Opinion: Trump Is Still Trying to Undermine Elections | Sue Halpern/The New Yorker

So far, it’s a tossup which of the Trump Administration’s wrecking balls will prove most destructive: the one that accelerates global warming, the one that abandons our allies, the one that torches the economy, or the one that compromises public health. Yet all of these are distractions from the President’s long-standing pet project: decimating free and fair elections. It may be that we have become so accustomed to hearing Donald Trump’s false claims about rigged elections and corrupt election officials that we have become inured to them, but in the past seven weeks he has pursued a renewed multilateral program to suppress the vote, curtail the franchise, undermine election security, eliminate protections from foreign interference, and neuter the independent oversight of election administration. And, as with the rest of Trump’s calamitous agenda, he is doing it in full view of the American people. Read Article

Arizona Secretary of State Proposes Alternative to Defunded National Election Security Program | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

After the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) cut funding to its election security programs, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) is taking matters into his own hands and forming an alternative program to fill CISA’s void for state and local election offices. According to a memo obtained by Democracy Docket, Fontes’ office wants to form a new organization called VOTE-ISAC, “an independent organization committed to safeguarding elections and restoring international confidence in the integrity of our democratic processes.” The idea for the program is to fill the void left by CISA’s crucial Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). Read Article

Colorado calls DOJ interest in Tina Peters’ case a ‘grotesque attempt to weaponize the rule of law’ | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

Colorado is asking a federal judge in Denver to reject the U.S. Justice Department’s statement of interest in the case of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters. In its filing, the state writes that the DOJ intervention has no legitimate basis and is a “grotesque attempt to weaponize the rule of law.” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser submitted the filing Tuesday in response to the DOJ’s statement of interest. “The United States cites not a single fact to support its baseless allegations that there are any reasonable concerns about Ms. Peters’ prosecution or sentence, or that the prosecution was politically motivated,” writes Weiser. Read Article

Georgia lawmakers keep election bill alive so they can change it | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Late at night in the Georgia House last week, representatives pushed through a hastily rewritten elections bill with little notice, less debate and no hint of its significance. This short bill is called a “vehicle” — a piece of legislation that can be amended to include very different election proposals, some of which never received a hearing or committee vote. House Bill 397, which passed the House and awaits action in the Senate, creates a process to remove members of the State Election Board. But Republicans might alter it to include ideas that did not survive last week’s deadline for bills to clear at least one legislative chamber, such as prohibiting voters from turning in their absentee ballots in-person the weekend before Election Day, banning last-minute election rules and a plan to withdraw Georgia from a national voter registration accuracy organization. Read Article

Michigan is short of clerks to oversee elections, but harassment and workload turn people away | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

In Michigan, local clerks have a lot of responsibilities. They manage elections, issue marriage certificates, handle requests for public documents, and numerous other duties. And just the election part has grown in recent years. Changes to the state Constitution to expand voting rights — like Prop 3 in 2018 and Prop 2 in 2022 — have increased the amount of work clerks have to put into elections. They now have to stand ready to register voters on Election Day, run at least eight days of early voting, and manage the distribution of absentee ballots to a growing list of voters every election cycle. The growing demands of the job — combined with the low pay people have come to associate with civic jobs — are discouraging new recruits, limiting the pipeline of talent for a critical role in the democratic process. In 2024, research found, 90% of clerk races in Michigan had only one candidate, and some small communities struggled to find anyone to run. Reasd Article

Missouri: St. Louis-based KNOWiNK first to get federal EAC certification for electronic poll books | Samir Knox/St. Louis Business Journal

A Creve Coeur company became the first in the nation to receive a key federal certification for its digital voter ID and verification technlogy. Knowink said the certification of its Poll Pad product from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission is a “seal of trust” for its customers that might encourage more election jurisdictions to use its products. “This first-in-nation certification is a testament to our dedication to constant innovation, top-tier security and full transparency in the election process,” Knowink CEO & Founder Scott Leiendecker said in a statement last week. Founded in 2011 by Scott Leiendecker, former city of St. Louis elections director, Knowink produces a suite of technology products marketed towards government elections directors to help manage everything from voter verification to vote tabulation and reporting. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court race hangs on unresolved ballot challenges | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

With voter confidence reportedly on the rise, it might be tempting to think that the battles over election integrity are over. But there’s one contest from the November 2024 general election that isn’t settled yet, even though it’s now March. And what’s happening in the North Carolina Supreme Court race is sending a clear signal that losing candidates will continue to contest the rules under which elections are conducted. Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, lost his bid for election to the court by just 734 votes to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat who was appointed to a vacant seat in 2023 and then ran for a full term. Read Article

Opinion: North Carolina elections will be in chaos if Griffin wins case | Cherie Poucher, Kathy Holland, Larry Hammond and Meloni Wray/Raleigh News & Observer

We are among a group of 42 former county directors of elections who recently provided state judges with our perspective about Jefferson Griffin’s request to disqualify more than 65,000 voters in the 2024 N.C. Supreme Court contest. Members of our group come from every part of the state and have more than 750 years of combined experience in managing elections. Though normally behind-the-scenes administrators, we are speaking out now because of the significant impact this case could have on the integrity of our state’s election system. First, the election laws that voters relied on to cast their ballots in 2024 have been in place for years. Election directors relied on those rules to conduct the election in a uniform manner across the state, without favoritism or bias. Changing these laws and rules in the middle of an election is disruptive. Changing them after an election to apply to the election already held is chaos. How can the public trust our election system if the rules can be changed after the results are known in order to produce a different outcome? Read Article

Texas: In Guadalupe County, an elections academy aims to strengthen residents’ trust in voting | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Guadalupe County’s Citizens Elections Academy is the brainchild of Lisa Hayes, the county’s elections administrator, who modeled the idea after a similar initiative by local law enforcement. Across the state, counties and cities offer local government citizens’ academies and local law enforcement agencies run police department academies, but Guadalupe County’s academy — launched in the fall of 2023 — is the first to focus solely on elections. The goal, Hayes said, is to increase confidence and trust in the election process. It’s part of a broader effort by Texas election officials to address rampant spread of misinformation following the November 2020 election. Across the state, election officials have hosted open houses, workshops, and additional public testing of voting equipment beyond what’s required by law to try to regain voters’ trust. Read Article

Utah Was a Rare Red State to Champion Mail Voting. That Era Is Likely Ending. | Alex Burness/Bolts

House Bill 300, which passed the Republican-controlled legislature March 6, would end universal vote-by-mail in Utah. It’s a landmark reform that would close an era in which Utah occupied a unique place in the national patchwork of election rules: Since 2019, it’s been the only reliably red state in the country to automatically mail a ballot to every registered voter. HB 300 would instead require any Utah voter to proactively request a mail ballot. It would also impose additional restrictions on how they must return these ballots, for instance by ending the grace period for when they must be delivered to election offices by postal workers. Read Article

Wisconsin appeals court tosses improper temporary injunction for emailed absentee ballots | Destiny DeVooght/Courthouse News Service

A Wisconsin appeals court reversed on Wednesday a temporary injunction by the circuit court that would allow visually impaired voters to request emailed absentee ballots to be digitally marked and returned in person. In 2024, Disability Rights Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed suit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission, alleging the present absentee voting scheme is unlawful to print-disabled absentee voters because they cannot cast their ballot privately and without assistance. Specifically, they argued that this violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and Article III of the Wisconsin Constitution, which states that “all votes shall be by secret ballot,” according to the appellate brief. Read Article

Pennsylvania signs new contract to upgrade SURE voter registration system | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The Pennsylvania Department of State said Wednesday that it signed a new $10.6 million contract with Louisiana-based technology company Civix to upgrade the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE, and integrate it with other state-run election systems. The SURE system is a statewide database used by counties to register voters and maintain their records, print poll books, process mail ballot applications, and carry out many of the functions necessary to run elections. The contract calls for Civix to integrate the functions of the SURE system with the state’s election night reporting, campaign finance, and lobbying disclosure systems, creating a system that the department called a “one-stop-shop elections administration experience.” Read Article

National: “We Are Effectively Flying Blind:” Election Officials Say Cuts to CISA Are Affecting Operations | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

Ever since President Donald Trump’s victory in November, election officials at every level and voting rights advocates have worried that he would gut the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — the little-known federal agency responsible for the nation’s cybersecurity and protecting critical infrastructure from digital threats. And now that those cuts have come to fruition, election officials are already experiencing the loss of crucial CISA resources they said are integral to voting security. In the seven years since CISA’s creation, it’s become a crucial agency to help secure elections from foreign and domestic cybersecurity threats. Among the agency’s routine functions are sending cybersecurity experts to local election offices to recommend upgrades and best practices, training election officials to spot foreign interference and connecting offices with law enforcement agencies — a crucial practice as violence and threats to election officials significantly grew in the past decade. Read Article

 

Can VotingWorks’ publicly viewable software boost faith in voting machines? | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

At a recent gathering of election officials in Washington, D.C., a technology vendor called VotingWorks demonstrated the systems that it has submitted for federal certification this year. The group says its mission is to make voting equipment everyone can trust “through transparency, simplicity, and demonstrable security.” It’s the first technology company to seek federal certification for a voting system relying on publicly available code. “I think it’s a big deal,” said Pamela Smith, CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections, who sees the election technology industry moving toward more transparency. “I think it’s a good step forward.” Read Article

National: Trump’s federal shake-up sparks concerns among election security experts | Julia Mueller and Caroline Vakil/The Hill

Election experts are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s wide-reaching changes to the federal bureaucracy, which is impacting the cybersecurity agency responsible for protecting the nation’s critical cyber and physical infrastructure. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has paused its election security work while it conducts a review of all election security related funding, products, activities, and personnel. “Faced with limited resources, state and local election officials across the country rely on CISA’s expertise,” nonpartisan election watchdog Verified Voting’s president and CEO Pamela Smith said in a statement calling on DHS to keep CISA’s “essential” election security work in place. “Any reduction in these critical resources could make our elections more vulnerable and leave officials with fewer tools to protect our democratic process. Election security is national security — something every American has a stake in.” Read Article

National: Election security aid on the chopping block, rattling local officials | Kevin Collier/NBC

State and local election officials who have grown to rely on the federal government’s cybersecurity assistance fear that the Trump administration may permanently block that aid by Thursday. Such funding, which began in President Donald Trump’s first term and is funnelled through the country’s top domestic security body, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), stopped in February. Those programs include free on-site and remote security testing of election machines and the websites that report election results, and ad hoc “situation rooms” where election officials can virtually gather and discuss security tactics in real time. Read Article

National: Trump Bid to Take Over Postal Service Could Threaten Mail Voting | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

President Donald Trump may soon attempt to absorb the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), an independent agency, into his administration by issuing an executive order that reportedly would dissolve the service’s leadership. The order could allow the Trump administration to make mail voting — which was used by tens of millions of voters last year — more difficult. Trump has repeatedly said he’d like to end the practice, falsely claiming it allows for widespread fraud. “Taking over the Postal Service just kind of opens up a whole Pandora’s box of mischief,” said Barbara Smith Warner, the executive director of National Vote at Home Institute, a nonprofit which works to increase voters’ access to and confidence in mail voting. Read Article

National: Judge finds Mike Lindell in contempt for failing to turn over documents in Smartmatic defamation case | Laura Romero and Soo Rin Kim/ABC

A federal judge in Minnesota has found MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell in contempt of court for failing to provide discovery and financial documents in the defamation case brought by voting machine company Smartmatic. Smartmatic sued Lindell for defamation in 2022, alleging that he lied about the company’s role in the 2020 presidential election for his own financial gain. In a filing on Thursday, Judge Jeffrey M. Bryan said Lindell failed to produce analytics data for his company’s website and financial records to show Lindell’s financial condition for the years 2022 and 2023. Read Articles

National: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves | Elisabeth Bumiller/The New York Times

The silence grows louder every day. Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute. Even longtime Republican hawks on Capitol Hill, stunned by President Trump’s revisionist history that Ukraine is to blame for its invasion by Russia, and his Oval Office blowup at President Volodymyr Zelensky, have either muzzled themselves, tiptoed up to criticism without naming Mr. Trump or completely reversed their positions. More than six weeks into the second Trump administration, there is a chill spreading over political debate in Washington and beyond. Read Article

Alabama House committee advances post-election audit bill | Craig Monger/1819 News

For the third year in a row, the House Ways and Mean General Fund Committee voted to advance a bill by State Rep. Debbie Wood (R-Valley) requiring probate judges in each county to conduct a post-election audit after every county and statewide general election. Despite receiving broad support from lawmakers and the state Republican Party, the bill has failed to pass in the previous two legislative sessions. This year’s version, House Bill 30 (HB30), requires the probate judge of each county to order a post-election audit after every county and statewide general election of all ballots in one precinct of a countywide or statewide race, selected by the canvassing board of each county, so long as that election is not subject to a recount. Read Article

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