in addition to the subsequent lawsuits that have followed, politicize state efforts to expand mail-in voting, and could cost some Americans a vital opportunity to have their votes counted. The Republican National Committee has intervened in legal battles across the country, including New Mexico, Michigan and Arizona to limit mail-in ballot expansions. In California, the RNC filed a lawsuit seeking to have Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order automatically issuing an absentee ballot by mail to every registered state voter, overturned and declared unlawful. “Democrats continue to use this pandemic as a ploy to implement their partisan election agenda, and Governor Newsom’s executive order is the latest direct assault on the integrity of our elections,” said Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Newsom’s illegal power grab is a recipe for disaster that would destroy the confidence Californians deserve to have in the security of their vote.”

National: Donald Trump is Waging War on Vote-By-Mail. The Facts Don’t Support It | Lissandra Villa/Time

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson doesn’t follow the President of the United States on Twitter. She was sitting in her basement office eating breakfast May 20 when her staff called to inform her that Donald Trump had called Benson a “rogue Secretary of State,” accusing her of mailing ballots to Michigan voters (in fact, they were ballot applications) and suggesting (incorrectly) that vote by mail would lead to fraud. Oh, and he threatened to withhold funding from Michigan over the issue. (It’s unclear what funding he was referring to; the White House did not respond to a request for comment.) What stood out about the episode to Benson, a Democrat, wasn’t just how Trump had addressed her, the factual inaccuracies, or the threat tucked into his tweet. It was that she was hardly the only Secretary of State to take a step like this. States like Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska, and West Virginia—which Trump won in 2016, and which have Republican Secretaries of State—have taken similar actions in sending out applications for absentee ballots in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, at least for their primaries.

National: Kellyanne Conway on voting by mail in 2018 midterms: ‘That’s called an absentee ballot’ | J. Edward Moreno/The Hill

White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway is drawing a contrast with her mail-in vote for the 2018 midterm elections in New Jersey with general mail-in voting, saying she filed an absentee ballot, not a mail-in ballot. “That’s called an absentee ballot. One completes it and posts it by U.S. Mail,” Conway told the HuffPost in an email. “Don’t confuse it with a [non-absentee] ‘mail-in ballot’ to serve your purposes.” Conway voted in the New Jersey midterm election while living in Washington, D.C., much like President Trump did in Florida. The state of New Jersey does not require voters voting remotely to indicate if they are in the state or not when they send in the ballot. Her statement comes after she defended the president’s stance against mail-in voting to reporters on Wednesday, where she compared waiting in line for a cupcake to standing in line to cast a ballot.

National: U.S. Accuses Russian Military Hackers of Attack on Email Servers | Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger/The New York Times

The National Security Agency publicly accused Russian government hackers of targeting email servers around the world in an unusual announcement on Thursday, showing that the agency is becoming more aggressive in calling out Moscow’s action as the presidential election approaches. While the Trump administration has publicly attributed cyberattacks to Russia before — including for its 2016 election hack and for paralyzing Ukraine in 2017, which damaged the operations of the shippers Maersk and FedEx — this allegation was unusually specific. It singled out Russia’s military intelligence unit, widely known as the G.R.U., demonstrating intelligence agencies’ concern that Russia intends to interfere in the election only a little more than five months away. But it also comes as President Trump has renewed his baseless claims that the investigation into Russia’s activities was part of a “hoax” intended by Democrats to paralyze him. He has publicly questioned Russia’s culpability in the election hacking and appeared to accept President Vladimir V. Putin’s argument that Russia was so good at cyberoperations that it would never have been caught. “There has been a reluctance to be critical of Russia because of echoes of investigations,” said retired Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “For the N.S.A. to do that, in this climate, they must have absolutely incontrovertible evidence.”

National: Coronavirus Blocks Naturalization Ceremonies In Election Year | Ashley Lopez/NPR

Elizabeth Hernandez moved to the United States from Mexico almost 30 years ago and was days away from becoming an American citizen when her March 15 naturalization ceremony was canceled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. “It made me sad,” said Hernandez, who lives in New Mexico. She hadn’t thought much about becoming a citizen until this year because of the upcoming election. “I want to vote for a president who will improve the country.” Hernandez is one of hundreds of thousands of people who were scheduled to become naturalized this year. But naturalization ceremonies have been on hold during the coronavirus pandemic in this election year. An estimated 860,000 people were set to become citizens — with many also expected to become first-time voters. The crimp in the pipeline of new citizens is one of a series of unexpected challenges that could reshape the electorate ahead of the November general election. About a quarter of naturalized citizens live in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and Georgia, all potentially key states in the fall election, according to data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

National: Republicans Open to More Election Funding, but Not on Democrats’ Terms | Kristina Peterson/Wall Street Journal

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say they don’t want the federal government telling states how to hold elections during the coronavirus pandemic. But they haven’t closed the door on increased funding for local officials wrestling with how to keep voters safe this November. While most Republicans are leery of new federal requirements backed by Democrats that mandate mail-in voting nationwide, they are discussing a range of other ideas. Sen. Roy Blunt (R., Mo.), chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, said he expected the next relief package would include more money for elections. “I think it’s likely and it’s likely necessary,” Mr. Blunt, a former Missouri secretary of state, said in an interview. He said he is also looking at reducing the current requirement that states provide a 20% match in order to access emergency election funding. In late March, Congress approved $400 million in election assistance grants as part of its roughly $2 trillion stimulus bill.

National: Will mail-in voting turn Election Day into Election Week? | Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

A shift to mail voting is increasing the chances that Americans will not know the winner of November’s presidential race on election night, a scenario that is fueling worries about whether President Donald Trump will use the delay to sow doubts about the results. State election officials in some key battleground states have recently warned that it may take days to count what they expect will be a surge of ballots sent by mail out of concern for safety amid the pandemic. In an election as close as 2016′s, a delayed tally in key states could keep news organizations from calling a winner. “It may be several days before we know the outcome of the election,” Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview. “We have to prepare for that now and accept that reality.” Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, pleaded for “patience” from the public. “We’ve gotten accustomed to this idea that by the middle of the evening of election night, we’re going to know all the results,” LaRose said Wednesday at a forum on voting hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Election night reporting may take a little longer” this year, he warned.

National: States weigh vote-by-mail options amid Trump and GOP opposition | Aaron Navarro/CBS

President Trump has called mail-in voting “substantially fraudulent.” But amid growing concerns about a second wave of the coronavirus in the fall, states are trying to figure out how they will increase access to mail-in voting. The pandemic has prompted a total of 17 states to postpone their presidential primaries and expand their mail ballot access, with some states, like Rhode Island, Georgia and Maryland, sending out ballot application forms to registered voters. Five states —Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — already have all-mail elections, which consist of a mix of sending ballots to registered voters and opening up limited polling centers for those that wish to vote in-person. States including Massachusetts and New Hampshire, which previously had limited who could request a mail ballot, have opened access further for the November elections because of the pandemic. Connecticut and Michigan are sending mail absentee ballot applications to registered voters for their state primaries and the general election. California, which already had a substantial mail vote, will be sending the ballots themselves to every voter.

National: Trump rants about fraud. But here’s the secret to keeping voting by mail secure. | Allan Smith/NBC

President Donald Trump insists there’s “NO WAY” an election with increased mail-in voting will be legitimate. But both Democratic and Republican officials overseeing that process say he’s dead wrong and in interviews with NBC News they outlined the steps they take — most importantly, signature verification — to ensure the integrity of the system, which is coming into more widespread use because of the coronavirus. Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, a Republican, oversees the elections in one of the nation’s leading vote-by-mail states. “I think it’s good when the public questions any form of a voting system, but people should have confidence in it because election administrators are always trying to build in security measures that balance out that access,” she said. Like other states, Washington requires that voters sign their absentee ballot and that the signature matches the one on file with a voter’s registration. If the signatures don’t match, the voter will be contacted and alerted to the discrepancy.

National: With citizenship ceremonies postponed due to coronavirus, hundreds of thousands could miss chance to vote in November | Nick Miroff/The Washington Post