National

Cyber and elections experts turned their attention during a recent webinar to the possibility of hackers trying to compromise digital jurisdictions’ voter registration systems — and what defenders can do about it. “If [advanced persistent threat actors] are trying to come after us, or our election, and they know that it’s near impossible to get into our voting systems and get out of it without detection, then the next easiest target is to mess with our registration system[s],” Craig Bowman, vice president of government, education and healthcare at cybersecurity company Trellix, said in the FedInsider webinar. Adversary nations want to tamper with U.S. elections to promote candidates whose policy stances they prefer or to foment chaos that undermines the credibility of American democracy, Bowman said. Read Article

National: ‘Wild west of election work’: How certification fights are already cropping up in battleground states | Sara Murray/CNN

Georgia conservative Julie Adams spread conspiracies about election workers, concocted a baseless story about ballot couriers drinking beer and doing drugs while hoarding ballots, and boasted of her contentious relationship with local election officials. Then, in February, Adams was sworn in as a member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections in Georgia. In one of her first acts, she sued the rest of the board and the elections director, claiming she should not be forced to certify election results “without access to all elements of the election materials”. The dustup in Fulton County is just one example of the election certification fights already cropping up in battleground states, from Georgia to Michigan to Nevada this year. The election officials who have refused to certify have said they’re guarding against election fraud or seeking information they believe is necessary to certify the results. But voting rights activists see the challenges as an effort to undermine faith in the election process and test out ways to contest the election results in November. Read Article

National: The Voting Machine Conspiracy Theorists Are Still at It | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Nearly four years later, zealous supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged its machines to rob him of the 2020 election are still at it. Even though Dominion has aggressively defended itself in court, a network of pro-Trump activists has continued to push false claims against the company, often by seeking to use information gleaned from the very defamation lawsuits the firm has filed against them. The network includes wealthy business executives like Patrick Byrne, who once ran Overstock.com, and Mike Lindell, the founder of the bedding company MyPillow. Both have sought without credible evidence to put Dominion at the heart of a vast conspiracy to deny Mr. Trump a victory. It also includes a pro-Trump sheriff from southwest Michigan, a former election official from Colorado and Mr. Byrne’s own lawyer, who is facing charges of tampering with Dominion machines and who once worked alongside Mr. Trump’s legal team in claiming that the company was part of a plot to subvert the last election. Read Article

National: Election officials continue to face threats, harassment ahead of November | Laura Romero/ABC

In early July, a man wearing a gator face mask, sunglasses, and camera equipment attached to a vest walked into the elections building in King County, Washington, and began to take videos and photos of the employees and their surroundings. The man, according to a video obtained by ABC News, approached a counter and began harassing the election workers as he recorded them with his equipment. After he left, the man posted a video of the interaction on YouTube and published some of the staff’s names, emails, and phone numbers, which officials said resulted in “dozens of calls and emails” to election workers. Read Article

National: A Senate Bill Would Radically Improve Voting Machine Security | Eric Geller/Wired

Congress is moving closer to putting US election technology under a stricter cybersecurity microscope. Embedded inside this year’s Intelligence Authorization Act, which funds intelligence agencies like the CIA, is the Strengthening Election Cybersecurity to Uphold Respect for Elections through Independent Testing (SECURE IT) Act, which would require penetration testing of federally certified voting machines and ballot scanners, and create a pilot program exploring the feasibility of letting independent researchers probe all manner of election systems for flaws. The SECURE IT Act—originally introduced by US senators Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican—could significantly improve the security of key election technology in an era when foreign adversaries remain intent on undermining US democracy. Read Article

National: Election offices are slowly adopting .gov domains, report finds | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

A growing number of election offices are adopting verified, top-level .gov domains to safeguard against impersonation, phishing attacks and the spread of misinformation, according to a report published by the Washington think tank Bipartisan Policy Center. The report includes analysis of a dataset maintained by the Center for Tech and Civic Life consisting of websites and contact information for all local election offices in the United States. The center found that since 2022, nearly a third of the nation’s 7,000-plus election office websites have adopted .gov domains. William Adler, associate director of the center’s Elections Project and one of the report’s authors, said he’s encouraged by the trend, but that it’s still moving slowly. Read Article

National: Russia is relying on Americans to spread election disinformation, officials say | David Klepper/Associated Press

The Kremlin is turning to unwitting Americans and commercial public relations firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the U.S. presidential race, top intelligence officials said Monday, detailing the latest efforts by America’s adversaries to shape public opinion ahead of the 2024 election. The warning comes after a tumultuous few in U.S. politics that have forced Russia, Iran and China to revise some of the details of their propaganda playbook. What hasn’t changed, intelligence officials said, is the determination of these nations to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims about American democracy to undermine faith in the election. “The American public should know that content that they read online — especially on social media — could be foreign propaganda, even if it appears to be coming from fellow Americans or originating in the United States,” said an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under rules set by the office of the director. Read Article

National: State election directors fear the Postal Service can’t handle expected crush of mail-in ballots | Steve Karnowski/Associated Press

State election directors from across the country voiced serious concerns to a top U.S. Postal Service official Tuesday that the system won’t be able to handle an expected crush of mail-in ballots in the November election. Steven Carter, manager of election and government programs for the postal service, attempted to reassure the directors at a meeting in Minneapolis that the system’s Office of Inspector General will publish an election mail report containing “encouraging” performance numbers for this year so far. “The data that that we’re seeing showing improvements in the right direction,” Carter told a conference of the National Association of State Election Directors. “And I think the OIG report is especially complimentary of how we’re handling the election now.” Read Article

National: Election workers prepare for violence with guns and PPE | Charlotte McDonald-Gibson/The Times

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has highlighted the growing danger faced by public figures across the United States and experts are warning that, unless politicians dial down the divisive rhetoric, more violence is likely. Politicians, state legislators, election workers, school board officials and local prosecutors are increasingly targeted with death threats, harassment and other abuse as the political atmosphere before the election on November 5 becomes more tense. This is forcing local officials to take extraordinary measures to keep themselves and their staff safe. At her office in Douglas County, Nevada, Amy Burgans, the county clerk treasurer, has stockpiled personal protective equipment to keep election workers safe from ballots spiked with drugs. She has nasal spray on her desk to reverse overdoses in case any fentanyl gets through, and has organised training on how to deal with active shooters. She also carries a personal firearm. Read Article

CISA publishes resilience-planning playbook for critical infrastructure | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday published a supplemental manual to its infrastructure resilience planning framework, which provides guidance on how local governments and the private sector can work together to improve the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure. The new playbook includes processes and table top exercises to help public and private sectors minimize the impact of cyberattacks on their communities, reduce the risk of disruption to critical services and keep system restoration costs low. It also outlines key actions for resilience planning, such as establishing incident-response groups, identifying critical infrastructure and those that dependent on it, creating mitigation strategies and integrating solutions into existing protocols. Read Article

National: Conservative groups are pushing to clean voter rolls. Others see an effort to sow election distrust | Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Conservative groups are systematically attempting to challenge the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations across the country before the presidential election. The strategy is part of a wider effort raising questions about the integrity of this year’s election as former President Donald Trump repeatedly claims without evidence that his opponents are trying to cheat. The voter roll tactics include mass door-knocking campaigns, using special software designed to identify voters whose eligibility could be challenged and a crush of lawsuits. Read Article

National: How mapping tech is revolutionizing election administration | Chris Teale/Route Fifty

When St. Louis County, Missouri, kicked off its redistricting process after the 2010 Census, local officials used colored pencils on transparent paper to redraw their legislative boundaries and reflect population shifts. Ten years later, following the 2020 Census, officials in Missouri’s most populous county had traded in their pencils and paper for geographic information system mapping. St. Louis County, despite delays wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, had automated the process and used GIS to redraw the lines with the updated residency data. The result was more accurate and transparent maps. The story was similar in Orange County, California, which used to use “reams of paper” in its redistricting process, according to Matt Eimers, GIS supervisor at the Orange County Registrar of Voters. Officials there would have to compare their hand-drawn maps against paper records, which was a laborious process. Read Article

National: CISA bolsters security of US election infrastructure with new OpSec guide | Liam Garman/Cyber Daily

The six-page guide highlights the potential security risks menacing the upcoming US elections and provides actionable insights into how election officials can effectively manage them, from securing online infrastructure to protecting voter information. The document also includes insight into how the US’ adversaries collect private information and officials can find themselves on the radar of overseas threat actors, before laying out actionable steps for the creation of OpSec policies. “CISA provides various training programs for election workers, including secure practices, incident response planning, and de-escalation techniques,” Cait Conley, CISA special adviser to the director for election security, said. “This guide is another excellent resource CISA provides the public with to keep our elections safe and secure.” Read Article

National: Deployable voting machines for overseas troops move closer to reality | Jonathan Snyder/Stars and Stripes

Deployable electronic voting machines are now fully functional and could be used in a pilot election as soon as next year, the president of a nonprofit technology firm said this week.“We now have a fully functional prototype and are a few weeks away from wrapping up our report to [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency],” Ben Adida, executive director of VotingWorks and the technical lead on the project, told Stars and Stripes by email Monday.VotingWorks unveiled an early-stage version of its deployable voting machine in February at the National Association of State Election Directors conference in Washington, D.C. The machine aims to allow service members around the world, even at remote locations, to transmit a signed, encrypted digital ballot to their home precinct for tallying on Election Day. Read Article

National: Conservative activists find errors in software they hoped would root out voter fraud | Jane C. Timm/NBC

After months of testing, some conservative activists are finding that the vigilante computer programs they’d hoped would give them the ability to root out redundancies and fraud in the country’s voter rolls aren’t very reliable. Last year, those activists excitedly embraced EagleAI and similar programs that promised to help them look through voter rolls across the country in search of outdated or fraudulent voter registrations, even as experts warned about the programs’ limitations. The country’s voter rolls are designed for registration, not removal. Few people think to cancel old voter registrations when they move, which can lead to messy voter rolls as election officials must wait years to remove outdated registrations under federal law. Read Article

National: US intel reveals Russia plans to meddle in 2024 election | Ariana Baio/The Independent

Russia will attempt to influence the 2024 US presidential election using familiar tactics like spreading misinformation online to subvert the public’s faith in the democratic election process, according to intelligence officials. On Tuesday, officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters that Russia is using covert social media tactics like targeting voter groups in swing states with bot farms. The goal, they said, is to drive a larger rift in domestic political ideology, promote mistrust in the electoral system and sway public opinion in favor of a certain candidate. “We haven’t observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections,” a senior official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Though officials did not name a particular candidate, investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election found that their strategies were aimed at helping Donald Trump. Read Article

Georgia: Critics charge GOP election board members violated state laws in rushed meeting | Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder

The three GOP members of the Georgia State Election Board convened an emergency meeting Friday to press forward with several new election rules in a rush to have new procedures in place for the November election, sparking accusations of state open meetings law violations. A couple hundred people packed inside a state Capitol room for the impromptu hearing where Democratic party members and progressive voting rights advocates shouted “shame” and waved signs reading “this meeting is illegal” as GOP board members Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King conducted an “emergency meeting” scheduled about 24 hours prior. Jeffares and King, the two newest members of the election board, threatened to remove disruptive individuals from a meeting, which would culminate in the adoption of two new election rules and the threat of legal action for violating open meetings rules. Read Article

National: Election officials push back against draft federal rule for reporting potential cyberattacks | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

A group of state election officials is urging the nation’s cybersecurity agency to revise a draft rule that would require election offices to disclose suspected cyberattacks to the federal government, casting the mandate as too burdensome on overworked local officials. The new rule is the result of a 2022 federal law that directed the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to develop regulations that require certain entities to report potential cybersecurity breaches or ransomware attacks to the agency. Election offices fall under the requirement because their systems are considered critical infrastructure, along with the nation’s banks, nuclear power plants and dams. In a letter, the executive board of the National Association of Secretaries of State asked CISA to consider making the rule voluntary, limit the types of information requested and more clearly define what types of cyber incidents would trigger a report. The proposed rule says state and local election offices must report suspected breaches within 72 hours. Read Article

National: As ‘Pro-Democracy’ Philanthropy Grows, Experts Warn of Many Obstacles to Combating Misinformation | Alex Daniels/The Chronicle of Philanthropy

To cut through online noise and potentially false information surrounding the U.S. elections and ensure that voters go to the polls armed with verified facts, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Thursday announced it will put nearly $7 million toward fighting misinformation in states crucial to determining the results in November. Funding for the Associated Press, in the amount of $1.5 million, will provide training to small newsrooms on how to report election-related polling and how to identify and explain to readers instances of misinformation spreading online. Another $2.75 million will be dedicated to the Knight Election Hub, which provides resources like polling and data, as well as training for newsrooms. Knight will split the remainder of the commitment among nonprofits that support journalism and will direct grants to one news outlet in each of the election swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Read Article

National: GOP jump-starts 2024 election challenges with Trump-inspired lawsuits | Amy Gardner and Isaac Arnsdorf/The Washington Post

The Republican National Committee has expanded legal challenges to voting and election procedures in key swing states since March, when presumptive nominee Donald Trump installed new party leaders with a mandate to pursue his unsubstantiated claims of widespread cheating. In Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, Republicans are seeking to force election officials to remove voters from the rolls, despite federal law limiting such actions in the months preceding an election. In another Nevada lawsuit, the RNC is seeking to block mail ballots from being counted if received after Election Day, using a legal theory that has been repeatedly rejected in other courts and would upend existing practices in many states. Critics say the challenges are legally frivolous. But the cases are dangerous nonetheless, they argue, because they are meant to further erode public confidence in elections and lay the groundwork to overturn the results if Trump loses. Read Article

National: The man who cries voter fraud: how Hans von Spakovsky has built a career peddling election security fears | Alice Herman/The Guardian

At a US House hearing in May, a bespectacled 65-year-old attorney made a startling claim: American citizens’ right to vote was under attack. Non-citizens, Hans von Spakovsky claimed, were voting unchecked in federal elections, and something needed to be done about it. For Von Spakovsky, who leads Heritage Foundation’s election law initiative and authored the section of Project 2025 on federal election oversight, the testimony joined two of his favorite topics: immigration and what he believes is the unseen scourge of fraudulent voting in American elections. It was also deeply misleading. The criminal penalties for voting in federal elections are steep for immigrants without full citizenship – felony charges and even deportation. So they rarely cast ballots in US elections. That has not stopped Von Spakovsky from doubling down on his claim that non-citizen voting threatens election security. Read Article

National: House passes GOP bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote | Ali Swenson and Farnoush Amiri/Assocaited Press

The House on Wednesday passed a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration, a proposal Republicans have prioritized as an election-year talking point even as research shows noncitizens illegally registering and casting ballots in federal elections is exceptionally rare. The legislation, approved largely along partisan lines but with five Democrats voting in favor, is unlikely to advance through the Democratic-led Senate. The Biden administration also says it’s strongly opposed because there already are safeguards to enforce the law against noncitizen voting. Still, the House vote will give Republicans an opportunity to bring attention to two of their central issues this year — border and election security. Read Article

National: Even Disinformation Experts Don’t Know How to Stop It | Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson/The New York Times

To fight disinformation in a chaotic election year, Ruth Quint, a volunteer for a nonpartisan civic group in Pennsylvania, is relying on tactics both extensively studied and frequently deployed. Many of them, however, may also be futile. She has posted online tutorials for identifying fake social media accounts, created videos debunking conspiracy theories, flagged toxic content to a collaborative nationwide database and even participated in a pilot project that responded to misleading narratives by using artificial intelligence. The problem: “I don’t have any idea if it’s working or not working,” said Ms. Quint, the co-president and webmaster of the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh, her home of five decades. “I just know this is what I feel like I should be doing.” Read Article

National: Mission to support fragile democracies steps up US election monitoring | Andrew Jack/Financial Times

A programme created by former president Jimmy Carter to support elections in fragile democracies is increasing election monitoring in the US as political polarisation and voter distrust grow ahead of November’s presidential contest. The Carter Center’s Democracy Program, which has carried out work recently in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela and Sierra Leone, will support non-partisan election observation missions in up to five US states. The pledge comes as Donald Trump and his supporters continue to cast doubt on the integrity of US ballots following the ex-president’s claim that he would have won the 2020 poll if it had not been rigged. “We have taken our international election observation expertise and have needed to turn it inward to the United States,” Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center and grandson of the 39th US president, told the Financial Times. Read Article

National: Supreme Court rejects effort to limit government communication on misinformation | Derek B. Johnson and Madison Alder/CyberScoop

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an effort by Republican states to sharply limit the ability of the federal government to share information with social media platforms to combat the spread of false information online — something the plaintiffs argued had resulted in censorship of conservative viewpoints. The ruling represents a major victory for the Biden administration, whose communications with social media platforms sought to limit the spread online of election- and COVID-related misinformation. Those communications prompted attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana to bring suit to limit information-sharing between the government and online platforms. In a 6-3 ruling, the court concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit and lacked sufficient evidence to prove that government communications had resulted in the restriction of online speech. The ruling overturned a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that found the government had, through its regular communications and information-sharing efforts, effectively “coerced” the platforms into censoring content. Read Article

National: Trump allies test a new strategy for blocking election results | Amy Gardner , Patrick Marley and Colby Itkowitz/The Washington Post

When a member of Georgia’s Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections refused to join her colleagues as they certified two primaries this year, she claimed she had been denied her right to examine a long list of election records for signs of fraud or other issues. Now the board member, Julie Adams, an avowed believer in the false theory that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump, is suing the board, hoping a judge will affirm that right and potentially empower others in similar positions elsewhere to hold up the outcome of elections. To voting rights activists, election law specialists and Democrats, such actions represent an ominous sign that could presage a chaotic aftermath to the 2024 election. They are particularly worried about the threat of civil unrest or violence, especially if certification proceeds amid protests or efforts to block it. Read Article

National: Fight against misinformation faces headwinds as 2024 election nears | Carrie Levine/Votebeat