Texas: Eastland County’s hand count of Republican primary ballots stretched into Wednesday as residents waited on results | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Just after midnight, as Election Day became Wednesday, workers at a polling place in the city of Rising Star called Eastland County election administrator Temi Nichols with a problem. They told Nichols some workers tasked with hand counting the GOP ballots cast at that location had decided to call it quits, she told a reporter afterwards, and she tried to talk those on the phone out of joining them “Please don’t load up and take off,” Nichols said. The workers on the other end of the phone said they weren’t sure how to read the tally sheets the other workers had left behind or fill out the required paperwork, among other things, according to Nichols. They asked her if they could go home and finish counting in the morning. Read Article

Wisconsin Senate lags on election bills without dedicated committee | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

When this legislative session began, Wisconsin Senate leaders made the unusual decision not to create a committee dedicated to election policy for the first time in nearly two decades. That choice has had a measurable consequence: The Senate has taken up far fewer election bills than the Assembly, and several measures that cleared the lower chamber are now stalled with no clear path forward. Of the 19 election bills that Votebeat has tracked this legislative session, 18 have gotten at least a public committee hearing in the Assembly, compared with nine in the Senate. Fourteen of those bills passed the Assembly, compared with six in the Senate. Even in a session when the Senate has generally moved more slowly than the Assembly on many issues — as of Feb. 25, the Assembly has passed 439 bills since the start of the current two-year session, while the Senate has passed 276 — the disparity is especially stark on elections. Read Article

Wyoming: “Hands On Everything”: Clerk Warns Of Tampering Risk As Voting Machine Bill Passes | David Madison/Cowboy State Daily

During a conference committee hearing Wednesday on Senate File 28, Fremont County Clerk Julie Freese told lawmakers about a previous public testing of voting equipment in the state where observers crossed a line. “They had their hands on everything and had stuff with them,” Freese said, without identifying the county. The account underscored her central argument: that county clerks must retain discretion to control who enters secure election spaces and how many people can be present during mandatory pre-election equipment tests. In a follow-up interview after the hearing, Freese provided a fuller picture of the incident, which she said was relayed to her by another clerk. The testing had taken place in a room that also contained boxes of county records — a common reality in Wyoming’s smaller courthouses. Read Article

National: Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency | Isaac Arnsdorf/The Washington Post

Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting. Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there is no national emergency. “We’ve been raising the alarm for weeks about President Trump’s attacks on our elections and now we’re seeing reports that outline how they may be planning to do it,” Warner said in a statement in response to this article. “This is a plot to interfere with the will of voters and undermine both the rule of law and public confidence in our elections.” Read Article

National: The laughable legal memo behind the claim that Trump can declare a national voting emergency | Matt Cohen and Jim Saksa/Democracy Docket

Peter Ticktin, the Florida-based lawyer leading an effort to have President Donald Trump issue an executive order declaring a national emergency to enable a federal takeover of the upcoming midterm elections, shared his reasoning with Democracy Docket Thursday. It was quickly torn to pieces by a leading expert on the president’s emergency powers. Shortly after the Washington Post reported that the White House was taking Ticktin’s plan seriously, legal experts responded with ridicule, noting how blatantly unconstitutional it would be. But Ticktin’s reasoning appears more flawed still, relying on economic sanctions law that conveys no authority whatsoever to block mail-in ballots or seize voting machines. Read Aricle

National: Trump’s push for election power raises fears he will ‘subvert’ midterms | Shane Goldmacher and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Ahead of the midterm elections, an emboldened U.S. President
Donald Trump has shown an increased eagerness to leverage the full investigative, prosecutorial and legislative powers of the federal government to bend election mechanics to his will. With his words and deeds, the president — who pushed to overturn his 2020 defeat but declared his 2024 victory legitimate — appears to be undermining Americans’ trust that the midterms will be free and fair. As the political environment darkens for his party, Trump is again warning Republicans that Democrats are going to rig the results. At the same time, he is taking actions that make Democrats fear that Republicans are actually going to subvert the election. Read Article

National: Republican voter ID bill stalls in Senate despite Trump demands | Mary Clare Jalonick/Associated Press

Election-year legislation to impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements on voting appears stalled in the Senate, for now, despite President Donald Trump’s call in his State of the Union speech that Republicans in Congress pass the bill “before anything else.” Trump’s push for the bill, backed by House conservatives and his most loyal supporters ahead of the midterm elections, has put new pressure on Senate Majority Leader John Thune as he tries to navigate an effort from inside and outside Congress to bypass normal Senate procedure. Thune has said he supports the legislation and that his GOP conference is still discussing how to pass it. Senate Republicans “aren’t unified on an approach,” Thune said on Wednesday after Trump’s speech. In an effort to get around Democratic opposition, Trump and others have pushed a so-called “talking filibuster,” which would bring the Senate back to the days of the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” when senators talked indefinitely to block legislation. Today, the Senate mostly skips the speeches and votes to end debate, which takes 60 votes in the Senate where Republicans have a 53-47 majority. Read Article

National: Trump’s Favorite Voter-ID Bill Would Probably Backfire | Marc Novicoff/The Atlantic

On the surface, the debate over the SAVE America Act is familiar, even predictable. At Donald Trump’s urging, Republicans are pushing yet another voter-ID bill, ostensibly to prevent fraud and noncitizen voting. Democrats are opposing the bill on the grounds that voter fraud is negligible and that the law is really meant to disenfranchise their supporters. But upon closer inspection, something very strange is going on. For decades, the politics of voter-ID battles were based on a simple premise: The voters most likely to be screened out by such restrictions were probably Democrats. In 2024, however, that fact stopped being true. Trump beat Kamala Harris among voters who didn’t regularly participate in elections. In the low-turnout, off-cycle elections that have happened since then, Democrats have overperformed dramatically, suggesting that their advantage with the most educated, plugged-in voters remains strong. In other words, the politics of voter ID have not caught up to its new partisan implications. Making voting more difficult would most likely hurt Republicans’ chances, yet they’re pushing hard to make that happen; meanwhile, Democrats, who insist that Trump and a MAGA Congress are existential threats to American democracy, refuse on principle to help Republicans sabotage themselves. Read Article

National: Democratic Attorneys General plot to thwart Trump election interference | Lisa Kashinsky/Politico

Democratic attorneys general are bracing for President Donald Trump to interfere in the midterm elections — and war-gaming how to stop him. The party’s top prosecutors have been strategizing for months about how to counter a series of increasingly extreme scenarios they fear could play out this fall. They have huddled in hotel conference rooms and over Zoom meetings to run tabletop exercises anticipating the president’s moves and choreographing responses. They’re preparing for the administration to potentially confiscate ballots and voting machines, strip resources from the postal service to disrupt the delivery of mail ballots, and send military members and immigration agents to polling locations to intimidate voters. They’re readying motions for temporary restraining orders to preserve election materials and remove armed forces from voting sites. Read Article

National: In an Intense Election Year, New Post Office Rules Could Trip Up Voter Registration | Pascal Sabino/Bolts

The U.S. Postal Service began piloting a cost-cutting plan in 2023 to remove the machines that sort and postmark mail from local offices and instead consolidate mail processing in regional centers. As they rolled out the program nationwide, Jeremy Schilling, president of a local chapter of the American Postal Workers Union in Oregon, was one of those who spoke out about the adverse effects. His union organized demonstrations against the consolidation plan and blew the whistle on election mail that fell through the cracks due to the slowdown amid the 2024 presidential race. Election mail that people leave at their local post office in Southern Oregon, where Schilling is based, typically sits overnight until it is collected in the morning since evening dispatches were slashed nationwide at the end of last year. The mail is then trucked nearly 300 miles to a Portland facility that processes mail for most of the state, where it is postmarked, then sent back to the local post office for delivery. “Any mail that’s getting dropped into a blue box is not getting postmarked on the same day, and likely not on the day after either,” Schilling said. “The mail is so slow that it is an unreasonable amount of lead time that the normal person wouldn’t expect.” Read Article

National: DHS official promises election officials that ICE will not be at polling places | Andrew Howard and Erin Doherty/Politico

A top Department of Homeland Security official vowed during a private call with election officials Wednesday that immigration officers will not be stationed at polling places in November amid Democratic warnings about interference in the midterms by the federal government. Heather Honey, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, dismissed as “disinformation” any fears that officers from Immigration Customs and Enforcement would be deployed to the polls as part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing mass deportation campaign. “Any suggestion that ICE is going to be present at polling places is simply disinformation,” Honey said, according to four people on the call who were granted anonymity to discuss it. “There will be no ICE presence at polling locations.” Read Article

Opinion: How can the Supreme Court protect electoral integrity? | Edward Foley/SCOTUSblog

The court has already confronted cases concerning the midterms, like the efforts to re-gerrymander already gerrymandered congressional districts for even more partisan advantage. And undoubtedly, the court will face many more issues before ballots are cast in the upcoming fall. But there is one specific possibility that I want to consider now because it’s especially crucial that the court be prepared to act proactively, so as to avoid electoral subversion that can’t be remedied after it has occurred. The threat is that President Donald Trump will order FBI, or perhaps other federal officers, to seize ballots in key congressional districts, so that the results of those elections cannot be certified before Jan. 3, 2027, when the new Congress is scheduled to meet and elect the Speaker of the House. Indeed, federal seizure of ballots potentially could irrevocably destroy the essential chain-of-custody of those ballots, preventing those elections from ever being certified and requiring instead another round of voting in those districts. But meanwhile the House Speakership election would go forward without Members-elect from the affected districts, potentially determining which political party controls the House of Representatives without the input from all of America’s voters – a deliberate denial of democracy if ever there was one. Read Article

Arizona’s ICE-at-polls bill is dead for now, but backers can revive it | Caitlin Sievers/Arizona Mirror

People packed into an Arizona Senate Committee room on Friday, waiting hours to protest a Republican plan to station federal immigration officers at Arizona polling places in November. But those protestors were disappointed when the measure was suddenly spiked at the end of the six-hour meeting because its sponsor was ill, according to Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee Chairwoman Wendy Rogers. The failure to hear the bill in the committee on Friday likely kills the specific piece of legislation, though the idea is likely to be resurrected. Friday was the deadline for legislative committees to consider legislation in its chamber of origin. But there are parliamentary moves that allow proposals that failed to be revived. Read Article

Colorado secretary of state says feds have ‘lost credibility’ on elections after FBI call  | Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said President Donald Trump’s administration has “lost credibility” on election security issues after a Wednesday call between top state elections officials and federal law enforcement agencies. Griswold, a Democrat who is also a 2026 candidate for Colorado attorney general, echoed concerns from other Democratic secretaries of state over what they characterized as administration officials’ refusal to acknowledge states’ constitutional role in overseeing U.S. elections. Staff from Griswold’s office participated in the call, which was organized earlier this month by FBI election executive Kellie Hardiman. It included representatives from the FBI, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Election Assistance Commission. “Unfortunately, there’s just not a lot of confidence or trust at this point with previously important federal relationships,” Griswold said. Read Article

Florida plan to verify citizenship could snare lawful registered voters in bureaucratic morass | Anthony Man/South Florida Sun Sentinel

An effort in the Florida Legislature sounds simple and straightforward: ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in state elections. Republicans who control the state Senate and House of Representatives are advancing legislation they say would do just that, brushing aside warnings that they are about to create a logistical and bureaucratic morass — that could result in thousands of citizens losing their ability to vote. They envision a far-reaching effort, with two central components. Registered voters who change their party affiliation; their address; or their name after marriage, divorce or some other reason would have to produce documentation proving their citizenship to a county elections office. All existing registered voters would be checked against the state’s driver license database to flag anyone who hasn’t previously produced proof of citizenship, a process that depends on the technology working — even though sponsors aren’t allocating money for tech upgrades. Read Article

Georgia: Election skeptics convinced criminal charges coming in Fulton County election case | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Voting integrity advocates who believe the 2020 election was rife with fraud have been jubilant since the FBI seized Fulton County’s ballots last month. They’ve been hailed as heroes for keeping the issue alive until the FBI intervened. And they’re convinced that prosecutions of election officials, politicians and even judges are coming. Election and legal…

Indiana election bill would undermine secret ballots for early voters | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

For more than a century, American elections have operated around a simple promise: who you voted for is a secret. But a bill moving through the Indiana legislature would undermine that promise — at least for people who vote early. House Bill 1359 would let counties have early voters feed their completed ballots directly into a scanning machine instead of placing them in a sealed secrecy envelope. It would then allow those ballots to be scanned starting on the first day of early voting, rather than waiting until closer to Election Day. On its own, that process isn’t unusual — it’s similar to how ballots are handled at in-person polling places on Election Day. But the bill also authorizes counties to generate a unique identifier connected to each voter during early voting, print that number on the voter’s ballot, and allow officials to retract a scanned ballot if its voter is later found ineligible. That combination weakens the traditional separation between a voter’s identity and the ballot they cast. Read Article

Kansas Court of Appeals examines arguments on constitutionality of state ban on ‘fusion voting’ | Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector

Members of a three-judge Kansas Court of Appeals panel on Tuesday pushed a United Kansas Party attorney to explain why they didn’t take their fight to the Legislature to change a state law banning multi-party nominations of the same candidate. Saline County District Judge Jared Johnson last year tossed United Kansas Party’s lawsuit seeking to allow “fusion voting” by deciding the state made a strong argument that nomination of a candidate by more than one party in the same election cycle could undermine competition while elevating voter confusion and weakening voter confidence in elections. United Kansas Party appealed its First Amendment case to the state Court of Appeals by arguing the case should be sent back to district court for reconsideration under standards more favorable to the idea of striking down the law. Read Article

Michigan: Uncertainties facing election officials mount ahead of key election | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

Michigan election officials are facing increasing scrutiny from some politicians and a presidential threat of federal intervention, which some expect to be attempted in the coming months, to begin the pivotal 2026 campaign year. Republican President Donald Trump has floated the idea of having federal officials take over local responsibilities for administering elections. He’s also used social media to promote five-year-old and dubious claims of voter fraud centered on Michigan. A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Friday that Michigan leaders were preparing for a “range of potential threats.” Despite the array of pressures — including a push for funding for new equipment and a petition campaign on voter eligibility — some of the clerks who administer elections in Michigan’s largest cities said they’ll continue to be focused on ensuring the law is followed. “They will not betray their oath because of any type of effort by any elected official, whether it be Donald Trump or anyone else,” said Michael Siegrist, the clerk in Wayne County’s Canton Township. Read Article

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

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