Michigan: GOP election conspiracist given platform in House committee to rail against Democrats | Ben Solis/Michigan Advance

A former Republican lawmaker, gubernatorial candidate and election conspiracy theorist on Tuesday asked a Michigan House of Representatives committee to request federal investigations against three of Michigan’s top ranking Democrats, whom he has repeatedly accused of fraud and other crimes, including bribery. Pat Colbeck, who served in the Michigan Senate from 2011 to 2019 and sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2018, presented a laundry list of election integrity concerns to the House Election Integrity Committee, chaired by state Rep. Rachelle Smit (R-Martin). The three officials Colbeck asked to be investigated include Attorney General Dana Nessel, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Supreme Court Justice Kyra Harris Bolden. Nessel spokesperson Danny Wimmer, in a statement to Michigan Advance, dismissed Colbeck’s claims and accusations as “unhinged.” Read Article

Minnesota: A Month After Shootings, We’re Normalizing Political Violence | Joshua A. Douglas/Washington Monthly

It’s been a month since the assassinations, yet hardly anyone seems to remember they occurred. On June 14, an assassin murdered the leader of the Minnesota House Democratic Caucus, Melissa Hortman, and her husband in the middle of the night at their home in suburban Minneapolis. The perpetrator also shot and wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. Thankfully, Hoffman is now out of the ICU, though he has a long recovery ahead of him. The murderer, Vance Boelter, had a “hit list” of 45 targets, all of whom were Democrats. The politically motivated attack, however, barely made a blip in the national consciousness. People expressed shock the day it happened, but the country swiftly moved on. Similarly, almost no one is still discussing the April break-in and arson of the Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion, with the perpetrator’s goal of beating Governor Josh Shapiro with a hammer. That attack echoed a 2022 incident in which an individual broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi and assaulted her husband with a hammer. In 2020, several men plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to start a civil war; two were convicted. Read Article

New Hampshire Secretary of State rebuffs Trump administration request for state’s voter roll | Todd Bookman/NHPR

New Hampshire is among the states targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice seeking information about its voting system, including a request for a complete copy of the state’s voter registration list. The inquiry for sensitive voter information comes as the Trump administration continues to make false claims about the validity of election results. In a June 25 letter, officials from the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division asked New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan for information about a range of election policies, including how the state registers voters, removes deceased residents from voter rolls, and identifies non-citizens who may seek to register. The letter also requests a copy of New Hampshire’s statewide voter registration list: “Please include both active and inactive voters,” the letter says. State officials were given 30 days to comply with the request. Read Article

New York: What the election case in Rockland County tells us about the tide of voter mistrust | Jessica Huseman/ Votebeat

Donald Trump is leaving little doubt about who’s president right now, but in one corner of the country, a lawsuit is helping to fan skepticism about the results of the 2024 general election. The case against Rockland County, New York, claims that there were irregularities in the county’s vote tallies, judging in part by what the plaintiffs characterize as statistical anomalies — notably the mismatch in support between Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and the person at the top of the party’s ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris. Gillibrand won the suburban county by about 8,000 votes, while Harris lost to Trump by more than 17,000. The plaintiffs say it’s a suspicious pattern of ticket-splitting that suggests vote-rigging or errors, an echo of the spurious claims made by Trump allies when he lost several swing states in 2020. They want the court to invalidate the Senate and presidential election results and order the county to redo the election. Read Article

North Carolina Launches Voter Roll Program That Could Disenfranchise Tens of Thousands | Jen Rice/Democracy Docket

North Carolina formally launched a project Thursday that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters, despite pushback from national Democrats. The plan, conceived by a former top GOP legislative aide, would create a two-tiered system for some voters with missing information — allowing them to vote in federal elections, where legal protections for voters are stronger, but not in state and local contests. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued North Carolina last month, alleging that the state failed to collect information from voters required by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). In response, the North Carolina State Board of Elections released a plan that requires voters with missing information to vote a provisional ballot unless they respond to mail notifications by providing the additional information. Read Article

Pennsylvania redesigns provisional-ballot envelope to help cut rejections | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania election officials on Monday announced a redesigned provisional-ballot envelope that they hope will lead to fewer ballots being rejected for technical errors. “Improvements to envelope design might seem like a small thing, but it has a huge impact on the ability for Pennsylvanians across the commonwealth to have their votes counted,” said Seth Bluestein, a Republican city commissioner for Philadelphia, which worked with the Department of State on the new design. Philadelphia plans to use the new design in its November municipal elections. The state also consulted election officials from Berks, Greene, Butler, and Mercer counties. Read Article

Texas Attorney General Ken investigating “potential” noncitizen voters | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday that he is investigating “more than 100 potential noncitizens” suspected of casting more than 200 ballots during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. Paxton’s news release said most of the cases involve Harris County voters. His office is also investigating possible instances in Guadalupe, Cameron, and Eastland counties, using information obtained from the Texas Secretary of State, the news release said. In Texas, about 11 million voters cast ballots in Texas in the November 2020 presidential election, and more than 8 million in the November 2022 general election. The more than 200 ballots Paxton cited for the two full election cycles would amount to around one-thousandth of 1% of the ballots cast in just the two general elections combined. Read Article

Wisconsin: US Appeals Court rules against town that removed voting machines last year | Rich Kremer/WPR

A northern Wisconsin town sued by the U.S. Department of Justice last year for not providing electronic voting machines to people with disabilities has lost its federal appeal. Thornapple’s town board passed a resolution to stop the use of electronic voting machines in June 2023. Court documents show the town’s former clerk Suzanne Pinnow cited “the controversial nature of electronic voting machines” as part of its justification. The DOJ sued Thornapple and the Rusk County Town of Lawrence for removing access to voting machines designed for people with disabilities. They said the decisions violated the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA. Officials in Lawrence negotiated a settlement and agreed to make at least one accessible machine available in future elections. Read Article

National: Amid cuts to federal cyber services, local election officials expect greater state support | Colin Wood/StateScoop

A majority of local election officials are worried about the federal government’s recent moves to pull back support for election security services, according to a report published Thursday by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit public policy institute. The report, which arrives amid numerous cuts to services and staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, found that 61% of local election officials polled said they were specifically concerned about election security services cut by CISA. And of the 858 local election officials who responded, 87% said they believe it’s important that state and local governments fill the gaps in support created by the federal government’s cuts under the second Donald Trump administration. Lawrence Norden, a vice president of elections and government at the Brennan Center who helped conduct the survey, said the government landscape is already shifting to ensure election offices can protect their systems and share timely threat information. Read Article

National: CIA declassifies review of intelligence report on 2016 Russia election interference | Dan De Luce and Ken Dilanian/NBC

CIA officials failed in some cases to follow standard procedures in an intelligence analysis of Russian interference efforts in the 2016 election, according to an internal review declassified Wednesday. Intelligence officers were given an unusually short timeline for the analysis, there was “excessive involvement” by senior leaders, and staff members were given uneven access to crucial intelligence about Russia, the “lessons-learned” review said. But the review did not refute the findings of the 2017 intelligence assessment that Russia waged an information warfare campaign designed to undermine Americans’ confidence in the electoral process, damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald Trump’s prospects in the 2016 election. Read Article

National: Justice Department Explores Using Criminal Charges Against Election Officials | Devlin Barrett and Nick Corasaniti

Senior Justice Department officials are exploring whether they can bring criminal charges against state or local election officials if the Trump administration determines they have not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems, according to people familiar with the discussions. The department’s effort, which is still in its early stages, is not based on new evidence, data or legal authority, according to the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. Instead, it is driven by the unsubstantiated argument made by many in the Trump administration that American elections are easy prey to voter fraud and foreign manipulation, these people said. Such a path could significantly raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, thrusting the Justice Department and the threat of criminalization into the election system in a way that has never been done before. Read Article

National: Lawmakers demand CISA explain how it’s supporting election offices | Colin Wood/ StateScoop

In a letter Monday addressed to leaders of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Democratic lawmakers demanded to know why the agency hasn’t responded to their recent inquiries about the level of support it’s providing to state and local election offices. Ranking members Rep. Joseph D. Morelle and Sen. Alex Padilla wrote that they’re seeking “urgent updates” to the status of numerous election security policies and programs offered by CISA under previous administrations. The letter, which is addressed to CISA acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala and Mona Harrington, assistant director of CISA’s National Risk Management Center, demands a “comprehensive briefing” on CISA’s operations and personnel before July 21. “CISA’s repeated failure to respond to our requests for information while undertaking a significant reshaping of the agency’s personnel and mission is unacceptable,” the letter reads. “We remain deeply troubled by the lack of information CISA has provided to congressional oversight committees and the lack of substantive responses to our questions.” Read Article

National: Department of Justice Jumps on SCOTUS Nationwide Injunctions Ruling to Boost Trump’s Anti-Voting Order | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

Citing the Supreme Court’s recent ruling curtailing nationwide injunctions, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal judge to weaken part of a previous court order against President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting decree. Beyond its potential impact in the battle over the voting order, the filing is also a stark example of how SCOTUS’ ruling in the nationwide injunctions case, Trump v. CASA, could give the administration a boost in other cases challenging Trump’s authoritarian power grab. The DOJ asked District Judge Denise Casper July 3 to amend the portion of her previous court order that barred the government from enforcing Section 2d of Trump’s executive order. Read Article

National: Nearly half of election officials concerned about politically motivated investigations | Aaron Pellish/Politico

Nearly half of local election officials are concerned about politically motivated investigations targeting election workers, according to a new survey from the Brennan Center for Justice. Forty-six percent of local election officials said they were at least somewhat concerned about politically motivated investigations of their work or the work of other election officials. Of that, 18 percent of respondents said they were “very concerned” about potential investigations. Election officials have increasingly become targets of scrutiny in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when President Donald Trump and his allies touted conspiracy theories about ballot processing to claim the results of the election — which he lost — were rigged. Read Article

National: Trump and GOP target ballots arriving after Election Day that delay counts | Chistina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

President Donald Trump and other Republicans have long criticized states that take weeks to count their ballots after Election Day. This year has seen a flurry of activity to address it. Part of Trump’s executive order on elections, signed in March but held up by lawsuits, takes aim at one of the main reasons for late vote counts: Many states allow mailed ballots to be counted even if they arrive after Election Day. The U.S. Supreme Court last month said it would consider whether a challenge in Illinois can proceed in a case that is among several Republican-backed lawsuits seeking to impose an Election Day deadline for mail ballots. At least three states — Kansas, North Dakota and Utah — passed legislation this year that eliminated a grace period for receiving mailed ballots, saying they now need to be in by Election Day. Read Article

National: The States Decide How Elections Are Run | Grace Olson/NCSL

After every major election, we see headlines fly about election policies. Recent hot topics include mail-in ballots, proof of citizenship for voter registration and the type of identification needed to vote. Although several pieces of federal legislation and U.S. Supreme Court decisions have established rules governing voting, the primary responsibility for facilitating federal elections lies with the states. Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor, told a recent NCSL webinar on federalism and U.S. election law that when the Founding Fathers authored the U.S. Constitution, they did so with a heavy focus on the states, allowing each state to handle elections as it saw fit. Despite the states having considerable power in federal elections, Persily says that voting is the most amended topic in the Constitution. The most notable revisions, he says, are the 14th and 15th Amendments, which protect U.S. citizens from discrimination based on race. The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, and the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18. Read Article

Arizona’s Democracy Shield, Secretary of State’s Office Fights Off | Taylor Johnson/Hoodline

Arizona’s Secretary of State’s office recently managed a cybersecurity skirmish, fending off what it described as a “malicious adversary” that had eyes on the state’s election-related systems. According to an official statement released by the office and obtained by AZ SOS, the attempted incursion focused on the website, specifically the Candidate Portal, which required temporary offline measures to beef up security protocols. The attack hit home the message that threats to election integrity are not just hypothetical but pressing and immediate. The state’s top election official, Secretary Adrian Fontes, laid out a stark picture of the digital battlefield where Arizona’s voter registration database remained unscathed during the cyber assault, noting, “Since day one, I’ve warned that foreign adversaries, particularly Iran, are actively targeting our election infrastructure and political systems.” Read Article

Colorado Supreme Court committee advances election-related change, goes back to work on magistrate rules | Michael Karlik/Colorado Politics

The Colorado Supreme Court’s civil rules committee approved a procedural change for court challenges to presidential electors, a move that complies with legislation passed this year. The committee also heard from the Supreme Court that it must perform further work on proposed changes to the rules governing magistrates, after the justices heard criticism from some judges and attorneys this week. State lawmakers enacted Senate Bill 210 during the 2024 legislative session, addressing a wide range of elections topics. One provision added new language for legal challenges to presidential electors, requiring filings in the Supreme Court within 24 days of Election Day and obligating the court to prioritize such challenges “over all regular business.” Read Article

Connecticut’s voter rights law, the strongest in the nation, finally got funded | Colin Wood/ StateScoop

Upon announcing this week that he’d signed into law a “balanced, sensible budget” for next two years, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont was also signaling that he’d authorized funding for the most comprehensive voting rights act in the nation. The Connecticut Voting Rights Act, which became law in 2023 after the NAACP Legal Defense Fund introduced the legislation and accompanied it to enactment, had sat without funding until Monday. Now the act, which the civil rights group says needs roughly $1 million each year it operates, has the dollars it needs to implement its numerous protections, like legal tools to fight discriminatory voting rules in court, expanded language assistance for voters who struggle with English and a data portal to host all of the state’s election results and demographic information. Read Article

Georgia election results must be certified, Court of Appeals rules | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Election board members are required to certify election results, even if they distrust the outcome, according to a Georgia Court of Appeals decision. The decision resolves a dispute that overshadowed the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, when the State Election Board passed rules calling for an “inquiry” and more documents before signing off on results. The Georgia Supreme Court recently rejected the board’s rules. The unanimous order, issued last week by a three-judge panel, says Georgia law demands that election boards make results official. Any doubts about fraud or irregularities can then be reported to prosecutors, the appeals court ruled. The decision confirms a Fulton County judge’s ruling last October that election boards have a duty to approve the votes of the people. Read Article

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