National: Top federal election official says her conspiratorial rant against Democrats is being investigated | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

Christy McCormick, the Republican vice-chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), told Democracy Docket Wednesday that her inflammatory comments against Democrats last year are under “investigation.” During a panel discussion in October with the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute (AFPI), McCormick falsely claimed that Democrats actively promote and rely on voting by “illegal citizens” to win elections. “They need the votes. They’re losing ground,” McCormick said when asked why she thinks the “left” opposes measures to tighten voting rules. “Everybody is seeing how people are going toward the right. They need open borders, they need illegal citizens to increase their votes,” she continued. “And this is why they’re fighting so adamantly against us.” At the time, McCormick was appearing on the panel in her official capacity as a commissioner of the EAC, an independent agency that helps all states — including those led by Democrats — administer fair and impartial elections. Read Article

National: Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections | Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield/ProPublica

In mid-December 2020, federal officials responsible for protecting American elections from fraud converged in a windowless, dim, fortified room at the Justice Department’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters. They had been summoned by Attorney General William Barr. Over the preceding weeks, Donald Trump’s claims that the presidential election had been stolen from him had reached a crescendo. He’d become obsessed with a conspiracy theory that voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan, had switched votes from him to Joe Biden. With each day, Trump ratcheted up the pressure to unleash the might of the federal government to undo his defeat. Barr interrogated experts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, crammed in beside top FBI officials around a cheap table. He needed the group of around 10 to answer a crucial question: Was it really possible the 2020 presidential vote had been hacked? Read Article

Alaska: ‘It would be catastrophic’: A Supreme Court decision could upend crucial Senate race | Lisa Kashinsky/Politico

In the villages that dot Kodiak Island off the coast of southwest Alaska, the post arrives by plane. Mailing a ballot to the archipelago’s hub takes at least two days — if the region’s frequent storms haven’t grounded air traffic. It’s a common problem across Alaska. And it’s a big reason why the state allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted for up to 10 days afterward, a critical reprieve for voters in remote communities that are disconnected from the state’s highway system and sometimes even polling locations. That’s why Alaskans across the political spectrum are sounding the alarm about a pending Supreme Court ruling. A majority of justices appear to be leaning toward barring states from counting late-arriving ballots, a ruling that would upend voting laws in Alaska and more than a dozen other states. That could potentially disenfranchise hundreds of voters in Kodiak’s distant villages and thousands more across the remote reaches of The Last Frontier — and upend Alaska’s election process in a state that could determine Senate control. Read Article

A California sheriff seized ballots, testing the limits of local power over elections | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

Over the past few weeks, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — who is also a Republican candidate for governor of California — has taken the unusual step of seizing ballots from a recent election, launching his own recount, and opening a criminal investigation into how the election was run. The premise of Bianco’s investigation is sharply disputed. Bianco has pointed to the claims of a conservative citizens’ activist group that says it found an apparent discrepancy of tens of thousands of ballots — a figure election officials and independent experts say stems from a misreading of preliminary vote data, not an actual gap between ballots cast and ballots counted. California’s attorney general moved to stop the investigation, which is now on pause. Bianco seized more ballots, anyway, and says the effort to stop his recount is “politically motivated.” Courts this week ordered the unsealing of the warrants used to justify the seizures, which showed a yearslong relationship between Bianco’s office and the conservative activist group. On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court also ordered a halt to Bianco’s investigation. Read Article

Illinois: DuPage County forced to pay bill after vendor disables election equipment | Alicia Fabbre/Daily Herald

DuPage County Board members this week approved a $629,068 expenditure after learning that election-related equipment had been disabled and wouldn’t be reactivated until a vendor was paid. Vendor Hart InterCivic billed the DuPage County clerk’s office in September. The invoice was for services related to the county’s electronic poll books. Election officials use the devices to review and process voter information. County board members did not learn the bill was unpaid until after the company contacted DuPage on April 1. According to a memo to the board, Hart InterCivic notified the county that it had turned off “phone service” to the electronic poll books and would not provide services until the invoice is paid. Read Article

Indiana GOP election division leaders resign | Niki Kelly/Indiana Capital Chronicle

The top two Republicans at the Indiana Election Division have tendered their resignations, effective May 6 — the day after the primary election. Co-director Brad King is retiring after 24 years in the role and a host of accomplishments to his name. Co-General Counsel Valerie Warycha, who is supporting GOP Secretary of State candidate David Shelton, is also leaving. King and Warycha work alongside the Democratic co-director and co-general counsel in the Indiana Election Division, which is part of Secretary of State Diego Morales’ agency. He is seeking renomination at state convention this summer. Read Article

Kansas lawmakers overturn governor’s veto, approving voting system changes | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Kansas state lawmakers on Thursday overturned a veto by Gov. Laura Kelly, on a bill that she said would “suppress civic engagement and make it harder for Kansans to vote.” The legislation now to be enacted is the SAVE Kansas act, which directs the Kansas secretary of state to regularly check voter rolls, using a new, controversial tool offered by the federal government called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system. That tool, originally designed to check whether noncitizens were eligible for various benefits, has been repurposed by the second Trump administration to root out noncitizen voting, despite it being exceptionally rare. Kansas’s law also puts new security requirements on the websites used to collect voter registrations. They must use the .gov domain and meet nine other security requirements, including that data is transmitted using “encryption in transit,” that encryption standards are aligned with those set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and that audit logs are maintained. Read Article

Michigan Bureau of Elections says Antrim County clerk improperly changed, canceled voter registrations | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The Michigan Bureau of Elections is demanding answers from a controversial county clerk who reportedly canceled or changed voters’ registrations when she wasn’t supposed to. The bureau sent a letter to Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop on Tuesday saying it had received information suggesting she had made voter registration changes “that fall outside the scope of your statutory authority and fail to comply with the law.” Bishop, a Republican, was first elected in 2024 on a platform of cleaning up Antrim County’s voter roll. She is associated with the wing of the Republican Party that claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. The bureau learned that Bishop, who took office in 2025, apparently sent confirmation and cancellation notices — essentially, notices sent by election officials when they believe a voter has moved — to an unknown number of voters who didn’t vote in the last two major elections. However, the bureau noted in the letter, “Michigan law is explicit that a clerk may not cancel, or cause the cancellation of, a voter’s registration solely because a voter has missed one or two elections.” Read Article

North Carolina to feed data to Homeland Security under new noncitizen removal rules | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

The North Carolina State Board of Elections on Thursday approved a new process for partnering with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to remove potential noncitizens from the voter rolls. The rules, which the board’s Republican majority passed in a 3-2 vote, formalize the board’s new agreement with Homeland Security, which will run potentially millions of voters at a time through its citizenship databases. The state could begin uploading voter data to DHS as early as Friday. The board’s two Democrats fiercely opposed the rules, saying they did not trust DHS to provide the state with accurate data and believed it could disenfranchise eligible voters. “We are now saying you have to carry your papers,” board member Jeff Carmon said. Read Article

South Dakota: ‘Absolute chaos’: State, local officials disagree on path forward amid delay in early voting | Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight

County auditors and the state’s lead election official disagree about how to handle a delay of early and absentee voting for the June 2 primary election in South Dakota. Codington County Auditor Brenda Hanten told local media on Wednesday that the county would begin early and absentee voting on time by using sample ballots as the county waits for official ballots, under the guidance of South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson. Hanten walked back those plans on Thursday, telling South Dakota Searchlight she hadn’t yet discussed the plan with her state’s attorney when she made those comments. Codington County will not use sample ballots and will wait until official ballots are mailed. Read Article

Texas counties receive subpoenas for voters’ records from Department of Homeland Security | Natalia Contreras/Houston Public Media

At least three Texas counties last week either received or were told they would soon receive administrative subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department is seeking detailed records about some individual voters, including their registration applications and voter history, though counties don’t yet know which ones. The subpoenas appear to be linked to a series of efforts by the Trump administration to verify the citizenship of registered voters. In December, Texas turned over the state’s voter roll to the Justice Department. The transfer included voters’ identifiable information such as dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. It did not include, however, voters’ registration applications or signatures — the state does not have access to that information, which is kept by county voter registrars. Lubbock County’s elections administrator, Roxzine Stinson, said she met with a Homeland Security representative who informed her she would soon receive a subpoena seeking additional information for at least 10 voters, and potentially up to 30. Stinson said she’ll seek guidance from the county’s legal department on how to respond. The Homeland Security representative told Stinson, “all 254 counties will be contacted,” she said. Read Article

Some Utah voters weigh unregistering because of new law lifting certain privacy protections | Katie McKellar/Utah News Dispatch

When David Yoder — a registered Utah voter living in South Jordan — got a letter from the lieutenant governor’s office earlier this month notifying of changes to Utah’s voter privacy law, he said he was left “fed up and frustrated.” As an IT worker, Yoder told Utah News Dispatch he’s “very protective of my privacy,” and he knows how information like names and addresses can be used for scams or other malicious reasons. He’s also concerned about that information becoming more easily accessible during a time of heightened political tension and online vitriol on social media. “I don’t want my name and address publicly available to anyone,” he said, while expressing concerns that he has a “real problem” with allowing that information to be “available for purchase.” Even though the new law, SB153, criminalizes misusing the information — like posting the information online for free or otherwise — by making it a class A misdemeanor, Yoder worries that’s not going to stop it. Read Article

Wisconsin: How Rock County got new clerks ready for Supreme Court election | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead’s election operation is a well-oiled machine. She comes to the polls at 6 a.m., a pot of cowboy beef stew in hand to warm up for her poll workers, and takes a backseat as she lets the town’s longtime staffers settle into their rhythm. Having run well over 100 elections, administering the Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 7 in the 1,200-person town felt like second nature. Hookstead, now 65, has spent three decades in the role — a depth of experience many towns have lost since 2020. Twenty miles south sits Clinton, where 59-year old Town Clerk Shannon Roehl-Wickingson was administering her first election on her own. It will take years for her muscle memory to rival Hookstead’s. But, she may get there faster than many of her peers in Wisconsin — or across the country. Rock County has a support and training system that most new clerks can only dream of. Read Article

National: The Fight to Protect the Midterms | Michael Waldman/Brennan Center for Justice

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order purporting to upend mail voting. It’s jarring that the administration would target something so popular. According to a Pew Research Center poll, more than one in three voters cast ballots by mail in 2024. Trump himself votes that way. As Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) put it, “The reality is in a state like Montana, like Alaska, like other rural states, most of our people vote by mail. And they like it, and they trust it.” The order instructs the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to deliver ballots unless the voters are on a list of approved citizens that would be created by the executive branch. Such federal databases are out of date and unreliable, so this risks mass disenfranchisement of eligible citizens. The order is also illegal. The Constitution is clear: States run elections. Congress can pass national legislation. Presidents have no lawful role. Read Article

Trump’s election order, SAVE Act, rely on ‘flawed’ system | Joe Fisher/UPI

President Donald Trump’s multipronged plan for ensuring only eligible citizens vote in elections leans on a system that experts say is flawed. Pamela Smith, CEO and president of Verified Voting, told UPI the SAVE system’s errors were frequent enough to potentially impact some election results. “Some researchers found that more than 5% of the voters that the SAVE database had identified as noncitizens were actually citizens,” Smith said of SAVE errors in Texas. “Five percent is a big number. That’s well over the margin of victory in lots of situations. In some of the smaller counties that percentage became much higher.” Trump’s election order, SAVE Act, rely on ‘flawed’ system – UPI.com

National: At Los Angeles ‘shadow hearing’ on elections, House Democrats join experts to defend voting systems | Kevin Rector/Los Angeles Times

House Democrats and a panel of elections experts expressed unwavering confidence in state voting systems and dismissed Trump administration claims of widespread fraud and other vulnerabilities during a special “shadow hearing” in Los Angeles on Tuesday. They accused President Trump and his Republican allies of pushing sweeping federal reforms — including stricter voter ID laws and new restrictions on voting by mail — that would disenfranchise millions of eligible Americans, especially low-income, rural and elderly voters, as well as voters of color and those with disabilities. “They are taking us backward, and not to a good place,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who helped lead the hearing at the Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Little Tokyo. Read Article

National: Trump is trying to build a massive voter database. Election officials are afraid of what he’ll do with it | Gabe Cohen, Tierney Sneed, Jeremy Herb and Fredreka Schouten/CNN

The Trump administration is intensifying its campaign against alleged voter fraud, taking new steps toward building a national citizen database and ramping up its hunt for suspected noncitizen voters — all under the banner of “election integrity.” The latest escalation — including an executive order, a newly empowered prosecutor and a growing raft of lawsuits — has drawn fresh warnings from critics who say the administration’s push to amass vast troves of voter data from across the country could be used to block eligible Americans from voting and stoke fresh doubts about the legitimacy of the 2026 midterm elections. The Justice Department has finalized a deal with the Department of Homeland Security to give DHS sensitive voter-roll data the administration has demanded from states to be checked against a citizenship verification program that has been criticized for its inaccuracies. Trump officials last week floated a new potential pressure tactic on states that so far have refused to hand over their full voter rolls: Conditioning hundreds of millions of dollars in homeland security grants on sharing voter data, requiring states to run their registration rolls through the federal immigration records system or lose the funding. Read Article

National: Trump proposes cutting CISA election security program in FY27 budget | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

TThe Trump administration is hoping to eliminate roughly $700 million in programs across the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in fiscal year 2027, a sweeping set of cuts that translate to a net reduction of about $360 million after accounting for internal transfers and other adjustments, according to a detailed budget justification. The proposal targets election security, workforce development, stakeholder engagement and a range of infrastructure protection efforts, marking one of the most significant overhauls of the nation’s civilian cyber defense agency since its creation. The budget would notably eliminate CISA’s election security program entirely, including cutting funding for information-sharing support to state and local officials and removing dedicated election security advisors across the country. The proposal would also end CISA’s support for the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC, a key hub for sharing threat intelligence, cyber alerts and incident response resources with state and local election officials. Read Article

National: Preparing for the Real Risks of Election Interference | Carl Smith/Governing

In February, allies of President Trump began circulating a 17-page draft executive order declaring a national emergency and granting the president unprecedented powers over voting — including the power to ban mail ballots, require IDs to vote and other changes. The basis for the order was a claim that China interfered in the 2020 election — an assertion that U.S. intelligence has said is not credible. The president later told reporters he was not considering the executive order, which would have almost certainly become mired in court challenges. President Trump has never conceded defeat in the 2020 election, but investigations have never turned up evidence of widespread fraud or of foreign interference in the technical aspects of the voting process. Still, foreign interference in U.S. elections is a real threat. U.S. intelligence has repeatedly reported that countries like Russia and Iran have attempted to influence U.S. election outcomes. A 2021 intelligence report found that China considered interfering in the 2020 election, but did not follow through. Read Aricle

National: How the Supreme Court could upend the midterm elections | Richard L. Hasen/MS Now

Pending before the Supreme Court are three disparate cases, each with the potential to remake rules on district boundaries, campaign finance and the eligibility of certain mail-in ballots. These rulings, issued in the middle of the election season, could potentially confound voters, scramble overworked and threatened election administrators, and alter campaign strategies in the middle of heated election contests. And depending on how the justices rule, these decisions may have cascading effects including new court challenges, legislative changes and even more uncertainty in the months before the midterms. The justices can avoid this confusion entirely. In June 1964 the court issued a landmark decision in Reynolds v. Sims that helped cement the principle of “one person, one vote.” Yet the ruling made clear that it need not be applied to that fall’s fast-approaching elections. Whatever this court ultimately decides on the merits in these cases, it should apply the same principle. Read Article

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