Virginia’s tough rules for felons to regain their voting rights could soon be changing | Dean Mirshahi/NPR

Tati King says he wants to set an example for his grandchildren that it’s important to make sure their voices are heard. It’s why King, a 54-year-old living in Alexandria, Va., is suing Virginia election officials in federal court to get his voting rights restored. “I want them to see that their grandfather was on the right side of things for once in his life,” he said. King lost his ability to vote in the state because of a 2018 felony drug possession conviction. He served 11 months in prison and is now challenging Virginia’s constitutional rule that automatically strips anyone’s voting rights if they’re convicted of a felony. The constitution gives the governor sole authority to restore those rights. Read Articlew

National: Dominion Voting’s new owner pledges impartiality, says, ‘I’m not on anybody’s side’ | Marshall Cohen/CNN

The new owner of Dominion Voting Systems affirmed in his first interview since buying the company that President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and pledged that his company’s machines, used by nearly a third of US voters, won’t be misused to help either political party. Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican election official from St. Louis who already runs a separate election tech company, bought Dominion last month and rebranded it Liberty Vote. The surprise move, and a public announcement that seemingly embraced parts of Trump’s push to transform voting procedures, spooked election officials around the US, raising concerns about the future of a company that unexpectedly found itself at the center of Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Read Article

National: Secretaries of state ask DOJ to clarify how it’s using their voter data | Colin Wood/StateScoop

After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls, which can include information like driver’s license numbers, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and birth dates. The letter, addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, flags an Aug. 28 call with Michael Gates, who was deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division until he stepped down this month. Gates, the secretaries wrote, assured them that the DOJ would protect the voter information in compliance with the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. Read Article

National: Officials prep for possible 2026 election interference from Trump | Miles Parks/NPR

Less than a year from the midterm elections, state and local voting officials from both major political parties are actively preparing for the possibility of interference by a federal government helmed by President Trump. The problem is, no one knows what might be coming. Steve Simon, the Democratic secretary of state of Minnesota, likened it to planning for natural disasters. “You have to use your imagination to consider and plan for the most extreme scenario,” Simon said. Carly Koppes, the Republican clerk of Weld County in Colorado, said officials in her state are shoring up their relationships with local law enforcement and county and state attorney’s offices, to make sure any effort to interfere with voting is “met with a pretty good force of resistance.””We have to plan for the worst and hope we get the best,” Koppes said. “I think we’re all kind of conditioned at this point to expect anything and everything, and our bingo cards keep getting bigger and bigger with things that we would have never have had on them.” Read Article

National: 60 Attorneys on the Year of Chaos Inside Trump’s Justice Department | Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser/The New York Times

President Trump’s second term has brought a period of turmoil and controversy unlike any in the history of the Justice Department. Trump and his appointees have blasted through the walls designed to protect the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency from political influence; they have directed the course of criminal investigations, openly flouted ethics rules and caused a breakdown of institutional culture. To date, more than 200 career attorneys have been fired, and thousands more have resigned. What was it like inside this institution as Trump’s officials took control? It’s not an easy question to answer. Justice Department norms dictate that career attorneys, who are generally nonpartisan public servants, rarely speak to the press. And the Trump administration’s attempts to crack down on leaks have made all federal employees fearful of sharing information. But the exodus of lawyers has created an opportunity to understand what’s happening within the agency. We interviewed more than 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department. Much of what they told us is reported here for the first time. Read Article

National: Federal judge questions changes to SAVE database for voter screening | Natalia Contreras andAlexander Shur/Votebeat

A federal judge on Monday declined to order the federal government to undo its overhaul of SAVE, a database that some states are using to check voters’ citizenship status, but said she doubted the legality of the government’s changes. SAVE, which is operated by the Department of Homeland Security, was typically used by states to check residents’ eligibility for public benefits. But the changes the Trump administration introduced in April made SAVE easier to use for screening voters’ citizenship, allowing state election officials to upload voter registration records for verification in bulk, instead of one by one, and search by Social Security number. The League of Women Voters and other plaintiffs in the case claimed that the changes made SAVE less accurate and were illegal, and asked the court for a temporary order that the database revert to how it operated before the overhaul. Read Article

National: Responses in opinion polls may be coming from AI​ | Eglė Krištopaitytė/Cybernews

Surveys have played a crucial role in the United States’ elections for nearly a century, but their reliability is now threatened by AI tools, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ​Researchers from Dartmouth College have developed an autonomous synthetic respondent that operates from a 500-word prompt. In 43,000 tests, the AI tool passed 99.8% of attention checks designed to detect automated responses. It made zero errors in logic and successfully concealed its non-human nature. Moreover, the tool tailored responses according to randomly assigned demographics, such as providing simpler answers when assigned less education. Presidential approval ratings swung from 34% to either 98% or 0%, depending on whether the poll was programmed to favor Democrats or Republicans. Similarly, generic ballot support went from 38% Republican to either 97% or 1%. Read Article

National: Inside the Multimillion-Dollar Plan to Make Mobile Voting Happen | Steven Levy/WIRED

The loudest objections against mobile or internet voting come from cryptographers and security experts, who believe that the safety risks are insurmountable. Take two people who were at the 2017 conference with Kiniry. Ron Rivest is the legendary “R” in the RSA protocol that protects the internet, a winner of the coveted Turing Award, and a former professor at MIT. His view: Mobile voting is far from ready for prime time. “What you can do with mobile phones is interesting, but we’re not there yet, and I haven’t seen anything to make me think otherwise,” he says, “Tusk is driven by trying to make this stuff happen in the real world, which is not the right way to do it. They need to go through the process of writing a peer-reviewed paper. Putting up code doesn’t cut it.” Computer scientist and voting expert David Jefferson is also unimpressed. Though he acknowledges that Kiniry is one of the country’s top voting system experts, he sees Tusk’s effort as doomed. “I’m willing to concede rock-solid cryptography, but it does not weaken the argument about how insecure online voting systems are in general. Open source and perfect cryptography do not address the most serious vulnerabilities.” Read Article

Alaska: Anchorage officials clarify role of electronic voting in city’s mail elections after report | Bella Biondini and Sabrina Bodon/Anchorage Daily News

After the publication of a report this week on the city’s remote voting options, Anchorage officials sought to clarify its offerings, which they say were mischaracterized in a national news story. Among the options to vote in Anchorage’s by-mail local elections, voters can choose to cast their ballots electronically, an option the municipality has offered since 2018. In the last year, the city established a “secure document portal” that gives registered voters, no matter where they are, the ability to vote electronically with preapproval without having to email or fax their paper ballot. Municipal Clerk Jamie Heinz, in a statement Thursday responding to a New York Times article on the city’s use of electronic voting, called the story an “egregious misrepresentation of MOA Elections. The article claims a new ‘experiment’ will allow all voters to cast ballots from their smartphones. This is factually inaccurate,“ Heinz said. Read Article

Arizona proposal would end automatic mail ballots for early-voter list | Gary Grado/Votebeat

A Republican state lawmaker who is also running for secretary of state has introduced a proposed ballot measure that would overhaul early voting in Arizona by eliminating the early-voter list, shortening the time to cast early ballots, and requiring proof of citizenship to receive an early ballot. State Rep. Alex Kolodin, who as a lawmaker and a former lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party has pushed to abolish the state’s early-voter list, said in a press release that he’s pushing legislation to put the measure on the ballot because “Arizonans are tired of excuses and chaos on Election Day.” Some provisions of his proposed measure are already in state law, including a poll closing time of 7 p.m. on Election Day and a voter ID requirement. Read Article

Colorado: Trump administration moves to take custody of imprisoned elections clerk Tina Peters | Colleen Slevin/Associated Press

The Trump administration is seeking a transfer from state prison to federal custody of a former Colorado county clerk who has become a hero to election conspiracy theorists, the state and one of her lawyers said Friday. The Colorado Department of Corrections said Friday that it received a letter from the federal Bureau of Prisons regarding Tina Peters on Wednesday. Neither the department nor the Bureau of Prisons immediately responded to a request to provide a copy of the letter but a corrections department spokesperson, Alondra Gonzalez, confirmed the letter was a request to move Peters to federal custody. A member of Peters’ legal team, Peter Ticktin, said he had seen the letter and also described it as a request to move her to a federal prison to serve out her sentence there. “It is not to have her released,” he said. Read Article

Georgia lawmakers weigh seismic changes to voting equipment | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

Ahead of the momentous 2020 presidential election, Georgia’s state leaders faced a choice. The state’s voting system prior to that year consisted of 27,000 electronic voting machines that had been in use since 2002, which were reaching the end of their life and needed to be replaced. Legislators at the time voted for Georgia’s new election system largely along party lines, with Democrats largely favoring hand-marked paper ballots that require voters to fill out ballots with pencils or pens, and Republicans supporting ballot-marking devices, which still required voters to make selections on a machine but produced a paper ballot that would be scanned to tabulate the results. The new machines, purchased for $107 million and manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, were used statewide in Georgia for the first time during the 2020 election. But nearly six years later, Democrats and Republicans have seemingly found themselves on opposite ends of a similar debate. Some GOP lawmakers are now leading a push to replace ballot-marking devices with hand-marked paper ballots, and there are Democrats who are cautioning against abandoning Georgia’s current ballot-marking device system before the end of the state’s 10-year contract in 2029. Read Article

Idaho: Elmore County reports hundreds of uncounted ballots, prompting election review | Julie Luchetta/Boise State Public Radio

About 300 ballots in Elmore County were not counted in the results of the Nov. 4 election. The Elmore County clerk notified the Secretary of State’s office of the discrepancy last Friday, kicking off an investigation into what happened. Secretary of State Phil McGrane said there is no indication of foul play, but called the situation very concerning. On Tuesday, McGrane’s office sent a team to Elmore County to review their process. He said the county used new business processes and equipment, but it’s unclear where things went wrong. Discrepancies were found in several precincts. Read Article

New Indiana election laws face court challenges over their constitutionality | Cameron Shaw/The Indiana Lawyer

Two Indiana election laws that went into effect this summer are being challenged in federal court, with voting-rights advocates arguing that they disenfranchise young and naturalized voters. One federal judge already has given some hope to the plaintiffs in a case against Senate Enrolled Act 10, which was passed this spring and bars the use of state-issued student IDs as a proof of identification at polling locations, something that had been allowed for 20 years in Indiana. The court dismissed Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales and Indiana Election Commission Chair Paul Okeson’s motion for dismissal last month, saying the plaintiffs—several voting rights organizations and an Indiana University student—had provided a plausible argument that SEA 10 could discriminately burden young people from voting. Read Article

Michigan: Ballot custody questions complicate aftermath of Hamtramck election | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Sometime in the hours after last week’s election in Hamtramck, officials who weren’t involved in elections walked into the city clerk’s office, a space that’s supposed to be a secure place to keep ballots. That revelation has thrown the outcome of the Michigan city’s entire election into doubt, including an exceedingly close mayoral race. A total of 37 absentee ballots were initially unaccounted for on election night but were later discovered in the clerk’s office, opened but not yet tabulated. But since those ballots were not secured and could have been accessed by others, it’s currently up in the air whether they will be included in the election’s final totals. Read Article

New York: Formatting errors lead to recount of all Rensselaer County ballots | Tyler A. McNeil/Albany Times-Union

All ballots will be recounted in Rensselaer County after formatting errors were discovered during the recanvassing process. Every contest in the county will be retabulated. Ovals juxtaposed over text on the second side of the ballot may have also generated incorrect results for propositions in some municipalities, according to the Rensselaer County Board of Elections. The full extent of the issue is not yet clear. With the expansive rehashing of about 40,000 ballots underway, the BOE’s Republican Commissioner Henry F. Zwack expects that it could take until the first week of December to get sorted out. Read Article

North Carolina: Turnover in Board of Elections staff follows shift in control | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

A recent wave of staffing changes at the State Board of Elections began with a bill originally intended to make the Moravian star North Carolina’s state star. But as is often the case at the legislature, the final product ended up entirely different. After the state House gave its stamp of approval, the state Senate stripped House Bill 125’s original Moravian star language and replaced it with various budgetary allocations and adjustments. The State Board of Elections, newly helmed by Executive Director Sam Hayes, won big. The agency received $15 million to finish modernization of the state’s outdated election system, $1.5 million for litigation costs and $1.1 million to pay for seven new election board positions. Read Article

Ohio’s mail-in absentee ballot grace period on the chopping block following Senate vote | Avery Kreemer/Dayton Daily News

The Ohio House is set to consider a GOP-backed bill that would eliminate the state’s four-day, post-election grace period for mail-in absentee ballots to get delivered, a period that allowed hundreds of Miami Valley ballots to be counted in the 2024 presidential election. Senate Bill 293, set to be evaluated by the House General Government Committee after easily clearing the Senate with near-unanimous Republican support, would require domestic absentee ballots in future elections be delivered to local boards of elections by the time polls close. Current law allows absentee ballots to be delivered by mail up to four days after election day, as long as those ballots were postmarked on the eve of the election, at least. Ohio’s grace period used to be 10 days before it was pared down. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Chester County commissioners vote to count challenged provisional ballots after poll book error | Katie Bernard/The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Chester County Board of Elections rejected Republican challenges to provisional ballots Monday as the board prepares to launch an investigation into a poll book error that forced thousands of independent and third-party voters to cast provisional ballots during this month’s election. In a nearly six-hour meeting, the Democratic-led board heard from dozens of voters and poll workers who described the chaos they endured on Nov. 4 during the high-turnout municipal election. The election resulted in more than 12,000 provisional ballots being cast primarily by independent and third-party voters blocked from voting on machines — an unusually high amount. Read Article

Texas Republicans in some counties are pushing to count ballots by hand in next year’s primary | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Republicans in at least a half-dozen counties in Texas are considering or have made plans to count ballots by hand in next March’s primary elections, a move that’s financially costly and could inject uncertainty into key contests. Texas Republicans who are pushing for the shift argue that voting machines that normally handle the process are unreliable, a position President Donald Trump and his allies have been pushing for years, despite a lack of evidence. But voting experts and Democrats warn that hand-counting could result in errors, delays in final results and post-election litigation. Texas tasks political parties, rather than local governments, with running Election Day voting in primaries, giving partisan officials unusual say over election administration. Democrats and Republicans in the state often administer elections jointly, outsourcing the job to the county election officials, and their expenses are reimbursed by the secretary of state. Read Articled

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