Wisconsin Elections Commission challenges Madison absentee voting argument | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, filing its first ever friend-of-the-court brief, challenged Madison’s controversial legal argument that it should not be financially liable for 193 uncounted ballots in the 2024 presidential election because of a state law that calls absentee voting a privilege, not a right. The argument presented by city officials misunderstands what “privilege” means in the context of absentee voting and “enjoys no support in the constitution or case law,” the commission wrote in its filing Tuesday, echoing a similar rebuke by Gov. Tony Evers last month. “Once an elector has complied with the statutory process, whether absentee or in-person, she has a constitutional right to have her vote counted,” the commission said. Read Article

National: FBI’s Georgia raid highlights Trump’s obsession with 2020 election | Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020. But for more than five years, he’s been trying to convince Americans the opposite is true by falsely saying the election was marred by widespread fraud. Now that he’s president again, Trump is pushing the federal government to back up those bogus claims. On Wednesday, the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, seeking ballots from the 2020 election. That follows Trump’s comments earlier this month when he suggested during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that charges related to the election were imminent. “The man has obsessions, as do a fair number of people, but he’s the only one who has the full power of the United States behind him,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor. Read Article

National: Secret US cyber operations shielded 2024 election from foreign trolls, but now the Trump admin has gutted protections | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

Weeks before the 2024 election, American military hackers carried out a secret operation to disrupt the work of Russian trolls spewing false information at US voters. From their perch at Cyber Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, the military hackers took aim at the computer servers and key personnel of at least two Russian companies that were covertly pumping out the propaganda, according to multiple sources briefed on the operation. The trolls were trying to influence election results in six swing states by publishing fictitious news stories that attacked American politicians who supported Ukraine. One of the companies had held “strategy meetings” with Kremlin officials on how to covertly influence US voters, according to an FBI affidavit. In one case, the Cyber Command operatives planned to knock offline computer servers based in a European country that one of the Russian companies used, the sources said. Though the Russian trolls continued to create content through Election Day, when President Donald Trump defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris, one source briefed on the hacking effort said it successfully slowed down the Russians’ operations. Read Article

National: Why Trump can’t cancel the 2026 midterms — and why that fear distracts from the real risk | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump floated the idea of canceling the 2026 midterm elections, drawing widespread attention and concern even as White House officials later dismissed the remarks as facetious. But election experts consistently agree that Trump has neither the legal authority nor the practical ability to cancel elections. And state and local election officials consistently say they will carry out the elections they’re legally required to run. The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact. Read Article

National: AI and Elections: What to Watch for in 2026 | Chris McIsaac/Street Institute

The 2026 midterm elections are right around the corner, which means Americans are bracing for the onslaught of campaign advertisements, fundraising solicitations, and media coverage of the contests that will determine control of the U.S. Congress and state capitols across the nation. If 2024 was any indication, artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to disrupt American elections will feature prominently in the national dialogue leading up to November. While AI’s actual impacts were far less than originally feared, the rapid improvement of AI tools raises concerns that 2026 could be the year its harmful effects come to full fruition. Despite its characterization as a tool of electoral deception, AI presents a mix of opportunities and risks. This piece provides an overview of AI’s impact on the election ecosystem and the potential issues policymakers should consider when determining how to adapt and respond during this contentious election year. Read Article

National: Spy Chief Tulsi Gabbard Is Hunting for 2020 Election Fraud | Josh Dawsey/The Wall Street Journal

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has spent months investigating the results of the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost, according to White House officials, a role that took her to a related FBI search of an election center in Georgia on Wednesday. Gabbard is leading the administration’s effort to re-examine the election and look for potential crimes, a priority for the president, the officials said. The national intelligence director is usually focused on ensuring the president has the best intelligence available to make national-security decisions. Gabbard has been sidelined from some of those deliberations, including the Venezuela operation earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Read Article

National: New GOP anti-voting bill may be the most dangerous attack on voting rights ever | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

Republicans in Congress have unveiled a new bill that would impose the most extreme voting restrictions ever proposed at the federal level. The new bill goes far beyond even the SAVE Act, which the House passed last year and which one historian called “the most extraordinary attack on voting rights in American history.” It’s being unveiled at a time when GOP anti-voting legislation has been steadily gaining GOP support in the Senate, after a push by President Donald Trump and anti-voting groups. Introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), the chair of the House Administration Committee, the proposal is called the Make Elections Great Again Act, or MEGA Act — a name deliberately echoing President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Read Article

National: CISA chief uploaded sensitive government files to public ChatGPT | Gyana Swain/CSO Online

The acting director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency uploaded sensitive government contracting documents to a public version of ChatGPT last summer, triggering automated security alerts and raising questions about AI governance at the agency responsible for defending federal networks and critical infrastructure. Madhu Gottumukkala, who has led CISA since May 2025, uploaded at least four documents marked “for official use only” to OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform between mid-July and early August, Politico reported. The documents contained contracting information not intended for public release. Cybersecurity sensors detected the activity in early August, generating several alerts in the first week alone, according to the report citing four Department of Homeland Security officials. Read Article

National: DHS’s Data Grab Is Getting Citizens Kicked Off Voter Rolls, New Complaint Says | Vittoria Elliott/WIRED

Even before winning reelection, President Donald Trump and his supporters put immigration at the center of their messaging. In addition to other conspiracy theories, the right-wing went all in on the false claim that immigrants were voting illegally in large numbers. The Trump administration has since poured billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, and in March, Trump issued an executive order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that states have “access to appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.” In May, DHS began encouraging states to check their voter rolls against immigration data with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, run by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). SAVE now has access to data from across the federal government, not just on immigrants but on citizens as well. Experts have warned that using disparate sources of data—all collected for different purposes–could lead to errors, including identifying US citizens as noncitizens. According to the plaintiffs in a new legal complaint, it appears that it’s already happening. Read Article

Arizona GOP leaders ask Arizona’s high court to let counties reject election results | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

The state’s top two Republican lawmakers are asking the Arizona Supreme Court to rule that county supervisors don’t have to accept the vote total figures they get from election officials. In a new filing, attorneys for Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro argue that supervisors have “discretion” to determine whether to certify…

Georgia: FBI seizes 2020 ballots in Fulton County in apparently unprecedented action, alarming local officials | Luke Barr, Olivia Rubin, and Pierre Thomas/ABC

Fulton County, Georgia, officials said Wednesday that the FBI seized original 2020 voting records while serving a search warrant at the county’s Elections Hub and Operations Center. The FBI earlier Wednesday said they were conducting court-authorized activity at the facility. The development comes after President Donald Trump has repeatedly said there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss. Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election. Fulton County officials expressed concern over the seizure of the ballots. “These are the original voting records, original absentee ballots,” Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington, a Democrat, told ABC News regarding the materials seized by the FBI. “Once that stuff leaves our custody, where is the chain of custody? How can we know if we’re going to get everything back? How can we know if they might do something mischievous?” Read Article

Hawaii House GOP Caucus Wants Voters To Pick Chief Election Officer | Chad Blair/Honolulu Civil Beat

Hawaiʻi GOP lawmakers rolled out their priorities for the legislative session on Thursday in an announcement that was critical of their Democratic counterparts for focusing too much on the Trump administration and its potential impact on the state budget. “What a waste of time. Not one issue about Hawaiʻi was mentioned,” Rep. Diamond Garcia, one of the House’s most outspoken members, said about the Democrats’ opening day speeches and press conferences. “It was about Trump, it was about ICE, it was about ski masks, it was about Greenland, it was about whatever else but the issues facing Hawaiʻi.” On Thursday, Garcia and seven of his GOP colleagues (sans Rep. Kanani Souza, who charts an independent course) held a press conference at the Capitol Rotunda to introduce their package of 2026 bills. Read Article

Michigan Secretary of State says flawed review risks disenfranchising eligible Michigan voters | Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says some Michigan voters may be at risk of criminal investigation or having voter registration cancelled after a Republican county clerk made claims that he found proof of non-citizens voting in Michigan. She said an investigation into Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini’s allegations that he had identified 15 non-citizens who were registered to vote in Michigan returned mixed results. Of the 15 residents flagged by Forlini, the Bureau of Elections identified four apparent non-citizens who are registered to vote in Michigan. The Michigan Department of State will send them a letter asking to confirm their eligibility to vote and will cancel their registration if they don’t respond. Read ‘Article

Minnesota Gov. Walz appears unimpressed by Pam Bondi’s demands | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Monday confirmed to the press that he received a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi over the weekend demanding that the state better cooperate with federal immigration authorities and that it hand over its voter registration lists and safety-net benefits data. Whether the nation’s chief law enforcement officer should expect the governor to bend to her demands was perhaps made clear by his rejoinder: “There’s two million documents in the Epstein files we’re still waiting on. Go ahead and work on those.” Bondi’s letter on Saturday described Operation Metro Surge, the name Immigration and Customs Enforcement gives its Minnesota activities, as an urgent effort “to protect Americans from the dangers presented by unchecked illegal immigration, including violent crime,” but that has received scant support from local law enforcement, detention centers, officials or residents. She recalled that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told ICE during a recent press conference that it should “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” Read Article

North Carolina students sue election officials over rejection of campus voting sites | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

A group of college students from three North Carolina universities — including the nation’s largest HBCU — filed a federal lawsuit against North Carolina election officials on Tuesday after the state rejected efforts to place early voting sites on their campuses. The lawsuit, which asks the court to order the restoration of the voting sites before early voting begins next month, accuses North Carolina’s Republican-led State Board of Elections of “targeted efforts to place additional, unnecessary, burdensome, and ultimately unjustifiable obstacles” on students. The litigation comes just weeks after the elections board voted against including on-campus early voting sites at Western Carolina University, UNC Greensboro and NC A&T State University. Read Article

Oregon: Federal judge dismisses Justice Department lawsuit seeking voter rolls | Claire Rush/Associated Press

A federal judge in Oregon dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking Oregon’s unredacted voter rolls on Monday in another setback to wide-ranging efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to get detailed voter data from states. In a hearing, U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai said he would dismiss the suit and issue a final written opinion in the coming days. The updated docket for the case showed that Oregon’s move to dismiss the case was granted. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield welcomed the move. “The court dismissed this case because the federal government never met the legal standard to get these records in the first place,” he said in an emailed statement. “Oregonians deserve to know that voting laws can’t be used as a backdoor to grab their personal information.” Read Article

South Dakota Senate committee rejects on-demand ballot printing | Gracie Terrall/Keloland

A bill that would have allowed on-demand ballot printing for elections in South Dakota has died in the Senate State Affairs Committee. Senate Bill 28 would have allowed county auditors to purchase machines that print ballots on demand for Election Day. Supporters say the machines would cut back costs and time for printing bulk batches and having them shipped to precincts in a short amount of time. However, concerns over equipment malfunctions and tabulator machines potentially not being able to read the ballots correctly, led to a 7-1 vote against the bill. Read Article

Texas attorney general acted in bad faith against Latino civic group Jolt, judge rules | Eleanor Klibanoff and Alex Nguyen/The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton failed to offer “any plausible proof” that Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is violating the law, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Paxton had filed a lawsuit in state court accusing Jolt of submitting “unlawful voter registration applications,” specifying in a press release that the group was “attempting to register illegals, who are all criminals.” The suit, which seeks to revoke Jolt’s nonprofit charter through a legal mechanism known as a quo warranto petition, was put on ice by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, who said in his ruling that Paxton appears to be operating in bad faith. The attorney general’s case against Jolt “supposes absolutely no wrongdoing,” and indicates that the attorney general may be “harassing [Jolt] and fishing for reasons to investigate its organization.” Read Article

Wisconsin: Social media post shared by Trump misinterprets the way state manages its voter rolls | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

A misleading claim that Wisconsin has more registered voters than people eligible to vote is gaining traction on social media, including in posts shared this week by President Donald Trump. It’s just the latest in a long-running series of claims that misinterpret basic data about voter rolls to create alarm about the risk of voter fraud. The posts circulating this week cite videos asserting that Wisconsin’s voter rolls contain more than 7 million names — far more than the state’s voting age population — and are overlaid with text reading, “This Is Not a Glitch — This Is Election Fraud Waiting To Happen.” But the claim conflates two different datasets in Wisconsin’s voter registration system: the Wisconsin voter list and active registered voters. Read Article

National: Trump regrets not calling up troops after the 2020 election. What stops him in 2026? | Nathaniel Rakich/Votebeat

Regrets — we’ve all had a few. One of President Donald Trump’s, apparently, is not directing the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election in search of evidence of fraud. That revelation, part of a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Jan. 7, commands particular attention in a world where Trump has already sought to push the boundaries of his power, deploying the National Guard to multiple U.S. cities to crack down on protests and crime. The November midterms will be the first federal general election with Trump as president since that 2020 contest, and even before his comments to the Times, plenty of people were already worried that Trump would attempt to deploy the National Guard around the 2026 election. The National Guard isn’t necessarily the problem here; the Guard actually has a history of helping with election administration, such as when troops in civilian clothing helped fill in for absent poll workers during the pandemic in 2020. But many Democrats and election officials are worried that Trump could, say, send them to polling places to interfere with voting on Election Day. If troops were to take possession of voting machines or other equipment, it could break the chain of custody and invalidate scads of ballots. And if troops just show up outside polling places, even if they don’t try to impede the administration of the election, their presence could still intimidate voters. Read Article

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