North Carolina State Board of Elections names director of election security ahead of primary | Theresa Opeka/The Carolina Journal

With a little over a week to go before the state’s primary elections, Mount Olive native Ron Herring has been named as the director of election security and enforcement for the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), effective immediately. State board Executive Director Sam Hayes made the announcement on Monday. As director of election security and enforcement, Herring will oversee investigative operations; support election security initiatives; and work with federal, state, and local partners to protect the integrity of North Carolina’s elections. Read Article

Pennsylvania special elections come with high financial and logistical costs | Carter Walker/Votebeat

If it feels like Pennsylvania voters are constantly going to the polls, it’s not your imagination. According to data from Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan online political encyclopedia, Pennsylvania has held 47 special elections for vacant state legislative and congressional seats since 2017, including two being held Tuesday for state House seats in Allegheny and Lehigh counties. That’s more than in any other state over that period. It’s not clear why Pennsylvania has had so many special elections, though observers have pointed to the state’s large full-time legislature as a possible factor. But what’s more clear is the cost. Many of those special elections were held on different days from normal primary or general elections, increasing the burden for administrators and costing taxpayers millions of extra dollars. Read Article

South Carolina ‘wasted’ more than $30M on new voting machines, Senator says | Lucy Valeski/The State

After taking out more than $30 million in loans for new voting equipment before the 2024 general election, the new ballot scanners work similarly to the former machines, state Election Commission executive director Jenny Wooten told lawmakers Tuesday. The state Election Commission agreed to pay more than $28 million for ballot scanners and other new voting equipment in late 2024. With additional sales tax and interest, the cost ballooned to nearly $32 million, Wooten said Tuesday. Former executive director Howard Knapp, who was fired by the commission in September, signed off on the requests. The new ballot scanners work similarly to the old machines, Wooten told a Senate Finance panel Tuesday. The subcommittee is in the process of vetting agency budget requests for next fiscal year. Read Article

Texas: Eastland County Republicans scramble as hand-count of primary ballots looms | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

On Monday, a group of four people spent more than an hour at a table inside a Realtor’s office, hand-counting the results of two races on 100 sample ballots. It was only a week before Tuesday’s primary election, and for this small group, it was their first time practicing to tally votes by hand. They counted in batches of 25 and used different colored markers to keep track of where one counted batch ended and a new one began. They also used laminated tally sheets, which allowed them to erase and remark them if they made any errors. The group twice marked a vote for the wrong candidate, an error that meant they had to go back and start over and correct their laminated sheets. But on Election Day, “you won’t be able to erase the errors on the sheet. That’s why we practice,” said Robin Hayes, the county’s GOP chair, who was training the group. Hayes hasn’t yet participated in an official hand-count herself, but said she’s attended trainings to learn how to do it and has been preparing and training other volunteers for months. Read Article

Wisconsin: Who will run the next election in small-town Wisconsin? No one knows. | Alexander Shur |Votebeat

Inside the mostly empty town hall on County Road Z last week, a handful of voters cast ballots in wooden booths for a school board race. The biggest question on the minds of local election officials wasn’t who would win — it was who would run elections next year. After two clerks left within a year, longtime town supervisor Sharon Hunter stepped in because no one else would. Hunter’s term ends next April. Nomination papers for a potential successor are due in January 2027, but local officials still don’t know who comes next. “Sharon’s not going to do 29 years,” Deputy Clerk Amy Meyer said, referring to the long tenure of the clerk who resigned in late 2024, setting off the cascade of brief replacements. Hunter, 72, laughed. “I’d be over 100 years old,” she said. “I don’t think you want me here with my walker.” Read Article

National: Trump says Republicans will ‘never lose a race’ if Congress restricts voting | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

During a rambling rehash of false assertions of voter fraud, President Donald Trump claimed that Republicans will never lose an election “for 50 years” if his allies in Congress pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) America Act, which critics have called the most restrictive anti-voting law in U.S. history. “I tell you what, Republicans have to win this one,” Trump said during a speech at a steel facility in Rome, Georgia. “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.” Trump’s remarks Thursday were just his latest alarming comments calling into question the security of American elections — and pressuring Congress to suppress the vote to benefit Republicans. Read Article

National: Meet the election denier now heading White House election security | Josh Meyer/USA Today

As President Donald Trump ramps up his interest in taking federal control of the November 2026 elections, he’s tapped one of the lawyers who worked on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election to be his administration’s “director of election security and integrity.” That’s Kurt Olsen, a conservative lawyer who has been hit with ethics complaints and a legal sanction for spreading “unequivocally false” claims about Trump’s 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden and Kari Lake’s 2022 gubernatorial loss in Arizona. Olsen, a 63-year-old former Navy SEAL, quietly joined the Trump White House in October as a special government employee. Since then, he’s been working with law enforcement and intelligence officials to re-investigate Trump’s debunked allegations about 2020, including that he lost Georgia because of voter fraud and that states used “COVID to cheat” via mail-in ballots. Read Article

National: What if everyone had to prove their citizenship to register to vote? | Nathaniel Rakich/Votebeat

Presidents’ Day is always the hardest holiday to shop for; it’s hard to know what to get the president in your life. But the U.S. House of Representatives got President Donald Trump exactly what he wanted when it passed the SAVE America Act on Wednesday. The act, which passed with the support of all 217 House Republicans but only one Democrat, is a centerpiece of Trump’s agenda to exercise more federal oversight over elections and prevent illegal voting, which is already very rare. It’s essentially version 2.0 of the SAVE Act, which passed the House last year. Like its predecessor, the SAVE America Act would require people who are registering to vote to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship. (Currently, new registrants only have to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens.) This version of the bill also adds a photo ID requirement for voters and requires states to run their voter rolls through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to scan for noncitizens. All provisions of the bill would take effect immediately upon enactment. Read Article

National: Trump vows voter ID requirements for the midterms, ‘whether approved by Congress or not’ | Kyla Guilfoil/NBC

Trump has called for Republicans to “nationalize” and “take over” the administration of elections. While Congress can pass federal regulations, the Constitution states that “the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” Nate Persily, a law professor at Stanford University, said that an executive order mandating changes to elections would be unconstitutional. “The Constitution is clear on this. There are a lot of things where it’s ambiguous, but it doesn’t give unilateral regulatory authority for election to the president,” Persily said. He said the only way for state procedures to be overridden would be if Congress passes a law, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Read Article

National: Even Republican election officials are balking at Trump Justice Department’s voter roll crusade | Tierney Sneed/CNN

As the Trump administration has sued 25 mostly Democratic state election chiefs for their voter rolls, it has also encountered quieter resistance from Republican officials who have balked at the Justice Department’s demands for confidential voter registration information. At least a half-dozen Republican-led state election offices have declined the Justice Department’s request for non-public voter data, which can include a voter’s Social Security number, driver license ID number or current residence, according to interviews, local media reporting and records obtained by CNN and by the Brennan Center, a left-leaning think tank that researches election issues. “They can have the voter rolls. They’re gonna pay for it like everybody else,” West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner told CNN last month, referring to the public list that can be purchased in his state for $500. “They’re not going to get our personal information.” Read Article

National: Republicans are eyeing major election changes. Trump’s mail voting crackdown isn’t one of them. | Mia McCarthy/Politico

President Donald Trump is pushing Congress to end mail voting as Americans have come to know it. So far, Republican lawmakers aren’t heeding his calls. Trump has long railed against the expansion of vote-by-mail, arguing despite scant evidence that it is rife with fraud and suggesting it was responsible in part for his 2020 election loss. Since retaking office, he has repeatedly called for action — most recently Monday night to reporters on Air Force One. “Why would you want mail-in ballots if you know it’s corrupt?” Trump said. “It’s a corrupt system.” But other Republicans don’t see it that way — many of their own voters have voted by mail consistently for decades. So far, the type of blanket ban on mail voting Trump wants has not gained traction on Capitol Hill as GOP lawmakers counsel for a more targeted approach. Read Article

National: Democracy nonprofit launches project to aid elections officials on cybersecurity | Colin Wood/StateScoop

The nonprofit advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology on Friday announced a new initiative to provide local elections administrators with additional support as they attempt to defend their infrastructure from cyberattacks. The work is to be led by Geoff Hale, a former election-security associate director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. According to the group’s press materials, the new project aims to “strengthen mechanisms that provide timely, actionable research and analysis to support the cybersecurity and resilience of vital election processes.” Alexandra Reeve Givens, the nonprofit’s president and chief executive, said in a press release that elections officials “deserve top-notch technical support” to protect their systems, particularly when the nation is so contentiously divided along political lines. Read Article

National: Voter trust in U.S. elections drops amid Trump critiques, redistricting, fear of ICE | Kevin Rector/Los Angeles Times

President Trump and his allies are questioning ballot security. Democrats are warning of unconstitutional federal intervention. Experts and others are raising concerns about partisan redistricting and federal immigration agents intimidating people at the polls. Voter trust in the upcoming midterm elections, meanwhile, has dropped off sharply, and across party lines, according to new research by the UC San Diego Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections. Out of 11,406 eligible voters surveyed between mid-December and mid-January, just 60% said they were confident that midterm votes will be counted fairly — down from 77% who held such confidence in vote counting shortly after the 2024 presidential election. Read Article

Alaska: Federal government may seek removal of individual Alaskans from state voter rolls | James Brooks/Alaska Beacon

When the state of Alaska turned over a copy of the state’s voter rolls to the Department of Justice in December, it also signed an agreement that allows the DOJ to ask the state to put individual Alaskans on track for removal from the state’s voter list. Officially labeled a “confidential memorandum of understanding,” the document was signed Dec. 19 by Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, and U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. Alaska is one of at least a dozen states that have signed similar documents or expressed an interest in them, even as more states continue to fight the requests in court. Read Article

Arizona: ICE at the polls: Republicans push plan to require agents at all polling places | Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror

Polling shows that Americans want to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the murders of two American citizens in Minnesota amid a violent surge to round up immigrants as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, but Arizona Republicans want to require ICE officers to be stationed at polling places this year. This week, the Arizona Senate will take up a proposal to force all 15 of the state’s counties to sign an agreement with ICE “to provide for a federal immigration law enforcement presence at each location within this state where ballots are cast or deposited.” The Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee is slated to take up the strike-everything amendment to Senate Bill 1570 either Wednesday or Friday. (The committee has scheduled nearly 60 bills for hearings over the two meetings, but it’s unknown which measures will be considered on which day. This is the final week for legislative committees to hear bills.) Read Article

Georgia: Fulton County lawsuit claims feds used ‘gross mischaracterizations’ to justify raid | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

A former federal official who tested and certified voting machines used in Fulton County, Georgia for the 2020 presidential election told a court that the federal government misrepresented key facts and omitted exculpatory public evidence while seeking a warrant in last month’s law enforcement raid. The raid, carried out by the FBI and overseen by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, saw agents seize ballots and other documentation from the Fulton County election offices. A public affidavit cited five core allegations related to the county’s recordkeeping, electronic ballot image storage, and election night reporting. Authorities allege these issues point to a potential conspiracy to intentionally manipulate the vote count in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. Fulton County officials sued the federal government in response, arguing that the affidavit used to obtain a warrant for the raid “does not identify facts that establish probable cause that anyone committed a crime.” Read Afrticle

Mississippi: Lawmakers eye changes to in-person absentee voting | Derrion Arrington/Mississippi Independent

Both chambers of the legislature have each passed bills to overhaul the state’s in-person absentee voting process, setting up a cross-chamber negotiation that could reshape how Mississippians cast ballots before Election Day. Both bills seek to eliminate the longstanding ballot-envelope procedure that has governed in-person absentee voting for decades, replacing it with a machine-based tabulation system. But the two measures diverge on a critical question: How many days before an election should voters be permitted to cast their ballots? The House bill, H.B. 447, would retain the existing 45-day in-person absentee voting window while modernizing ballot processing. The Senate’s version would compress that period to 22 days, beginning roughly three weeks before an election and continuing until noon on the Saturday before Election Day. The Senate measure would also require that in-person absentee votes be counted alongside Election Day ballots, with results announced after the polls close at 7 p.m. Read Article

North Carolina letter sent by the State Board of Elections sparks voter registration confusion | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

A letter sent to 241,000 North Carolina voters about their registration status sparked confusion and worry among some, who flooded county election offices with hundreds of calls and visits amid an already busy primary election season. The letter, which was sent by the State Board of Elections in recent weeks, informed recipients that their voter registration lacked certain required identification information. It asked them to provide either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to clear up the issue. What the letter did not say was that recipients would have their vote counted normally regardless of whether they responded or not. Kelly McPherson, director of the Dare County Board of Elections, said that in the days following the letter’s arrival, her office fielded over 100 phone calls and visits from voters worried that they were now ineligible to cast their ballot. Read Article

Oklahoma: Election Board decision to keep voter data private garners support | Emma Murphy/News From The States

A group of Oklahomans on Monday said they’re prepared to sue the federal government if they continue trying to push state leaders to release protected voter information. C.J. Webber-Neal, a member of Sooner State Party, said at a press conference outside the State Election Board offices that the Department of Justice does not need access to Oklahoman’s protected voter information, like Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers. Continued requests for that information amount to government overreach and could disincentivize Oklahomans from participating in elections, he said. “I think that it does not even help with voter integrity because now voters are going to be concerned about voting,” Webber-Neal said. “So that’s going to cause voters maybe not to go vote because they know that the government is going to have that information and it might affect them adversely.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: Paper ballots OK’d for Westmoreland County  voters at $18K price tag | Rich Cholodofsky/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Westmoreland County voters will again be able to cast paper ballots at the polls during this year’s primary and general elections. Republican commissioners Sean Kertes and Doug Chew on Thursday approved a contract with an estimated price tag of $18,275 to supply paper ballots at each of the county’s 306 voting precincts for the May 19 primary. Voters will continue to have an option to use the touch-screen voting machines at the polls. Commissioners authorized the paper ballot option for the first time during the last year’s general election, calling it a test run for a future where digital ballot marking devices, such as what has been used in Westmoreland County since 2020, will no longer be part of the Election Day process. Read Article

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