One Year to Defend Elections | Michael Waldman/Brennan Center for Justice

On Monday, President Trump pardoned Rudy Giuliani and dozens of others who participated in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. It’s worth remembering exactly what they tried to do: Among those pardoned are the orchestrators of the so-called “fake electors” scheme — the attempt to replace certain states’ representatives in the Electoral College with Trump allies to certify false election results. If successful, it would have ended our country’s history of free and fair elections. Although the recipients can still face state prosecution, these acts of clemency — like the pardons of the January 6 insurrectionists — send a clear message: If you try to steal an election for his team, Donald Trump will have your back. In the states that voted last week, turnout was high and largely without incident, showing the resilience of America’s election system even at a moment of high tension. Next come the midterm elections a year from now, with control of Congress and many statehouses in the balance. Read Article

National: Donald Trump might challenge election results in 2026 | Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer/The Economist

On November 3rd 2026 Americans will vote in midterm elections to determine control of Congress. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House and a firmer grip on the Senate. The House race thus offers Democrats their best shot at putting some brakes on the Trump juggernaut. The midterms will unfold amid long-held public distrust of the electoral process—distrust that Donald Trump has been actively stoking. More ominously, under the banner of defending “honest elections”, he appears to be laying the groundwork to challenge and possibly manipulate them. His words and actions strongly suggest he may use the formidable powers of the presidency—and possibly even the armed forces—to resist 2026 electoral results he dislikes. Mr. Trump has long framed any electoral loss as proof of opponents’ fraud. He engaged in unprecedented efforts at the end of his first presidential term to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. His charges have weakened the once-bipartisan consensus that election administration should be insulated from politics. Read Article

National: CISA’s Cyber Collapse: Politics Gutting America’s Election Shields | Juan Vasquez/WPN

In the shadow of escalating cyber threats, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) finds itself at a crossroads. Once hailed as the nation’s bulwark against digital intrusions, CISA is now reeling from budget cuts, layoffs, and political pressures that have eroded its capacity to safeguard critical infrastructure, including election systems. As the U.S. grapples with foreign adversaries like Russia and China, experts warn that these internal fractures could leave the country vulnerable at a pivotal moment. Recent developments paint a grim picture. According to The Verge, cuts and politicization have made it increasingly difficult for stakeholders to rely on CISA. Published on November 10, 2025, the report highlights how these issues are compromising the agency’s role in protecting elections infrastructure amid a government shutdown. Read Article

National: Trump Loyalists Push ‘Grand Conspiracy’ as New Subpoenas Land | Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage/The New York Times

Far-right influencers have been hinting in recent weeks that they have finally found a venue — Miami — and a federal prosecutor — Jason A. Reding Quiñones — to pursue long-promised charges of a “grand conspiracy” against President Trump’s adversaries. Their theory of the case, still unsupported by the evidence: A cabal of Democrats and “deep-state” operatives, possibly led by former President Barack Obama, has worked to destroy Mr. Trump in a yearslong plot spanning the inquiry into his 2016 campaign to the charges he faced after leaving office. But that narrative, which has been promoted in general terms by Mr. Trump and taken root online, has emerged in a nascent but widening federal investigation. Read Article

National: Federal Judge, Warning of ‘Existential Threat’ to Democracy, Resigns | Mattathias Schwartz/The New York Times

A federal judge warned of an “existential threat to democracy” in a searing first-person essay published on Sunday, saying he had stepped down from the bench to speak out against President Trump. He accused Mr. Trump of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.” The judge, Mark L. Wolf, wrote in The Atlantic magazine that Mr. Trump’s actions were “contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench.” The publication of the essay by Judge Wolf, 78, came two days after an announcement by the Federal District Court for Massachusetts that he was leaving his post as a senior-status judge. Read Article/a>

 

National: The Supreme Court just took a scary case on Trump’s pet issue. He might not like the outcome. | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

President Donald Trump’s obsession with mail-in balloting reached the Supreme Court on Monday through a bonkers 5th Circuit opinion written by Trump appointee (and Trump Supreme Court auditioner) Andrew Oldham. Disagreeing with plain statutory text, statutory history, Supreme Court precedent, and the practice of many states, Judge Oldham’s opinion held that Mississippi violates federal law when it accepts ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive within five days of the election. If the Supreme Court upholds the 5th Circuit in Watson v. Republican National Committee, 29 states and the District of Columbia would have to change their laws to require receipt of virtually all ballots by Election Day, aside from a small class of ballots including those from military and overseas voters. Trump has railed against mail-in balloting for years as being rife with fraud, even though he regularly uses it to vote in Florida. He often calls for states to eliminate the practice, even though Republicans for years have used it without problem in states ranging from Arizona to Florida to Utah (which conducts almost all balloting by mail). He has issued an executive order telling the Department of Justice to pursue litigation against other states to push the argument in the 5th Circuit’s Watson decision and he has promised another executive order on mail-in balloting to come. Read Article

National: Lies, damned lies and AI: the newest way to influence elections may be here to stay | Adam Gabbatt/The Guardian

The New York City mayoral election may be remembered for the remarkable win of a young democratic socialist, but it was also marked by something that is likely to permeate future elections: the use of AI-generated campaign videos. Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Zohran Mamdani in last week’s election, took particular interest in sharing deepfake videos of his opponent, including one that sparked accusations of racism, in what is a developing area of electioneering. AI has been used by campaigns before, particularly in using algorithms to target certain voters, and even, in some cases, to write policy proposals. But as AI software develops, it is increasingly being used to produce sometimes misleading photos and videos. Read Article

Alaska: Will People Trust Voting by Phone? Anchorage Is Going to Find Out. | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The largest city in Alaska is about to undertake an experiment that feels both inevitable and impossibly futuristic in an era of pervasive mistrust toward elections: allowing all voters to cast ballots from their smartphones. Anchorage, home to about 240,000 registered voters, is starting small. Mail and in-person voting will still exist, but voters will also be able to open a link on their phones to cast a ballot in municipal races in April, when six city assembly seats and two school board seats are up for election. The change will not apply to higher-profile races later in the year for state legislature, governor and federal offices. But even at the local level, the trial run of phone voting — the first of its scale in the nation — could offer a blueprint for expanded use in future elections beyond Alaska.S Read Article

Arizona: Johnson to Seat Grijalva, Seven Weeks After She Was Elected | Anushka Patil/ The New York Times

Speaker Mike Johnson plans to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona as a member of Congress on Wednesday, according to his office, 50 days after her election, as the House returns from an extended recess. Ms. Grijalva, a Democrat, won a special election on Sept. 23 for the Arizona seat left vacant by the death of her father, Representative Raúl Grijalva. Mr. Johnson had since refused to seat her, despite several opportunities to do so, public pleas, a Democratic pressure campaign and, eventually, a federal lawsuit brought by Ms. Grijalva and the attorney general of Arizona that argued that Mr. Johnson had no authority to continue to stall. The delay prevented Ms. Grijalva from freely entering and moving about the Capitol complex, or having access to the budget or the materials she needed to do her job. As recently as Tuesday afternoon, she told NPR that she had not heard directly from Mr. Johnson’s office about the swearing-in and that she was “90 percent” confident it would happen at last. She said on social media on Monday that she was traveling to Washington after hearing from news reports and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, that she could soon be seated. Read Article

California: Republican challenge to voting map appears hamstrung by Supreme Court precedent | Edvard Pettersson/Courthouse News Service

The California Republican Party’s lawsuit to block the state’s new, voter-approved congressional district map may be doomed by the unwillingness of the the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority to get involved in partisan gerrymandering. In their complaint — filed the day after California voters approved Prop 50 and joined Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice — Republican politicians and voters argue that the state’s Democratic lawmakers engaged in unlawful racial gerrymandering to benefit Latino voters. “California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement announcing the Trump administration’s request to join the California lawsuit as a plaintiff. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.” Read Article

Georgia Settlement Forces Transparency from Election Deniers on State Election Board | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

Georgia’s election board has agreed to stop conducting its business in secret after a settlement with a government watchdog group. The deal represents a major win for transparency as Republican election deniers on the board ramp up efforts to restrict voting ahead of the 2026 elections. The State Election Board (SEB) ended a year-long lawsuit by American Oversight Wednesday after the group had exposed how board members used private emails and messaging apps to discuss election rules in violation of the state’s Open Records and Open Meetings Acts. Read Article

Michigan: Ballot custody questions complicate Hamtramck election | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Sometime in the hours after last week’s election in Hamtramck, officials who weren’t involved in elections walked into the city clerk’s office, a space that’s supposed to be a secure place to keep ballots. That revelation has thrown the outcome of the Michigan city’s entire election into doubt, including an exceedingly close mayoral race. A total of 37 absentee ballots were initially unaccounted for on election night but were later discovered in the clerk’s office, opened but not yet tabulated. But since those ballots were not secured and could have been accessed by others, it’s currently up in the air whether they will be included in the election’s final totals. Read Article

Montana: Thousands of ballots rejected due to new birth year law | Micah Drew/Daily Montanan

Voters who did not follow a new Montana law requiring electors write their birth year on the envelope of an absentee ballot had the chance to fix the issue if they responded to a call, mailed notice or email from their local election department, but thousands of ballots still ended up in the rejected pile when all the counting was finalized. According to the Secretary of State’s office, “only one percent” of ballots were rejected due to a missing or mismatched birth year. However, some counties had rejection rates significantly higher than one percent, and almost all large counties saw higher rates than previous elections. The Secretary of State’s office did not provide any aggregate data showing the statewide rejection rate, and did not respond to several questions from the Daily Montanan about the new process, including specifics about cases of potential fraud the office said were prevented due the new law. Read Article

North Carolina elections board reveals new partisan voice | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

A recent NC Board of Elections news release berating the head of the state Democratic Party took some observers by surprise. The public face of the agency has historically remained above the political fray, focusing on voting rules and routine business. That changed Saturday, Nov. 1, the final day of voting in the 2025 municipal elections. The online portal voters use to look at their sample ballots wasn’t working that day. North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton called out Republican state Auditor Dave Boliek, who was recently given a role in state elections. The election board’s news release didn’t explain what happened to the portal, but castigated Clayton for spreading misinformation about the problem. It also praised state elections director Sam Hayes, and blamed the former director and Democratic leaders for not updating aging software. Read Article

Pennsylvania’s Chester County seeks explanation for pollbook error as it checks provisional ballots | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania’s Chester County has reviewed more than two-thirds of the provisional ballots cast on Election Day, and confirmed that it has begun counting eligible ballots, though officials still cannot explain what caused a pollbook error that forced independent and third-party voters to use provisional ballots. County officials said they hope to have the answer by December, after an investigation by an outside firm. Pollbooks are the lists of registered voters that workers use to check in voters at the polling place. But pollbooks that Chester County distributed for Election Day omitted third-party and independent voters, forcing thousands of them to vote using provisional ballots. Provisional ballots require voters and election officials to take some additional steps, such as signing the envelope in the correct spot, or they will be rejected for technical reasons, and the ballots must undergo additional checks before they are counted. Read Article

Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down | Alex Nguyen and Eleanor Klibanoff/Texas Tribune

Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut them down. Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that the group had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.” This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into their voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut them down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House. Read Article

Wisconsin: Trump pardons Republicans named in efforts to overturn 2020, but state prosecutions aren’t affected | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

President Donald Trump has pardoned a handful of Wisconsin Republicans who participated in a scheme he created to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump pardoned most of the Republicans who signed paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump when former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, was elected in Wisconsin instead. He also included two attorneys with Wisconsin ties who are alleged to be the architects of the plan. The list posted by Trump’s pardon attorney late Sunday night, includes: Carol Brunner, Mary Buestrin, Darryl Carlson, Andrew Hitt, Kelly Ruh, Bob Spindell and Pam Travis. Read Article

Wyoming: Undeterred by tight timeline, lawmakers charge ahead with election reform | Maggie Mullen/WyoFile

Wyoming lawmakers will once again consider a slate of bills to remake the state’s election system when the Legislature convenes in February. In the legislative off-season, lawmakers in two committees voted to sponsor 14 bills tied to elections. The legislation ranges from restricting how ballots can be returned to county clerks, limiting acceptable voter identification, banning ballot drop boxes, mandating automatic hand recounts in certain instances and upping the campaign filing requirements for independent candidates. Most of the legislation comes from the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee, which held its last off-season meetings Monday and Tuesday in Cheyenne. Elections were the committee’s top priority ahead of the 2026 session. Read Article

Judge Permanently Bars Trump From Requiring Proof of Citizenship for Voter Registration | Zach Montague/The New York Times

A federal judge in Washington has permanently barred the Trump administration from requiring proof of citizenship on federal voter registration forms, a change dictated in an executive order President Trump signed in March. The ruling definitively halted the effort to compel the Elections Assistance Commission, an independent body, to adopt nationwide changes to voting procedures at a time when the president has also called for requiring voter identification in elections and ending mail-in voting. For months, voting rights groups have warned that those changes, in tandem with the deployment of the national guard to the streets of Democratic-led cities, resembled steps of a voter-suppression strategy. Read Article

Dems ‘Need the Votes’ of ‘Illegal Citizens,’ Top Federal Election Official Claims in Unhinged Rant | Zachary Roth/Democracy Docket

A top federal voting official is facing a call to step down after accusing Democrats of encouraging “open borders” and widespread voting by “illegal citizens,” because “they need the votes.” The outlandish conspiracy theory is common on the far right. But its embrace by Christy McCormick, a Republican member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), part of an unhinged public rant against Democrats, raises serious questions about her ability to help states administer fair and impartial elections, and to retain public trust. “They need the votes. They’re losing ground,” McCormick said Wednesday at a panel discussion on voting at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute (AFPI), when asked why she thinks the left opposes measures to tighten voting rules. Read Article

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