Colorado: Justice Department is reviewing prosecution of clerk who supported Trump’s election lies | Nicholas Riccardi and hristina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The Department of Justice is backing a former county election clerk in Colorado who was convicted for her role in allowing supporters of President Donald Trump to access confidential data about the 2020 election, the latest move by the administration to use its power to reward allies who violated the law on the president’s behalf. Peters has become a celebrity in the world of those who embrace Trump’s lies that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud. Her supporters have been pushing the new Republican administration to pressure Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, to pardon her. Read Article

Georgia: ‘Trump asked for paper ballots’: State Senator files bill to remove electronic voting machines | Sarah Dolgin/Chattanooga Times Free Press

Georgia Senator Colton Moore A Northwest Georgia senator has filed a bill that would require the state to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in elections. “I know many of you listen to everything that President Trump says, and you may have noticed a week or two ago, President Trump asked for paper ballots,” Moore said, “and I have a piece of legislation that accomplishes that very thing.” SB 303 would transfer the power to select and certify a statewide voting system from the secretary of state to the state election board. The legislation would require the use of hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots and require the absentee ballot scanning process to conform to the new system. It would also require the state to repeal any conflicting laws. Read Article

Michigan plans to remove 318,000 inactive voters | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office announced Tuesday morning it will remove more than 318,000 inactive registrations from the state’s voter rolls in April. The number represents about 4% of the total registered voters in Michigan, where debates over election law have been persistent amid close presidential elections in 2016, 2020 and 2024. “This is a milestone for Michigan’s secure and accessible election system,” Benson said in a statement. “State and local election officials are constantly working to maintain our voter rolls transparently, accurately and in accordance with state and federal law.” Read Article

New Jersey’s ballot design that gave party bosses big influence is officially dead | Ry Rivard/Politico

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Thursday signed into law a redesign of primary ballots, formally ending an entrenched system that gave unique influence to the state’s party bosses but faced an unexpected wave of opposition. It’s known as the county line and was an only-in-Jersey phenomenon that faced a reckoning following the 2023 indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez. But it became a strange vestige of Tammany Hall-era machine politics that then-Gov. Woodrow Wilson tried to snuff out over a century ago. The county line system gave political parties in all but two of the state’s 21 counties the power to help design primary ballots based on party endorsements. Party-backed candidates were grouped together while candidates without endorsements were displayed awkwardly or on obscure parts of the ballot. Getting the line could make or break a campaign. Read Article

North Carolina: Seeking to avoid repeat of Supreme Court election lawsuit, lawmakers eye changes for overseas voters | By Will Doran/WRAL

Democrats in the state legislature are planning to file a bill aimed directly at one of the legal tactics employed by Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin in his attempt to reverse the results of the 2024 election for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat. Griffin wants to throw out more than 60,000 voters’ ballots, including thousands of ballots cast by overseas voters. The state didn’t require overseas voters to show photo identification in 2024, even though most other voters did have to show ID. Griffin contends that’s wrong, and that their ballots shouldn’t count. No legislation would be able to shut down Griffin’s lawsuit as it plays out in the courts, but Democrats believe their proposal will at least stop future lawsuits from targeting overseas voters like deployed members of the military, by making it clear that they don’t have to show ID. Read Article

Pennsylvania to update SURE election and voter registration system | Jordan Wilkie/WITF

The Department of State has selected a contractor to update the state’s 22-year-old voter registration system. Over the next three years, a technology company called Civix will modernize Pennsylvania’s voter registration, election-night reporting, lobbying disclosure and campaign finance systems. SURE and systems like it are already doing far more than they were originally designed to do back in 2002, when Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, requiring states to have unified voter registration systems. “When HAVA initially required voter registration databases, they really were just lists of registered voters,” said Megan Maier, deputy director of research and partnerships at the election technology nonprofit Verified Voting. The system was not designed to handle the over 1.8 million mail-in ballots Pennsylvania voters returned in the 2024 general election, for example. Read Article

Texas proposal would ease polling place requirements for countywide voting | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas state senators Thursday held a public hearing on legislation crafted to update a 2023 law requiring certain counties to drastically increase the number of polling locations if they use vote centers for countywide voting. Last year, Votebeat reported that election officials in several counties said they were struggling to comply with the law as written. “Most election administrators and county clerks will tell you they’re struggling to find workers on Election Day,” Bettencourt said during the hearing Thursday. He cited an example reported by Votebeat last year of election officials in Brazos County who said they were struggling to comply with the law. Read Article

Washington Supreme Court rejects challenge to mail-in ballot signature verification process | Monique Merrill/Courthouse News Service

Washington state’s mail-in ballot process that requires election workers to verify ballot signatures will remain in place, the state’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. “The undisputed fact that signature verification results in tens of thousands of votes being disqualified every election raises significant constitutional concerns,” Washington Supreme Court Justice Steven Gonzalez wrote in the 32-page opinion. However, the high court determined that the law at issue does not itself require election workers to disqualify a single valid ballot, and the opportunities to cure rejected ballots don’t exclude or unduly burden voters. Read Article

Wisconsin voters give notice they’re suing over misplaced ballots in the November election | Scott Bauer/Associated Press

Four Wisconsin voters whose ballots were not counted in the November presidential election initiated a class-action lawsuit Thursday seeking $175,000 in damages each. The voters were among 193 in Madison whose ballots were misplaced by the city clerk and not discovered until weeks after the election. Not counting the ballots didn’t affect the result of any races. The Wisconsin Elections Commission investigated but did not determine whether Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl failed to comply with state law or abused her discretion. She didn’t notify the elections commission of the problem until December, almost a month and a half after the election and after the results were certified on Nov. 29. Read Article

Wyoming: Bills banning ballot drop boxes, touch screen voting machines fail in Senate | Hannah Shields/Wyoming Tribune Eagle

A majority of Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s election integrity bills died Friday night after failing to pass first reading in the Wyoming Senate, including two that threatened to “upend” Laramie County elections, according to County Clerk Debra Lee. A large number of election-related bills were filed this session, making up 8% of total proposed legislation, according to WyoFile.com. House Bill 245, “Pen and paper ballots,” would have removed touch-screen voting machines that have been used by Laramie County voters for decades. Lee previously told lawmakers this bill would “upend” elections in her county. Read Article

National: Trump keeps cutting election security jobs. Here’s what’s at risk | Jocelyn Mintz/Fast Company

As the Trump administration continues to dismantle federal agencies, one that plays a critical role in U.S. infrastructure and election security faces an uncertain future. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), housed in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and tasked with enforcing cybersecurity and protecting American infrastructure across all levels of government, placed multiple members of its election security team on administrative leave over the last few weeks. The 17 reported election security team members, part of the agency’s foreign influence and disinformation teams, were placed on administrative leave as part of an overall review of the team, with a particular focus on those two operations. A DHS spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that number. On Friday, the Trump administration separately fired more than 130 members of CISA, the DHS confirmed. Read Article

National: Mac Warner, Who Said CIA Stole Election, Now Leads DOJ Civil Rights | Ben Penn/Bloomberg Law

The Justice Department has inserted Mac Warner, who last year espoused false claims that the CIA stole Trump’s 2020 presidential victory with the FBI’s help, to run the civil rights division, replacing an ousted career official who’s started reporting to the new sanctuary cities office. Warner, West Virginia’s former secretary of state, embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election while running in the state’s GOP gubernatorial primary. Warner told DOJ civil rights staff Monday that he’s assumed control of the division, according to an email obtained by Bloomberg Law. He’ll function as the top official until Harmeet Dhillon, another 2020 election denier who Trump selected to lead the anti-discrimination enforcement office, wins Senate confirmation. Read Article

National: Fact-check: Trump relies on falsehoods when pushing voting changes in speech to governors | Amy Sherman/PolitiFact

President Donald Trump told governors to change their election laws and repeated falsehoods and misleading statements to make his case for new voting policies. If states required “proof of citizenship, voter ID, paper ballots, one day voting,” Trump said, it would result in knowing “the results of your election by 10 p.m.” What Trump leaves out: The vast majority of U.S. voters already use paper ballots; a majority of states require voter ID at the polls; and only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. Read Article

National: State Election Officials Seek to Avert Deeper Cuts | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Alarmed by cuts already made to federal agencies that help safeguard elections, and fearful that more could be coming, a bipartisan group of the nation’s top state election officials has appealed to Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, for help. In a rare move, the ordinarily restrained National Association of Secretaries of State wrote to Ms. Noem, the former South Dakota governor, on Friday asking that critical election programs and protections be spared during an upcoming agency review. Among the programs the group singled out for preservation were those aimed at assessing the physical security of voting locations and election offices, shoring up cybersecurity for election offices, sharing classified intelligence on foreign threats to elections and responding to attacks like ransomware. Read Article

National: Election systems feared to be vulnerable as Trump administration cuts workers tasked with security | Nicole Sganga/CBS

Over the last month, the U.S. government has worked quickly to pause, disband and dismantle the U.S. effort to fight foreign meddling in elections, raising concern among federal lawmakers and election officials across the country who rely on the federal cybersecurity agency and its counterparts to warn them about attacks on election systems. First came a flurry of notices forcing out Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency personnel who are tasked with stopping foreign interference in U.S. elections — at least a dozen have been put on leave or fired over the past month. Then, on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s first day in office on Feb. 5, she disbanded the FBI task force targeting foreign influence operations originating from places like Russia, China and Iran. Read Article

National: CISA layoffs do foreign disinformation peddlers a massive favor | Gintaras Radauskas/Cybernews

At the beginning of February, staff at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), who are focused on disinformation and influence operations, were placed on leave, sparking concerns about the future of American efforts to counter digital threats under the new administration. For good measure, Pam Bondi, the new Attorney General, also dissolved an FBI task force formed in response to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections that worked to sniff out efforts by Russia, China, or Iran to manipulate US voters. These moves aren’t surprising as they originate from within an administration that has consistently claimed that even merely pointing out potential disinformation is censorship in disguise. Read Article

National: Experts warn the proposed SAVE Act could make it harder for some married women to vote. Here’s who could be affected. | Alex Clark/CBS

A claim circulating on social media suggests that married people who changed their last name will face difficulties when trying to vote under the proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. Experts say the bill, which was recently reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, would not explicitly prevent these voters from casting a ballot, but it could create barriers to registration by requiring them to show additional documentation. If passed, the act would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to offer voter registration when obtaining a driver’s license, to mandate documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration. Read Article

Arizona voter proof-of-citizenship laws blocked by federal appeals court | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Two Arizona laws that restrict voting by people who don’t prove their U.S. citizenship are “unlawful measures of voter suppression,” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. The appeals court on Tuesday upheld a 2023 decision from the U.S. District Court of Arizona that found many provisions of two 2022 Republican-backed laws unconstitutional. That includes one provision that prohibits voters who don’t prove citizenship from voting for president, and another that prohibits them from voting by mail. The judges also found that the state must allow voters who don’t prove citizenship to vote in federal elections even if they use a state voter registration form. Read Article

Georgia election board drops suit after group fails to produce ballot-stuffing evidence | Kate Brumback/Associated Press

The Georgia State Election Board on Wednesday voted to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to enforce a subpoena against a conservative group that was unable to produce evidence to support its claims of ballot stuffing in the state. Texas-based True the Vote in 2021 filed complaints with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, including one in which it said it had obtained “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the November 2020 election and a crucial runoff election for two U.S. Senate seats in January 2021. Investigators with the secretary’s office looked into the group’s complaints and in April 2022 subpoenaed True the Vote for evidence supporting its allegations. A lawyer for the group wrote to a state attorney in May 2023 that a complete response would require it to identify people to whom it had pledged confidentiality and said it was withdrawing its complaints. Read Article

Massachusetts: Citing lapses, state to oversee Boston’s elections department | Matt Stout/Boston Globe

Secretary of State William F. Galvin said he’s appointing a receiver inside the city of Boston’s Elections Commission to help oversee the department through 2026, including for this year’s mayoral vote, after the department stumbled through several “unacceptable” problems last fall. Galvin released an order Monday mandating several changes in the department after his office investigated and confirmed complaints that polling locations in the city didn’t receive enough ballots during November’s election. State officials had been in talks with city officials, but Galvin said in a Globe interview that he determined last week they wouldn’t be able to reach a voluntary settlement that “was sufficient.” Read Article

Load more