National: Justice Department’s early moves on voting and elections signal a shift from its traditional role | Christina A. Cassidy and Scott Bauer/Associated Press

In North Carolina, it was a lawsuit over the state’s voter registration records. In Arizona and Wisconsin, it was a letter to state election officials warning of potential administrative violations. And in Colorado, it was a demand for election records going back to 2020. Those actions in recent weeks by the U.S. Department of Justice’s voting section may seem focused on the technical machinery of how elections are run but signal deeper changes when combined with the departures of career attorneys and decisions to drop various voting rights cases. They represent a shift away from the division’s traditional role of protecting access to the ballot box. Instead, the actions address concerns that have been raised by a host of conservative activists following years of false claims surrounding elections in the U.S. Some voting rights and election experts also note that by targeting certain states — presidential battlegrounds or those controlled by Democrats — the moves could be foreshadowing an expanded role for the department in future elections. Read Article

National: A second federal judge partially blocks Trump’s executive order on elections | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

A federal judge has issued a second preliminary injunction blocking some provisions of the sweeping executive order on elections that President Donald Trump signed in March. Judge Denise Casper blocked provisions ordering the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to take steps to require documentary proof of citizenship from people registering to vote and requiring federal voter registration agencies to “assess” the citizenship of individuals who receive public assistance before providing them a voter registration form. Those provisions were also blocked by a federal judge in Washington D.C. last month in a separate case. Casper also blocked parts of the order telling the U.S. Justice Department to enforce a ballot receipt deadline of Election Day and ordering the EAC to withhold federal funds from states that did not comply with it. Casper wrote that the states challenging the provisions had “shown the risk of irreparable harm” if they were permitted to go into force, and the provisions would require the costly and difficult process of revamping states’ voter registration processes, as well as hampering “the registration of eligible voters, many of whom lack ready access to documentary evidence of citizenship.” Read Article

National: FBI Director Kash Patel feeds 2020 election conspiracy theories with documents about unverified tip | Ryan J. Reilly and David Rohde/NBC

FBI Director Kash Patel said this week the bureau had shared “alarming” — but unsubstantiated — allegations about manipulation of the 2020 election with a Republican member of Congress. The unsubstantiated claim promoted by Patel, which an unidentified confidential human source gave to the FBI in 2020, during President Donald Trump’s first term, asserts that the Chinese mass-produced driver’s licenses to be used in a mail-in ballot scheme. Patel linked to an article written by John Solomon, whom Trump appointed alongside Patel in 2022 to represent him before the National Archives and Records Administration on matters related to his presidential records. The article Patel promoted mentioned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized fake licenses that were arriving mostly from China and Hong Kong around the time the FBI received the tip about the election plot. According to a 2020 news release from CBP, most of the seized licenses “were for college-age students,” a population that has historically sought licenses with fake birthdays so underage students can get into bars and purchase alcohol. No evidence of widespread or systemic voter fraud affecting the 2020 election has been found, despite allegations promoted by Trump and his allies since he lost that year’s presidential race. Read Article

National: Jury finds MyPillow founder defamed former employee for a leading voting equipment company | Colleen Ylevin/Associated Press

A federal jury in Colorado on Monday found that one of the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, defamed a former employee for a leading voting equipment company after the 2020 presidential election. The jury found that two of Lindell’s statements about Eric Coomer, the former security and product strategy director at Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, including calling him a traitor, were defamatory. It ordered Lindell and his online media platform, formerly known as Frankspeech, to pay Coomer $2.3 million in damages, far less than the $62.7 million Coomer had asked for to help send a message to discourage attacks on election workers. “This is hurting democracy. This is misinformation. It’s not been vetted and it needs to stop,” Charles Cain, one of Coomer’s attorneys, told jurors in closing arguments Friday. Read Aerticle

National: Trump uses his power to cement a false history of the 2020 election | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

Donald Trump’s second term is shaping up to be just as much about the past as the future. Not the past as it unfolded, but the version of events as he wants them remembered. There are a few troubling examples of how the president and his allies are actively attempting to reshape public views of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — and how these efforts are starting to affect real people and real institutions. Take Oklahoma. Teachers there are now facing updated social studies standards that instruct students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results” — not to examine election systems or to discuss voter confidence, but to presume that the election was flawed. This language is a quiet but profound distortion: It accepts Trump’s false narrative of fraud and requires educators to teach that falsehood as fact. Read Article

Election Certification – Stronger safeguards can ensure that the process cannot be exploited to disrupt elections | Lauren Miller Karalunas/Brennan Center for Justice

Since the 2020 election, the election denial movement has led rogue local officials to refuse to fulfill their mandatory duty to certify election results. Efforts to interfere with certification persisted throughout the 2024 election cycle, becoming untethered from the presidential election outcome and focused instead on local disagreements over downballot races. States should strengthen their statutory frameworks ahead of the 2026 midterms to prevent and more efficiently resolve future certification disputes. Read Article

Arizona lawsuit centers on power struggle over elections in Maricopa County | Sejal Govindarao/Associated Press

The top elections official in one of the nation’s most pivotal swing counties is suing the Maricopa County governing board over allegations that it’s attempting to gain more control over how elections are administered. County Recorder Justin Heap filed a lawsuit Thursday in state court with the backing of America First Legal, a conservative public interest group founded by Stephen Miller, who is now the White House deputy chief of staff. Heap, a former GOP state lawmaker who has questioned election administration in Arizona’s most populous county, has been at odds with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for months over an agreement that would divide election operations between the two offices. Read Article

Colorado election officials react to federal request for voter data, eye political motives | Tom Hesse and Anthony Cotton/Colorado Public Radio

An expansive request for Colorado’s election records by the U.S. Department of Justice has leading election officials in the state wondering if the ask might be the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of a former Mesa County Clerk now incarcerated at La Vista Correctional Facility. The letter, first reported by NPR, was sent to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold in May and requested all election records relating to the state’s 2024 federal contests, under a provision of the Voting Rights Act. Griswold told Colorado Public Radio she thinks this has less to do with the events of November and more to do with October, when former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years incarceration for her role in allowing unauthorized access to county voting equipment. Read Article

Kansas analysis, national report urges more funding for local election administration | Tim Carpente/Kansas Reflector

The co-author of a national assessment of challenges faced by local election administrators focused on the failure of some Kansas counties to match rising costs of voting technology and election staff with budgets heavily reliant on property tax revenue. The joint report from the Robert Dole Institute of Politics in Lawrence and the Edward Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston provided election policymakers and administrators with data and research useful in arguing for more sustainable funding of local elections. Zach Mohr, associate professor of public affairs and administration at University of Kansas and a co-author of the report, said 92% of funding for local elections in Kansas’ smallest population counties was derived from property taxes. He said the property tax was a steady source of money, but it didn’t keep pace with escalating costs. Read Article

New Hampshire jury acquits consultant behind AI robocalls mimicking Biden on all charges | Holly Ramer/Associated Press

A political consultant who sent artificial intelligence-generated robocalls mimicking former President Joe Biden to New Hampshire Democrats last year was acquitted Friday of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate. Steven Kramer, 56, of New Orleans, admitted orchestrating a message sent to thousands of voters two days before the state’s Jan. 23, 2024, presidential primary. Recipients heard an AI-generated voice similar to the Democratic president’s that used his catchphrase “What a bunch of malarkey” and, as prosecutors alleged, suggested that voting in the primary would preclude voters from casting ballots in November. “It’s important that you save your vote for the November election,” voters were told. “Your votes make a difference in November, not this Tuesday.” Read Article

New Jersey bill to allow machine election audits clears committee | Zach Blackburn/New Jersey Globe

A Senate panel on Thursday unanimously approved a bill that would reform how post-election audits are undertaken. The Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism, & Historic Preservation Committee voted to pass state Sen. Andrew Zwicker’s (D-South Brunswick) bill through the committee. The legislation would allow post-election audits to be conducted with independent, third-party ballot machines in addition to a hand count. Audits are currently conducted exclusively through hand counts, and Zwicker, the Senate bill’s sole sponsor, stated that the reform would enable more efficient auditing. The Democrat says reform to the system is further needed due to the increased embrace of early voting and vote-by-mail in the state’s elections. Read Article

Nevada: New law will make it easier to vote on reservations | Jimmy Romo-Buenrostro/NPR

Tribes will soon be able to run their own polling locations for federal and state elections on reservations in Nevada. The change came from Gov. Joe Lombardo’s approval of Senate Bill 421 in the recently concluded legislative session. This bill was developed in response to barriers Tribal members in the state faced when trying to participate in elections. For instance, members of the Walker River Paiute Tribe, one of the two largest tribes in the state by population, had to travel over 60 miles to cast a ballot. Read Article

North Dakota: “A Law Without a Way to Enforce It” – Native groups face a triple threat on voting rights | Pascal Sabino/Bolts

The water system that provides for the entire Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota has been contaminated with dangerous levels of manganese that have made the water undrinkable since May. For Lonna Jackson-Street, chair of the Spirit Lake Tribal Council, which is now scrambling to provide bottled water to residents and install a filtration system, the crisis underscores the need for Native voices in government. The federal government fails to properly maintain infrastructure it’s supposed to be managing, and state leaders don’t dedicate enough resources to reservations they see as outside their jurisdiction. “Native representation is so important,” she said, “because they understand the gaps in these services and how they are administered to our tribal nations.” Read Article

Pennsylvania election officials bring wish lists to Duquesne forum | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Yes, counties still need more time before Election Day to process mail ballots. And while you’re at it, Harrisburg, please adjust the deadlines for voters applying for mail ballots. County election officials brought their wish lists to a panel moderated by Votebeat Pennsylvania reporter Carter Walker at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University Monday. The event was hosted by Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan nonprofit whose mission is strengthening elections. The panelists were Chet Harhut, deputy manager of the Allegheny County Elections Division; Sherene Hess, Indiana County commissioner and board president of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania; and Melanie Ostrander, Washington County elections director. Read Article

Wisconsin proposal would require simple explanation of ballot questions | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin Republicans want to require that all proposed constitutional amendments come with a plain-language explanation, a move that they say would help voters better understand complex ballot questions. The proposal has drawn broad support. But some lawmakers are concerned about whether the measure as proposed would leave the interpretation of ballot questions vulnerable to partisanship. And even some supporters say the bill should have more specific standards for what constitutes plain language. In its current version, the bill calls for the Legislature to pass a plain-language explanation along with any proposed constitutional amendment. The explanation would be drafted by the Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan legislative agency that helps draft bills, but legislators would be able to revise it. Neither the explanation nor the amendment would be subject to a governor’s veto. Read Article

A US territory’s colonial history emerges in state disputes over voting and citizenship | Mark Thiessen, Becky Bohrer and Gene Johnson/Associated Press

Squeezed between glacier-packed mountains and Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the cruise-ship stop of Whittier is isolated enough that it’s reachable by just a single road, through a long, one-lane tunnel that vehicles share with trains. It’s so small that nearly all its 260 residents live in the same 14-story condo building. But Whittier also is the unlikely crossroads of two major currents in American politics: fighting over what it means to be born on U.S. soil and false claims by President Donald Trump and others that noncitizen voter fraud is widespread. In what experts describe as an unprecedented case, Alaska prosecutors are pursuing felony charges against 11 residents of Whittier, most of them related to one another, saying they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering or trying to vote. The defendants were all born in American Samoa, an island cluster in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. It’s the only U.S. territory where residents are not automatically granted citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil, as the Constitution dictates. Read Article

How Arizona is lining up the next generation of election workers, as more people leave the field | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

In Arizona, where each election is closely watched, officials are under such intense pressure to conduct elections perfectly, that some counties hire a person whose sole duty is ensuring that all laws are followed. Filling that compliance officer spot isn’t easy. It needs to be someone who knows the complex, technical side of conducting elections, and also is well-versed in all the rules officials must follow. This year, though, Pima County had a candidate who not only had the right skills and interests, but also had been trained already. Constance Hargrove, elections director in the state’s second-largest county, said she was thrilled when a young law student named Carly Morrison came to her and said she wanted the job. “I’m like, ‘Yes!’” Hargrove said, pumping both of her fists. “That was awesome.” Read Article

National: Federal judge appears open to blocking Trump’s election overhaul order | Nate Raymond/Reuters

A federal judge appeared open to blocking enforcement of U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order overhauling elections that calls for requiring voters to prove they are U.S. citizens and barring states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day. At a hearing in Boston before U.S. District Judge Denise Casper, a lawyer for the Trump administration argued the Republican president’s order was lawful and that any request by 19 Democratic-led states challenging it was premature. But Casper said those states were under pressure to comply with Trump’s order before voting begins in the 2026 federal election cycle and that 13 of them that accept mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day say they could be sued by the U.S. Department of Justice unless she issues an injunction. Read Article

National: House committee sets CISA budget cut at $135M, not Trump’s $495M | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

A House panel approved a fiscal 2026 funding bill Monday that would cut the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by $135 million from fiscal 2025, significantly less than the Trump administration’s proposed $495 million. The chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Rep. Mark Amodei, said the annual Department of Homeland Security funding measure “responsibly trimmed” the CISA budget. But Illinois Rep. Lauren Underwood, the top Democrat on his panel, said the legislation “fails to address the catastrophic cybersecurity threats facing our critical infrastructure.” The subcommittee approved the bill by a vote of 8-4. CISA would get $2.7 billion under the measure, according to a committee fact sheet, or $134.8 million less than the prior year. Read Article

National: How Trump Upended Biden’s Successful Push For Federal Agencies to Register Voters | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

In March, 2021, then-President Joe Biden became the first president to make it clear: Federal agencies should be registering voters. An executive order issued by Biden that month led to unprecedented voter registration efforts by federal agencies that were lauded by voting rights advocates: The Department of the Interior worked with several states to make Tribal institutions voter registration centers. The Department of Veterans Affairs created a pilot voter registration program with Kentucky, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And the Small Business Administration started registering voters at local entrepreneur events in Michigan. That was just the start. But Republicans went ballistic, filing lawsuits and launching congressional probes into the order. They described the move as federal overreach, and warned, without evidence, that it would lead to non-citizens getting on the rolls. Read Article

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