Georgia: Elections watchdog group seeks answers after Georgia drops 590,000 from voter rolls | Mic

A watchdog group is pushing the state of Georgia to explain why more than 591,000 people were struck from the voter rolls. “Each of the 591,548 voters affected by the move had already been on the state’s ‘inactive’ registration list,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported this week. That means those voters had not cast a ballot, updated their registration or address or responded to efforts to contact them for at least three years. Let America Vote, an advocacy group run by former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, wrote in a Wednesday letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp that federal law doesn’t permit the purge of voters simply for not voting.

North Carolina: Opponents expect new voter suppression bill | Winston Salem Chronicle

With the Republican-led legislature reconvening today, Aug. 3, for the first of two special sessions, there are concerns that part of the agenda beyond overriding Gov. Cooper’s vetoes, redrawing legislative voting maps and tinkering with judicial districts will be to pass another law designed to restrict voter access to the polls. “A new voter suppression bill is coming soon,” warned Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy N.C., a nonpartisan public policy advocacy group, in a mass email to supporters last week. “They’ve also been threatening for months to revive provisions of the 2013 Monster Voting Law, including a new photo ID bill that will target certain North Carolinians, harm eligible voters  and trigger more costly litigation.”

National: Kobach appeals order to answer questions under oath | The Kansas City Star

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is seeking to avoid answering questions under oath about two documents containing plans for changes to U.S. election law. Kobach, who also is vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s commission on election integrity, filed a notice late Monday saying he is appealing to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals an order to submit to a deposition by the American Civil Liberties Union in a voting rights case. The closed deposition is scheduled for Thursday. The ACLU said Tuesday that Kobach’s appeal of the deposition order to the 10th Circuit is “bizarre.”Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is seeking to avoid answering questions under oath about two documents containing plans for changes to U.S. election law. Kobach, who also is vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s commission on election integrity, filed a notice late Monday saying he is appealing to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals an order to submit to a deposition by the American Civil Liberties Union in a voting rights case. The closed deposition is scheduled for Thursday. The ACLU said Tuesday that Kobach’s appeal of the deposition order to the 10th Circuit is “bizarre.”

Colorado: State sends voter roll information over to Trump fraud commission | The Denver Channel

Colorado finally sent its voter roll information over to President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission on Tuesday, a day after the transfer was delayed due to “user error” in the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. The office had been set to send the information over to the controversial commission on Monday, but a spokeswoman for the office said a system lockout stopped the transfer. Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert told the Denver Post Monday night it was due to “user error.” The sending of the information had already been delayed while a lawsuit over the commission and its request was cleared up in federal court.

Editorials: Separate facts, myths on voter fraud in Kentucky | Joshua A. Douglas/Lexington Herald Leader

When discussing the right to vote — the most fundamental right in our democracy — it is important to separate fact from conjecture, myth from reality. Unfortunately, the recent op-ed from the organization Americans First Inc. about President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission fails in that regard. Focusing solely on allegedly bloated voter registration rolls, the op-ed suggests that voter fraud is widespread. It uses unreliable studies based on Census estimates, not hard data. It fails to acknowledge that Trump’s commission is hardly bipartisan and does not have the support of any serious academic in the election law field. Let’s separate the facts from hyperbole.

Texas: Partisan Gap Widening On How To Tackle Mail-In Ballot Fraud In Texas | KERA

Even on issues where Republicans and Democrats agree on a problem, they differ on solutions. Case in point: mail-in ballot fraud. With the Texas Legislature midway through a special session, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say something should be done to better prevent, detect and punish people who abuse the mail-in ballot system and steal the votes of vulnerable seniors. But, Republican legislative proposals to do that have drawn little support from Democrats. Jonathan White, who works on voter fraud cases in the Texas Attorney General’s office, says the mail-in ballot is more of an honor system, and that’s why it gets abused. He says prosecutors like him need more tools to tackle the problem. … But where White sees voter fraud as a problem largely undetected and prosecuted, Myrna Perez from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University says the statistics are clear: Voter fraud is extremely rare, though it is more likely to happen through mail-in ballots than in person.

National: Federal judge set to hear new challenge to Trump fraud commission Tuesday | The Washington Post

A federal judge will hear arguments Tuesday over whether a Watergate-era law prohibiting the government from collecting data on how Americans exercise their First Amendment rights bars President Trump’s Election Integrity Commission from American’s voting records. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the District set the hearing Monday after Common Cause, a nonprofit government watchdog group, alleged that the Trump administration was violating the Privacy Act of 1974 by seeking the “quintessentially First Amendment-protected political party affiliation and voter history data” of every American. The court could rule on the request for a temporary restraining order as early as Tuesday.

Maine: Secretary of state says he will reject second request for voter registration data | Portland Press Herald

Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap said Monday that he is unlikely to release any state voter registration data to the federal voter fraud commission to which he was appointed by President Trump. Dunlap said he will reject a second request for the data from the commission’s vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who promised last week that the data would be held in confidence at the federal level. But Dunlap said he is uncertain that the federal Freedom of Information Act would allow the data to be protected from disclosure once it is in the federal government’s hands. He said he wants the commission, to which he was appointed in May, to first set goals for what it hopes to achieve as it investigates Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

National: Leader Of Voter Fraud Probe Really Doesn’t Want To Release Trump Meeting Documents | HuffPost

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) continued to fight releasing documents from a meeting with President Donald Trump in November, saying that the public did not need to see them and that disclosing them would impede his ability to serve on Trump’s commission to investigate voter fraud. Kobach, who has lent support to Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud and exaggerated instances of it in the past, made the argument with his lawyer in a Friday court filing as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union over a Kansas law requiring people to prove their citizenship to vote. As part of the lawsuit, the ACLU is requesting a Kansas federal judge unseal documents that Kobach was photographed holding when he met with Trump in November 2016, as well as a draft amendment to federal voting law, which circulated in his office. The documents contain potential amendments to the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law requiring motor vehicle and some other state agencies to provide opportunities to register to vote.

Editorials: The man who may disenfranchise millions | The Washington Post

The day after last fall’s presidential election, Kris Kobach got to work. In an email plotting action items for the new Trump administration, Mr. Kobach, the Republican secretary of state in Kansas and a champion of voter suppression campaigns there and nationally, said he had “already started” drafting a key legislative change that would enable states to impose rules complicating registration for millions of new voters — exactly the sort of rules he had advanced in Kansas, with mixed success. Writing to a Trump transition official, Mr. Kobach said he was preparing an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act to allow states to demand documentary proof of citizenship for new registrants.

Arizona: Trump taunts states, like Arizona, that denied voter data to task force | Cronkite News

Arizona election officials had sharp words Wednesday for President Donald Trump after he suggested that states that are withholding voter information from a presidential commission have something to hide. “What are they worried about?” Trump asked, during remarks at the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. “There’s something, there always is,” Trump said. “We could say the same thing about him,” shot back Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez. “What is he hiding in his taxes?”

Editorials: What does the US election integrity commission need to be credible? Some actual experts | Michael Halpern and Michael Latner/The Guardian

Last Wednesday, the US Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity (PACEI) held its first meeting, with many election experts and political observers anxious to get clarity on the group’s composition and stated objectives. But even before its first meeting, experts have called it a sham and orchestrated chaos, and have accused it of breaking the law. Our assessment of the first meeting is that, as currently structured, the commission will almost certainly create more problems than it solves. The most remarkable thing about the first meeting is not who was there and what was said, but rather who was not there and what was not said. Election integrity commissions are traditionally bipartisan affairs, and have been led by major figures from both parties, like Jimmy Carter and Jim Baker. This commission is headed by Republicans Kris Kobach and Vice-President Mike Pence. Only two notable Democrats, Maine and New Hampshire Secretaries of State Matt Dunlap and Bill Gardner, have agreed to serve on the 15-member panel.

Kansas: Kobach Statements ‘Demonstrate a Pattern’ of Misleading Claims | The Atlantic

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach could use a little credibility at the moment. President Trump’s so-called election-integrity commission, of which he is the de facto chief, has come under suspicion for both its methods and its purpose. But citizens seeking assurance about Kobach’s motives won’t find that from the federal courts. In a ruling yesterday, flagged by the indefatigable Rick Hasen, Judge Julie Robinson of the U.S. District Court of Kansas rejected Kobach’s request that she overturn a $1,000 fine levied on him by a U.S. magistrate judge. That wasn’t the most significant part of the ruling. Over 13 pages, Robinson carefully lays out ways in which Kobach appeared to be playing fast and loose with the facts in the lower court. And in affirming Magistrate Judge James O’Hara’s fine, she became the second federal judge to deem Kobach at the very least misleading in his court appearances. …  Robinson, a George W. Bush appointee, continued that “these examples… demonstrate a pattern, which gives further credence to Judge O’Hara’s conclusion that a sanctions award is necessary to deter defense counsel in this case from misleading the Court about the facts and record in the future.” In the dry language of federal courts—a federal judge is unlikely to call a statewide official a liar—that’s a stinging judgment on Kobach’s honesty.

National: Kris Kobach says Trump’s fraud panel will keep voter data secure. Some states aren’t buying it | Los Angeles Times

After weeks of legal battles and bipartisan pushback from top election officials nationwide, President Trump’s voter fraud commission has renewed a message for the states: It’s safe to pass along your data about voters. “Individuals’ voter registration records will be kept confidential and secure throughout the duration of the commission’s existence,” Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the commission, wrote in a letter sent late Wednesday to all 50 secretaries of state. Even so, by Thursday, much of the criticism that greeted an earlier request from the commission was repeated by election officials and activists, who have expressed concerns about privacy and have called the panel both a sham created by an insecure president and a tool to suppress votes. … The letter from Kobach is the second in less than a month requesting that secretaries of state submit voter data to the so-called Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

National: Voter fraud commission will almost certainly ‘find’ thousands of duplicate registrations that aren’t duplicates. Here’s why. | The Washington Post

Did Vice President Pence commit voter fraud? You might think so, if you looked at voter registration data that includes only each voter’s name and birth year. Mike Pence registered to vote eight times and cast seven ballots across six states in the November 2016 election. But you would be wrong. Each of these registration records belongs to a different person. Their only crime is that they share their name and were born in the same year as the vice president. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, led by the vice president, has gotten considerable attention for requesting voter registration information (including names, birthdays and Social Security numbers) from each state. Presumably, the commission will use the names and birthdays in these lists to identify potential duplicate registration records between states.

Editorials: Trump’s Election Integrity Commission is illegal and unconstitutional — that’s why we filed a lawsuit | Sherrilyn Ifill /Salon

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund recently filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging President Trump’s Election Integrity Commission as illegal and unconstitutional. Our complaint makes clear that to falsely allege that voter fraud exists is nothing more than a pretext for the suppression of Black and Latino voters. Ours is the seventh suit against the commission, and the first to allege that it discriminates against voters of color. Statements made by President Trump and his surrogates demonstrate the connection between race and the commission’s search for voter fraud. Without offering any evidence, the president has repeatedly claimed that voter fraud is rampant in the U.S. and that he lost the popular vote in the 2016 election because of millions of “illegal” votes cast for Hillary Clinton. He has couched these allegations in racially coded terms, implying that voter impersonation is perpetrated mostly by immigrants or residents of predominantly Black urban centers. A few weeks before the election, then-candidate Trump told a predominantly white crowd in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, “I just hear such reports about Philadelphia. … We have to make sure that this election is not stolen from us and is not taken away from us.” He added: “Everybody knows what I’m talking about.”

Colorado: No evidence 5,000 Colorado voters who unregistered were ineligible to vote, secretary of state says |

There is no evidence any of the more than 5,000 Colorado voters who have withdrawn their registrations following the Trump administration’s request for voter information were ineligible to participate in elections, Secretary of State Wayne Williams said Thursday. “It’s my hope that citizens who withdrew their registration will re-register, particularly once they realize that no confidential information will be provided and that the parties and presidential candidates already have the same publicly available information from the 2016 election cycle,” Williams said in a written statement. “Clearly we wouldn’t be asking them to re-register if we didn’t believe they were eligible.” Williams’ remarks come as his office prepares in the coming days to send publicly available voter data — including names, addresses, party affiliations and birth years — to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Julia Sunny, a spokeswoman for Williams, said the information is slated to be submitted by Monday night.

Maine: Dunlap balks at Trump fraud panel’s new request for Maine voter data | Bangor Daily News

Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap’s office said Thursday that a second request for state voting data from President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission raises concerns about the panel’s work. The Presidential Commission on Election Integrity’s vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, sent letters to Maine and other states on Wednesday seeking personal voter information. It’s similar to a June request to all states that was rejected by Dunlap’s office. However, Kobach’s second request says identifiable voter information won’t be made public — only summarized — and will be deleted by the federal government when the panel is done. His first request said identifiable information would be public.

California: President Trump’s voter fraud panel asks again for data from California – and again the answer is no | Los Angeles Times

For the second time in less than a month, California’s chief elections officer has refused to hand over data to President Trump’s voter fraud commission, arguing on Wednesday that the inquiry is still part of an “illegitimate” exercise. “I still have the same concerns,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said. “I can’t in good conscience risk the privacy of voters in California with this commission.” The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which met for the first time last week, originally asked for the information from California and other states on June 29. A federal court refused last week to block the commission’s request, though as many as 21 states have insisted they won’t hand over details on voter names, addresses and political party affiliations.

Editorials: Kris Kobach and Kansas’ SAFE Act | Chelsie Bright/The Conversation

If you want to understand President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission, it helps to study what happened in Kansas. Six years before Trump was tweeting about stolen elections and unsubstantiated claims of millions of fraudulent votes, Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, was promoting the idea that widespread voter fraud threatens the integrity of our electoral system. It should come as no surprise that Trump chose Kobach to be the vice chairman of Vice President Mike Pence’s new Commission on Election Integrity. This appointment gives Kobach a national platform by which to pursue his agenda. Kansas’ voter ID law went into effect when I was a graduate student at the University of Kansas. The pervasive campaign promoting the new law piqued my interest. My co-author and I set out to assess the impact advertisements – specifically, the “Got ID?” campaign – had on voter turnout during the 2012 election.

National: Kobach says states will be sent new letter on voter information request | The Kansas City Star

Kris Kobach said states will be sent a new letter describing how to submit voter information following a federal court ruling this week that favored Kobach and President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission. Kobach told The Star that he expected those instructions to be issued Tuesday. The commission, which Kobach helps lead, had asked states to hold off from submitting the data until a judge ruled on a request for a temporary restraining order filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “There are more than 30 states that already indicated they intended to provide this publicly available information to the commission,” Kobach said. “So I anticipate that that will start happening soon.”

Kansas: Judge OKs Sanction of Kobach in Voting-Rights Case | Courthouse News

A federal judge on Tuesday denied Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s request to reconsider a magistrate judge’s sanctions, finding Kobach has shown a pattern of misleading the court in a voting-rights case. In a ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson refused Kobach’s request to reconsider a $1,000 fine issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge James O’Hara, as well as O’Hara’s order that Kobach submit to a deposition in an ongoing case between the secretary of state and the American Civil Liberties Union over Kansas’ requirement of proof of citizenship for registered voters. O’Hara sanctioned Kobach for misleading the court regarding the nature of voting-policy documents he was photographed with in a November meeting with President Donald Trump. The top sheet of the documents visibly showed suggested policy changes to the National Voter Registration Act which had been requested by the ACLU. After a review, O’Hara ordered Kobach to hand over the documents after finding them relevant to the case.

Ohio: Voter fraud is rare, Secretary of state tells Trump’s election integrity commission | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Soon after taking office, President Donald Trump assembled an election integrity commission to investigate his theory that millions of people voted illegally in last year’s presidential election. On Monday, Ohio’s top election official wrote in a letter to Trump’s panel that it didn’t happen in Ohio, a swing states crucial to Trump’s victory. … Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted told Trump’s commission his office identified 153 “irregularities” in Ohio during the 2016 election, in which 5.6 million Ohioans cast presidential ballots out of 7.9 million registered voters. His office referred 52 cases for further investigation and prosecution, including 22 individuals who voted in more than one state.

Ohio: Groups Back Decision to Keep Voter Data Private | Public News Service

Voting-rights advocates are backing Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s decision to not give private voter information to President Trump’s Election Integrity Commission. The White House panel requested voter data from states as it investigates the president’s claims about fraud in the 2016 election. Husted responded by offering an online link to public-record voter information and stating that private information, such as voters’ Ohio drivers license numbers, will not be provided. Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, said it was the right move. “The commission seems bent on looking for something that doesn’t actually exist,”she said, “and asking for voter information and all sorts of information that is just truly not necessary and that they don’t have the right to have.”

National: District court refuses to block federal government voter information collection | Los Angeles Times

A federal court in Washington on Monday cleared the way for President Trump’s election commission to ask states to turn over personal voter information as part of its investigation into Trump’s claims about voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. The U.S. District Court ruled against the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public-interest research group that had sought a temporary restraining order to block the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The court rejected arguments that the commission’s request for certain voter data violated Americans’ privacy and that the commission did not follow constitutional proceedings. … The commission has been hit with a flurry of lawsuits since its vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, sent a letter to state officials nationwide June 28 requesting voter information, including dates of birth, partial Social Security numbers and information about which elections voters participated in since 2006.

Iowa: Pate submits election commission correspondence | Quad City Times

In response to an open-records request, Secretary of State Paul Pate has turned over the “sum total” of correspondence between his office and the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity — two emails. The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa requested the correspondence as part of its nationwide effort to gather all communications between the commission and state election officials. ACLU could have made a “simple inquiry” rather than go through the public records request process, Pate said. He suggested ACLU’s intent was “not to obtain information, but to receive media coverage.” ACLU of Iowa rejected that criticism, but Executive Director Mark Stringer said the organization is satisfied with Pate’s response.

Papua New Guinea: PNG citizens deprived of the right to vote – Forum observer team | Radio New Zealand

The Pacific Islands Forum’s election observer team to Papua New Guinea says a large number people were deprived of their constitutional rights to vote during the past month’s polling. The team deployed from 19 June to 24 July, and observed pre-polling, polling, and counting. In an interim statement released yesterday the observer group said there were several significant challenges noted, the most serious of which was the alarmingly large number of names missing from electoral rolls. It said this was especially disappointing given the team observed high levels of civic awareness and interest in participating in the election.

Editorials: The Trump election commission exists solely to justify a Trump lie | E.J. Dionne/The Washington Post

President Trump had some remarkable things to say at the inaugural meeting of his Commission to Promote Voter Suppression and Justify Trump’s False Claims, which is formally known as the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He also asked a question that deserves an answer. Lest anyone believe Vice President Pence’s claim that “this commission has no preconceived notions or preordained results,” Trump was on hand last week to state clearly what its agenda is. With the resignation of Sean Spicer as White House press secretary and the rise of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications czar (an appropriate word these days), the television cameras are riveted on the latest reality show, “Spicey and The Mooch.” But we dare not lose track of the threat the Trump administration poses to the most basic of democratic rights.

Editorials: The Bogus Voter-Fraud Commission | The New York Times

The truth can’t be repeated often enough: The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which held its first meeting last week, is a sham and a scam. It was born out of a marriage of convenience between conservative anti-voter-fraud crusaders, who refuse to accept actual data, and a president who refuses to accept that he lost the popular vote fair and square. It is run by some of the nation’s most determined vote suppressors, the kind who try to throw out voter registrations for being printed on insufficiently thick paper or who release reports on noncitizen voting that are titled “Alien Invasion” and illustrated with images of U.F.O.s. Its purpose is not to restore integrity to elections but to undermine the public’s confidence enough to push through policies and practices that make registration and voting harder, if not impossible, for certain groups of people who tend to vote Democratic.

Kansas: Kris Kobach’s voter fraud work presses on nationally, locally | The Topeka Capital-Journal

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach started drawing the ire of statewide voting rights advocates years before he was appointed to President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission and continued his work on voter fraud at the commission’s first meeting this week. The controversial champion of strict voting laws long has been known for his claims of voting fraud and landed a national position under Trump, who has repeatedly claimed without evidence that illegal votes for former opponent Hillary Clinton cost him the popular vote last fall, though he won the Electoral College. Now, on a national stage, Kobach is hoping to study the election system and supposed voter fraud through the commission, which met for the first time Wednesday.