Votebeat

Here’s what you need to know about Texas’ voter suspense list

2026-08-31T18:37:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Multiple headlines recently have fueled confusion among Texas voters who have been placed on the state’s suspense list.

Voters on the suspense list can still vote. Despite its name, being placed on the suspense list does not mean a voter’s registration was suspended, canceled, or that the voter was removed from the voter roll.

The list is made up of registered voters whose local election officials have reason to believe they may no longer live at the address they used to register to vote. Texas voters move every day, and they often don’t update their address on their voter registration record.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said the number of voters on the suspense list now — 1.2 million out of more than 18 million registered voters — is consistent with what the state has seen in previous election cycles.

Voters on the suspense list can confirm their address by contacting their local voter registrar ahead of the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline and filling out a new voter registration form with their updated address. Voters can also update their address at the polls.

Here’s what you need to know about Texas’ suspense list and what to do if you’re on it:

What is the suspense list?

It’s an address verification list. By law, if a county voter registrar “has reason to believe that a voter’s current residence is different from that indicated on the registration records,” the voter registrar “shall deliver to the voter a written confirmation notice requesting confirmation of the voter’s current residence,” according to the secretary of state’s office guidance.

How are voters placed on it?

Every two years, each county voter registrar mails a new voter registration certificate to all active voters, a move required by law to keep the voter roll up to date.

If the U.S. Postal Service returns the certificate as nondeliverable, the voter registrar must then confirm that the voter still lives at that address.

That’s when a voter is added to the suspense list.

A voter registrar mails a notice of address confirmation to voters when:

The voter’s registration certificate has been returned as nondeliverable.
A jury summons or any mailing sent to the voter was returned as nondeliverable.
The voter registrar has received information indicating the voter no longer resides at the address on file. For example, parents can notify their voter registrar if their children have moved, or a voter themselves can call the voter registrar to say they no longer live at that address.

Although some county election officials had trouble mailing voter registration certificates in December due to issues with the state’s voter registration and management system, the certificates were mailed out ahead of the primary election earlier this year.

How can I check my voter registration status?

You can check your voter registration status at VoteTexas.gov. But county voter registration lists are managed by county election officials, who have the most up-to-date information about your voter registration record. When in doubt, contact your county voter registrar directly. You can find a list and contact information by county here.

I’m on the suspense list; can I still vote?

Yes, you can still vote. Just make sure you update your address before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline.

How do I update my address on my voter registration record?

Fill out a voter registration application before the Oct. 5 deadline. You can find a form here. Print it, sign it, and mail it to your local voter registrar or turn it in in person.

If you have a state ID or a driver’s license, you can also update your information online here.

If you have questions, contact your local voter registrar — the election official in charge of your county’s voter registration list. You can find a list of voter registrars by county here.

What if I didn’t update my address before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline?

That depends on where you’ve moved.

If you moved to a different county, you may be able to vote using a limited ballot — which may include only state and federal races, but no local races — during early voting. A poll worker will instruct you on how to obtain one at the county’s main early voting polling place. On Election Day, however, limited ballots are not available for voters who moved from a different county and did not update their registration on time.

If you moved within the same county, you can vote during early voting and on Election Day by filling out a statement of residence form to update your address. If on Election Day, your county does not use the countywide polling place program, which allows voters to cast their ballot at any polling location in the county, you may be asked to go to your assigned precinct to update your address and cast your ballot there.

If you’re running into further voter registration issues, we want to hear from you. Please send us an email at community@votebeat.org.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Trump’s mail voting restrictions would create logistical nightmare for midterm elections

2026-08-31T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

It has been a dizzying week of legal challenges and rulings that have scrambled plans for the November election. The end result is… more uncertainty!

The legal drama spanned three different courts and created a legal tilt-a-whirl that ultimately ended up right where we started: a freeze on the Trump administration’s efforts to impose new restrictions on voting by mail and a likely Supreme Court showdown fast approaching.

The U.S. Supreme Court kicked things off on Monday with a narrow procedural ruling that gave the Trump administration hopes it could move ahead with its plans for the November election. New rules briefly went into effect midweek, but the ruling triggered a new round of legal maneuvering that led U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani to impose a new 14-day freeze on the plans while she considers a permanent ban on putting them in place for this election. The Trump administration has already appealed the temporary order.

The whiplash is creating headaches for election officials with the first mail ballots for the November election set to go out to voters in less than a week and more court action the only certainty.

Since the U.S. Postal Service this month unveiled its proposal to implement the administration’s mail ballot restrictions in a 95-page plan, election officials have been scratching their heads as they try to figure out whether, and how, they’ll have to follow the guidelines.

Tammy Patrick, the chief program officer at the Election Center, a national nonprofit association for election administrators, said there was no way that states would be able to successfully shift to the new system in time for the November election.

Patrick said the rules have created widespread confusion among elections officials who have to rush to meet what seems like an impossible timeline to comply with the regulations.

“The U.S. Postal Service has been a very collaborative partner in delivering democracy,” she said. “This rule is a dramatic shift in both how election officials conduct elections and how the Postal Service delivers democracy.”

The first challenge for election officials are rules that require them to follow new uniform mail ballot envelope design standards. The envelope going to the voter and the one the voter returns each have to have unique barcodes that link the mail to the person casting the ballot. The envelope designs first have to be reviewed by the Postal Service, something Patrick said seems logistically impossible to do before November’s election.

“We have more than 10,000 election jurisdictions and there are 40 mail design analysts at the Postal Service for the entire country,” she said. “They would not be able to accommodate everybody redesigning the envelopes.”

This change could potentially have the biggest impact on rural counties with small teams of elections officials that sometimes hand-write names and addresses on mail ballot envelopes. Finding a company that could quickly design and produce the new ballot envelopes at this late date seems implausible, Patrick said.

The first mail ballots are set to go out to North Carolina voters this Friday, and a host of other states will also begin sending them out in the coming weeks. And it’s unclear how the federal government would treat ballots that don’t comply with the new requirements but are sent out before the new system is up and running.

During the short window when the Trump plan was in place, North Carolina said that it rushed to comply by submitting its envelopes to the Postal Service for “review and approval.”

“Our office is confident that the county boards of elections plan to send out absentee ballots to North Carolina voters who have requested them for this election, starting September 4, as required by state law, will happen flawlessly and smoothly,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

The U.S. Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment on specific questions about how the new processes will work this year and pointed to an online FAQ that provides broad guidance about how the system is intended to work.

If and when election officials clear the envelope design hurdle, they would then have to compile a list of everyone who wants a mail ballot and help create a statewide list with detailed information — down to the barcode — for everyone eligible to vote by mail. The Postal Service says it will refuse to deliver a ballot to anyone who is not on the list.

Each state would have to submit its list to the Postal Service via a new online portal, and the rule says that would preferably be done 30 days ahead of the election, though that’s not a hard-and-fast deadline. The Postal Service has yet to unveil the new online portal.

Then, things get even more complicated. If a state sends out a large batch of mail ballots and one of them is sent to a voter who’s not on the list reviewed by the Postal Service, the Postal Service could reject all of the ballots in that batch, Patrick said. That could mean that one error might delay the processing of a huge number of ballots and create extra work for election officials. She emphasized that election offices in big counties routinely send out millions of ballots at a time. Election officials would have to check the rejected mail ballots and resend them once they address the problems.

On top of that, she said, the time it would take for the Postal Service to scan each barcode could overwhelm its staff as a flood of mail ballots come through the system.

“This is very, very difficult,” Patrick said. “All of this is untenable.”

The Trump executive order signed in March envisioned a much longer rollout period for the new system. But the legal challenges put the plans on hold until now, giving the Postal Service very little time to put the system into place. The Postal Service has expressed confidence that it can smoothly roll out the plans, but election officials are skeptical and wary.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Federal judge places new freeze on Trump mail-ballot rules, setting up likely Supreme Court showdown

2026-08-28T03:27:09+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

A federal judge on Thursday imposed a new freeze on President Donald Trump’s mail-ballot restrictions, the latest move in a back-and-forth legal battle playing out just weeks before the November elections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the U.S. Postal Service from moving ahead with plans to regulate mail ballots for at least 14 days while she weighs a more permanent ban on the agency’s new rules.

The temporary restraining order comes just four days after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted Talwani’s previous injunction against the order on narrow procedural grounds. However, voting rights groups and a coalition of two dozen states and the District of Columbia kept pressing their case against the order, arguing that the president had no authority to try and regulate mail ballots.

In her 11-page decision, Talwani agreed and concluded that Trump’s proposals were an unconstitutional attempt to usurp powers from the states over elections.

“The court is unaware of, and no party has proffered, any delegation Congress has made that would permit the USPS to regulate election mail,” Talwani wrote.

Talwani set a hearing for Sept. 3 on the request for a permanent injunction. The Trump administration is likely to quickly appeal her order, a move that will probably propel the case back before the Supreme Court.

In court filings opposing the temporary restraining order, the Trump administration argued that the Postal Service plan was an effort by the federal government to help ensure elections were run smoothly and that the agency was acting within its legal authority.

The monthslong, multicourt legal battle over Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting is taking on increasing urgency as the November election nears. Election officials preparing to send out ballots are faced with a whipsaw of directives.

Trump’s order, issued in March, directed the U.S. Postal Service to set up a new system that would allow the agency to block delivery of mail ballots to voters not on a list presubmitted by state election officials.

It quickly prompted a slew of lawsuits. In June, Talwani found that some of the order’s key provisions were unconstitutional and blocked them from going into effect for this year’s elections.

The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose Aug. 24 ruling paved the way for the U.S. Postal Service to roll out the new restrictions. But the Supreme Court’s ruling dealt only with the question of whether the injunction was premature, with the justices themselves acknowledging it didn’t address the legality or constitutionality of the plan. That set off a new and increasingly complex round of legal wrangling.

Earlier in August, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled its proposal to implement the administration’s mail-ballot restrictions in a 95-page plan that created widespread confusion among election officials.

The Postal Service rules require states to use a new online federal government system to send it a list of all voters who should receive mail ballots. The Postal Service would refuse to send ballots to anyone not on the list. Ballot envelopes would also have to meet new design standards, including unique barcodes that have to be checked by the Postal Service.

The states challenging the rules warned that they would not have the time, money, or people needed to comply in the short time between now and November. Talwani agreed and wrote that the Trump administration’s filings “offer no reply to Plaintiff States’ assertion that compliance for the 2026 midterm elections will be impossible for many of them.”

Democratic leaders across the nation have vowed a fierce fight to ensure that all voters that want to vote by mail are able to do so.

“Over my dead body is that rule going to go into effect,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said earlier this week, before Talwani’s latest order. “We are going to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”

Read more Votebeat coverage of Trump’s executive order on elections:

Trump issues second executive order on elections, giving U.S. Postal Service unprecedented control over mail voting, March 31, 2026
Trump administration sued by states over mail voting executive order, April 3, 2026
One line in Trump’s order would reshape how long states have to store election records, April 6, 2026
We still have questions about Trump’s new executive order on elections, April 6, 2026
USPS proposal to carry out Trump’s executive order could create new barriers to mail voting, May 29, 2026
Trump’s moves to erect voting hurdles face race against the clock, June 15, 2026
Federal judge blocks key pillars of Trump executive order restricting mail voting in 2026 election, June 25, 2026
Trump administration asks federal judge to quickly lift ban on planned mail voting restrictions, July 2, 2026
Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow new mail ballot restrictions in the 2026 midterms, Aug. 3, 2026
Federal judge blocks Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting nationwide, Aug. 11, 2026
Supreme Court lifts 1 of 2 blocks on Trump’s mail-voting executive order, Aug. 24, 2026
Election officials wrestle with uncertainty amid legal battles over Trump mail ballot restrictions, Aug. 26, 2026

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Proof-of-citizenship amendment fails to make November ballot, for now

2026-08-27T21:55:13+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Update, Aug. 27, 5:55 p.m.: Americans for Citizen Voting has formally asked the Michigan Supreme Court to place its proposed amendment on the November ballot.

The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has denied ballot access to a state constitutional amendment that would require Michigan voters to prove they are U.S. citizens.

A long, tense meeting on Monday ended in a deadlock, meaning the effort won’t make the ballot without intervention from the Michigan Supreme Court. The decision — or lack thereof — means that despite the massive numbers of signatures the amendment’s supporters turned in, it will likely be the court that decides whether it makes the November ballot.

In March, the group Americans for Citizen Voting submitted 709,841 signatures to the state in support of the amendment — significantly more than the 446,198 valid signatures required to get on the ballot. To estimate whether the group surpassed that threshold, the Board of State Canvassers checked the validity of a random sample of 1,000 of the submitted signatures.

At least 629 of them needed to be valid to certify the proposal for the ballot. The board found 626 were valid, though it had not ruled one way or the other on a decisive number of the signatures by the end of the meeting.

Mary Ellen Gurewitz, a Democrat and the vice chair of the board, called the petition drive “sloppy,” saying that it put the board in a “bad position.” Paul Cordes, a Republican on the board, said he felt that if all signatures were considered, there would be more than enough to certify the effort for the ballot.

The bipartisan Board of State Canvassers isn’t allowed to approve or reject certification based on whether board members like the subject matter of the petition. Instead, they have an obligation to act only based on whether the number of signatures is valid.

It wasn’t entirely clear what the board would do after the Bureau of Elections released a report last week recommending denial. The board makes its decision independently of the bureau, but the two work in tandem on ballot measures, election results, and more.

In its analysis of the 1,000 signatures, the Bureau said that the effort had only 612 valid signatures. After a weekend of back-and-forths between Americans for Citizen Voting and Promote The Vote Action — a voting rights group that challenged some of the signatures — the number was 624. Much of Monday’s meeting was spent going through individual petition sheets to see if others should be added.

That effort ended when the board ran out of time and took a 2-2 vote along party lines both to certify the effort and to find it insufficient, falling short of the decisive majority needed to certify and put the amendment on the ballot.

Amendment’s rejection to be appealed

Americans for Citizen Voting doesn’t plan to let the canvassers’ decision go unchallenged, particularly given the narrow margin between certification and rejection.

Paul Jacob, president of Liberty Initiative Fund, the group behind Americans for Citizen Voting, called the meeting’s outcome a “travesty” based on partisan politics rather than the will of Michigan voters.

“People deserve a vote on this issue, and they’re going to get one,” Jacob said after the decision. “We’re going to go to every court we’ve got to go to. We’ll go to the Supreme Court of Michigan. We’ll go to the U.S. Supreme Court, wherever we have to go.”

According to Michigan law, organizers have seven business days — in other words, until Sept. 2 — to file their appeal, which will go straight to the Michigan Supreme Court.

The group spent more than a year building support for its effort, and in March it claimed to have submitted more than 750,000 signatures to the state. State Sen. Ruth Johnson, a former Republican secretary of state and a supporter of the amendment, said at the time that that number spoke to the popularity of the effort. Jacob reiterated that Monday, saying it was a sign that Michigan supported proof of citizenship.”

“You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it,” Jacob, who lives in Virginia, told reporters. “We’re going to be back.”

The Supreme Court will be up against a tight deadline: The earliest ballots go out to military and overseas voters by Sept. 19, and all absentees must be available for distribution no later than Sept. 24. That means the contents of the ballots need to be finalized ASAP to ensure clerks have time to print them.

What’s in the Americans for Citizenship Voting proposal?

If the proposed amendment does ultimately make the ballot, Michiganders would be weighing in on one of the strictest proof-of-citizenship requirements in the U.S.

New voters would have to prove their citizenship when registering, a requirement currently in place in four states. But the amendment would also require existing voters to prove their citizenship if the state can’t independently verify it. The ultimate result would be an Arizona-style system in which Michigan is required to maintain two voter rolls — one for voters who have proven their citizenship and can vote in all elections and a second for those who have not and who can only vote in federal elections.

It would also remove the option for voters without a valid photo ID to instead sign an affidavit verifying their identity under the penalty of perjury. It would instead implement a “hardship program” funded by the state to allow those who aren’t able to afford identification documents to get them for free.

Those who vote without their citizenship verified would have to vote a provisional ballot. They would then have six days after an election to show their documents to election administrators or else their vote will not be counted.

Proof-of-citizenship requirements enjoy broad public support; a YouGov/CBS News poll from earlier this year found that 66% of Americans support requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Being a U.S. citizen is already a federal requirement to vote in U.S. elections, however, and opponents say putting up additional barriers would just serve to disenfranchise people who are citizens but lack the paper trail to prove it.

Noncitizen voting is extremely rare in Michigan and in the U.S. When it does happen, it is typically prosecuted. Six people have been publicly charged across the state for casting a ballot in the 2024 general election despite not having U.S. citizenship, a tiny fraction of the more than 5.6 million ballots cast in Michigan.

The topic has remained at the forefront of conservative talking points, though. President Donald Trump said without evidence last month that more than 270,000 noncitizens appear on voter rolls across the country. He has made a federal proof-of-citizenship requirement a priority, repeatedly pressuring Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. The bill, however, lacks the support in the U.S. Senate to pass.

If the Michigan proposal makes the November ballot, it would need only a majority of the state’s voters to vote yes in order to be enshrined in the state constitution.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Election officials wrestle with uncertainty amid legal battles over Trump mail ballot restrictions

2026-08-26T16:00:19+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update, August 26, 1:27 p.m.: This story has been updated with the fact that, shortly after publication, a federal judge lifted an order that was blocking the U.S. Postal Service from putting new rules on mail ballots in place for the November election.

Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of President Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict mail ballots via executive order is procedural and narrow, but it’s fueling broad confusion and uncertainty as the November election grows inexorably closer.

On Wednesday, in response to the high court decision, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani removed the last legal block preventing the U.S. Postal Service from finalizing its proposed changes for the 2026 elections, even though she warned that the move could create “chaos” as the election closes in.

On Wednesday, a coalition of Democratic states at the forefront of the fight filed a new federal lawsuit against the Postal Service asking the court to block the changes, a move that will likely put them on a fast track back to the Supreme Court and leave election officials contending with messy legal rulings for some time to come.

“Across the country, states are already deep into preparations for the 2026 elections,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in announcing the lawsuit. “Now, at the last moment, the federal government is attempting to meddle in those preparations and potentially threaten countless Americans’ right to vote.”

In a separate case, voting rights groups and Democratic leaders on Tuesday also asked federal courts to block the changes from going into effect for this November’s election.

“The 2026 election has already begun, and this is sowing chaos,” said Paul Gronke, a political science professor at Reed College in Oregon and a founder of the Elections & Voting Information Center.

Meanwhile, as the fight rages over how the U.S. Postal Service will handle mail ballots, North Carolina is preparing to send the first ones out next week.

Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said the state is still planning to send out its ballots as expected.

“At this time, with so much left unresolved, we cannot comment on hypotheticals about what may or may not happen with the USPS and the executive order in the courts, as the situation is uncertain,” he said. “If it becomes necessary, we will do our best to comply with any court decisions.”

Monday’s high court ruling added to a messy snarl of court cases over Trump’s March executive order that sought to allow the U.S. Postal Service to reject delivery of mail ballots to voters in states that don’t meet new federal requirements.

The justices, who split along ideological lines, ruled only on a narrow legal argument and stressed their decision didn’t speak to the merits of Trump’s plan. While the case was pending, the Postal Service last week moved to finalize the new rules, action that a federal judge ruled Tuesday had violated a court order.

The Postal Service rules require states to use a new online federal government system to send it a list of all voters that should receive mail ballots. The Postal Service would refuse to send ballots to anyone not on the list. The envelopes would have to meet new design standards, including unique barcodes that have to be checked by the Postal Service.

Is it too late for changes?

While the matter works its way through the courts, states across the nation have already designed, ordered, and paid for ballots that don’t necessarily comply with the new design guidelines (though North Carolina’s Tyson says theirs do).

North Carolina’s ballots start going out Sept. 4. Seven other states, including New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, can start sending out their ballots the following week.

“I don’t know of a single state where this could be adopted and rolled out quickly, and that I think is a real problem,” she said.

Trump supporters who have been cheering his push to assert more control over elections hailed the court ruling but expressed concern that time was running out to set up the system for the November election.

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the conservative, Texas-based anti-voter-fraud group True the Vote, said she supports the effort but acknowledged the Trump administration faces a daunting challenge in trying to set up the new system with fewer than 70 days to go before Election Day.

“It’s a tall hill to climb, but somebody’s got to do it,” she said.

Even if the courts block the Trump administration from moving ahead with the new plan for November, some voting rights advocates predicted that the president would still look for other ways to impose his policies.

Jared Davidson, an election law attorney at Protect Democracy, said that the Trump administration continues to face legal setbacks in its efforts to impose federal regulations on elections because the Constitution gives states primary responsibility for running elections.

“In the days and weeks ahead I think we can all expect that this administration will throw all kinds of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks,” said Davidson. “But the law could not be clearer that this is an effort to take control over elections by an executive where there is no authority to do that whatsoever.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Hundreds of thousands of Arizonans could be removed from the mail voting list in 2027

2026-08-26T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Arizona could remove hundreds of thousands of voters from its automatic mail ballot list under the provisions of a state law coming to bear next year.

The 2027 removals will be the first under the law, signed in 2021 by former Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican. The statute requires county recorders to remove voters from the early voting list if they don’t cast their mail ballot in federal, state, or certain municipal elections for two consecutive cycles — a four-year period.

That means a voter who didn’t mail or drop off their early ballot in 2023, 2024, or 2025 could be at risk of being removed if they again don’t do so this year, even if they voted in person in one or more elections. But that clock restarts if they choose to cast a mail ballot this November.

The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office was unable to provide an estimate of how many voters statewide could be kicked off the list. Spokesperson Calli Jones said the office was working with INEXL Consulting, the developer behind the state’s voter registration database, to develop coding that would allow them to come up with a list of impacted voters, but did not expect the project to be complete before the general election.

A 2022 study from the Brennan Center for Justice found that about 340,000 Arizonans could have faced removal if the law were implemented at that time. That’s about 12% of the voters who were on the early voting list in 2021. The study also found that nonwhite voters were at higher risk of being removed.

There’s a difference between a voter being removed from Active Early Voting List, or AEVL, and having their registration canceled entirely. Those impacted by the new law will still be able to vote, and they can stay on the list by responding to notices sent by officials in advance of their removal.

Those who don’t take those steps and are ultimately removed from the state’s early voting list would no longer automatically receive a mail ballot for each election, although they still may request to rejoin the list, or make ad hoc asks for mail ballots in future elections.

But research suggests that similar laws in other states have caused voters to turn to other methods of voting, or to stop voting entirely.

For example, Texas’ Senate Bill 1, a sweeping voting law enacted in 2021 that made it harder for voters to apply to receive a mail ballot, changed voting patterns in the next election cycle, according to a report last year from the Brennan Center. In Arizona, where the vast majority of voters cast ballots by mail, those impacts could be amplified, potentially shifting more people to in-person voting and putting additional strain on election infrastructure.

“A policy like this is going to have those sorts of effects on voters, and it’s rooted in misinformation about the prevalence of mail voting fraud,” said Kevin Morris of the Brennan Center, adding that research and audits have consistently shown that voting fraud is extremely rare. “It is really troubling.”

Meanwhile, the law is also posing communications challenges for local election officials. Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly said it’s complicated to explain to voters that the law won’t remove them from the rolls.

“That is something that I think people are scared of,” said Cázares-Kelly, a Democrat, adding that some are referring to the early voting list removals as a “purge,” which is “creating more fear.”

How Arizona changed its early voting list

Arizona established its mail voting list — initially called the Permanent Early Voting List, or PEVL — in 2007.

As the name suggested, once on the list, voters generally stayed there unless they requested removal. Officials could also scratch them off if they moved, died, or their registration was moved to inactive status or canceled.

Then, Arizona Republicans began pushing for a plethora of election policy changes in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, which President Donald Trump falsely alleged was rigged. The law that changed PEVL to AEVL — Senate Bill 1485 — was introduced by former Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita of Scottsdale, who said it would help prevent fraud by reducing the number of mail ballots sent to people who had moved, died, or didn’t want them.

In Arizona, there are several other ways to ensure voter lists stay clean. Officials use information from the U.S. Postal Service, the Arizona Department of Health Services, and other agencies to flag voters who have moved or died, keeping the rolls up-to-date.

Still, Ducey, who signed the bill into law about an hour after the Arizona Senate passed it on a party-line vote, called it a matter of “election integrity.”

“Let’s be clear — despite all the deceptive and heated rhetoric being used by some partisan activists to lobby against this reform, not a single Arizona voter will lose their right to vote as a result of this new law,” he said in a video on May 11, 2021.

Meanwhile, Democrats described the law as a voter suppression tactic. Then-House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding of Phoenix called it “reprehensible” in a letter to the NFL, which he hoped would commit to pulling the 2023 Super Bowl from Arizona.

The move had been inspired by an incident in Georgia — after Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed a law that imposed several new voting restrictions, the MLB withdrew its All-Star Game from Atlanta.

What will happen to voters removed from the list?

Under the law, voters won’t be removed from the state’s early voting list without notice.

In odd-numbered years, county officials are required to send impacted voters a letter to inform them that they could be removed from the list. In 2027, that notice must be sent to voters on or before Jan. 15.

Officials can also opt to also try reaching voters by phone, text, and email, but are not required to do so. Cázares-Kelly said it was “the common understanding that everyone is going to send a notice to their voters,” but that she hadn’t determined whether her office would attempt any other outreach to individual voters impacted by the law.

“We’re focused on the upcoming election,” she said, adding that her staff were also creating “plain language resources” about the law to share broadly next year.

Once the mandated letters are sent, voters have 90 days to confirm in writing if they wish to remain on the list. To do so, they’ll also need to sign a form with their address and date of birth. If they don’t, they’ll be removed.

Still, Morris said there will almost certainly be voters who don’t notice that they’ve been removed from the mail voting list. Some may find out during the following election cycle, when their mail ballot doesn’t show up as usual. Others, he said, may not realize at all.

In Texas, officials were also required to send voters notice if their mail ballot application was rejected under SB 1. But Morris said those messages are “easy to miss in the mail.” His research found that many Texans didn’t reapply for a mail ballot in the general election that fall. He said those effects could be amplified in Arizona.

“The pool of voters that could be impacted by this is an order of magnitude larger than in some of the other states, where maybe only 10% of people are casting a ballot by mail,” Morris said.

He added that the law could ultimately have “downstream effects” at the polls.

“If all of these people suddenly aren’t getting the mail that they were expecting, they are going to start showing up at the vote centers,” Morris said, noting that could cause longer lines, voting materials shortages, and other complications that officials will have to handle moving forward.

Cázares-Kelly said she opposed the law as it made its way through the Arizona Legislature. But she said the version that resulted wasn’t “as terrible as most people think.” When asked if she would’ve opposed the law in its current form, she hesitated.

“I don’t know,” she said, adding that her “kneejerk reaction” was that she’d still be against it. As a voter, she said she’d want to receive her mail ballot “every time, whether or not I choose to use it by mail or if I vote in person.” A mail ballot, she said, also gives voters a chance to review contests in a simpler format than a sample ballot.

To give a fuller answer, Cázares-Kelly said she would need to see how many people the law could impact in Pima County and calculate its financial impact.

“We’re just going to have to wait and see what those numbers look like,” she said.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

What we know about Galveston County’s redistricting and what it means for voters

2026-08-25T09:44:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Galveston County’s decision to redraw local precinct lines this year between the primary and general elections means some voters could cast general election ballots in contests where they had no say in the primary, unless the courts intervene.

Election experts say they’re not aware of any prior instance where this has happened. Galveston County’s latest round of changes is adding new complications to a long-running lawsuit over the maps the county had adopted in 2021, and voting rights advocates say the new maps could further dilute Black and Latino voting power in the county.

When the county redistricted in 2021, county leaders openly said their goal was to draw lines that would be friendly to electing a commissioners court with a Republican majority. Voting rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice subsequently filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Galveston County voters, claiming the map was unconstitutional and violated the Voting Rights Act because it eliminated the only majority-minority commissioners court precinct. The challenge before the court now alleges the county intentionally dismantled that precinct because of race. That case is still pending.

Then, this past June, commissioners voted to redraw precinct boundaries throughout the county for commissioners, constables, and justices of the peace — once again citing partisan aims behind the change. Voting rights advocates again sued, this time on behalf of three county residents in Texas state courts, saying the move to redistrict between a primary and a general election violates state and federal laws. That case is now pending before the Texas Supreme Court.

Here’s what we know:

Why are Galveston County commissioners redrawing lines now?

Galveston County Judge Mark Henry in June told the Houston Chronicle that the latest map accomplishes his goal of turning Galveston County Republican. Henry did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat.

But the unusually timed change could serve another purpose for the county too, coming as it continues to argue against legal challenges to the 2021 map. A day after Galveston County commissioners approved the newest map, the county told the federal judge overseeing the federal case over the 2021 map that the changes rendered the lawsuit over that map moot, according to court documents.

“This Court no longer has jurisdiction to consider declaratory or injunctive relief relating to implementation of the 2021 Map,” Galveston County lawyers said in their court filing.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Brown of the Southern District of Texas rejected that argument. In an order that effectively kept the 2021 challenge alive, he described the timing of the new maps as “highly suspicious.” Brown noted that the county could have redrawn lines to accomplish their partisan aims at any time since the 2021 map was issued, but chose to do so between the 2026 primary and general elections even though the change was unlikely to shift partisan outcomes until the 2028 election.

“If the defendants really cared about improving Republican partisan performance, they would have changed the 2021 map before the primary election to encourage a Republican to run for Justice of the Peace in that now-Republican-leaning precinct in 2026,” he wrote.

Is the commissioners’ move to redraw precinct lines after a primary election and about 70 days ahead of the November midterm election legal?

That question is now before the Texas Supreme Court. The plaintiffs say that it isn’t legal, but Galveston County officials argue that it is.

What do the Galveston County residents suing the county argue?

Plaintiffs argue that the county cannot hold the March primary under one set of precinct boundaries and then conduct the November midterm election under another.

The plaintiffs say the county should be required to hold a new primary because otherwise, some voters who can vote for an office in November would never have had the chance to vote for that same office in the primary election. In addition, they argue some candidates would not have had the chance to run for office because they weren’t in the correct precinct at the time of the primary. Plaintiffs say moving forward with the new map violates state and federal laws requiring all voters to be treated equally and fairly.

“This is a matter of federal equal protection. You have to run your elections in a manner that allows equal access to them,” said Mark Gaber, Campaign Legal Center’s senior director of redistricting litigation. “Galveston County is just dispensing with that part of the process and just deciding who the candidates are.”

What do Galveston County leaders say?

Galveston County officials did not respond to a request for comment.

But in an Aug. 10 filing with the Texas Supreme Court, the county argued that state law does give them the authority to redraw precinct lines between a primary and a general election. They also argue that redrawing the lines doesn’t mean that the county must conduct a new primary in order for voters to cast ballots in November. County attorneys in the filings said that state law does not “freeze precinct boundaries in place once a primary occurs.”

What’s the status of the lawsuit?

The latest case filed in state court has followed a convoluted legal route, but is now pending a decision in the Texas Supreme Court. The court could request additional information, or rule based on the existing record.

What are the implications for voters?

The shifting boundaries have confused voters who aren’t sure who their candidates are or which district they’ll belong to come November, said Sarah Chen, senior supervising attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. And depending on how the court rules, they could shift again.

“I think people are still even trying to understand what the impact is because it happened so quickly and so just like out of the blue,” Chen said.

Which Galveston County communities are most affected?

Under the 2021 redistricting, county commissioners redrew Precinct 3, historically a predominantly Black and Latino district that was the county’s only majority-minority district, significantly but did not change the justice of the peace and constable boundary lines within it. The 2026 map does, and likely eliminates the only remaining majority-minority justice of the peace and constable districts that remained.

Brown, the federal judge overseeing the 2021 case, in his order described that as “the primary partisan change under the new map,” but said it likely wouldn’t kick in until the 2028 election.

“People in our community are enraged. It doesn’t make any sense why they keep doing this to Precinct 3,” Lucille McGaskey, a resident of the precinct who isn’t one of the plaintiffs in either lawsuit, told Votebeat in an interview. “For years we’ve built a coalition of Black and Latino voters to have a seat at the table, and now it feels like we can’t even have that. We only have this precinct, Precinct 3.”

Administratively, is redrawing precinct lines now doable for election officials?

Galveston County Clerk Dwight Sullivan, who oversees the county’s elections, did not respond to a request for comment. But other Texas election officials have told Votebeat that redistricting is a time-consuming task that requires a lot of attention to detail to make sure that voters’ addresses are aligned with the correct boundaries. Redistricting now, in the midst of ongoing legal challenges and on a tight timeline, could create more opportunities for errors — a concern Texas election officials are already familiar with, as the state’s mid-cycle congressional redistricting and ensuing legal challenges left them scrambling.

The first deadline election officials are up against ahead of the November election is coming up on Sept. 19, when ballots must be mailed to military and overseas voters who have already requested them. By then, election officials must know which precincts voters will be assigned to.

Has this been done before?

Gaber and Chen said they had never heard of something like this happening anywhere else, and if allowed to go ahead, it could set a new precedent.

“I think it’s such a dangerous precedent for something far worse than just gerrymandering. It’s like changing the rules in the middle of the election to discard the votes of the voters and to prevent candidates from running,” Gaber said.

Could other places also decide to redraw lines before the November election?

Yes, it’s a possibility, if the courts don’t step in.

Chen pointed to the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Prior to the decision, plaintiffs could prove a claim under Section 2 by showing evidence of a disparate impact on minority voters, regardless of whether the mapmakers intended it. Now, they must be able to show a “strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred,” the high court’s conservative majority declared, a much higher bar.

Earlier this year when the ruling came out, experts warned that it could undo decades of progress that expanded the voting power of Black and Latino voters in Texas and elsewhere.

“We all knew there was going to be this wave of local redistricting,” following Louisiana v. Callais, Chen said. “And we’re preparing for that. We just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. It is like, mindfully disruptive and illogical according to the norms of our democracy to try to redistrict in June and after a primary election.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Supreme Court lifts 1 of 2 blocks on Trump’s mail-voting executive order

2026-08-24T22:37:11+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday lifted one of two injunctions against President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting, but additional legal hurdles and practical considerations could make it difficult to implement it in time for the quickly approaching November elections.

The unsigned ruling, which cut along ideological lines, focused on a relatively narrow legal question: whether the lower court’s injunction was premature. The majority made it clear that it was not deciding on the legality of Trump’s order as a whole, which is certain to be quickly challenged again in court as the administration moves to put its provisions in place.

“The court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful,” the majority wrote. “On that score, time will tell.”

The ruling, made in response to an emergency request, didn’t specify which justices had joined it. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented, warned that the ruling would create a “Kafkaesque nightmare” that “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a separate dissent, joined by Justice Elena Kagan.

What’s the dispute?

Shortly after Trump issued his executive order in March, states, nonprofit organizations, and Democratic Party committees filed multiple lawsuits seeking to block it. In June, in the case brought by states, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found that some key provisions of the order were unconstitutional and blocked them from going into effect for this year’s elections.

Talwani issued an injunction specifically preventing the federal government from enforcing those provisions of the order against the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) whose attorneys general and governors brought the lawsuit. The list included most Democratic-led and swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The Trump administration appealed, arguing the judge’s order was issued prematurely, before the Postal Service and other relevant agencies had finalized their plans to carry out the order’s provisions. The administration also argued that the injunction prevented it from implementing the order in the unaffected states because of the logistical impossibility of a bifurcated mail-voting system.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Talwani’s order in late July, prompting the administration to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the order and allow the agencies to act in time for the November election. In filings, the states warned that “the consequences of allowing such transformative changes to take effect so close to this fall’s elections would be extreme” and would disenfranchise voters.

On Aug. 11, Talwani issued a separate injunction against the order in the lawsuit brought by nonprofit groups, led by the League of Women Voters. The decision made it clear that her ban on implementing the law extended to all states, not just the 24 jurisdictions that brought the other lawsuit. That ruling again rejected the Trump administration argument that it was too soon to address the underlying issues.

The Trump administration again asked the Supreme Court to issue a ruling and make it clear that it would also apply to the Aug. 11 court order. If not, Solicitor General D. John Sauer warned in a court filing, it would require prolonged legal battles that would “effectively run out the clock” on the government’s ability to implement its plans.

On Friday, while the administration’s request was still pending before the Supreme Court, the Postal Service issued its final rules for implementing the order, which it said it would not put into effect for this November’s election unless and until the Supreme Court cleared the way.

The Supreme Court’s ruling addressed neither the second injunction nor the fact that the Postal Service had issued final rules, leaving observers to wonder about how those developments might affect what happens next.

“I expect that the trial court will now amend [the second] injunction and issue a new injunction that will stop USPS from implementing its now final rule. And that too may end up at the Supreme Court within a week,” wrote Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, on the Election Law Blog shortly after the ruling.

What happens now?

The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday will not be the final word on Trump’s executive order. The question before the Supreme Court was a relatively narrow one about whether Talwani issued her order prematurely, before the government had taken final action to carry out the executive order. The states and voting rights groups are likely to go back to court quickly to challenge the Postal Service and the final rules it issued last week.

Talwani has also not yet ruled on whether the order can go into effect for future elections, which she found would be premature. A parallel case involving consolidated challenges brought by nonprofit groups and Democratic Party committees is pending in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Should Trump’s executive order go into effect, it would mandate the creation of a series of lists. The Department of Homeland Security would be required to send each state a list of citizens over the age of 18. States using mail ballots would be required to send the federal government a list of all registered voters to whom they are sending mail-in and absentee ballots in key federal elections. The Postal Service’s final rule states that it will decline to deliver mail-in ballots in states that do not provide that list.

The order would also create new design standards and ballot-tracking requirements for mail ballots. Creating such a complicated process before November presents a huge challenge for the cash-strapped Postal Service.

Read more Votebeat coverage of Trump’s executive order on elections:

Trump issues second executive order on elections, giving U.S. Postal Service unprecedented control over mail voting, March 31, 2026
Trump administration sued by states over mail voting executive order, April 3, 2026
One line in Trump’s order would reshape how long states have to store election records, April 6, 2026
We still have questions about Trump’s new executive order on elections, April 6, 2026
Two reminders that the rules of the 2026 election are still in flux, May 11, 2026
Federal judge refuses to block Trump executive order on mail voting — for now, May 28, 2026
USPS proposal to carry out Trump’s executive order could create new barriers to mail voting, May 29, 2026
Trump’s moves to erect voting hurdles face race against the clock, June 15, 2026
Federal judge blocks key pillars of Trump executive order restricting mail voting in 2026 election, June 25, 2026
Trump administration asks federal judge to quickly lift ban on planned mail voting restrictions, July 2, 2026
Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow new mail ballot restrictions in the 2026 midterms, Aug. 3, 2026
Federal judge blocks Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting nationwide, Aug. 11, 2026

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Votebeat’s Expert Desk is back for the 2026 midterms. Journalists can sign up now.

2026-08-24T16:38:17+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Election reporting gets complicated fast. A breaking story can suddenly require a working knowledge of an obscure state law, a county’s ballot-handling procedures or a voting system you’ve never encountered before — and the person who knows the answer may not be someone you already know how to reach.

That’s why Votebeat is bringing back the Expert Desk for the 2026 midterms.

The Expert Desk is completely free and entirely on the record. It gives journalists covering elections direct access to roughly 100 vetted experts in election administration, election law, voting technology, misinformation, and related fields. Reporters can ask questions in Slack, get help finding the right source, check their understanding of unfamiliar processes, and pressure-test reporting before publication.

We first tried this in 2024. The Desk ultimately brought together 471 journalists from 56 newsrooms and 93 experts. Reporters asked everything from urgent questions about voting-machine problems to highly specific questions about polling-place rules, mail ballots, and state election procedures. Experts could answer directly, point reporters toward someone better suited to help, or build on one another’s responses.

The return of the Desk comes as a relief for Tory Wegerski, an investigative producer for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. She said the venture was crucial to her election coverage in 2024.

“The Expert Desk kept me from losing my mind and I am deeply glad they’re back,” Wegerski wrote in a text message.

She wrote the Expert Desk was “indispensable” because the 2024 election in Pennsylvania was hectic and constantly changing. The Expert Desk provided access to people who could help her coverage.

“From the former Secretary of State who could answer my questions about the mail-in ballot law because she’d helped write it, to other journalists from Pennsylvania and beyond who provided sanity checks, the Expert Desk connected me with incredible resources for my reporting and I was able to keep my viewers up to date and informed thanks to them,” Wegerski wrote.

Aidan Hughes, a data journalist and faculty member at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism within the University of Maryland, also joined the effort in 2024. He wrote in an email that the Expert Desk was a valuable resource when he covered Maryland’s congressional races for the first time.

“It was a relief to know that if a niche question came up during my reporting that was important to get just right, there was a supportive community of experts and other journalists eager to point me in the right direction,” Hughes wrote.

Hughes wrote that he’ll be turning to the Expert Desk again alongside his students as he teaches a journalism course in the fall that focuses on election data.

A University of Washington study of the 2024 Desk found that participating journalists valued the speed of responses to their questions, access to hard-to-find local and specialized expertise, and the ability to gut-check their reporting.

The researchers found that the Desk increased the “speed and credibility” of journalists during important moments.

“In journalism, particularly in public-interest and misinformation contexts, these findings suggest a promising path toward strengthening the infrastructures that help support a more informed public,” they wrote.

Reporters also learned by watching other journalists ask questions and reading the answers they received. Participants gave the Desk an average recommendation score of 8.8 out of 10. The study has been accepted for publication in “Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction.”

How to use the Desk

Using the Desk is simple: Journalists post questions in Slack, where Votebeat community editor Zack Newman will help route them to the experts best positioned to answer. Responses in the Desk are on the record and visible to all participating journalists, so reporters can benefit not only from their own questions but from conversations happening across the network.

This year, the Desk will also include a separate AI-powered research tool designed to help reporters search election codes and related source material. It will answer questions using a curated library of documents and provide citations so reporters can check the underlying material themselves. The AI tool will remain clearly separate from the human Expert Desk: Its responses are a research aid, not a quotable source, while experts will remain available to interpret the material, answer follow-up questions and provide on-the-record guidance.

We’re also investing more in the human side of the Desk this year. Zack will monitor questions, connect reporters with the right experts, and help keep conversations moving as election coverage intensifies.

You don’t need to be an election specialist to join. You don’t need to know much of anything: In fact, the Desk may be most useful when you suddenly find yourself covering an election question you’ve never encountered before.

If you’re a journalist covering the 2026 elections, sign up for the Expert Desk here. We’d be honored to help make this hectic season a little bit easier.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Zack Newman is the Expert Desk’s community editor and is based in Denver. Contact Zack at znewman@votebeat.org.

A state election law in Minnesota faces a surreal test

2026-08-24T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Can Hamas members from the Gaza Strip walk in and vote in Minnesota elections?

A group of disguised conservative activists armed with hidden cameras set out to test that claim during the state’s recent primary election. The Election Day exploit put a spotlight on Minnesota’s election laws, and has now triggered investigations.

The furor centers on a Minnesota law allowing what is often referred to as “vouching.” It permits a registered voter to clear the way for up to eight other eligible voters to register and cast ballots on Election Day by signing a sworn statement affirming that those people live in their precinct.

The rarely used law has been on the books in Minnesota since 1973. It’s most typically used for residents of nursing homes who have moved out of their longtime houses but haven’t yet changed their addresses.

The activists decided to test the law at Minneapolis polling places during the August 11 primary.

One of the men, Cam Higby, dressed as a conservative Muslim woman with his face hidden by a black veil and said he misrepresented himself as a registered voter to see if he could game the vouching system. Another, James O’Keefe, dressed in traditional Muslim clothing, appeared to impersonate at least two registered voters at different polling places, and said he wanted to vouch for prospective voters. Another activist, Anthony Rubin, walked into a polling place saying he wanted to vouch for several people he claimed were newly arrived Hamas members from the Gaza Strip.

None of the activists said they went so far as to try to cast a ballot in the election. But they did release a series of carefully edited videos suggesting that the Minnesota vouching system is so lax that it makes it possible for virtually anyone to vote in an American election, creating a furor on social media.

What is vouching and how does it work?

So, how does the Minnesota law work, and is it unusual? To use the system, the person doing the vouching has to be either a registered voter in the precinct or an employee of a residential facility — such as a nursing home — vouching for a resident of that facility. That person must sign a sworn statement saying that they know that the people they are vouching for live in the precinct. This can serve as proof of residency for eligible voters looking to register to vote on Election Day, in lieu of documentation such as a state ID or utility bill.

The person being vouched for doesn’t have to show a physical ID to verify their identity, but must still fill out the standard voter registration application, which requires them to affirm that they are a U.S. citizen and eligible to vote in Minnesota. It also asks them to provide a Minnesota driver’s license number, a state ID number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. That information is checked later by elections officials to make sure it’s legit. Lying on a voter registration form is a felony carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines.

In Minnesota’s 2024 general election, about 19,000 voters used the vouching system, about 0.6% of the 3.2 million people who cast ballots that year. Of that 19,000, the vast majority were already registered voters updating existing registrations on Election Day with information such as a new address. Around 5,500 people were voting for the first time.

Minnesota’s vouching law has become a prime target for conservative activists who say the process exposes the vulnerabilities of a system that doesn’t require voters to show an ID. A registered voter can vouch for up to eight people. Someone working in a nursing home can vouch for an unlimited number of residents.

“With tens of thousands of voters registering through vouching across recent cycles, without basic verification safeguards, the vouching policies and practices leave Minnesota’s elections vulnerable and risk Americans’ votes being canceled by fraudulently registered voters,” Will Scolinos, an attorney at conservative nonprofit America First Legal, said in May.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon has publicly defended the law. In a letter earlier this year to the U.S. Department of Justice, he pointed out that other states also allow some forms of vouching. For example, Alaska allows state voter identification requirements to be waived if the election official knows the identity of the voter, Iowa allows registered voters to vouch for someone from the same precinct without documentation on Election Day, and Arkansas permits staff members to vouch for residents of long-term or residential care facilities.

Simon denounced the activists’ Election Day operation as “outrageous and totally unacceptable.”

The videotaped incidents were reported by poll workers on Election Day and are under investigation by elections officials and local law enforcement, Simon said.

“The conduct was disturbing,” Simon told Votebeat. Simon said the law has long had bipartisan support in the state as a way to expand voter access, especially for elderly residents.

“This is America,” he added. “Do what you want. If you want to dress up as someone, look no further than Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen. But we have to draw the line.”

Could those people claiming to be newly arrived Hamas members from the Gaza Strip have voted?

To do so, the prospective voucher would have had to break several laws by impersonating a registered voter and signing an affidavit falsely claiming that the other people lived in the precinct. Then the fake Hamas members would have had to break the law by providing false information about their identity and their eligibility to vote in Minnesota.

It is unclear from the videos released by the activists if the poll workers detailed the other steps they would have to go through before they could vote. Anthony Rubin declined to comment or release the raw footage from the incidents. O’Keefe did not respond to a request for comment.

Higby said the group was trying to expose shortfalls in the state election system.

“The goal was never to vote, it was never to touch a ballot, it was never to obtain a ballot,” Higby told Votebeat. “It was simply to test the system and see if poll workers would be prepared to allow me to vote.”

But Simon said in his 11 years as Minnesota’s top elections official, he’d never seen a single case of someone trying to game the vouching system to illegally vote.

“Could someone scam the system?” he asked. “Anything is possible. But you have to look at what is probable.”

Simon said he’d also never before seen a case of someone impersonating a voter.

“There is no end to the creativity of people who are looking to do wrong,” he said. “You have to look at the track record and the incentive structure. There’s a high likelihood that someone is going to get caught.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

The SAVE system isn’t reliable, but it still might be useful. One Arizona county’s experience shows how.

2026-08-22T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Recorder Michelle Burchill was intrigued when she first learned about a newly expanded federal tool for checking voters’ citizenship.

She had helped run elections in bright-red Yavapai County, Arizona, for about six years — and while she entered the field as an elections skeptic, she had gained trust in election systems during her time with the county. Still, Burchill, a Republican, wanted to confidently tell her voters, neighbors, and friends that her county’s voter roll was free of any noncitizen voters.

So, earlier this year, she began running her county’s voter list through the expanded tool, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE.

That system, maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was originally built to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits. Under President Donald Trump’s administration, it has been transformed into a mass voter verification tool — and a political lightning rod. Trump and his allies have used its findings to claim that there are thousands of noncitizens registered to vote across the country; Democrats have decried it as a voter suppression tool after it was found to have falsely flagged eligible voters as noncitizens.

Burchill, who spent months running her county’s voter rolls through the system, also saw false positives. But she said the system helped her confirm the citizenship status of hundreds of voters who hadn’t submitted a birth certificate, passport, or other documents required by Arizona law to vote a full ballot.

She also found the tool useful for identifying voters who had died and needed to be removed from the rolls, as well as vulnerabilities in the state’s aging voter registration system. And in the process, she found 30 noncitizens on her voter list, representing about 0.01% of her county’s total voters. She reached that number only after using other methods and databases to double-check the citizenship status of voters that the SAVE system initially flagged as ineligible.

Nationwide, virtually every election official aims to maintain a clean voter roll. The politicization of SAVE — which, after a series of court decisions, is now in legal limbo — has problematized its use for routine, nonpartisan maintenance. But Burchill’s experience shows that the system could be helpful — when used responsibly. Her county is now among the first jurisdictions in the country to demonstrate the system’s broader potential as a voter roll maintenance tool.

“The SAVE database is not the only useful tool on which we should rely for voter registration purposes,” Burchill wrote in an Aug. 7 report summarizing her findings, “but in my view, it has been by far the most valuable.”

Nationally, SAVE has made headlines for false positives

Burchill’s experiment stands in stark contrast to the vast majority of jurisdictions nationwide. States and counties that have run their data through SAVE — which tend to be run by Republicans — have largely used it to confirm their suspicions that the rolls are laden with noncitizens. Most Democratic-run jurisdictions, by contrast, have not even used it at all.

Until last year, the tool had a fairly limited use. It could confirm citizenship for certain voters, but only if election officials had specific immigration and naturalization identification numbers issued by the Department of Homeland Security.

But then, in March 2025, Trump issued a sweeping executive order that required the agency to make federal citizenship data available to state and local election officials and provide them with free access to federal systems for verifying voters’ eligibility.

So, late last year, the Trump administration upgraded the system to allow election officials to upload their voter lists to it to scan for noncitizens. And initially, the system indicated thousands of noncitizens were present on their voter rolls. As of June, the Department of Homeland Security said that states had run 60 million voter records through the system — about a third of all registered voters in the U.S. — and 24,000 were flagged as potential noncitizens.

But as election officials began investigating individual cases, they quickly realized that the tool was returning false positives.

In Missouri, the program wrongly flagged hundreds of voters as noncitizens. Officials didn’t attempt to confirm that information before limiting voters’ ability to cast ballots.

In Texas, the system said more than 2,000 of the state’s roughly 18 million voters were noncitizens. County election officials have since determined some of the flagged voters were citizens, though it isn’t clear exactly how many.

In Arizona, just one other county — Maricopa, the state’s most populous — has said it’s used the tool. There, Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, announced in February that his office had identified 137 potential noncitizens registered to vote. But Heap didn’t answer questions about whether he vetted the SAVE system’s results. Later, he said that he intended to change the registration status of the flagged voters, though experts questioned whether he’d followed the appropriate steps to notify them before doing so.

Prosecutors continue to investigate the voters referred by Heap. They have yet to issue information about whether the voters are noncitizens and whether they could be charged with illegally voting.

Meanwhile, several other jurisdictions, including counties in Texas, have ended up reinstating some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens by the SAVE system.

How Yavapai County ran its voter rolls through SAVE

Burchill began her experiment with the SAVE tool on a small scale — by examining her county’s roughly 300 federal-only voters.

Arizona requires people to submit documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote — a step beyond most states and the federal government, which only require voters to attest to their citizenship under the penalty of perjury. Arizonans who register with a federal form but don’t submit such documents are allowed to vote in federal contests, but not state ones. As such, the state has thousands of federal-only voters — people who haven’t proven citizenship, but are still allowed to vote in presidential and congressional races.

Burchill wondered whether the SAVE system could confirm citizenship for any of them. If so, they could be registered as full-ballot voters, expanding voting access.

Her idea worked. The tool confirmed the citizenship of 255 federal-only voters — all of whom can now vote full ballots. A handful came back as deceased, and several dozen came back with no determination. No noncitizens were found, backing analyses that have suggested most federal-only voters are students, homeless, or born on tribal lands, where birth certificates were not commonly issued for decades.

Burchill then used SAVE to check a list of 6,781 voters impacted by a longstanding state coding error. The coding issue made it difficult to determine whether those individuals had provided proof of citizenship when they registered.

The results surprised her. Several active voters were flagged as deceased, suggesting that there could be significantly more dead voters on the county’s rolls than previously known. Nationally, many states share death information with one another — but not all of them. That means local election officials aren’t necessarily automatically notified when a voter dies.

Another 10 voters — one of whom had previously cast a ballot — were flagged as noncitizens and ultimately had their registrations cancelled.

Before doing so, though, Burchill took additional steps to try to confirm whether these voters actually were deceased or noncitizens. The group of suspected noncitizens were sent formal notices requesting they submit documents proving their status, as prescribed by state law, and given 35 days to respond. Burchill, keeping in mind SAVE’s spotty track record, also personally called, emailed, and mailed letters to those flagged by the tool.

Finally, Burchill decided to run her county’s full voter roll through SAVE. The system confirmed citizenship for the vast majority of voters. It identified 39 as noncitizens, but through further vetting, Burchill said she was able to track down citizenship documents for 28 of them. The other 11 were removed from the voter rolls after the requisite notification and waiting period.

In the process of running the checks, Burchill also discovered nine other noncitizen voters — and a potential glitch in the state’s systems.

In total, she used SAVE to confirm the citizenship of 193,114 voters — 99.8% of those on her county’s roll. Burchill ultimately identified and cancelled the registrations of 30 individuals flagged as noncitizens, four of whom had previously voted.

The takeaways

Burchill’s report concluded the SAVE system, while flawed, can be used to constructively clean voter rolls and build confidence in elections, provided that its data is vetted carefully.

Hers is the most detailed, but not only, example.

Officials in Florida used the tool to help investigate specific voters after receiving information that they might be noncitizens. In a Jan. 15 report, they said they had looked into more than 835 voters and, after vetting them with the SAVE system and other tools, found that about 200 were ineligible to vote.

In Utah, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, wrote in a May 27 report that while SAVE could not reliably determine whether a voter was not a citizen without crosschecks, it reliably identified people who were citizens. She said the tool helped “identify and fix potential vulnerabilities in our voter registration processes while also protecting the rights of eligible voters.”

Burchill said her experiment also raised new questions about Arizona’s election laws and systems. For instance, some voters were flagged by the SAVE system as having no record or determination of citizenship. She was able to confirm most of those voters’ citizenship statuses in the Arizona Voter Information Database, the state’s voter registration system — but not all. That means some remain in limbo.

“These voters may very well be citizens, but we don’t have proof of either status,” Burchill wrote, adding that the voters would remain on the rolls under existing Arizona laws.

Burchill said the experiment also raised potential concerns with AVID that state and local officials are still working to fully understand. While attempting to confirm noncitizens flagged by the SAVE system, she discovered that several had seen their citizenship status change in motor vehicle records — without any notification to election officials.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, which administers AVID, said officials were looking into the changes described by Burchill. Jones added that her office “does not register voters, nor do we change voter information,” calling the issue “an outstanding question for our office as well.”

And Burchill questioned what election officials should do if they become aware of a potential noncitizen on the rolls within 90 days of an election. Under federal law, officials are barred from conducting systematic removals of ineligible voters during that period.

“This topic has not been addressed in the past but is now something that needs to be addressed in law,” Burchill wrote, adding that the SAVE system created an “uncomfortable” tension with the mandated pause.

SAVE is currently mired in lawsuits. In June, a federal judge blocked the use of the expanded tool, ruling that it violated citizens’ privacy and voting rights. That ruling prompted the Department of Homeland Security to pause certain features in the SAVE system to comply. Last month, a different federal judge ordered the agency to restore access to the revamped system for four states — Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana — due to an earlier settlement agreement.

Burchill said her use of the SAVE system didn’t infringe on any voters’ privacy. The only information she ran through SAVE was voters’ names, dates of birth, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. That information, she said, is already on record in the system.

“I’ve never understood why people keep saying there’s privacy concerns when we are just matching our info to what the database has,” she told Votebeat in a text message. “The whole point is for them to respond and say, ‘Yes, the information is correct and matches.’”

She said she thought it was unfortunate that the courts had limited SAVE’s use and believes the tool can still be valuable.

“I am more confident in our voter roll today than ever before, and that has always been my goal,” she wrote in her report.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

A new Trump administration analysis claims noncitizens voted in 2020. Experts are questioning its validity.

2026-08-20T12:00:00+00:00

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President Donald Trump this week unveiled another effort by his administration to raise questions about the outcome of the 2020 election he lost: an unusual U.S. Census Bureau analysis concluding with “high confidence” that 24,000 noncitizens illegally voted in the 2020 election.

Trump touted the finding on social media and wrote that it supports his long-running false claims that he actually won the 2020 election.

But experts said there are substantial questions about the Census Bureau study’s methodology and validity. And even if 24,000 noncitizens had voted in 2020, it wouldn’t have been enough to change the election’s outcome.

The seven-page Census Bureau report said researchers examined more than 128 million voters in the 2020 presidential election and determined with “high confidence” that more than 24,000 of them were noncitizens. If so, that number would be less than 0.019% of the sample.

Trump said census researchers are still analyzing another 32 million voters and predicted that the number of illegal noncitizen votes would “explode” after that was done.

The Census Bureau did not respond to a request for comment. But experts said some aspects of the bureau’s release raise fundamental questions.

Most Census Bureau reports identify the authors of the report and detail the reliability of the data they are using. This analysis did neither.

“A properly done Census report would have had that information and the fact that it is missing is glaring and makes me think that they are hiding something,” said Beth Jarosz, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Massive Data Institute who has worked as a contractor on Census Bureau reports.

Terri Ann Lowenthal, who served as staff director for the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee overseeing the Census Bureau from 1987 to 1994, said the report’s minimal methodological information raised questions about the accuracy of the results.

Lowenthal said the report was “beneath the Census Bureau’s stellar reputation.” The failure to include the names of any career staff members, she said, suggested that the work may have been done by someone with a political agenda “and may not reflect the sound, reputable analysis for which the Census Bureau is known.”

Trump administration searches for noncitizen voters

Trump has focused the efforts of his second administration on rooting out voter fraud, especially any instance of illegal voting by noncitizens, which audits, investigations, and studies have found happens only rarely. But the federal government doesn’t possess a comprehensive database of citizens, and efforts to match different data sets have so far yielded inaccurate results.

The administration pushed states to run millions of records of registered voters through a revamped federal data tool to check if they were citizens. But election officials found the system, which cross-referenced federal records from various federal agencies, in some cases erroneously flagged citizens. In June, a federal judge blocked the use of the overhauled tool, finding it threatened privacy and voting rights.

In a televised primetime speech on July 16, Trump said his administration had found more than 250,000 noncitizen voters on the voter rolls of just four states: New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Officials in all four states pushed back on Trump’s claims and said they didn’t understand how the administration arrived at those numbers. The Trump administration has yet to provide any detail on its methodology in that case either.

The president has lobbied for federal legislation to require people registering to vote to prove their citizenship, and he repeated that call when releasing the Census Bureau findings Tuesday, describing it as his highest legislative priority. But the effort has stalled in the U.S. Senate. He has also released two sweeping executive orders on elections, but their major provisions have been so far blocked by federal courts.

Questions surround Trump administration’s data analysis

The voting data used in the analysis was provided by Data-Clear, a business in Virginia that secured an $885,000 Census Bureau contract from former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2024. Carolyn Carlson, Data-Clear’s president and founder, said she provided nationwide voting data to the bureau that year as part of a project to try and prevent an undercount of minority voters in the 2030 census.

Carlson said she was surprised to see the data she provided used in the new review of noncitizen voters.

The report says the Census Bureau matched the Data-Clear voter files with federal immigration records to determine if people were citizens and eligible to vote. The report offers only general descriptions of how and when it was able to match verifiable information.

Justin Levitt, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who worked in the Biden White House on voting rights issues, said a typical analysis would include caveats around the possible margin of error, and the 24,000 figure for noncitizen voters could be within it. However, the Census Bureau report doesn’t specify one.

“In most statistical exercises, it’s not unthinkable that there might be 0.019% false positives – and if that were the case here, that would turn the total conclusions to zero,” he said.

Should the analysis hold up to scrutiny, the underlying numbers showed that they would not involve enough voters to change the result of the 2020 election. The report said it found 500 noncitizens illegally cast ballots in Wisconsin, which Trump lost to Biden by more than 20,000 votes. The survey said it identified 1,100 noncitizens who cast ballots in Arizona, which Trump lost by more than 10,000 votes. And the report cannot say whether those voters supported Trump or Biden.

In response to questions about whether the release supported the president’s assertion, the White House responded with a link to a social media post by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

How Josh Shapiro and Stacy Garrity stack up on election issues

2026-08-20T10:00:01+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Two candidates with vastly different visions for elections are competing for Pennsylvania’s governorship this year.

On one side, incumbent Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has staked many of his policy stances on elections in opposition to President Donald Trump, while struggling to pass new election laws through the state legislature. On the other hand, state treasurer Stacy Garrity, Shapiro’s Republican challenger, has indicated she would defer to Trump’s election priorities, but her state-level legislative priorities are less clear.

And in the background, questions about Garrity’s views on the legitimacy of the 2020 election still loom.

Garrity has walked a fine line on the 2020 election

Garrity was first elected as state treasurer in November 2020, when Trump lost his first reelection bid and falsely claimed the contest was marred by fraud. Garrity went on to echo that rhetoric.

“The election from this November is tarnished forever,” she said at a Jan. 5, 2021, rally at the state capitol.

At a 2022 rally with Trump and Mehmet Oz, who was then a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Garrity was more direct.

“We know that he won,” she said, referring to Trump’s 2020 race.

Since then, Garrity has attempted to walk back those and other comments, but she hasn’t ever fully refuted Trump’s claim that he lost the election due to fraud or acknowledged that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner.

When she was up for reelection in 2024, a campaign spokesperson said her January 2021 comments were not about Trump’s election, but rather only about “inconsistent application of ballot counting rules that directly affected the outcome of a state senate race in the 45th District.” However, rally organizers told reporters at the time that the purpose of the event was to ask state legislators to decertify Pennsylvania’s November 2020 votes.

As for her 2022 comments, Garrity said earlier this year those remarks were made at a Trump rally, which are “kind of fun things” that are “easy to get caught up in.”

During a recent sitdown interview with Dennis Owens, the ABC27 anchor asked Garrity if she believes Trump lost the 2020 election.

“Yeah, I mean, I won, and that’s what I’m most concerned about,” Garrity responded, though she added there were “irregularities” in the election.

In an interview with Spotlight PA earlier this month, Garrity said that her use of the word “irregularities” referred “very specifically” to guidance issued by then-Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar in 2020.

While Garrity told Spotlight PA she is “painfully aware” Biden was the president after the 2020 election and that she “agree[s] that he was the elected president,” Garrity has not said Biden won legitimately.

Did Shapiro keep his 2022 campaign promises?

When he first ran for governor in 2022, Shapiro put a heavy emphasis on democracy and voting issues, and the first policy plan his campaign released was focused on those subjects. It laid out a wide range of policy ideas he said he would pursue, including new legislation and administrative changes.

During his first term, Shapiro has successfully enacted some of those plans, but not others.

In September 2023, he unilaterally brought automatic voter registration to the state, directing PennDOT to change its voter registration process from one where prospective voters had to affirmatively opt in to one where they are automatically taken through the process unless they opt out. State data shows the switch has achieved its goal of registering more voters.

Shapiro also promised to appoint a secretary of the commonwealth who would “run elections fairly and uphold democracy.” That appointment would fall to Al Schmidt, a Republican and the former Philadelphia city commissioner who stood up to Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2020.

Under Schmidt, the Department of State has redesigned mail ballot return envelopes and provisional ballot envelopes to reduce the number of ballots rejected for technical errors. Analysis from Votebeat and Spotlight PA found that both of those changes have achieved their goals.

In keeping with Shapiro’s promise to “make more resources available in different languages so that every eligible voter can make their voices heard,” in 2023 the Department of State created Spanish and Chinese versions of its website. During Shapiro’s term, the department has also translated voter registration and mail ballot application forms into additional languages.

But there are some promises Shapiro hasn’t delivered on. For instance, his 2022 plan said he would create a centralized website where election results for all races, including local races, could be found. But the state’s current project to upgrade its Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE, program, which includes a revamp of its election night reporting system, does not include a plan to have it also display local results.

Additionally, he said he would “provide funds in his first budget” so that all counties could participate in a risk-limiting audit of elections, a type of statistical test done to ensure the accuracy of results. By the time Shapiro entered office, all counties were already participating in the risk-limiting audit, and his first budget kept funding for county election expenses flat. Counties are not currently reimbursed for the costs of these audits.

This, and other policy struggles also reflect the reality of Pennsylvania’s divided legislature.

A divided legislature impedes election lawmaking

Shapiro made many other promises during the 2022 campaign that required the legislature’s help to pass. Those included allowing people to register to vote on Election Day, preregistering 16-year-olds to vote, establishing true early in-person voting, and allowing counties more time to process mail ballots ahead of Election Day.

But election legislation of all types has effectively ground to a halt during Shapiro’s term. The Republican-controlled state Senate has said any election legislation needs to be paired with expanded voter ID requirements, which they prefer in the form of a hard-to-pass — and hard-to-challenge legally — constitutional amendment.

But Shapiro himself has also been relatively quiet on election legislation. He has issued few statements urging passage of specific proposals, even those that he touted during that 2022 campaign.

In 2024, when the state House passed a bill that would have provided more time for counties to prepare mail ballots for counting, he urged the state Senate to do the same and send it to him to sign. But in other instances, Shapiro has not responded to questions on specific election legislation, and he has avoided weighing in or declined to comment on competing proposals, even when he has supported the underlying policy.

Last year, when a comprehensive election reform package supported by Democratic state House Speaker Joanna McClinton passed the lower chamber, a spokesperson for Shapiro did not directly answer a question on whether he supported the bill, which included some elements he campaigned on. Recently, his campaign also did not respond to questions on what his election priorities would be if Democrats were to win full control of state government this fall.

Shapiro has also failed to appoint several members to a state board meant to advise the legislature on election policy, which has contributed to the board now sitting idle.

Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for Shapiro’s campaign, defended his record on elections and noted that the fact that control of the legislature is split between parties makes it more difficult to pass legislation. “Governor Shapiro has a long record of protecting our democracy – from standing up to Trump and his allies when they try to undermine it, to implementing commonsense reforms to protect and improve our free, fair, safe, secure elections,” he said in an email.

Beyond voter ID, Garrity’s election priorities are unclear

If Garrity is elected governor, she could have tremendous influence over election policy in the state. But she hasn’t released an elections policy plan of her own, and her campaign has not responded to several requests for an interview on the subject. What is known about her stance on election issues comes from the few questions she has answered on the campaign trail and in more broadly-focused interviews with Spotlight PA.

First and foremost, Garrity would be able to appoint a new secretary of the commonwealth, who can influence how elections run through approving what equipment can be used and making sometimes binding guidance on issues of state law. It’s not clear who, if anyone, Garrity has in mind for this position.

Garrity could also make, or direct her cabinet members to make, administrative decisions that would impact voting.

For example, several Republican-led states have recently withdrawn from the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a data-sharing consortium of states that works to identify inaccurate or duplicate voter registration records. The program has faced attacks from conservatives in recent years. Garrity has not said how she would handle ERIC.

Both state Republicans and President Trump have also heavily criticized Shapiro’s implementation of automatic voter registration. As governor, Garrity would be able to reverse the policy, but she has not said whether she would.

One point on which Garrity has been more definitive is that she would like to require more voters to show identification at the polls.

Currently, voters are required to show ID only when voting for the first time or when voting at a new polling location. Republicans in the state have for years been trying to expand those requirements.

During the recent interview with Spotlight PA, Garrity said she supported implementing enhanced voter ID requirements in the state.

“That’s where I would start,” she said. “You have to have an ID to do anything.”

Garrity did not specify what forms of identification would be acceptable, or other details such as whether she would be open to exceptions. For instance, some other states have an affidavit system where someone else can vouch for a voter’s identity if they do not have ID with them at the polls.

Shapiro has also indicated an openness to voter ID, though no proposals made it to his desk during his first term.

Shapiro, Garrity would handle Trump differently

Apart from their policy differences at the state level, Shapiro and Garrity would bring very different approaches to Pennsylvania’s relationship with the federal government, including as it pertains to elections.

As state attorney general in 2020, Shapiro represented Pennsylvania in numerous lawsuits involving Trump’s election fraud claims, a fact he still makes note of even today.

“Every time Donald Trump and his enablers have been forced to produce evidence to back up these ridiculous claims, they’ve failed,” Shapiro said in response to Trump’s July primetime address on elections. “And in 2020, when they took us to court and tried to undermine the will of the people here in Pennsylvania — I went 43-0, Trump went 0-43.”

This year alone, Shapiro has joined two lawsuits against the Trump administration in his capacity as governor. The first, from April, challenged Trump’s executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to only deliver ballots to individuals on preapproved lists provided by the states.

In July, he also joined a suit challenging the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s withholding of grant funds, which the plaintiffs argue is being done to coerce the states into compliance with the administration’s preferred elections and immigration policies.

By contrast, Garrity is likely to cooperate with the federal government on election policies. In response to Trump’s call this past February to nationalize elections, Garrity said she would “work with the Trump administration” to “turn our state around.”

The Shapiro administration has also rebuffed the U.S. Department of Justice’s demand for a version of the state’s voter roll that includes driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers.

By contrast, Garrity has said she would provide the records.

“If we think there’s not voter fraud, then why not hand over the rolls and prove him wrong?” she told ABC27.

Clarification, Aug. 20: This article has been updated to specify that Garrity has not acknowledged that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.

Katie Meyer of Spotlight PA contributed reporting.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Issues with modem-based systems held up election results reporting in two Wisconsin counties

2026-08-20T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Systems used to transmit unofficial election-night results broke down in Green and Winnebago counties during Wisconsin’s August primary, causing problems processing and posting results.

The issues had no bearing on the official results that counties across the state are still certifying. But those breakdowns come as national experts have encouraged a move away from transmitting results over modems and toward physically delivering them. Many other states and election jurisdictions have shifted away from transmitting results by modem, but it remains common in Wisconsin.

Much of the concern about sending results over modems has related to cybersecurity. But experts say there are additional reasons to avoid the use of modems, and the recent issues in Wisconsin are one example. There’s no indication that the Election Day issues in Green and Winnebago counties, which both use Liberty Vote election technology, had anything to do with a hack.

Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting, an elections technology organization, said election security is not only about preventing incorrect results or cyberattacks. It also means making sure the systems that election officials rely on are available and functioning when they need them.

A breakdown in transmitting unofficial results may not change the outcome of an election, she said, but it can still disrupt election-night operations and consume significant staff time.

“It matters because it’s a time suck for the county, and everybody trying to deal with it,” she said.

In a statement, a Liberty Vote spokesperson said they have “every confidence these isolated issues will not occur in future elections.”

Green County changing results reporting process for November

The results transmission failure caused the most significant delay in Green County, where officials did not fully shift to a backup method for collecting results from municipalities until the next morning.

Officials there and their vendor, Liberty Vote, are still trying to understand what went wrong after county staff were unable to process the results that municipalities sent over via fax modems, Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli told Votebeat.

When municipalities in Green County send their unofficial results to the county clerk’s office, they appear as encrypted files on a so-called listener server set up to receive the transmissions, said Voegeli, a Democrat. Normally, a different software called a results workstation pulls those files and uploads the results to the county’s unofficial results reporting system, but that process broke down on Election Day, she said.

County staff tried to troubleshoot the issue with Liberty Vote after discovering the issue at 9 p.m. on election night but couldn’t find a solution. That meant they had to turn to alternative methods to get the results from municipalities, and didn’t have them all until the next morning — far later than most counties.

Voegeli said she consulted with the Wisconsin Elections Commission at the time to discuss what to do. The commission, she said, encouraged her to get municipal results as quickly as possible.

“Their recommendation was, at that point, to do my due diligence and do the best I can with trying to contact people [that] night to get those results in,” she said.

She opted not to use sheriff’s deputies to wake clerks that night, she said. Instead, she called all 24 of them; most didn’t return her call until early the following morning, but the few who responded delivered results over the phone. She got back to work at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday to finish processing results as municipal officials either came in person to deliver the unofficial results or told Voegeli the results over the phone. All the results were uploaded by 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

Had it been November, she said, she would have employed sheriff’s deputies to wake up clerks. She opted not to do it this time around, Voegeli said, in part because the Wisconsin Elections Commission didn’t give hard guidance, and she didn’t feel she’d save meaningful time by waking them.

As of Monday, she said, officials still had not determined what caused the failure. But Green County is changing its approach for the November election.

Voegeli said nearby municipalities will drive to the county office to physically deliver unofficial results, and the faraway ones will verbally transmit results via telephone.

“Even if we determine what the cause of this issue is, I think we’re still going to plan on that for the general election,” she said. “We really want to make sure that we’re getting those results out in a timely manner.”

Winnebago County shifted gears on Election Day

Winnebago County, which also uses Liberty Vote systems, also had trouble transmitting unofficial results by modem, but officials there shifted to a backup plan that same night.

After polls closed, municipal clerks were initially unable to send unofficial election results over a cellular modem. County officials and Liberty Vote are still trying to understand what went wrong, County Clerk Julie Barthels said. After noticing the error, Barthels instructed municipal clerks in the county to drive in the results and hand them over physically. The last one arrived around 10:30 p.m. on Election Day.

The city resolved the results-reporting issue by 9 p.m., said Barthels, a Republican. But by then, municipal officials were already on their way to the county and Barthels said she didn’t want to turn the municipal officials around again to deliver them via modem.

Winnebago County isn’t planning for any shift in results-reporting for November. But she said she’ll work with Liberty Vote, to understand what went wrong.

“They’ve promised me this will not happen in November,” Barthels said about Liberty Vote. “We’re going to get to the bottom of what happened. I so trust our system. But it’s like any other computer. One day it works, and the next day it doesn’t.”

Some election security experts warn against modeming results

Smith, the Verified Voting CEO, said any method that requires election equipment to communicate with other devices — whether that’s through a secure cellular network or a physical phone line — introduces additional vulnerabilities.

“It’d be great if they would move towards a safer operation of not not having that connectivity,” she said

But Geoff Hale, a visiting fellow for election security at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said transmitting unofficial results via modem does not pose a major technical risk as long as the official results are protected through testing and audits of paper ballots. Every method for transmitting results has trade-offs, he said: Driving a USB stick for an hour may have fewer vulnerabilities than an internet-connected method, but it also takes far longer.

The more important safeguard, Hale said, is for election officials to stay involved throughout the process, validating results and checking for errors — especially when verifying the official count. Hale previously worked for a decade at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

In this case, he said, Winnebago and Green County responded appropriately by having backup plans in case their initial systems failed.

“This one doesn’t concern me quite as much as some other things I’ve seen,” he said.

Noah Praetz, president of Ready For Tuesday and a longtime election administration and security consultant, said jurisdictions embraced reporting results via modems in the 2000s and 2010s.

That momentum stalled around 2016, he said, amid Russian attempts to interfere with U.S. elections and after Ukraine’s results reporting system in 2014 was successfully hacked. After that, Praetz said, following responses from the FBI and CISA, and the designation of elections as critical infrastructure by the Secretary of Homeland Security, election officials began recognizing that results in transit over modems posed a risk, even if the results were unofficial.

But a major benefit of using modems is speed, and Praetz emphasized the downsides of slower alternatives, as delays in reporting results can create openings for bad actors — including foreign governments — to sow distrust.

“People want to get results out of their hands,” he said. “They want to satisfy their voters.”

That was evident in Milwaukee on Aug. 11, when a human error in exporting results caused a 90-minute delay that exasperated election watchers and prompted widespread conspiracy theories about what had gone wrong.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Over 1,300 ballots never made it to voters in Navajo County. That isn’t unusual.

2026-08-19T18:13:36+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

At least 50,000 mail ballots never made it to voters during Arizona’s July 21 primary election.

That number, based on information gathered by Votebeat from 11 of the state’s 15 counties, isn’t out of the ordinary. In fact, it appears roughly in line with that of prior major elections. About 71,000 mail ballots went undelivered statewide during the 2024 general election, according to data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission that represented all of the state’s counties.

Every year, some ballots that are mailed out to voters are returned to election officials because the voter’s address is incorrect or the voter has a forwarding address on file. (In Arizona, ballots legally can’t be forwarded.)

Their return does not necessarily mean those voters were disenfranchised, as they could have voted in person instead. But slowdowns in mail processing and President Donald Trump’s invections against mail voting put voters and advocates nationwide on edge about the U.S. Postal Service’s role in elections. Anxiety is especially acute in Arizona, where the vast majority of voters cast ballots by mail. That has put more attention on the state’s undeliverable ballots.

Those fears were on full display last month in Navajo County, a rural county in the northeast quadrant of the state where Recorder David Marshall said just before the primary that his office was experiencing “an issue” with the U.S. Postal Service.

“We have received over 900 returned ballots — over 900,” Marshall, a Republican who was recently appointed to his post, said in a public meeting on July 14. “Why? Don’t know.”

Later, the number of undelivered ballots in the county rose to more than 1,300 — a figure that continues to tick slightly upward as delayed returns from the Postal Service trickle in. The news quickly spread, drawing extensive media coverage and the attention of Trump himself.

This year, more ballots than usual statewide might have been undeliverable because voters were out of town. Some county recorders told Votebeat that they noticed a slightly higher number of ballots returned with postal codes indicating that the intended recipients were temporarily away. Most chalked that up to the state’s earlier-than-usual primary date. In February, state lawmakers shifted the primary from Aug. 4 to July 21.

But in the Navajo County case, data and records suggest nothing nefarious, or even all that unusual, was afoot.

What data and records show about undeliverable ballots in Navajo County

Votebeat found that Navajo County’s rate of undeliverable ballots was indeed higher than that of other jurisdictions across Arizona during this year’s primary. As of Aug. 12, county officials said 1,377 ballots went undelivered in the rural county, or about 3.9% of the total number of ballots mailed out. By contrast, across the other 10 counties where Votebeat was able to collect data, only 2.3% of ballots were returned undelivered.

But data from the EAC shows Navajo County’s undeliverable ballot rate isn’t unheard of historically in Arizona. During the 2024 general election, for instance, La Paz County saw about 4.4% of its mail ballots returned as undeliverable. In 2022, Coconino and Pinal each received thousands of undeliverable ballots from the Postal Service — about 5.5% and 3.8% of the total number of mail ballots sent to voters by officials, respectively. Statewide, undeliverable ballot rates rose as high as 4.7% in the 2016 general election.

Furthermore, undeliverable ballot rates can vary widely from year to year. Navajo County, for instance, has seen its rate fluctuate from as low as 0.6% to as high as 3.3% in recent general elections.

The data isn’t perfect. Some counties told Votebeat they counted undeliverable ballots in the primary election slightly differently than other counties. The EAC collects data on undeliverable ballots after each general election, but not for primary elections. And in some years, not all counties reported undeliverable ballot data to the EAC.

But records obtained by Votebeat also suggest that Navajo County’s high rate of returned ballots wasn’t because something went wrong with their delivery. Following Marshall’s remarks, county officials asked the Postal Service to examine a sampling of the undeliverable ballots. When the Postal Service did so, it found that nine of the 10 ballots submitted by the county had a valid reason for being returned. The remaining ballot required further investigation.

Officials appear to be backing away from undeliverable ballot fears

Federal, state, and local officials have been working to tease out whether there was an identifiable issue connected to the undelivered ballots in Navajo County — or if the number, while not ideal, came from processes operating as usual.

Initially, some officials — including Marshall in his remarks at the public meeting — appeared to suggest that something may have gone awry. But in recent weeks, the county’s tone has gradually shifted.

For instance, the Navajo County Recorder’s Office said in a July 24 statement that it was working with the Postal Service to “identify any issues that may have occurred during the mailing process.”

Later, on July 31, the office issued an updated statement. It said it had sent an expanded sample of 200 undeliverable ballot envelopes to the Postal Service for review. Of those, the Postal Service found that 66% were returned because the recipient had some type of change-of-address order on file. Others were marked undeliverable because they were addressed to vacant homes or closed postal boxes.

“Returns of ballots occurred in other Arizona counties, demonstrating that this is a routine part of election administration statewide,” the statement read.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, told Votebeat on July 30 that her office was working to set up meetings with the Postal Service to “learn more about this situation on their end.” And on Aug. 14, Richie Taylor of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office said his office believed the undeliverable ballots were normal after looking into the matter.

“We’ve spoken to the recorder in Navajo County and they’ve verified that the rejection rate is in line with historical rejection rates, so we don’t believe there’s anything nefarious going on there,” Taylor told Votebeat.

Meanwhile, Cathy Purcell, a spokesperson for the Postal Service, told Votebeat on July 24 that mail carriers returned the ballots to the county “in accordance with proper protocol.”

Can Arizona reduce its undeliverable ballots?

Some number of undeliverable ballots may be normal and a sign that the system is working as intended. Still, undeliverable ballots are far from ideal, and officials in Navajo County say they will work to reduce them in the future.

In a statement, officials said they would begin taking more proactive steps to clean up the county’s voter rolls ahead of November. When ballots are returned as undeliverable, the Navajo County Recorder’s Office will begin sending affected voters a mailed notice that can be forwarded by the Postal Service to their current address, if available.

The office will also seek to email, call, and text voters if their contact information is available in their voter record.

“This additional step will provide multiple ways for voters to receive information, respond, and update their registration,” officials said on July 31.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Complaint alleges conservative activist Scott Presler violated campaign finance law

2026-08-18T19:36:12+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

A watchdog group has filed a complaint alleging conservative activist Scott Presler and his political action committee may have violated state campaign finance law in Pennsylvania.

Presler is based in Pennsylvania and has gained a national profile for voter registration work and ongoing searches for noncitizen voters. The complaint alleges that despite his extensive campaigning in the state in 2025 urging voters not to retain three state Supreme Court judges, Presler and his organization, Early Vote Action, did not disclose sources of revenue or detailed expenditures as required.

“Presler has every right to conduct such political activities, but lawmakers and voters also have every right to know who is paying how much to influence their political choices,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, which filed the complaint, said via email. Public Citizen is a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit focused on democracy and corporate power issues.

Presler did not respond to requests for comment.

According to Pennsylvania campaign finance law, political action committees are required to report expenses, as well as the names of all contributors who give more than $50, when their spending exceeds $250. While Early Vote Action is registered with the Federal Election Commission, a search of the state’s campaign finance database shows that the organization has never registered as a political action committee or submitted reports in Pennsylvania.

Fines for late filings in the state are relatively minimal. Failure to file is more serious, and can result in fines of up to $5,000 and jail time for a candidate or the treasurer of a political action committee, but charges for this are exceedingly rare.

Enforcement of Pennsylvania campaign finance law violations is lax, and Presler isn’t the first activist to face questions over whether expenses were properly reported in recent elections.

The new complaint against Presler focuses on his activism in the 2025 election. That year, three state Supreme Court judges, who were originally elected as Democrats, were on the ballot for retention, a type of election where voters select “yes” or “no” to indicate whether they would like the judge to serve another 10-year term.

Republicans, including Presler, were campaigning to unseat the judges in the hopes of opening the court up for an ideological shift during the 2027 municipal election.

“If we defeat even 1 of these democrat Supreme Court Justices this November, we will go down in Pennsylvania history,” Presler said in a September 2025 post on the social media site X, which showed him placing Early Vote Action-branded “Vote No” signs along a roadway.

Public Citizen said in its complaint that according to press reports, during the campaign, Early Vote Action used paid staff, engaged in voter outreach, and purchased digital and print media — all expenditures which should have been detailed in campaign finance reports.

The complaint was lodged with the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees the state’s campaign finance law. A spokesperson for the department confirmed the state had received the complaint but said that it does not comment on investigations.

This is not the first time Public Citizen has filed a complaint against Presler. In March the group filed a complaint with both chambers of Congress alleging Presler was not registered as a lobbyist as he should be, given his work pressing members of Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. Front Line Government Relations, a firm representing Presler Persistence, LLC, subsequently registered and filed disclosures.

(Neither entity has ever registered as a PAC with the state.)

Presler has also been gaining national attention in recent weeks for his request to Pennsylvania counties for lists of individuals who were rejected for jury duty due to their lack of U.S. citizenship, which he says he will cross check against the state’s vote roll for evidence of illegitimately registered voters.

Presler’s social media posts citing the numbers of noncitizens who were rejected from jury lists attracted the attention of U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, a Republican, who said it was evidence of a “badly broken” system. Those posts also prompted a direct rebuke from the Pennsylvania Department of State, which clarified online that inclusion on a jury rejection list doesn’t mean a person is registered to vote.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

You’re invited: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered, Part 2

2026-08-18T09:05:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Will the 2026 midterms happen? Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local laws requiring them to happen — 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.

Got more questions about the midterms? Submit them to Votebeat reporters with your RSVP, and they’ll give you the long answer live on Sept. 15 at 1 p.m EDT.

Votebeat is a nonprofit newsroom specialized in explaining how elections work. Each of our reporters and editors spend every day covering voting rules, election administration, misinformation, election lawsuits, local officials, and the systems that determine how ballots are cast and counted. Ask them anything!

Watch the event recording of our previous Q&A event here.

Live event: Will the midterms happen? Your questions answered | Part 2

Virtual webinar event
Sept. 15 at 1 p.m. ET
RSVP for free on Eventbrite.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s Editorial Director. She runs big initiatives for Votebeat, like our experts desk, and manages our investigations. She was previously the lead elections reporter for ProPublica, and helped manage the Electionland project for three federal election cycles, sharing information and tips with hundreds of newsrooms across the United States.

Alexander Shur is Votebeat’s Wisconsin reporter. He previously covered politics, policy, and the fallout of the 2020 presidential election for the Wisconsin State Journal. Prior to that he covered the criminal justice system for the Jackson Hole News & Guide, where he investigated the impact of voting laws on people with felonies and how the criminal justice system treats people with mental illnesses. He is originally from Michigan, and has degrees from Northern Michigan University and Northwestern University.

Hayley Harding is Votebeat’s Michigan reporter. Hayley Harding is a Detroit-based reporter who has covered government and elections at all levels. Most recently, she was a data journalist on The Detroit News’ investigations team, where she covered population trends, social problems, and more. She has worked for the Idaho Statesman in Boise and for the Salisbury Daily Times in Salisbury, Maryland. A Michigander by birth, Hayley graduated from Ohio University.

Sasha Hupka is Votebeat’s Arizona reporter. She is based in Phoenix and has long covered politics, business, and democracy issues in the Southwest. Most recently, she was a watchdog reporter at The Arizona Republic, where her stories won several awards. She has also worked for The Los Angeles Times, Politifact, and other news outlets. She is originally from New York, and holds degrees from Binghamton University and the University of California, Berkeley.

13 Detroit voters disenfranchised in primary because their absentee ballots were mishandled

2026-08-17T20:06:32+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Thirteen Detroit voters did not get their ballots counted in Michigan’s hotly contested primary because of an oversight by election officials.

The absentee ballots were delivered to the city clerk’s office before the deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day, Daniel Baxter, chief of operations for Detroit elections, told the Wayne County Board of Canvassers during its meeting Monday. But the ballots were “left behind” and not taken to the city’s Department of Elections, a necessary step before they are tabulated.

Instead, the ballots were discovered at the clerk’s office the day after the election, Baxter said. They were then sealed and held securely before being delivered to the canvassers Monday, nearly two weeks after Election Day.

The identity of the voters who were disenfranchised remains unknown. None of the races that were on the primary ballot in Detroit were decided by 13 votes or fewer, meaning that the exclusion of the ballots will not affect the outcome of any elections. However, the Aug. 4 election featured several contentious races that voters were eager to weigh in on, such as the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

It’s the second time in less than a year that the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, the body that certifies elections in Michigan’s most populous county, has had to decide whether improperly handled ballots could still be considered.

In last year’s municipal elections, the canvassers opted not to count 37 ballots from Hamtramck that were left in their opened envelopes in the city clerk’s office but never tabulated. The concern there was that non-election officials had walked into the clerk’s office while the ballots were there, breaking their chain of custody.

Becki Carmargo, assistant corporate counsel for Wayne County, told canvassers Monday that Detroit’s situation was different. Because the ballots were not delivered to the city’s elections department until after Election Day, Detroit never entered the 13 ballots in question into the Qualified Voter File, the statewide voter database in which absentee ballots are logged before they are counted — meaning they “basically don’t exist” in the eyes of the law. Carmargo advised the board against tabulating the ballots.

“We don’t know that they were received timely,” Carmargo told the board, referring to the fact that ballots have to be returned by 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey told canvassers the ballots were “absolutely” received before 8 p.m.

Baxter also argued the ballots’ chain of custody was maintained because the ballots were eventually delivered to the elections office by the deputy clerk, who documented the process throughout. He said that adding the ballots to the QVF when they were discovered would have led to their rejection. Officials confirmed that special permission would have to be granted from the state for those ballots to be entered after the deadline.

“I believe that we should ... fall on the side of the voter and not penalize them for the error that the department has made,” Baxter continued.

Democrat Richard Preuss, the chair of the board of canvassers, agreed.

“There’s no malice involved,” he said. Although Preuss noted no election was close enough for the 13 ballots to change the results, he still wanted to “make sure that ... people are voting and that their faith in the process is still solid moving forward.”

Republican Lisa Capatina, the vice chair of the board, chastised the city for waiting until Monday to turn the ballots over to the county and not properly advocating for the 13 voters in previous meetings.

She said that while she respected the amount of work Detroit has to do during elections, “there is a process that also has to go along to ensure accountability and accuracy for all the voters in Detroit and Wayne County.”

A motion was made to accept the ballots, but it was not seconded. The failed motion meant the ballots won’t be included in the official primary results. The board will meet again on Tuesday to certify those results and send them to the state.

However, advocates for the disenfranchised voters could still try to go to court to get the ballots counted.

Last year’s decision not to count the ballots in Hamtramck set off a nine-month legal battle that was largely resolved just last week, when the Michigan Supreme Court opted not to take up an appeal in the case, meaning the state’s Court of Appeals’ decision that the ballots should be counted will stand. That tabulation, which could happen in as soon as a few weeks, could change the results of a tight mayoral election decided by only 11 votes.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

‘I don’t trust you’: Tensions reach boiling point on election security call for state leaders hosted by Trump administration

2026-08-17T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Tensions between state election officials and the Trump administration are rising as we head into the heart of the midterm election season. Frustrations boiled over on Monday during a rare election security call hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for state officials. During the call, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes unloaded on the agency.

CISA used to be a go-to shop for many states looking for help ensuring that their elections weren’t hacked, targeted, or undermined by cyberattacks or foreign interference. CISA provided states with classified security briefings on threats, helped ensure that state voting equipment wasn’t vulnerable to cyberattacks, and worked with election leaders to game out potential risks.

All that changed when Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. The second Trump administration scaled back its support for states, cut back CISA staff, and launched an investigation of its former leader, whom Trump accused of disloyalty because he pushed back on the president’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. CISA has not had a permanent director since the start of Trump’s second term.

Changes at CISA have paired with the president’s broad focus on controlling how elections are run. The federal government is threatening to arrest election officials if they allow noncitizens to vote. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has vowed to withhold federal funds from states that don’t implement Trump administration election overhaul proposals. A coalition of Democratic states and officials has sued the Department of Homeland Security in a suit that accuses the Trump administration of withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency funding in an attempt to coerce states into enacting disputed election changes.

With all that as backdrop, CISA organized this week’s call – and things didn’t go too well.

After more than a year of near silence, elections officials wondered if CISA would step up to offer classified intelligence briefings on emerging cyber threats from hostile countries, specialized testing of election equipment, or training on how to prepare for potential problems on Election Day.

Instead, CISA leaders provided what one participant characterized as a generic “CYA” (cover your a**) briefing that offered state officials few assurances that the federal government would help thwart threats this November.

Participants said acting CISA Director Nick Andersen and Jim Harrell, the assistant director for integrated operations, offered no concrete support for the 2026 election, which is less than 90 days away. Instead, the participants said, CISA leadership seemed more focused on the 2028 presidential election.

When they were done, according to participants, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, lashed out at the CISA officials. Fontes blasted the Trump administration for threatening state election officials and made it clear he had no confidence in their leadership, they said.

“Fontes got testy with them,” said one participant on the call who asked not to be identified. “‘I don’t trust you,’ [Fontes told the CISA officials.] ‘Your boss came out there and said: We are going to criminalize the work you do. Why should we trust you?’”

When asked about the call, Fontes confirmed that he’d made those comments and expanded on his frustrations

“They don’t work with us, they work against us,” Fontes told Votebeat. “Why should I trust them?”

Fontes said it was difficult for state and local elections officials to have confidence they would get support from the federal government when the administration treats them like an adversary rather than a partner. He and others on the call said CISA leaders offered few assurances they would provide much support in the coming weeks.

“They just wholly and completely abandoned their duties and threatened prosecution,” Fontes said. “If they want to apologize for threatening us and ruining perfectly good systems, that’s a good start.”

CISA did not respond to requests for comment on the call.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, also a Democrat, echoed Fontes’s frustrations.

“It’s unhelpful to have political leaders, including the secretary of Homeland Security, hinting at imprisoning election administrators who don’t do what they want,” Simon told Votebeat. “That’s just not helpful.”

Simon said Minnesota and other states have spent months working to fill the gaps left by the drop-off in CISA support.

“It’s pretty clear states are almost entirely on their own this election cycle and cannot rely on the federal government for election assistance,” said Simon.

Not everyone on the call came away with a sour taste in their mouth, though. Some participants described it as a tentative move that could help repair the strained relationship between state and federal leaders working on elections.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, also a Democrat, described the call as a “positive step” in rebuilding relations between CISA and state election officials.

“While this engagement is encouraging, CISA and our other federal partners must focus on continuing to rebuild trust with election officials,” Hobbs said. “Over the last two years, we have watched this administration systematically dismantle many of the election security resources in place at the federal level.”

With the November election fast approaching, he said, “election officials need sustained commitment to supporting local elections, not renewed attention only as major elections approach. Meaningful support will do more to rebuild relationships than words alone.”

37 Hamtramck ballots could flip mayoral race after Michigan Supreme Court declines appeal

2026-08-14T21:20:53+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Update, 9:55 p.m.: This story has been updated to include comment from Hamtramck Mayor Adam Alharbi.

A tiny Michigan city must count 37 additional ballots more than nine months after the election in question, potentially flipping an election eight months after the announced winner took office.

The Michigan Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the city of Hamtramck, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers and current Hamtramck Mayor Adam Alharbi, leaving in place a March decision from the Michigan Court of Appeals that ordered the ballots counted. The parties could appeal to federal courts, but such a challenge would face significant expenses, not to mention legal hurdles.

These 37 ballots weren’t counted on Election Day after mistakenly being left in their opened envelopes and returned to the clerk’s office. They were later discovered there, but only after outside officials had entered the office — allegedly to address punching bags bearing candidates’ faces that had been left inside — thus breaking the ballots’ chain of custody.

The Wayne County Board of Canvassers deadlocked over whether to include the ballots in the final count because of concerns about the chain of custody, leaving the votes uncounted.

Those 37 ballots could now decide the mayoral race months after Alharbi — who beat his opponent Muhith Mahmood by only 11 votes — took office.

The identities of the 37 voters have not been made public.

“This is a great victory for democracy and for the rights of voters to have their votes counted,” Mark Brewer, Mahmood’s attorney, said in an email Friday afternoon.

He emphasized that counting the ballots will change the final vote totals, but it won’t be clear who the final winner is until after all 37 ballots are counted.

It is not clear when the Wayne County Board of Canvassers may consider the ballots in question. Questions sent to several canvassers weren’t immediately returned Friday.

While such a decision is atypical, there are plenty of examples of election results remaining unresolved for months, Justin Levitt, a constitutional law expert at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told Votebeat.

In 2008, for example, the Minnesota Senate race was decided by only a few hundred votes, and Sen. Al Franken wasn’t sworn in until the July following his election after a series of legal challenges.

“It takes time to get it right, and sometimes that means months,” Levitt said. “It’s very unusual, but it’s not unheard of, and frankly, I think the citizens benefit by making sure that these things are closely examined by the courts.”

It’s just the latest in a tumultuous saga in Hamtramck, a city of less than 28,000 people that has been racked by a number of election-related scandals. Last week, Mohammed Hassan, a city councilman who is also the city’s mayor pro tem, was sentenced to a year of probation after he was found guilty of forging someone’s signature on an absentee ballot. Another council member, Muhtasin Sadman, pleaded guilty to election fraud charges earlier this year.

Alharbi said in an email Friday that he wasn’t worried about his seat but rather “the future of our city,” pointing to at least one additional ballot that turned up later.

“The integrity of the process is fundamentally compromised,” he wrote.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel requested an independent prosecutor investigate a number of members of the council last year, alleging that six people “conspired to receive unvoted absentee ballots that had been signed by recently naturalized citizens, and to then fill in the candidates of their choosing” in the city’s 2023 election. No other charges related to that request have been made public.

Rana Faraj, the city’s clerk during last year’s election, was replaced by city officials in part for the envelope mixup, officials said. She sued the city late last year, alleging officials retaliated against her for trying to whistleblow “ongoing election integrity issues.” Court records show a review hearing is scheduled in that case for October.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Michigan charges 5 noncitizens for allegedly voting in 2024 election

2026-08-13T23:28:49+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Michigan’s attorney general announced Thursday she was charging five noncitizens for allegedly voting in the 2024 general election, plus one U.S. citizen accused of registering their noncitizen spouse to vote.

Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, made the announcement more than a year after her office announced she was investigating 13 potential noncitizen voters referred by the Michigan Department of State. Thursday’s announcement encompassed those referrals as well as 25 other people referred more recently on similar allegations.

In addition to the six who were charged, 10 of those cases have been closed without charges, and 22 remain under investigation. In addition, the voter registration of every identified noncitizen — including several who were not charged — has been canceled.

“We’re upholding election integrity by investigating all claims of non-citizen voters, as rare as they are, and holding bad actors accountable when they refuse to abide by the laws that keep our elections safe and secure,” Nessel said in a news release announcing the charges. “These charges reflect the severity of the allegations, the sanctity of our democracy, and the tremendous consequences of voting illegally— whether that’s done to try and ‘test’ security measures or to make an unlawful vote count.”

Noncitizen voting has been a top concern of conservative lawmakers and activists across the U.S. for several years, with a renewed emphasis during President Donald Trump’s second term. It is extremely rare in Michigan and across the U.S.

6 people charged in connection with noncitizen voting in Michigan

The six people were each arraigned between April and earlier this week, according to Nessel’s office. Of the six, three live in the U.S. as lawful permanent residents, while a fourth is a limited-term alien resident. Only U.S. citizens — not lawful permanent residents or noncitizens with any other residency status — can vote in state and federal elections.

Michael Akioya is accused of registering to vote in Inkster in 2016 and voting in the 2024 election in Oak Park via absentee ballot. He is a lawful permanent resident, Nessel’s office said, but not a citizen. He is charged with making false statements on an absentee ballot application and envelope.

Harumi Michael is accused of registering and voting in person in 2024 in Commerce Township despite being only a lawful permanent resident. She is charged with two counts of election law forgery, one count of making a false statement when registering to vote, and one count of being an unqualified elector attempting to vote.

Robert Piva, another lawful permanent resident, registered to vote online in September 2024 and voted early in Roseville the next month, according to the attorney general’s office. He “claimed his vote was an experiment concerning voter fraud,” according to the news release. He is charged with one count each of election law perjury, fraudulent registration, and being an unqualified elector attempting to vote.

Alondra Harker, a limited-term alien resident, allegedly registered and voted in person in the 2024 general election in Three Rivers. She is charged with fraudulently registering to vote.

Kimberly DiDonato, an American citizen, allegedly posed as her husband, a lawful permanent resident, and registered him to vote in 2024 while claiming he was a citizen. According to the news release, DiDonato “claimed her intent was to test the registration system for vulnerabilities to unqualified voter registrants” and she canceled the registration a month later. She has been charged with election law forgery and using a computer to commit a crime.

Her attorney, former Republican attorney general candidate Kevin Kijewski, noted that DiDonato’s case was lumped together with a number of “very different” cases.

“No ballot was cast, and the registration was canceled in May 2024 after it was brought to the township clerk’s attention,” he said in a text message Thursday.

The final person announced Thursday, Basanth Sadasivian, is a noncitizen residing in the U.K. who allegedly registered to vote by email using the Federal Post Card Application — which allows military personnel and other U.S. citizens living abroad to register and vote — using a Bloomfield Hills address. He voted in the general election in 2024 through that same system, according to Nessel’s office, and is charged with one count of being an unqualified elector attempting to vote.

Michael’s and Harker’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday. Attorneys could not be immediately located for Akioya, Piva, and Sadasivian.

“This is how the system works under the law. The same process that produced these investigations and criminal charges is the process we use every time we receive allegations of illegal voter activity,” Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie said in a statement Thursday. “The people of Michigan deserve to know that each case is thoroughly investigated, those investigations are pursued based on evidence, and that anyone found to have broken the law is held accountable.”

He further encouraged people not to “test the system,” noting that people who break the law in order to do so will be held accountable.

Others investigated as part of ongoing efforts

The attorney general’s office also announced that 10 people who had been under investigation for noncitizen voting or “adjacent conduct” would not be charged. Of those, two were found to be citizens, while another was “subject to a complicated international adoption” and is presumed to be a citizen. A fourth person, while not fully considered a citizen, is federally recognized as an American Indian born in Canada; such individuals are often referred to as “dual citizens” in their paperwork, according to the release.

Nessel’s office also declined to charge five legal permanent residents who had voted — some of them in several different elections — as well as one noncitizen with authorization to work in the U.S., because it felt there was not enough proof to do so. To secure a prosecution, the government must prove these people knew they were unqualified to vote and that they weren’t encouraged to register by the government itself.

Nessel’s investigations aren’t the only ones ongoing in the state. Anthony Forlini, the Macomb County clerk and the Republican candidate for secretary of state this fall, has been using jury pools to try to find noncitizens on the voter rolls for much of the year, despite warnings against that from the Department of State.

Forlini applauded Nessel on Thursday.

“Good elections are a non-partisan topic and both parties need to take this seriously,” he said in a statement shared on social media Thursday. “This is just the beginning of what I am uncovering. This is not a small matter. This is an infrastructure issue that needs to be fixed.”

Noncitizen voting a staple of political conversation in Michigan

Previously, only one person — a University of Michigan student from China — was publicly charged with voting in the 2024 election in Michigan despite not being a U.S. citizen. That student, Haoxiang Gao, was later charged with fleeing the country.

Despite its rarity, noncitizen voting has remained a focus of Republican elected officials. Rep. Bryan Posthumus, a Republican from Rockford, began the state legislative session last year by introducing an amendment to the Michigan Constitution that would require would-be voters to prove their citizenship. That ultimately failed to move forward in the legislature, but proponents are hoping to put a similar constitutional amendment before voters this fall.

The group Americans for Citizen Voting submitted more than 750,000 signatures in March in support of that effort. The Board of State Canvassers will decide later this month whether it will make the November ballot.

It’s not just Michigan where that’s a focus. Trump has made implementing a federal proof-of-citizenship requirement one of his top priorities, repeatedly calling on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act (the bill, though, lacks the votes to pass the Senate). In an effort to root out noncitizens on the voter rolls, the Department of Justice has also requested unredacted information on voters from every state; Michigan is one of 30 that have refused to comply and is locked in a legal battle with the federal government over the issue.

The Trump administration last month also sent letters to every state’s top election official warning that they could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly allow noncitizens to vote or be registered to vote.

Trump has claimed for years that noncitizen voting is a widespread problem in the U.S., even though election officials and independent audits have found no more than a handful of examples. Most recently, Trump said last month during a primetime speech that there are more than 270,000 noncitizens registered to vote nationwide, although he provided no evidence or details about how he arrived at that number.

Rep. Rachelle Smit, a Republican from Martin and the chair of the House Election Integrity Committee, said in a statement that she “truly believe[s] Michigan is the epicenter of the problem.”

“The charges filed today are just the tip of the iceberg, and further underscore exactly why the U.S. Senate must approve the SAVE Act to safeguard our elections and ensure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections,” she said.

Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for the Michigan attorney general’s office, said the investigations and ultimate charges were “not impacted by any external focus appearing in recent weeks or months.”

In fact, in her release, Nessel criticized the Trump administration for making it harder to identify the noncitizen voters. “The federal government has not always provided easy or open access to certain necessary citizenship records,” she said, noting that this delayed her investigation.

“While the question of whether any given resident is a citizen may feel simple, some cases are nuanced in unexpected ways,” Nessel said.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Texas’ mail ballot ID requirements restored by federal appeals court

2026-08-13T21:30:32+00:00

This story was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday restored several pieces of a 2021 Texas election law that overhauled mail-in and assisted voting, overturning a lower court’s block on those provisions.

Five years ago, Texas passed Senate Bill 1, a wide-reaching election law that changed the way local officials administer elections and how some Texans vote, particularly aimed at initiatives Harris County implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The law was denounced by voter advocacy groups, civil rights organizations, and Democratic lawmakers, who broke quorum in an attempt to stifle the bill.

After several lawsuits over accessibility concerns created by the new law were consolidated into a single suit, a district judge in March 2025 struck down nine of its provisions. Those blocked provisions included requiring Texans to provide an identification number or Social Security number on mail-in ballot applications and have them match the state’s records. The judge also blocked provisions that create processes for curing defective ballots and require voters and those who assist them in filling out their ballot to sign an oath swearing they did not coerce the voter and disclose how they’re related.

The plaintiffs who sued argued the provisions were overly cumbersome and restrictive for voters with disabilities, and the district judge agreed, ruling they violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Texas allows voters who are over the age of 65 and those with certain disabilities, among others, to vote by mail.

Wednesday’s 11-page ruling from the 5th Circuit reverses the district judge’s ruling in its entirety, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing on most of their complaints. The written opinion strongly rebuked the lower courts’ decisions in the suit, noting that appellate judges have “reversed the district court on everything” through the suit’s five years of litigation.

“The bulk of the plaintiffs’ claims fail for lack of standing. One fails on the merits. But none justifies interference with the State Legislature’s efforts to prevent voter fraud and to protect election integrity,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote in the opinion.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is a defendant in the suit, described the ruling as a “major victory” in a social media post.

The ruling also asserts that mail-in ballots have “long been established” as prone to fraud, and notes that the number of mail-in application or mail-in ballot rejections caused by identification numbers errors dropped from 11% to 2.7% after the law’s implementation. A 2022 study found that 1 in 7 voters who requested a mail ballot in the 2022 primary had their applications or ballots rejected in the wake of SB 1.

New secretary of state will continue to defend Texas’ open primaries against GOP lawsuit

2026-08-12T21:26:34+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Robert Howden, the new Texas secretary of state, said in a legal filing Monday that he would continue to defend the state’s open primary system, putting him at odds with the Texas GOP in the lawsuit filed by the party last year.

“The only thing that has changed in this case is the name of the defendant,” lawyers for the state agency wrote, emphasizing that the secretary would “gladly implement statutory changes” if passed by the Legislature.

Republicans in Texas, worried about the moderating influence of Democrats and independents crossing over to GOP races, want to require voters to register with a party before they’re allowed to participate in primaries.

Last year, the Texas GOP sued to strike down the current open primary system, under which eligible Texans register to vote without declaring a party affiliation. Attorney General Ken Paxton sided with the party, leaving then-Secretary of State Jane Nelson to find her own legal representation for the agency. Nelson, a Republican and former state senator, said in legal filings at the time that this was a decision best left to the Legislature.

In the months since, this idea spawned by the conservative grassroots has garnered widespread support from state leaders. At the Texas Republican Convention in June, Gov. Greg Abbott addressed the issue to a cheering crowd, saying he wants to “make clear that in the future, only Republicans vote in Republican primaries.” He later told Texas Scorecard that this was an issue for lawmakers, who “can and should be more responsive to Republicans than a judge may be.”

A spokesperson for Abbott, who appoints the secretary of state, did not respond to a request for comment.

Many in the party celebrated Nelson’s retirement last month as an opportunity for the agency to change its position in the lawsuit. But Howden, Abbott’s former legislative director, is staying the course.

“This issue can and will be resolved by the Legislature in the coming months,” he said in the filing, noting that the Legislature is the right venue for “thoughtfully crafting the detailed scheme that would govern it.”

The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Amarillo, has been a major financial weight on the party. After the convention, the new chair, D’rinda Randall, reported that the party’s largest unpaid debt was to cover the legal fees associated with this lawsuit.

The Texas GOP did not respond to a request for comment.

An election night error overshadowed Milwaukee’s improvements at processing absentee ballots

2026-08-12T16:59:27+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Milwaukee election officials spent Tuesday trying to prove they had a better way to count absentee ballots — faster, smoother, and with less reason for anyone to doubt the process.

Then, after 15 hours of nearly flawless work, a few minutes of human error blew up the plan.

At around 11:10 p.m. on Tuesday night, city officials left their central count facility without exporting results from five of its nine tabulators, forcing them to race back under police escort and delaying Milwaukee’s results by about 90 minutes. It was the third time in recent years that a significant tabulator-related mistake had disrupted the city’s heavily scrutinized absentee-ballot operation.

So, right around midnight, chief Milwaukee election official Paulina Gutiérrez and other city officials climbed into a white van under police escort and headed back along the Milwaukee River to the central count facility they thought they had shut down about an hour earlier.

There was ample evidence of what had gone wrong — and no evidence of tampering or any sign the results were affected.

“We’re all human, and humans can make errors,” Gutiérrez told Votebeat, just past 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, after she and several other city officials shuffled from tabulator to tabulator to export the results they had failed to retrieve the first time.

By then, the warehouse-like room was largely empty. Temporary workers had gone home. Election observers, believing the night was over, had left too. Gutiérrez, wearing a white blazer and pants and maintaining an even-keeled expression as reporters surrounded her, said the results were secure, and that the city would determine how the error occurred and how to prevent it from happening in the future.

City of Milwaukee Election Commision executive director Paulina Gutiérrez speaks to the media on election night. She assured reporters later in the night that the city error didn't jeopardize ballot security.

Her explanation did little to slow the criticism.

Within minutes, Dan Eastman, a right-wing lawyer who has filed election-related cases in Wisconsin, wrote on social media that there was no way central count could work for Milwaukee. Loomer Unleashed, a podcast hosted by right-wing pundit Laura Loomer, was more explicit: “Yeah, they cheated!”

Others, including Democrats, criticized the city without alleging wrongdoing.

“What an inauspicious ending to an otherwise quiet day,” said Ann Jacobs, a Democratic appointee on the Wisconsin Elections Commission and a regular observer at the city’s absentee ballot counting operation.

Mistakes add up for the state’s most scrutinized election operation

In November 2020, after arriving at the county clerk’s office to transmit Milwaukee’s election results, then-city election chief Claire Woodall realized that she forgot one of the facility’s 12 flash drives containing vote results at central count, a mistake some conservatives seized on as a flagrant oversight. That led her to create a checklist that the city has since used to avoid similar errors, outlining over two dozen steps for extracting, securing, and transmitting election results.

Four years later, at the next presidential election, Milwaukee election officials made the extraordinary decision to count 31,000 absentee ballots all over again because some staff didn’t lock tabulator doors in the early morning. Those panel doors, which cover the on/off switch and sometimes a slot for USB drives, were supposed to have been locked during counting.

The process Woodall created to prevent future such errors included a single official extracting results from each tabulator while accompanied by other staff. Officials appeared to have followed that process in November 2024, but not this time. Instead, different staff members downloaded the files from different tabulators and did so inconsistently, not realizing that results were not properly exported from five of the tabulators.

At the time, it appeared to take officials around 10 minutes to extract results from some tabulators, and only three minutes from others. In hindsight, the mistake was clear to Gutiérrez: Downloading results from tabulators takes more than three minutes, she told Votebeat.

“The fact that this happened five times seems more like a training issue,” Woodall told Votebeat. “Was this person trained on how to export results? Are they familiar with the machines and how you export results?”

But she also cautioned people not to get too carried away by a human error that wasn’t indicative of any fraud or fatal flaw in the election system.

Just after 1:15 a.m. Wednesday, Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson stood beneath the bright fluorescent lights outside his courthouse office, facing roughly a dozen reporters who had stayed well past midnight waiting for the city’s results. Nearly two hours had passed since Christenson first expected those results to arrive.

Now, with the mistake finally corrected and the long election night stretching on, he told the assembled media that Milwaukee operates under constant scrutiny — and that people make mistakes.

“At the end of the day,” he continued, “what’s important is that we’re transparent, that the results are secure, and that we’re open and honest. And that’s what the City of Milwaukee election director did. She came up here and she explained it, went back, got the results, brought it back to us, and we got everything right.”

Errors undermine city efforts to build trust, lobby for policy change

Milwaukee officials have long argued that state law and limited resources make the city’s massive absentee-ballot operation harder than it needs to be. But the string of high-profile mistakes at Milwaukee’s central count operation has complicated their efforts to persuade lawmakers to give them more flexibility.

Wisconsin law prohibits municipalities from processing ballots before 7 a.m. on Election Day. That leaves Milwaukee — home to the biggest central count operation in the state — to open envelopes, verify signatures and witness addresses, and prepare tens of thousands of ballots for counting in a single day.

For years, election officials have pushed for legislation allowing municipalities to begin that process before election day. The proposal has been repeatedly stalled by the Republican-controlled legislature, largely on the basis that Milwaukee cannot be trusted with additional time. That’s despite state Rep. Scott Krug, a high-ranking Republican, having spent years behind the scenes trying to gather support for the policy.

As liberals on Tuesday suggested the pre-processing law would have helped stave off mistakes, Krug said that the city wasn’t helping its cause.

“Complete incompetence at the facility isn’t helping anything here,” he said on social media. “This was human error that could have easily been double checked before leaving the facility. More than one answer to the problem not one silver bullet.”

How officials, experts think central count operation can improve

Allowing Milwaukee to start processing absentee ballots earlier would relieve some of the pressure on Election Day. But election experts say it would not solve all the other weaknesses in an operation handling more absentee ballots than any other in the state.

Jennifer Morrell, CEO of the Elections Group, said a successful central count operation depends on three things: experienced staff, a space designed for the work, and the right equipment. Milwaukee, she said, falls short in each area compared with similarly sized cities that have invested more heavily in election administration.

The city election commission never had enough full-time staff to begin with, Morrell said, and currently has a small handful of vacancies. While central count relies on temporary employees, she added, it still needs enough experienced full-time staff to run an operation of that size.

The city also has no permanent home for its central count, meaning officials must adapt the operation to spaces that were not necessarily designed for processing tens of thousands of absentee ballots. Morrell also said the city lacks equipment that other cities of similar sizes have invested in, like a mail sorting machine. That means Milwaukee election workers sort tens of thousands of mail ballots — sometimes more than 100,000 — by hand. Madison’s sorting machine, by comparison, allows the city to sort hundreds of ballots in minutes.

Gretchen Macht, the founder of the Engineering for Democracy Institute and an associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Rhode Island, has spent the past few years assisting Gutiérrez to find more efficient ways to conduct its central count. In an interview with Votebeat, Macht invoked an old saying in both election administration and engineering: You can have something fast, accurate, or cheap, but you can only pick two.

For Milwaukee officials, sacrificing accuracy is an obvious nonstarter.

“Our number one priority is efficiency and accuracy,” Gutiérrez said, adding that she’ll never sacrifice election operations just to improve speed.

But without more money or changes to state law, there is only so much faster the city can go.

Just before midnight on Tuesday, that consequence was playing out on national television.

With more than 90% of the state’s unofficial results in and Milwaukee’s absentee ballots poised to determine the outcome of the Democratic gubernatorial primary, NBC News election analyst Steve Kornacki was waiting for the city’s numbers to arrive.

He stood flabbergasted — hands on his knees, mouth agape, eyebrows raised — in his studio as he learned about the snafu with the USB sticks.

“Are you serious?” he said.

“We’re kind of indefinitely waiting for them to get their act together here,” he said. “We waited 90 minutes for them. They did this whole procession, and then we find out there’s nothing on the sticks.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Federal judge blocks Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting nationwide

2026-08-12T00:36:58+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update, Aug. 12, 11:26 a.m.: This story has been updated to include comment from the Justice Department.

What happened?

A federal judge delivered another setback on Tuesday to President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting during the 2026 midterms, blocking the U.S. Postal Service from taking steps to implement his election-related executive order from earlier this year.

It’s the second legal hold on the order, the first of which is currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Tuesday’s ruling makes it even less likely that the executive order will be in effect for the November election.

What’s the dispute?

Trump issued an executive order in March that called on the Postal Service to create a new system to regulate who could vote by mail and directed states to create special lists of who could request absentee ballots.

The order immediately drew several lawsuits challenging the executive order as unconstitutional. The League of Women Voters and a cross-section of states filed lawsuits in early April. The Postal Service unveiled draft rules to carry out the order in May, but U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked key pillars of the executive order in June as part of the case brought by the states.

At the time, Talwani issued an injunction specifically preventing the federal government from enforcing those provisions of the order against the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) that brought the lawsuit. The list includes most Democratic-led and swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

On Tuesday, Talwani issued an injunction in the separate lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters and other nonpartisan voting groups — this one blocking the Postal Service from restricting absentee voting across the nation.

Talwani rejected the Trump administration’s argument that courts could not rule on the legality of the Postal Service process since the government has not yet set up the system.

“The court finds it prudent to review the EO now, where less than 90 days pending before the midterms and the millions of citizens who rely on mail voting require clarity as to how or whether they will vote in November,” Talwani wrote in her 27-page ruling.

“The EO—even in the absence of a final rule—is thus causing irreparable harm to Plaintiff Organizations’ members through the confusion it has engendered as to how they may vote in the fast-approaching midterm elections,” the judge wrote.

“This ruling reinforces the clear language of our Constitution: The president plays no role in our elections and he cannot turn the U.S. Postal Service into a tool for disenfranchising voters,” attorneys for the League of Women Voters said in a statement. “Millions of citizens rely on mail voting, and USPS has no authority to determine which of them should receive ballots.”

The White House also responded to the decision on Tuesday. “The entire Trump Administration will continue lawfully enacting the agenda President Trump was elected to enact – which includes the safety and security of American elections,” said spokesperson Lauren Bis.

What happens now?

The ruling throws another wrench in the Trump administration’s efforts to constrain absentee voting.

On July 27, Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift Talwani’s June injunction by arguing that the lawsuit brought by the collection of Democratic states was premature. The high court is expected to rule on that question any day now, but Tuesday’s decision lowers the stakes of that decision. Even if the Supreme Court lifts the previous injunction, the newer one will still prevent the Postal Service from implementing the executive order, at least for the time being.

The Trump administration could appeal Tuesday’s ruling, just as it did the June one. On Wednesday, the Justice Department said it was “reviewing all options” and did not say how it would respond. “We disagree with the court’s ruling,” the department said in a statement. “The Department remains confident that President Trump’s order to secure federal elections will ultimately be upheld.”

But an appeal would burn precious time. There is already less than two months left before voters start casting absentee ballots — a nearly impossible time frame for the government and elections officials to set up the new system. Appealing Tuesday’s decision to the Supreme Court could take weeks off that ticking clock.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the issue here:

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Here’s when to expect results in Wisconsin’s primary election

2026-08-10T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Tuesday, Aug. 11 is Election Day in Wisconsin, and we will soon learn the results of the closely watched Democratic primary for governor and other important primary races. But how soon, exactly?

The unofficial winners of some close races may not be known until late Tuesday, or even early on Wednesday.

But results coming in late at night aren’t indicative of problems.

Over the past several years, Wisconsin voters have come to rely more and more on absentee voting. Absentee ballots take more time to process on Election Day than in-person ballots because they have to be removed from their envelopes and officials need to check that they have valid signatures and a witness address. That can add hours to poll workers’ nights on Tuesday, especially because election officials can’t process absentee ballots until Election Day.

Here are the answers to some common questions about when to expect primary election results.

When do polls close?

Wisconsin polls open at 7 a.m. on Election Day and close at 8 p.m. Absentee votes must be received by election officials by that 8 p.m. deadline. But election officials aren’t done working when the polls close.

In-person polling sites will stay open past that time if any voters who were in line before 8 p.m. still have yet to vote. Additionally, election officials often process and count absentee ballots for hours after polls close.

When will results be released?

Municipalities start releasing vote totals shortly after polls close and continue to count throughout the night. How long it takes them to finish can depend on factors like how many ballots they have to count and how well staffed they are.

Many municipalities should be able to finish counting by around 9 p.m. But it’s common for some municipalities — like Milwaukee, the state’s largest election jurisdiction — to take a few more hours to count all their ballots and transmit their results.

Why do Wisconsin election results sometimes arrive late at night?

Wisconsin is one of only six states that don’t allow absentee ballots to be pre-processed. While other states’ officials may spend days before Election Day processing and verifying absentee ballots, Wisconsin officials have to do all of that on Election Day.

As of Friday, 235,000 absentee ballots were already returned statewide, and that number will surely grow by Tuesday. That’s a ton of ballots to go through in just one business day. So the count often has to stretch late into the night.

In addition, some municipalities, including Milwaukee, upload their absentee ballot results all at once, at the end of the night. Those tens of thousands of votes are sometimes enough to affect preliminary statewide vote totals. They’re sometimes critically referred to as “late-night ballot dumps,” but despite the lateness of when they’re reported, it’s important to remember that all those ballots were legitimately received before 8 p.m.

Where can I find Wisconsin election results?

Wisconsin’s elections are run at the municipal level, so it takes compiling votes from each of the state’s 1,850 municipalities to have a full accounting of results.

There’s no statewide system for reporting results on election night, but counties are required to post unofficial results on their websites. You can either navigate webpages county by county, or use media outlets like the Associated Press, which typically have landing pages with aggregated election results.

But regardless of what source you use, just remember that the data you see on Election Day is unofficial. It takes weeks to finalize an election.

When will election results be final?

Wisconsin has a multi-step process to certify elections. Municipalities certify their results and send them to the county. Then counties certify their results and send them to the state.

Those steps allow for weeks of double-checking: making sure the count is accurate and that the number of votes cast is equal to the number of checked-in voters.

Aug. 21 is the deadline for county clerks to send primary election results to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The commission chair must then certify the results by Aug. 26.

When should I expect to know the winners?

Several media outlets, like the Associated Press, may project race winners on election night. That may happen even before all votes are tabulated. Those calls are based on what the outlets know about the votes cast, the political makeup of the places where votes haven’t yet been reported, and more.

Don’t confuse those race calls with official results. Only government officials can officially declare winners, and that only happens weeks afterward. But reputable media outlets’ race calls are typically an accurate projection of the eventual winner.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Prediction markets place odds on election results. Officials say they could erode public trust.

2026-08-10T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

A 2004 paper on the history of presidential election betting markets kicks off with a partial quote from the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau’s 19th-century essay “Civil Disobedience”: “All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it.”

Not everyone agrees with that last part. And the rapid rise of online prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket are bringing that tension to the fore.

Prediction markets are websites that sell contracts that allow users to wager on event outcomes. Political examples could include which party will control the U.S. House or Senate after the midterms, for example. Typically, there are fixed payouts and the price of the contract reflects the market’s expectation of the odds of the outcome.

It isn’t yet entirely clear who regulates prediction markets and how, and markets have regularly clashed with state officials trying to rein them in. When it comes to elections, most states have laws prohibiting election betting in some form or fashion, according to a Pew Research Center analysis released in June. But many such laws predate modern prediction markets and haven’t necessarily been tested in court recently.

Kalshi recently pushed back on Wisconsin election officials after they issued an advisory about a state law dating back to the 19th century that says voters can’t cast ballots in races they’ve bet on. A Kalshi staffer said on social media the Wisconsin advisory meant election officials were engaged in “active voter suppression.”

However the legal situation shakes out, betting on elections is happening. An NBC News analysis found nearly $200 million in trading volume on midterm election outcomes on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket, and election officials say they are concerned about how the odds on such sites could influence public trust in election outcomes — particularly when election results differ from those the markets had favored — and about creating incentives for manipulation.

“I think it is something that we are going to have to wrestle with going into the November election and forward,” said Dean Logan, the registrar-recorder and county clerk for Los Angeles County, California, the country’s single most populous election jurisdiction, during a webinar organized by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions this month.

Logan said in the Los Angeles mayoral primary in June, “early election returns differed from market expectations, and that resulted in suspicion and questioning of normal ballot processing and canvassing procedures in California.” The bottom line, he said, is that “elections administration right now is very much affected by perception and misinformation, and in our field we have to be prepared to respond to that.”

‘This is all bad’

Prediction markets say their odds reflect the wisdom of the crowds and can be more accurate than polling. And these markets have been pretty good at predicting elections in the past. For example, the 2004 paper that quoted Thoreau, by economics professors Paul Rhode and Koleman Strumpf, analyzed data on election gambling between 1868 and 1940 and found that the historical markets “did a remarkable job forecasting elections in an era before scientific polling.”

But prediction markets differ from polls in important ways. Polls are representative samples of just the voters who live in the state or district in question; prediction markets are open to anyone, and the more money a person bets, the more influence they have on the odds.

And election officials, already worried about low public trust in elections, are concerned the odds on these markets could be manipulated to influence public perception of a contest or create new financial incentives to shape outcomes. Kalshi and Polymarket did not respond to requests for comment.

Jim Allen, the elections director of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, which had already banned election workers from directly betting on elections, earlier this year added a ban on using prediction markets to do so. He likened it to referees betting on the outcome of a basketball game.

The new language, he said during the PLEJ webinar, “kicked off a conversation at our poll worker training. There was one person out of 383 precincts, one person who stood up and they said, ‘Well, what if we just want to make a minor bet on what turnout will be? That’ll keep things interesting.’ And we said, ‘No, this is all bad.’”

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Green Bay clerk resigns amid investigations into duplicate ballot incidents

2026-08-07T16:27:45+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys has resigned amid a state investigation into how her office sent duplicate ballots to voters two elections in a row, the city announced Friday.

Jeffreys had been on administrative leave since July 9. Her resignation came shortly after the first stage of a Wisconsin Elections Commission investigation showed just how central Jeffreys was to the city sending out 152 duplicate ballots in the April election and an undisclosed number ahead of the August primary.

“We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” the city said in a brief, two-sentence statement, declining to comment further on the matter.

Stacy Menke, previously the city’s deputy clerk, is serving as interim clerk for the August primary election. The job of picking a permanent replacement will fall to Mayor Eric Genrich, although his nominee must be confirmed by the city council.

Like all municipal clerk positions in Wisconsin, the Green Bay clerk’s office is nonpartisan.

Previously the mayor’s chief of staff, Jeffreys became city clerk in January 2021. Her tenure was marked by extensive scrutiny, and it followed a turbulent year for the city’s elections.

When she entered the role, the city was under fire, especially from Republicans, for allegedly giving an election consultant too much authority over its operations during the November 2020 election. The Wisconsin Elections Commission found no wrongdoing. But that incident, in part, led to a statewide ban on outside election assistance and a particular focus from conservatives on Green Bay’s election operations.

Jeffreys’ practices repeatedly drew criticism even before the duplicate ballot incidents.

The commission in late 2023 said Jeffreys’ policy of letting a third party return absentee ballots for someone who’s sick but not disabled likely broke state law.

The following year, she admitted that for several elections, she hadn’t followed the state law requiring clerks to deactivate certain voter registrations. The law applies when postcards sent to Election Day registrants at their stated mailing addresses are returned as undeliverable. She didn’t follow that law because she wasn’t aware of it, a city attorney said on her behalf.

As officials began to probe her recent duplicate ballot mistakes, former Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno, a Republican, told the city to consider moving on from Jeffreys.

“I would hope that when you go through this process, you really evaluate how things are done, because you may not have the right person in that job,” she said.

Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk, said voters need not worry about the transition coming amid the midterm elections.

“Green Bay has experienced leadership transitions before, and the systems in place are designed to ensure continuity regardless of personnel changes,” he said. “Voters in Green Bay can still vote with confidence, knowing election workers across the city remain committed to conducting free and democratic elections.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Antrim County clerk and her husband cleared of ‘criminal wrongdoing’ in computer case

2026-08-06T22:52:46+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Embattled Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop and her husband, a conservative talk radio host best known as Trucker Randy, won’t face charges after she left him alone with her government computer.

In February, a county maintenance worker reported that Randy Bishop was sitting in the clerk’s office unsupervised watching a public video stream of a county commission meeting on the office computer. This led to concerns that he could have used the computer to access sensitive information, including the Qualified Voter File, the central database that contains Michigan’s voter roll and can only be accessed by election officials.

Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a news release Thursday that her office found “no evidence of criminal wrongdoing” or that anyone had tried to access the QVF from that computer at that time.

The investigation found that the clerk likely did allow her husband to use her computer — which matches what they later told the Michigan State Police — but that no sensitive county files were touched, either.

Regardless, Nessel said the case “surely represents a clear misstep from adequate practices and prudent policy.”

The Bishops could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday, but their attorney, Kevin Kijewski, said via text message that “the allegations against Clerk Bishop collapsed under scrutiny.”

“Clerk Bishop remains focused on serving the people of Antrim County,” he added.

Nessel’s finding puts to bed one piece of a series of controversies that has followed Victoria Bishop for several months. Some local activists are looking to recall Bishop from office after she allegedly changed a number of voters’ statuses in the QVF earlier this year, despite that being outside of what a county clerk is permitted to do. She then lost access to the QVF entirely in June after failing to adequately respond to questions from the Michigan Bureau of Elections about her actions.

The recall effort was initially denied in its first attempt to win approval for signature gathering last month. Organizers have resubmitted their effort, though, and it is next scheduled to go before the Board of State Canvassers on Aug. 17, according to filings organizers shared with Votebeat.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Fracas over reducing Tarrant County polling locations highlights public distrust over how the county runs elections

2026-08-06T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Tuesday’s chaotic public meeting over the number of voting sites in Tarrant County for the upcoming November election highlighted public distrust in election administration decisions and the people making them in the state’s most populous purple county, experts and voting rights advocates said.

Hundreds of people showed up at the Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting to oppose a proposal to significantly reduce the number of polling sites on Election Day, from 316 used in the 2022 midterm elections to 176. At least one person, a former Democratic state representative, was arrested after Tim O’Hare, the county’s executive and a Republican, kicked everyone out of the chambers, saying that people clapping and speaking loudly were disruptive.

O’Hare also called multiple recesses during the meeting, prolonging it as people waited to speak.

Speaker after speaker described the effort to reduce the number of locations as the latest in a series of efforts by O’Hare and the majority-Republican commissioners’ court to make it harder for residents to vote, something commissioners said wasn’t true. O’Hare and Commissioner Manny Ramirez, also a Republican, are both on the ballot in November.

“People are suspicious. We don’t trust them to perform their duties in a way that is helping the voters or serving the voters of Tarrant County,” said Janet Mattern, president of the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County. “We see them more as self-serving of themselves and trying to keep themselves in power.”

However, the commissioners —– both Republicans and Democrats — said at the meeting that they didn’t suggest the plan.

“The notion or the idea that this is some conspiracy … is utter and complete and total nonsense,” O’Hare, who did not respond to requests for comment, said.

The proposal came from Tarrant County’s elections administrator, Clint Ludwig, whose role is nonpartisan, and who said the reduction in locations was aimed at increasing efficiency and saving money, since the county now lets voters go to any polling location rather than a single assigned site. Ludwig, who didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, said at the meeting the proposal would let him eliminate some sites that serve very few people. “Instead of having two polling locations, now you can have one,” he said.

The commissioners court ultimately tabled the vote, telling Ludwig the number of voting sites he proposed was too low and to return after revising the proposal to include a larger number of sites.

Especially with critical U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races on the ballot in Texas this November, the political stakes are extraordinarily high in swing counties like Tarrant, and this week’s fracas over the number of voting sites shows how closely residents — and politicians — are monitoring election administration plans there.

Democratic lawmakers, state Rep. Vikki Goodwin , who is running for lieutenant governor, and state Sen. Nathan Johnson, who is running for Texas attorney general, hosted a rally Tuesday ahead of the meeting to speak against the county’s proposal to reduce the voting sites. After the commissioners court meeting, Goodwin sent out a fundraising email about it. “Tarrant is the third largest (and most competitive) county in Texas,” she wrote. “The GOP knows their days are numbered, so they decided holding power was worth more than your ballot.”

Some experts say what happened in Tarrant on Tuesday shows how politicized the environment has become in Texas, and why the role of nonpartisan election administrators is key.

But that faith in independent election administration “sometimes falls away when you have this hyperpartisan environment where people aren’t sure if they can trust that the elections are going to be fairly run if it’s run by a party that is in power and is on the other side of that voter’s preferences,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Tarrant County officials have been accused of partisan motives for election administration decisions

One by one over six hours on Tuesday, people went up to the microphone, many addressing O’Hare directly.

“You could be honest. You could just go ahead and say that you are closing these election polling locations because you don’t want people to vote. It’s not about saving money,” one resident said.

Others carried signs that read “We will vote u out!”

This was the latest in a series of controversial election administration issues in Tarrant. In 2024, O’Hare unsuccessfully pushed to close polling locations on college campuses, again drawing allegations of partisanship. That same year, O’Hare and the three other Republican commissioners on the court also cut funding to provide free bus rides to the polls for low-income residents.

Last summer, the commissioners, led by O’Hare, voted along party lines to redraw county precinct lines midcycle, a rare move that followed state Republicans’ choice to also redraw congressional district lines mid-decade. O’Hare said the goal of the redrawn precinct maps was to benefit Republican candidates. And in the fall, the court also voted along party lines to reduce the number of available polling locations.

“The decisions the commissioners have made over the past two years have really eroded that sense of trust from the community,” said Nina Oishi, a voting rights attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. Oishi also raised concerns about the way the commissioners court has handled public meetings, such as restricting people’s speaking time to one minute, kicking people out of the chambers, and arrests.

“They are the residents. They are supposed to be the ones getting to make their voices heard, and it just never feels that way there.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Despite concerns, Department of Justice monitors kept a low profile in Michigan primary

2026-08-05T05:30:13+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Despite fears that federal monitors from the U.S. Department of Justice might in some way disrupt Michigan’s primary election, officials from around the state say things went smoothly.

Federal monitors — who are typically attorneys employed by the U.S. Department of Justice — were stationed in Detroit, Lansing, East Lansing, and Hamtramck on Tuesday.

The Department of Justice, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has routinely sent observers to monitor elections in Michigan and other states to ensure voters are able to cast ballots freely. However, many people were more suspicious of their motives this year given President Donald Trump’s preoccupation with election administration and Michigan Republicans’ calls for “comprehensive oversight” of the state’s elections.

According to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the monitors’ mandate this year was to root out “problems with the integrity of elections.” If they found any, it wasn’t immediately clear Tuesday.

Instead, election officials said monitors were polite and unobtrusive as they moved from one polling place to the next, asking a few questions about assistance technology designs for voters with disabilities and provisional ballots. Importantly, officials Votebeat spoke with on Tuesday said monitors did not interfere with election proceedings.

“There were no real issues, and we were pleased,” Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s director of elections, said after polls closed.

Two monitors, seen at Detroit’s Bagley Elementary School on Tuesday afternoon, declined to take questions from Votebeat. They sat in the middle of a small gymnasium that held multiple precincts and watched the room silently before politely saying goodbye to poll workers on their way out.

Other polling places visited by federal monitors had similar experiences. Pamela Phelps, chair of a precinct in Hamtramck, told Votebeat that the monitors who visited her polling place earlier in the day were “really nice.”

“They introduced themselves and told us they were from Washington,” Phelps said. “They sat back there in their spots, and they had no problems.”

Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum said that, when the monitors were first announced, no one was quite sure what to expect.

The Department of Justice’s letters informing Detroit, Lansing, and East Lansing about the monitors also requested documents such as such as precinct lists, training materials, and maps from them and alleged that the cities did not comply with federal election law during the 2024 presidential election, leading to long lines. Officials from those communities have denied the allegations.

“The fact that the DOJ felt it was necessary in the first place, it served to cast doubt,” Byrum said of the monitors in her county, which includes parts of Lansing and East Lansing. “Now, tomorrow, they can speak with authority having been here — is that going to lend credit to future claims, even when they’re nonsense?”

Other officials, though, were reassured by how uneventful the primary was. Kim Bush, a spokesperson for the Michigan attorney general’s office, said that, as the state looks ahead to the November election, she didn’t “see any concerns” based on monitors’ behavior Tuesday.

Michigan was not the only state to be visited by federal monitors this summer. The Department of Justice also sent monitors to observe Arizona’s primary, which took place on July 21. They visited three counties in the state, including Maricopa — a key swing jurisdiction that encompasses Phoenix, the state’s most populous city.

There, like in Michigan, the visits from federal monitors were uneventful.

Perhaps most importantly, voters and poll workers said the monitors didn’t appear to scare anyone away. Bill Hunts, a voter on Detroit’s west side, said that he had heard about the monitors but still showed up to vote because he wanted his voice heard.

“I need a say,” he said. “And I like voting.”

Sasha Hupka contributed reporting.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Nonpartisan groups can resume registering newly naturalized citizens to vote at USCIS sites

2026-08-04T20:28:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rule that had prohibited the League of Women Voters and other groups from registering voters at naturalization ceremonies held at the agency’s offices.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Adam Abelson said the government’s ban was a potential free speech violation under the First Amendment and that it likely had a discriminatory intent that breaches Fifth Amendment protections.

In a statement, League of Women Voters CEO Celina Stewart celebrated the decision and emphasized the organization’s history of supporting new citizens as they prepared to vote.

“Today’s ruling protects that fundamental democratic principle, and we will continue fighting to ensure every eligible voter can participate freely and fully in our democracy,” she said.

What’s the dispute?

USCIS announced in August 2025 that only state and local election officials can register new citizens to vote at ceremonies held at the agency’s facilities. In issuing the ban, the agency cited the “administrative burden” it faced in making sure that nongovernmental organizations providing those services were truly nonpartisan.

The League of Women Voters and several of its local chapters, along with the Greater New Orleans chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, filed a lawsuit in November 2025, alleging that the federal rule violated their constitutional rights and a federal law related to agency rulemaking.

The USCIS rule doesn’t apply to naturalization ceremonies held at federal courthouses, so much of the LWV’s work has continued. But the ban on registering people at USCIS facilities caused the voting rights group to cancel 166 planned events where members and volunteers “planned to register roughly 10,000 new voters,” according to the November complaint.

The LWV said in court filings that it has registered more people at naturalization ceremonies than any other organization.

In the complaint, the LWV points out that many state and local election officials — who would still be allowed to register voters at USCIS facilities under the ban — are elected in partisan races, and that the government hasn’t shown any evidence of the group being partisan.

But the group’s core argument is that the ban violates its First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of assembly in public places. It also claims that the USCIS violated a federal law by creating the rule without an opportunity for public comment, and that the rule itself is “arbitrary and capricious.”

The League “made a very strong showing” that it’ll prevail on the merits of its argument that the ban unconstitutionally restricts its free speech rights, Abelson wrote in the ruling.

Separately, the National Council of Jewish Women argued that the ban was a Fifth Amendment violation because it was put in place with discriminatory intent.

Highlighting federal officials’ recent critical statements about immigration and the USCIS decision to replace the term “naturalization candidate” with “alien” in its materials, Abelson said that a discriminatory intent was likely a motivating factor for the ban.

What happens now?

The court case is likely to continue. The Monday ruling was preliminary, and the federal government could appeal. A USCIS spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more Votebeat coverage about the ban on voter registration at some naturalization ceremonies here:

Some of America’s newest citizens may face an extra barrier to the ballot box Sept. 15, 2025

Clarification, Aug. 5: This article has been updated to specify that USCIS announced its ban on nonprofit groups at naturalization ceremonies held at the agency’s facilities last August.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Here’s when to expect results in Michigan’s primary election

2026-08-04T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

With primary races for the U.S. Senate, governor, and more going down to the wire, everyone is going to be watching Michigan on Tuesday.

But it might take a while to know the actual winners, particularly in close races.

Michigan counts its ballots as fast or faster than a lot of other swing states. And the state has done a lot in recent years to count even faster — for instance, by allowing people to vote early in person and letting election officials process absentee ballots before Election Day.

Despite concerns, Department of Justice monitors kept a low profile in Michigan primary

Slowdowns in reporting election results can give rise to unfounded speculation about improprieties in the count. Taking time to release results, though, isn’t a sign that anything is wrong — it’s a byproduct of the fact that running elections is complicated and involves many steps, which often take time to get right.

Here’s what to know about when to expect results from Michigan’s primary election.

When do polls close?

Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. local time. The vast majority of Michigan voters are in the Eastern Time Zone, but four counties in the Upper Peninsula use Central Time instead.

Those counties — Dickinson, Gogebic, Iron, and Menominee — will not finish voting until 9 p.m. Eastern Time. Those counties have only a few thousand voters, but no statewide winners will be declared until they’ve had a chance to weigh in.

When do they start counting ballots?

Ballots are actually already being processed, although no numbers will be run until polls close.

Michigan law allows election officials to pre-process absentee ballots — basically, do everything needed to verify them and prepare them for counting — before election night. Officials can verify that the signature on the ballot envelope matches what’s on file, open the envelope, verify they have the correct ballot, and even put the ballot into a tabulator where it will eventually be counted. The key is that they can’t actually hit the button to tabulate until after polls close.

Small towns can pre-process absentee ballots starting the Monday before the election, while larger communities — anywhere with more than 5,000 people — can start eight days before the election.

Pre-processing allows clerks to get a handle on their ballots before the stressors of Election Day while also allowing more absentee ballots to be included in initial vote reports. That can help prevent large quantities of absentee ballots getting reported late in the evening, which can significantly change candidates’ vote totals. In the past, these types of “ballot dumps” have led to inaccurate claims of ballot box stuffing.

Lots of people still turn in their absentee ballots on Election Day, so not all of them can be processed ahead of time. And not every clerk chooses to pre-process ballots, as some communities don’t have the manpower to do that on top of administering early voting. But where it happens, it does give clerks a head start. For example, during the 2024 primary, Detroit was able to report results from more than 80% of its absentee ballots by 10:30 p.m. on Election Day.

Where do I find Michigan election results?

The secretary of state’s office will post election results on its website on Tuesday night as it receives them. However, this will probably be one of the slowest ways to get results.

Michigan’s elections are highly decentralized, meaning each township and city clerk (all 1,600 of them across the state) is running their own election. Each of those municipal clerks reports their community’s results to a county clerk, who aggregates the information and passes it on to the state.

But the state doesn’t get any information from a county until all that county’s precincts are in and fully reported, meaning the state’s results page is the last to get updated.

Some local clerks will post their results on their websites, and many of the bigger counties will as well. Speed can vary widely on those updates, though. Some clerks prefer to upload all their results at once, while others might start uploading on a regular schedule and slow down as the evening goes on.

Lots of media outlets will also aggregate election results from around the state. Those results, based on what local and county officials have shared, are usually the fastest, but they are far from the final word.

When will election results be final?

Official results in local races come when the election is certified by county groups known as boards of canvassers. Each county board is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans.

They review pollbooks and other materials from the election, tabulate write-in votes, and verify the final numbers are accurate. The deadline for local canvassers to finish that work is two weeks after the election, which for the primary is Aug. 18.

For statewide and federal races, the Board of State Canvassers does much of the same work. Their deadline for the primary is Aug. 24.

All canvassers, regardless of what level they work at, are obligated by law to confirm the results of the election. If they don’t, they open themselves to potential criminal penalties and even civil lawsuits.

When should I expect to know the winners?

Media outlets may call winners in many races on election night. Reputable outlets, such as the Associated Press, make calls based on what they know about where results haven’t come in yet, the voting histories from counties outstanding, and more.

However, media calls don’t have the force of law; winners aren’t truly winners until election results are made official by the canvassers. Media outlets will also sometimes decline to call races if they are extremely tight. As a general rule of thumb, the closer an election is, the longer it will take to call.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Green Bay explains how voters got sent multiple absentee ballots in two straight elections

2026-08-03T19:49:50+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys sent some voters multiple ballots for the August primary after she reprinted absentee envelope labels that she mistakenly thought were missing from an outgoing batch of ballots, the city said in a Friday email to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

The email was the first of two sets of documents that the commission ordered the city to provide after the city sent duplicate ballots to voters two elections in a row. The commission also asked the city for an explanation by Aug. 14 on how it will prevent sending duplicate ballots in the future.

The document sheds light on how the city sent out duplicate ballots in both the April Supreme Court election and the August partisan primary. City officials had already detailed the breakdowns that led to the first error, but until now it was unclear just how central Jeffreys was to the mistake.

Still, the explanations fell short to at least one member of WEC.

“I don’t know that it answers the questions of how on earth this happened.” Ann Jacobs, a Democratic commissioner, told Votebeat.

Jeffreys, whose position is nonpartisan, was placed on administrative leave on July 9. Stacy Menke, previously the city’s deputy clerk, is serving as interim clerk for the August election. City spokesperson Michael Bergman said city officials won’t be providing additional comments on the documents at this time.

Green Bay sent first duplicate ballots in March

The first time Green Bay sent out duplicate absentee ballots was in March, when 152 voters received multiple absentee ballots for the April 7 state Supreme Court election. Although the incident sparked concerns about double voting, only one voter returned two ballots, and the city voided them.

City officials largely explained the causes of this error in response to an administrative complaint filed in April with the election commission. But Friday’s email revealed Jeffreys’ central role.

Typically, after mailing labels — featuring voters’ names and addresses — are placed on absentee envelopes, Green Bay election officials put a copy of regular paper with the same label information in a folder to be retained for recordkeeping purposes, Logan Wood, an attorney for Jeffreys, said in an April response to the complaint.

In March, Jeffreys photocopied a printed batch from regular paper copies to sheet labels and then gave them to a staff member to be placed into a ballot packet assembly, City Attorney Lacey Cochart wrote in Friday’s email.

But for the duplicated batch of labels, Jeffreys either failed to clip the original printing and the sheet labels together before giving it to the staff member, resulting in the paper copy of the labels not being filed in the right place, or for some reason reprinted the entire batch without inquiring with staff, Cochart said.

She then passed the duplicate labels for the second time to another staff member, Cochart said.

The April explanation of the error, which Wood filed on behalf of Jeffreys, said an election worker thought the batch hadn’t been completed and duplicated it. The latest explanation makes clear that Jeffreys was that election worker.

Jacobs said she didn’t understand why city officials were printing labels onto regular paper and then photocopying them rather than printing them directly onto labels.

Second error resulted from another Jeffreys oversight

The second error happened after Green Bay officials, preparing to send out absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 primary, sent a document containing the mailing labels for 1,734 voters to a printing shop in late June. After Jeffreys reviewed the labels the shop sent back, she came to believe some were missing Cochart said.

It’s unclear why Jeffreys thought the labels were missing or whether any actually were. But, either way, she reprinted the labels she believed to be missing directly from the PDF that was sent to the printing shop. That reprinting was the source of the duplicate ballots, Cochart said.

It remains unknown how many voters received duplicate ballots as a result of the second error. Jeffreys didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In both March and June, Jeffreys appeared to sidestep safeguards built into WisVote, the state’s voter registration database and election management system, to prevent the sending of duplicate ballots. WisVote does not allow officials to generate duplicate labels, but it doesn’t prevent someone from copying or reprinting an already-generated physical or digital label sheet. Cochart’s email confirmed that WisVote was the only software used to generate the labels.

Asked whether the latest batch of documents reveal that the city was using WisVote in a way it was not intended to be used, Jacobs said, “It’s hard to say because it’s really not clear what they’re saying.”

Don Millis, the Republican chair of WEC, had asked the city for a plan detailing how it will ensure that the voters mailed duplicate ballots won’t vote twice. The city’s response to that request was relatively brief. It outlined that election officials should contact the clerk and the voter if they discover a duplicate ballot.

Millis didn’t respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow new mail ballot restrictions in the 2026 midterms

2026-08-03T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Elections are back before the U.S. Supreme Court: The Trump administration is asking the justices to quickly lift an order blocking its efforts to put new restrictions on mail-in voting for the fast-approaching midterm elections.

It’s unclear how the justices will rule, but the case focuses on a narrow question of whether or not the lower courts issued premature rulings rather than the broader questions about the legality of the executive order.

But no matter what the court decides this time, a series of practical and legal challenges make it increasingly unlikely that the federal government can impose new rules giving the U.S. Postal Service the power to block Americans from voting by mail in November’s elections.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice designated to handle emergency appeals from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ordered the plaintiff states to respond by Monday to the Trump administration’s filing, and a decision could come any time after that. But there are already fewer than 100 days left until the election, and the U.S. Postal Service itself said in July court filings that it is running out of time to carry out the changes the president is demanding in time for this election.

The heart of the matter is President Donald Trump’s March 2026 executive order, which attempts to restrict mail-in voting by requiring creation of a series of lists of people eligible to vote, including one it requires the U.S. Postal Service to secure from states listing all voters eligible to use mail ballots. The order attempts to give the postal service unprecedented new power to prevent delivery of mail ballots to anyone who is not on these lists.

States, nonprofit groups, and Democratic party committees quickly sued over the order, which they argued was unconstitutional because the president has no authority over elections. Federal courts have since issued conflicting orders on the question of whether blocking major provisions would be premature because government agencies hadn’t yet taken final action to carry out Trump’s orders.

A judge in federal court in Washington, D.C. declined to block the challenged provisions, but last month, in a case brought by states, a federal judge in Massachusetts prevented the Trump administration from moving ahead with the plans, putting the whole issue on hold. Separate appeals courts have now upheld both rulings, leaving the Massachusetts injunction in place for now, which is what prompted the Trump administration to file its emergency appeal last week with the Supreme Court.

Still, “I think everyone agrees that it’s not going to be implemented for 2026,” said Derek Muller, an elections specialist at the University of Notre Dame Law School. “The logistics are so horrific.”

To be clear, the issue the court is now being asked to decide isn’t about the legal merits of the executive order itself, or whether Trump has the authority to issue it. The Trump administration is arguing that the federal courts blocked the executive order prematurely because the government is still drafting the rules, which haven’t been finalized. Until the rules are final, the Trump administration argues, the states can’t prove that there is any harm that should be blocked by the courts, or that agencies won’t carry out the order in a way that complies with the law.

The Massachusetts court’s injunction “is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order, yet the district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful,” the Trump administration argued in its 116-page filing.

That’s essentially what the other panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia concluded in a ruling Tuesday when it upheld a lower court’s decision not to block the executive order — though the plaintiffs in that case are nonprofit groups and party committees rather than states.

“The scope of the issues at play” before the Supreme Court “are really, really narrow,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights and rule of law at the Campaign Legal Center, one of the lawyers involved in bringing the Washington, D.C. case.

And like Muller, Lang said it appears unlikely that the government would have the time to push through the changes before November.

“The kinds of dramatic changes they are asking for in election administration are not the kinds of things that you get done in a few months’ time,” Lang said. “As a practical reality, I don’t think they can do this in any non-chaotic way.”

If the Supreme Court were to side with the Trump administration this time, an army of lawyers across the country is prepared to again ask the courts to step in as soon as the new rules are finalized.

Even the appeals court judges in Washington that agreed the legal challenges were premature also suggested that they had some qualms about the executive order.

“Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election,” the court said in its ruling.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Texas confirms some flagged as potential noncitizens on voter rolls had provided DPS proof of citizenship

2026-07-30T19:11:21+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Election officials across the state should immediately reinstate some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens through a federal program, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told county officials Wednesday.

Christina Adkins, the state elections director, told county officials the state had reviewed Texas Department of Public Safety records confirming the citizenship of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential noncitizens, according to an audio recording of her comments obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, as well as election officials who heard them. The voters were flagged after the state checked its voter roll through a federal program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify the citizenship of people registered to vote.

Adkins said the state is still working through the data and that she couldn’t yet say how many of the 2,724 people had provided proof of citizenship to DPS and should thus be reinstated if they were already removed from the voter roll. She characterized SAVE as having “some inaccurate information” but added that “most of the data that we got out of SAVE was consistent with what DPS had.”

According to election officials, the secretary of state’s office said it plans in the coming days to send voter registrars additional information from DPS showing some of the flagged registered voters had in fact provided proof of citizenship to DPS while registering to vote or obtaining a driver’s license or state ID.

There isn’t yet an exact number of how many U.S. citizens’ registrations were actually canceled or how many were canceled in total by counties after being flagged by SAVE, said Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.

“Counties are following appropriate list maintenance procedures under Texas law, and will ensure eligible voters whose registrations were cancelled are reinstated, and that only U.S. citizens remain on the voter rolls,” Miles said in an emailed statement.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the audio recording of the meeting with election officials, Adkins told election officials that once they receive the new information and review it, the state believes reinstating voters who had provided proof is “a very important thing to do to make sure that these individuals are not further impacted now that we have more information at our disposal.”

The state used a federal tool to flag potential noncitizens on the voter rolls

Texas officials last fall sent counties information on the 2,724 potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s voter roll of more than 18 million registered voters through SAVE, something the Trump administration has vigorously urged all states to do since it overhauled SAVE shortly after Trump came back into office last January.

Counties mailed notices asking those registrants to provide documented proof of citizenship.

Some voters responded to the letters from voter registrars and confirmed they were U.S. citizens, although a total number of how many is not yet available. The registrations of voters who did not respond to notices within 30 days were canceled. It isn’t clear how many were confirmed to be noncitizens. In some counties, officials said some people on the list had submitted an application to their local county voter registrar that accurately noted they were not U.S. citizens but were nonetheless added to the voter roll in error by county officials, and those have since been removed.

Under state law, if a voter’s registration is canceled for failing to respond to a request for proof of citizenship, their registration can be immediately reinstated by providing proof of U.S. citizenship to an elections office or at a polling location. The new information by DPS would immediately trigger the reinstatement without requiring further action from the voter.

Through their investigations, election officials also found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through DPS. The agency requires proof of citizenship or proof of lawful presence, such as a work visa or green card, to obtain a state driver’s license or state ID, and keeps copies of such documentation on file.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office in December told Votebeat and the Tribune that it did not initially check the registrants flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to investigate. That decision prompted a March lawsuit from voting rights groups and some Texas voters who said the state should have done so. The lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

Votebeat reported that the secretary of state’s office later asked DPS to check the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the SAVE program against its records to verify whether any of them had already provided proof of citizenship. Email communications between secretary of state and DPS officials obtained by Votebeat via a public records request show the secretary of state’s office made the request on May 4, with DPS completing its review June 16.

Election officials in multiple states have raised questions about SAVE’s accuracy

Experts and election officials have raised concerns about the SAVE program’s accuracy, and officials in multiple states have said it incorrectly flagged at least some citizens.

In April, former Secretary of State Jane Nelson sent a letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services raising concerns about the accuracy of the SAVE program after county election officials found citizens had been wrongly flagged as noncitizens. Adkins in May also told county officials that her office had found “discrepancies” with the data, though she stressed that it was generally fairly accurate.

States’ use of the revamped SAVE tool is currently in limbo in the wake of multiple court rulings. In June, a federal judge blocked the overhaul of the SAVE program, saying it violated privacy and voting rights. That ruling prompted the Trump administration to pause certain features in the SAVE system to comply. However, last month a different federal judge ordered Homeland Security to restore access to the revamped system for four states — Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana — due to an earlier settlement agreement.

The rulings also do not prevent Texas or other states that previously used the revamped program from continuing to investigate the status of any potential noncitizens it flagged on the voter roll.

The Trump administration has focused intently on searching for noncitizen voters. The Department of Justice asked all 50 states to turn over their voter rolls, seeking discrepancies and ineligible voters, and sued 30 states that declined to do so. Federal judges have so far ruled against the department in 18 of those cases.

Texas, though, is among the states that voluntarily agreed to share its unredacted list of more than 18 million registered voters, including personal information such as dates of birth, driver license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

In April, at least three Texas counties received subpoenas from DOJ seeking individuals’ voter registration information and voting history.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania asks Trump admin how it identified potential noncitizens registered to vote

2026-07-30T15:47:22+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Update, July 31, 8:52 a.m.: This story has been updated to include comment from the Department of Homeland Security.

Pennsylvania state officials are pushing back on the Trump administration’s claim that there may be more than 14,000 potential noncitizens registered to vote in the state.

In a letter sent Wednesday to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said the federal government has not disclosed the methodology or data source it used to identify the noncitizens.

Schmidt also pointed out gaps in a program that the Department of Homeland Security uses to identify noncitizens.

“As you know, past analyses of voter lists have relied on faulty methodologies that can lead to inaccurate results and false claims about the citizenship status of eligible voters,” Schmidt wrote. “In fact, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official who oversees [the program] has ‘acknowledged that the system can’t always find the most current citizenship information for people not born in the U.S.’”

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump gave a primetime address in which he made several allegations of foreign election interference and issues with the nation’s voting systems. One of his claims was that the Department of Homeland Security had identified more than 250,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls of California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.

In a letter to Schmidt the same day, Mullin wrote that a “preliminary review” had revealed “there may be as many as 14,576 non-citizens registered to vote in Pennsylvania.” A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State said Thursday that the federal government still has not shared the actual list of those people.

The Department of Homeland Security has not publicly disclosed, or disclosed to the other three states, precisely how it identified the potential noncitizen registrants. Letters to the states said the department used publicly available information but matched some of the potential noncitizens using Social Security numbers. All four states have refused to give the federal government versions of their voter rolls containing that information, saying state law prohibits them from disclosing it.

In a statement to Votebeat, the Department of Homeland Security declined to explain its methods but offered a pointed response to Schmidt’s letter. “If there are doubts, these officials should pick up the phone, not run to the press. Our offer to help them verify their voter rolls still stands,” a spokesperson said. “We look forward to working with them to ensure only Americans are electing America’s leaders.”

The system Schmidt was referring to — the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program — has erroneously flagged some citizens as ineligible to vote. A judge recently blocked an overhaul of the program, citing in part the accuracy issues.

Dion Nissenbaum contributed reporting.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

New ballot drop-off option proves popular in primary, potentially leading to faster election results

2026-07-30T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Correction, July 31: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that poll workers in Pima County had to sift through mail ballots on primary night to separate ID-verified ones from those in need of signature verification. The story has been updated to reflect that staffers had to do so during early voting, not on primary night.

When Arizonans went to the polls last week for the state primary election, they made their preferences clear about more than just the candidates: They also really liked the option to get their mail ballots counted faster by showing identification.

More than 6,000 voters used the new, optional procedure in Pima County — about half of the voters who dropped off their ballots at the polls on Election Day, per county records. In Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, officials said about 23,000 voters, or 30% of those who dropped off ballots on Election Day, opted to show ID to verify their mail ballots.

Those numbers represent a successful debut for the procedure, which Republicans have pushed as a way to speed up election results. Indeed, Maricopa County finished counting mail ballots significantly faster than usual, which officials credited in part to the change.

But it remains to be seen whether ID verification is a long-term fix for Arizona’s relatively slow vote count. Officials in at least one county, Pima, said kinks remained to be worked out with the process. Plus, it’s unclear whether the option will be as popular in November.

How the new option leads to faster election results

Arizona voters have long had the option of dropping off their mail ballots at polling places. But unlike voters who cast ballots in person, they don’t have to show an ID to verify their identity or wait in line at the polls.

Instead, they just have to sign their ballot envelope and place it in a secure box at the polling place. Election officials later compare that signature to signatures the voter has on file before counting their vote.

But that process can be time-consuming. As a result, it often takes days to verify and count the thousands of mail ballots — often called “late earlies” — that are dropped off on or shortly before Election Day. The wait has caused increasing consternation as the state has morphed into a key election battleground, with major races sometimes separated by just hundreds of votes.

So, in 2024, as state lawmakers sought to find compromise on legislation to adjust election dates, Republicans pushed to require county officials to offer a new option. Now, voters can wait in line and show a driver’s license, passport, or similar form of ID when dropping off their ballots, allowing them to bypass the signature verification process.

Last week’s primary was the first big test of the new option, and with fewer ballots needing to be signature-verified, that process took less time than usual. Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, announced around 8 a.m. on Wednesday, July 22 — just 13 hours after polls closed — that his staff had completed signature verification. His office said in a statement that it marked “an unprecedented milestone” and set “a new benchmark for the speed and efficiency of signature verification during a primary election.”

The statement attributed the improvement to “enhanced processes, technology improvements, and the dedication of our trained staff.” But Republican Kate Brophy McGee, chair of the county’s board of supervisors, said the ID-verify option also helped speed things up.

“This significantly reduced the number of early ballots requiring signature verification in the days after the election,” she said in a statement.

The county’s elections department also closely coordinated its ballot preparation and tabulation processes, and was fully done counting 99% of ballots as of Wednesday evening. Plus, the primary saw relatively low turnout statewide.

Judy Keane, a spokesperson for Heap, declined to respond to questions from Votebeat about how the ID-verify option contributed to the faster-than-usual signature verification. She said signature verification metrics would be available following the county’s canvass of election results on Aug. 3.

In Pima County, Democratic Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly said in a statement to Votebeat that workers are capable of verifying about 2,500 to 3,500 signatures in an hour, depending on staffing levels. In last week’s primary, her office finished signature verification at about 2 p.m. on Wednesday. She estimated that it would have taken staff an additional hour and a half to signature-verify ballots from voters who opted into the ID-verify process on Election Day.

Cázares-Kelly said the number of ID-verified ballots in the primary wasn’t significant enough to truly impact her office, adding that the new procedure also slowed some ballot intake processes.

But her county saw more than 44,000 late early ballots in the 2022 general election. If that number — and the ID-verify option’s popularity — holds true this year, the new process could stand to save her team up to nine hours of signature verification. The potential time savings is much larger in Maricopa County, which saw a record 290,000 late earlies dropped at the polls in 2022.

Election official says there are still kinks to work out

Despite the numbers, Cázares-Kelly raised a host of concerns with the ID verification process for mail ballots.

She said the procedure, created without “meaningful input” from election officials across the state, created additional steps that delayed ballot processing and ultimately did not save her office time. For instance, because Pima County offered just one ballot drop box per polling place for mail ballots during early voting, workers had to sift through those ballots to separate ID-verified ones from those in need of signature verification.

Cázares-Kelly declined to respond to questions from Votebeat about how much time workers lost to that task and whether the issue could be mitigated by implementing a second ballot drop box for ID-verified ballots at the polls.

Cázares-Kelly said the new process also created training and communication challenges. She said her office received many complaints when poll workers began approaching voters about the ID-verify option in small, local elections earlier in the year.

“Some felt singled out, discriminated against,” she said, adding that her team eventually created signage and directed workers not to proactively talk to voters about the new option. “Some voters wondered why they were asked, while others were allowed to simply drop off their ballots. Some said they were made to feel as if it were mandatory; several alleged racial discrimination.”

Meanwhile, other staffers were confused when voters came into the polls requesting that they “signature-verify” their ballots.

“This is a specific process, which is only conducted by our highly trained signature verification staff,” Cázares-Kelly said. “We will be training staff to interpret that language as a request to ID-verify in the next election cycle.”

Will ID verification be as popular in November?

There are also questions about whether the new option’s popularity in the primary will translate to the general election.

Lines were minimal to nonexistent at the polls during last week’s primary. But in higher-turnout elections, lines of up to an hour are not uncommon at polling locations in the state’s largest cities. It’s unclear whether voters will be as enthusiastic about ID-verifying their ballots if they have to wait in long lines to do so.

State Rep. Alex Kolodin, one of the lead architects of the new option and the GOP nominee for secretary of state, did not respond to requests for comment on the process’ primary debut and how it might perform in the fall.

But Republican Stephen Richer, Maricopa County’s former recorder, was doubtful. “Remains to be seen if it will be easy in November when more people vote and lines will be longer,” he wrote in an email.

Primary data suggests voter interest in the option may also hinge on decisions by county officials. In Pima County, where a significantly larger share of voters opted to ID-verify their ballots, officials offered two separate lines at the polls on Election Day — one for in-person voters, and one for those ID-verifying their mail ballots. Maricopa County offered only one line for all voters on Election Day, though officials there used on-site tabulators to count ID-verified ballots immediately.

Still, Richer said if the option remained popular in November, it could help “materially” with speeding up counting and race calls — although he noted voters and politicos will still have to wait if races are exceptionally close.

“The statistical models used by the networks are quicker to call results the more ballots they have in,” wrote Richer, now an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. “So the sooner you get to 80, 85, 90, 95 percent, the sooner you can call races, even closer ones.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Amid USPS delays, Wisconsin officials tell voters to mail their ballots ASAP and voters sue for more options

2026-07-28T09:30:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Ahead of the 2026 midterms, Wisconsin elections officials are planning for the potential of mail ballot delivery delays by encouraging voters to mail back absentee ballots as soon as possible or return them some other way.

And on Friday, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission, arguing voters should be able to cast provisional ballots on Election Day if they don’t think their mail ballot will arrive on time.

Unlike many other states, which allow ballots to be counted if they arrive after Election Day as long as they’re postmarked by that day and arrive by a set cutoff time, Wisconsin requires mail ballots to arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

Historically, the USPS and Wisconsin Elections Commission advised voters that mailing back a ballot a week ahead of Election Day would suffice. Now, the commission and municipal clerks are calling on voters to allow more time.

Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez reported receiving only 20 mail ballots on Election Day in April’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election — a low number even for a small election — but more than 269 late ballots on the day after, which Gutiérrez said was a high number for an election of that size. Seeking to avoid such a high number of late-arriving ballots in the future, Gutiérrez told Votebeat that for the upcoming August election, the city opened its ballot drop boxes four weeks sooner than it would have in the past.

“We are encouraging voters to use our dropboxes or drop off their absentee ballot at [early in-person voting sites],” she said.

If they’re unable to do either, Gutiérrez said voters should mail back their ballots at least two weeks ahead of Election Day.

In Madison, which received more than 100 late ballots in April — also more than what’s typical — City Clerk Lydia McComas told Votebeat that drop boxes open three weeks ahead of the August election.

“We emphasize this is a convenient and far faster option than returning an absentee ballot via USPS,” she said.

Many election officials observe mail delays

These concerns are shared by election officials across the state.

In a recent survey, two-thirds of Wisconsin election officials said they observed problems with absentee ballot mail delivery in the April election. About one-third of officials said voters had complained to them about mail delays.

Nearly 40% said that mail performance in the election was somewhat or much worse than mail performance in past elections.

That experience isn’t universal. Vernon County Clerk Jerry Pedretti, who’s also clerk of the separate town and village of Genoa, told Votebeat that rural USPS workers recognize absentee ballots from the envelopes and make “every effort to make sure that they’re getting them delivered.”

Similarly, Buffalo County Clerk Lisa Schmitt said a couple of ballots arrived after Election Day in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election but problems weren’t major. That was likely a result of postmasters keeping the mail local rather than sending it out via Minnesota for processing, which she said is the typical procedure for non-election mail.

Nonetheless,commissioners at the Wisconsin Elections Commission are concerned about the delays. On MyVote, a website for voters to request ballots, the commission still includes the USPS recommendation for voters to return mail ballots at least seven days before Election Day. But in June, the commission’s new election manual and guidance to voters went further, suggesting at least 10 days before Election Day.

At a meeting in early July, commissioners discussed this updated guidance. “I’m concerned about us just saying 10 days is enough,” Democratic commissioner Mark Thomsen said at the meeting.

USPS spokesperson Desai Abdul-Razzaaq said that he is confident the Postal Service will perform well in the upcoming elections. While he said the USPS takes officials’ concerns from the April election seriously, he said “the overwhelming majority of Election Mail was processed and delivered within established service standards.”

Voters sue for ability to cast provisional ballots

Amid these delays, voters are challenging commission guidance prohibiting voters from casting in-person ballots on Election Day if they think their mail ballot might arrive too late to be counted.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin said the commission’s guidance violates the right to vote enshrined in the Wisconsin Constitution, and is calling on a Dane County Circuit Court judge to allow voters to cast provisional ballots if they think their ballots might arrive late.

Unlike standard in-person ballots, which generally go directly from the person casting them to a tabulator, provisional ballots are segregated and verified and counted later on, once election officials determine they are validly cast. The league is asking for mail voters to be able to cast provisional ballots, and only have them counted if their mail ballots don’t arrive on time.

State law says that a voter who mails or delivers an absentee ballot to a clerk isn’t permitted to vote in person in the same election on Election Day. But the league said the commission is too narrowly interpreting that law in its rule prohibiting voters from casting ballots if they suspect their ballot will arrive late.

“This rule risks denying Impacted Voters their right to vote — the right most preservative of all others,” the lawsuit states.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Everything you need to know about how to vote in the Wisconsin primary

2026-07-28T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin’s primary election is two weeks away, and early voting is already underway in municipalities across the state.

Whether you plan to vote early in person, by mail, or on Election Day, here’s everything you need to know about how to make your voice heard in the upcoming election.

When is Wisconsin’s primary election?

Election Day is Aug. 11, and polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. that day. You can also vote early in person beginning July 28.

What offices are on the ballot?

The Democratic primary for governor is perhaps the highest-profile race for the August primary, but depending on your district, there may also be competitive congressional, legislative, and other primary elections. Click here for a full list of what’s on your ballot.

Who can vote in the Wisconsin primary?

Any registered voter can cast a vote in the primary. You can click here to find out whether you’re registered.

Wisconsin has an open primary system, so you don’t need to be registered with a political party to vote a certain way. But you can only vote within one party. If you’re choosing a Republican congressional candidate, for example, you can’t select a Democrat anywhere else on your ballot.

What if I’m not registered to vote yet? Is it too late?

The deadline to register to vote online or by mail was July 22, but you can still register in person.

You can register at your local clerk’s office or at an early voting location through Friday, Aug. 7. If you miss that window, you can also register at your polling place on Election Day itself.

Where is my polling place?

You can find your polling place here. On Election Day, you can only vote in person at your designated polling location. However, your early in-person voting location may differ from your Election Day polling place. You can contact your municipal clerk here to learn more early voting details specific to your community. The League of Women Voters has also assembled a list of early voting sites in dozens of Wisconsin’s biggest municipalities.

What should I bring to vote?

If you’re already registered to vote, all you need to bring is an acceptable photo ID. That can include a driver’s license, passport, military identification card, a free Wisconsin ID issued for the purposes of voting, and several other options. Click here to view all acceptable IDs.

If you are registering to vote at the polling place, you’ll need to bring a proof of residence that includes your name and current mailing address, which could include a driver’s license or other government ID, a residential lease, or a utility bill.

What is early voting?

Early voting, often called in-person absentee voting, allows voters to go to their municipal clerk’s office or a designated early voting location to cast a ballot up to two weeks before Election Day. That ballot is then stored by the city and counted on Election Day.

The availability of early voting varies widely across the state. Some clerks do it by appointment only. Some cities, including Madison and Milwaukee, operate multiple early voting sites that are open multiple hours each day. But by law, early voting can’t be offered later than the Sunday before the election; after that, you must vote on Election Day.

How does early voting work?

Once you arrive at an early voting site, you must first request an absentee ballot. Election officials will also check that you have an acceptable photo ID before issuing you a ballot.

Election officials should then let you mark your absentee ballot in private, but let them know if you require assistance. Clerks or designated officials will also have to sign the envelope that you put your absentee ballot in.

Can I vote absentee by mail?

In Wisconsin, you can also request that an absentee ballot be sent to you by mail. The deadline to request absentee ballots is Aug. 6 by 5 p.m. for regular and overseas voters, but Aug. 7 by 5 p.m. for indefinitely confined and military voters. For your absentee ballot to count, it must arrive back at the clerk’s office by primary day, Aug. 11.

However, if you want to vote this way, you should request and return your ballot as soon as possible; mail delays have recently led to some absentee ballots getting delivered too late to count. To avoid this, consider dropping your ballot off at the clerk’s office, a drop box, or an early voting location instead of mailing it.

What if I vote absentee and then my preferred candidate drops out?

Under current guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, you can’t void an absentee ballot after you return it to an election official. That guidance is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court, but as of July 27 the court hasn’t ruled in the case.

That means — for now — that your absentee votes are final once you return the ballot to the clerk. If you make a mistake while casting the ballot, though, or spill something on your ballot, you can request a replacement from an election official.

Who should I contact if I have trouble voting or have any questions?

Please contact your municipal clerk, whose information you can find here. We at Votebeat would also like to hear about any problems you notice. You can contact us at wisconsin.tips@votebeat.org.

If you have disability-related voting questions or concerns, you can also contact the Disability Rights Wisconsin Voter Hotline at 844-347-8683.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

The noncitizen voter mystery: New Trump numbers raise more questions than answers

2026-07-27T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The polarizing debate over noncitizen voters escalated last week when New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced that an apparent software glitch had led to the unintended registration of 6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024, 400 of whom voted in recent elections.

In a hastily called press conference, Sherrill placed the blame on her predecessor, fellow Democrat Phil Murphy, and said she was taking immediate steps to fix the problems.

Sherrill’s 20-minute briefing raised as many questions as it provided answers. How did a software glitch at the state’s motor vehicles agency lead to adding people who said they weren’t citizens to the state’s voter rolls? Who discovered the problem back in 2024? Why didn’t state officials alert the public when they first learned about the mistake? And what did state officials do about the people who were improperly registered at the time?

Sherrill, who took office in January and said she learned about the problems the week of July 13, said she’s ordered an independent investigation. That’s not good enough for Republicans in Washington and Trenton.

The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding that New Jersey hand over the names of the 6,600 people by Tuesday. New Jersey Republicans question Sherrill’s software glitch explanation and are calling for a legislative investigation.

The New Jersey issue isn’t coming in a vacuum. President Donald Trump has long argued that ineligible noncitizen voters cost him the 2020 election, though no evidence has emerged to support that. His second administration has been focused on rooting out any noncitizen voting, and his top legislative priority is election legislation that he says will block it.

In a televised primetime speech on July 16, Trump said his administration had found 250,000 noncitizen voters on the voter rolls of four states: New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.

Officials in all four states pushed back on Trump’s claims, and said they didn’t understand how the administration arrived at those numbers.

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar called the numbers “wildly speculative.” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said that “all evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country.” Even in New Jersey, the 6,600 noncitizen voters discovered by the state did not come close to the 35,152 that the Trump administration claimed to have found in the state. “Do I think that the latest round that he has put out is in some way an attempt to undermine our elections in this country? Yes I do,” Sherrill said at her press conference.

How did the Homeland Security Department come up with the estimates? The Trump administration isn’t saying. But the letters the Department of Homeland Security sent to the four states to notify them of the findings provide some interesting clues.

For instance, the letters qualify the numbers in ways that Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin did not in their public statements.

“We’ve identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in just four states,” Mullin said in a briefing the day after Trump’s speech.

But the letters are more careful in making that claim.

In California, for example, the letter from Mullin said there “may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California.” The letter then went on to say that the government found 81,336 registered voters in California’s public voter registration database with names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers that match those of noncitizens in federal files. That’s less than half the overall estimate; the letter doesn’t explain where the extra 109,496 came from.

In Pennsylvania, Mullin’s letter said the government matched the data of 8,594 registrants to a noncitizen, out of a total of 14,576 potential noncitizens it identified. Nevada’s letter said there were 8,576 matches out of 15,903 potential noncitizens. And according to the Shore News Network, New Jersey’s letter said there were 19,497 matches out of 35,152 potential noncitizens.

Altogether, these numbers in Mullin’s letters say the department has matches for just 118,003 of the 256,463 noncitizens the government is asserting have registered to vote.

The letters specify that Trump officials relied on each state’s public data files. All four of these states are among the 30 that have gone to court to block the federal government from getting access to unredacted versions of their voter rolls, which would include sensitive personal information, such as driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers.

The public versions of the voter rolls only include basic information about individual voters, such as their names and addresses, so it’s unclear how the government could have matched individuals based on social security numbers as it says it did.

It’s likely that even the 118,003 number is too high. States that have audited their own voter rolls for noncitizens or checked them against federal databases by using the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program have found noncitizen totals that are far less concerning.

Upon further investigation, several states have also found that SAVE — which works similarly to the methodology that Mullin apparently used — overestimated the number of noncitizens on their rolls, leading experts and elections officials to warn that the system was unreliable.

Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, called the 250,000 estimate “puzzling and concerning” and said there was no reason to believe the number of noncitizens on the voter rolls is actually that high.

“There are all sorts of reasons why you would get a huge number of false positives,” he said. “There is no reason to trust anything in the order of that 250,000 number. That will absolutely fall apart under any scrutiny.”

Correction, July 31: An earlier version of this story misstated the date of President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election issues. It was on July 16.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Democratic states, leaders sue Trump administration for conditioning grant money on election policies

2026-07-24T20:11:29+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

A coalition of Democratic states and officials has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security arguing that Federal Emergency Management Agency funding is being withheld as leverage to coerce the states into complying with President Donald Trump’s preferred elections and immigration policies.

The states say the department is requiring recipients of the Homeland Security Grant Program — one of FEMA’s largest grants, which can be used for preparation for and response to terrorist and other security threats — to switch to voting systems that employ hand-marked paper ballots, to conduct manual audits of election results, and use a controversial DHS program to identify noncitizens on their voter rolls.

“The Constitution grants the States the power to administer and set the rules governing federal elections, and pursuant to that grant of authority the States have adopted a range of systems for ensuring that votes are counted fairly and accurately,” the lawsuit says. “Defendants, however, seek to upend those laws and policies and—using hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds as a cudgel—impose the current Administration’s preferred policies in their place.”

The suit is being led by Illinois, which is joined by California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the District of Columbia.

The Trump administration has been pressuring states to tighten their election laws and run their voter rolls through the DHS program in question — known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. However, several states that have used the program to identify potential noncitizen voters have found it is prone to false positives.

In a statement, a spokesperson for FEMA said it was “nothing new” that these Democratic leaders “oppose common-sense measures” on election security.

“Election security is national security, and protecting our critical infrastructure remains a top priority for the Trump Administration,” the statement said. “This year, states must take critical, common-sense steps to protect U.S. elections before receiving their full Homeland Security Grant Program awards. These new requirements will preserve election integrity.”

The suit alleges that the department’s threat to withhold 20% of Homeland Security Grant Program funds if states don’t meet the election-related conditions means the plaintiff states would lose out on at least $148 million already allocated to them.

“Donald Trump is actively threatening the safety of our communities and withholding resources from our law enforcement officers and first responders in an effort to seize control of our election system,” Shapiro said in a statement Thursday. “Withholding this funding would be dangerous under any circumstance, but to do so in an attempt to control our elections is a new low — even for Donald Trump.”

At a recent gathering of state election officials, Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, who also serves in a leadership position with the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said the threat to withhold funding wouldn’t have an immediate effect on the midterm election, since planning for elections takes place months and years ahead of time.

However, “if you believe that there are threats against our elections and if you believe the way to secure our elections is to protect against foreign influence, why are you not funding the people who need to be protecting the election systems?” she asked. “It kind of feels like you’re undermining the people who need to do the work.”

The lawsuit isn’t the first time these states have sued the administration over its attempt to shape election policy. In April, the same coalition — minus Hawaii and Kentucky’s Beshear — sued the administration over Trump’s executive order seeking to impose new regulations on mail voting.

Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, said he didn’t think the federal government would succeed in withholding the money from the states.

“Courts don’t tend to like these kinds of conditions being imposed when there’s no clear statutory authority to do so,” he said.

The case is being heard by Rhode Island District Judge Mary Susan McElroy. The Trump administration has not yet filed a response.

Jessica Huseman and Dion Nissenbaum contributed reporting.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Noncitizen voters discovered in New Jersey fuel nationwide debate over how frequently that happens

2026-07-23T16:50:45+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

New Jersey stepped to the forefront of the national debate over noncitizen voting this week when the governor announced that a software glitch had allowed nearly 400 noncitizens to vote in elections since 2023 — a revelation that emerged just as President Donald Trump put a target on the state’s back over the issue.

Now, New Jersey is scrambling to explain what happened, how officials addressed it, and why it took so long to tell the public.

The federal government has sued a majority of states, including New Jersey, for access to unredacted versions of their voter rolls containing voters’ personal information, though so far, federal judges have ruled against the government in more than half of those cases. A top U.S. Department of Justice official — who recently threatened to criminally prosecute election officials who knowingly allowed noncitizens to remain on voter rolls — has also demanded that the state turn over information on the noncitizens involved and said the government intends to prosecute them.

Trump and his allies have long asserted that noncitizens are registering and voting in significant numbers, but available evidence shows noncitizen voting is actually rare. As in New Jersey, some cases in which noncitizens were improperly added to the voter rolls in other states stemmed from government or technology errors, including at motor vehicle agencies.

“When things like this happen, man, you want to crawl under a rock,” said Jennifer Morrell, a former Colorado elections official who now serves as chief executive officer of The Elections Group, a consulting firm that advises elections leaders around the country. “We know that these systems, all systems in our lives, are always going to be prone to human and technological errors and it’s important to be transparent about what happened.”

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, held a press conference Tuesday to disclose that a software problem at New Jersey’s motor vehicles department improperly registered 6,600 people to vote between June 2023 and June 2024, even though they had said that they were not U.S. citizens.

Fewer than 400 of those people cast ballots in elections between 2023 and 2026, Sherrill said. New Jersey has more than 6.6 million registered voters.

Sherrill said her predecessor’s administration discovered and fixed the software problem in June 2024. But state officials did not alert the public, or the 6,600 people who had improperly been registered, until this week, she said.

She stressed that the state is still investigating but said, based on what officials know so far, those votes did not change the outcome of any races.

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell, who is also the secretary of state, and Rosalie Johnson, the official who oversees the motor vehicle agency, joined Sherrill at the press conference. Their offices did not respond to additional questions about the incident.

Sherrill said she has ordered an independent investigation to determine exactly what happened, and promised to publicly release the results.

She also harshly criticized her predecessor, Gov. Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, for failing to address and disclose the problem and said she was moving quickly to remove improperly registered voters from the rolls. A representative for Murphy did not respond to a request for comment.

“I see no reason why our state cannot run an election system well and have a computer program that can operate well,” Sherrill said. “Should any problem occur it should be caught quickly. This is just to me not a problem with some of our laws; it’s a problem with accountability.”

Sherrill said the software issue involved the state’s outside vendor, IDEMIA, a French multinational technology company New Jersey has worked with for decades. The state is replacing IDEMIA with another vendor in the coming months, state officials said.

In a statement, IDEMIA did not acknowledge any mistakes and did not respond to requests for more information.

“IDEMIA’s role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” the company said. “Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”

New Jersey glitch echoes earlier ones in other states

New Jersey is the latest state to run into technological problems that have affected election systems and risked undermining public confidence in the nation’s voting processes.

In 2024, Oregon temporarily paused its automatic voter registration system after discovering that a data-processing error at the state Department of Motor Vehicles led to more than 1,700 people being improperly registered to vote, likely due to human error over which documents constituted proof of citizenship. That same year, shortly before the presidential election, Arizona discovered that a long-running error at its motor vehicles department improperly classified 218,000 people as having provided the proof of citizenship required by the state when they had not.

In 2017, elections officials in Pennsylvania revealed that a programming error had long allowed noncitizens to register to vote through the state’s motor vehicle agency, though it’s not clear precisely how many did. The state eventually sent letters to verify the eligibility of more than 11,000 voters, many of whom were later confirmed to be eligible.

Seth Bluestein, a Philadelphia city commissioner and the Republican member of the city’s three-person Board of Elections who helped identify the problems in Pennsylvania, said there is “a broader issue to be addressed when it comes to infrastructure related to elections.”

“Every state should check their DMV processes to make sure that their DMV is not mistakenly registering non-citizens,” Bluestein said. “To me this is about better government management.”

Keith Ingram, a former elections director in the Texas secretary of state’s office, echoed Bluestein’s assessment.

“If you’ve got a coding error, that’s something that needs to be fixed,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that you don’t get good data. It just means that you made a mistake.”

Ingram said he believes noncitizen voting “is a very small problem, if it’s a problem at all, and this doesn’t change that opinion at all.”

But New Jersey’s technological challenges can’t be divorced from the broader national debate over the country’s voting systems.

Last week, the Trump administration accused New Jersey and three other states of improperly registering 250,000 noncitizens as voters. The White House and Republican officials pointed to Sherrill’s announcement as they pushed for passage of the stalled SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, among other provisions. They said the disclosure validated their concerns, though experts say the legislation wouldn’t necessarily prevent such errors. The problem in New Jersey wasn’t a lack of checks, they said, it was that the software wasn’t properly documenting the information being entered.

“The thing the media says never happens just keeps happening,” a social media post by the Department of Homeland Security read, accompanied by screenshots of a headline about the New Jersey issue next to a 2017 headline about the problem in Pennsylvania.

“Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote, let alone cast a ballot,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. “Time and again, they have been proven wrong.”

The U.S. Justice Department has given New Jersey until next week to provide complete information on the 6,600 people who may have been improperly registered to vote and suggested that it may prosecute some of them for their actions.

In an interview Wednesday on Fox Business, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon pointed to the timing of New Jersey’s disclosure, which came days after the president’s prime-time speech on elections. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence it just came up suddenly a few days after the president gave a speech,” she said.

Dhillon also said that Sherrill “appears to be saying that the prior governor may have known about this for some time.” The federal government’s demand for the identities of the people who were improperly registered and voted while ineligible is “the beginning of our investigation,” she said.

In a separate interview Wednesday with the online program “The Benny Show,” Dhillon said, “they are subject to both prosecution as well as removal from the United States.”

New Jersey Republicans are questioning the governor’s explanations and calling for a legislative investigation into what happened.

Sherrill said the people involved should not be prosecuted for a mistake made by the state government.

“We are not in the practice of releasing personally identifying information to the federal government right now given that the Trump administration continues to weaponize it against people,” she said.

She also castigated Trump for pushing false election conspiracy theories.

“Donald Trump has done more to undermine free elections in this country than certainly anyone in my lifetime, including Vladimir Putin,” she said.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Why thousands of Michigan votes likely won’t be counted in this year’s primary

2026-07-23T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

This is an updated version of a story originally published Aug. 2, 2024.

Every other August in Michigan, thousands of votes are rejected because voters don’t understand or pay attention to the directions on their primary ballot.

The problem occurs when voters do something called crossover voting, where, either intentionally or by accident, they vote for candidates from different parties on the same ballot. In a general election, that would not be a problem. And in a presidential primary, it wouldn’t be possible.

But in the August primary elections — where candidates for federal- and state-level positions are selected — a crossover vote that doesn’t get caught by the voter means officials can’t count any of the votes on the partisan section of the ballot. And many voters, particularly if they vote absentee, will never know that their partisan votes didn’t count, if they don’t closely read instructions or don’t respond to an on-screen alert when their ballot gets flagged by the tabulator.

“I think that sometimes, it can be a source of confusion,” said Elizabeth Hundley, the Livingston County clerk.

It’s difficult to tell exactly how many crossover votes are cast in Michigan’s August primaries; the state doesn’t keep track of the number, and neither do many of the counties Votebeat surveyed. But the counties that do keep track suggest the number is significant, meaning there are likely thousands of Michiganders whose votes on the partisan section aren’t counted each election. (Votes in the other sections of the primary ballot — for nonpartisan candidates, proposals, or millages — are unaffected by the mistake and still get counted.)

In 2022 in Macomb County, for example, nearly 6,300 ballots — about 3.6% of the more than 175,000 ballots cast in the county’s August primary — saw their partisan votes rejected due to a crossover vote, officials said.

Washtenaw County doesn’t explicitly track rejections due to crossover votes, but Votebeat’s analysis of vote data from the county suggests the total was close to 1,400 votes in 2022, or roughly 1.5% of the 87,526 votes cast there. Even if that relatively low percentage is consistent statewide, Washtenaw County Clerk Lawrence Kestenbaum said, it would still mean thousands of votes across Michigan are being excluded from the count.

The rate of crossover voting is a significant improvement over the “punch-card days,” Kestenbaum said, when “something like 5% to 15% of primary ballots would not have partisan votes counted.” Punch-card ballots, which were largely phased out across the state by the early 2000s, didn’t enable voters to catch their mistakes in the way today’s electronic tabulators do.

That’s why the problem primarily affects absentee voters today, clerks say. If an in-person voter selects candidates from different parties, the tabulator will show a warning about the crossover,” explained Meredith Place, the Kalamazoo County clerk. The voter can then either spoil their ballot and get a new one, or else they can cast it as is. If they do so, their partisan votes won’t count, but their nonpartisan selections will.

Without those alerts, absentee voters are much less likely to become aware of the issue. And if they do notice, spoiling an absentee ballot is a more involved process.

In Michigan, nearly 2 million people have requested absentee ballots for August’s election, according to the state’s voting dashboard. More than 610,000 of those have already been returned as of Wednesday.

Ballot instructions don’t necessarily prevent crossover voting

It’s not that voters aren’t given instructions on how to mark their ballots correctly, clerks say. Those who vote in person, either early or on Election Day, will get instructions from poll workers to stay within a single party column. There are also instructions printed on the top of ballots that tell voters to choose only one party, and many polling places will have signage to further warn voters.

With mail ballots, there is an included instruction sheet that tells voters in capital letters: “YOU MAY VOTE IN ONE PARTY SECTION ONLY; YOU CANNOT ‘SPLIT YOUR TICKET.’ IF YOU VOTE IN MORE THAN ONE PARTY SECTION, YOUR PARTISAN BALLOT WILL BE REJECTED.”

But still, there are enough places for confusion that many voters miss the messaging altogether.

For one thing, the August ballot is not like the others. In Michigan’s presidential primary, voters have to request a specific party’s ballot, so there’s no risk of a crossover vote. In November’s general election, voters can vote straight-ticket or go back and forth as they please for each office.

But August — technically considered an open primary, because voters don’t have to declare a party — is ripe for problems, because voters may not be aware of the risk, especially if they’ve voted before and expect this ballot to be like the others.

“If we did the regular primary the way we do the presidential, this problem wouldn’t exist at all,” Kestenbaum said.

Another concern comes from the design of the ballot itself, which falls short of best practices in several ways, according to Whitney Quesenbery, director of the nonprofit Center for Civic Design, which helps promote best practices for ballots and other election tools across the country.

Among the issues Quesenbery flagged: The text on the ballot itself is small. The separate instruction sheet that comes with the mail ballot has language that’s set by state law but is potentially confusing, and the relevant warning comes after information on how to fill in a bubble, which could lead voters to ignore it altogether. The columns for separate parties don’t have a lot of visual space between them.

“This was all written into law by lawyers, not by the people who have to explain to people how things work,” Quesenbery said. “They don’t give enough attention to accurately explaining a complex system.”

Largely, clerks say they’re doing all they can to make sure voters are aware they can vote in only one column. Beyond that, there’s a level of what Hundley called “personal responsibility by voters” to make sure they read instructions.

Crossover voting may require a legislative fix

But some clerks are supportive of a change, because, as Hundley also said, an election administrator’s goal is to make sure “the will of the people is accurately reflected.”

Any significant changes would require changing state law. While legislators have discussed changing how certain offices are selected, pivoting from conventions to primaries, few have discussed altering the primaries themselves.

Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou, a Democrat from East Lansing who used to head the elections committee in the Michigan House, said she’s “always open” to proposals to try to address concerns people have about voting.

Before making any major moves, she said she would want more information on the scope of the problem. In the meantime, she said she thought more voter education might help.

“If people are really struggling with this, I’d want to look at it and consider what we can do,” Tsernoglou said. “I want to do all we can to make voting fair, accessible and easy for everyone.”

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Alex Kolodin wins GOP nomination for secretary of state

2026-07-22T04:30:34+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

The Associated Press has called the Republican primary for Arizona secretary of state for state Rep. Alex Kolodin, setting up a high-stakes general election between him and Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes.

As of Tuesday at 9 p.m. MST, with 65% of the expected vote reporting, Kolodin had 58% of the vote, while his primary opponent, former Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda, had 42%.

The secretary of state is the top election official in Arizona. They play a critical role in issuing guidance to county election offices and dictating how voting must be run via the state’s election rulebook. They also typically act as a spokesperson for elections in the state and are on the front lines of election-related interactions with the federal government. Most notably, the winner of this year’s election will oversee the pivotal 2028 presidential election in the key swing state.

Kolodin’s victory in the primary suggests that unproven claims of widespread election fraud continue to have a strong hold on GOP voters in the state. Kolodin, an election attorney from Scottsdale, was part of a lawsuit in the aftermath of the 2020 election that alleged that year’s presidential race was stolen from President Donald Trump. On the campaign trail this year, he repeatedly said that voters don’t trust elections. He also heavily criticized local election officials and lambasted the state’s voting systems as dysfunctional.

As a legislator, Kolodin has supported bills to ban vote centers, shorten the early voting period, and require voters to recertify their address each election cycle to vote by mail. He led the charge to put a measure on the November ballot that would require mail voters to provide ID, among other changes to state election law.

Swoboda, by contrast, has largely defended Arizona’s election systems. She argued throughout the campaign that Kolodin’s hardline conservative positions would make him unelectable in the general election. In June, she told Votebeat that Kolodin had a “negative zero” chance of beating Fontes.

But as Kolodin celebrated his win, he was quick to reach out to general election voters. In a statement, he said his campaign was about “protecting every vote, regardless of Party.”

At the same time, he took aim at Fontes, saying his victory showed Arizonans were “sick and tired of Adrian Fontes’ mismanagement of our election system.”

“Tonight, Arizona voters spoke up decisively for lawful, transparent, honest, and fair elections,” Kolodin said, adding that he aimed to run “world-class elections that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike can be proud of.”

Fontes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The secretary of state race is unfolding as the Trump administration attempts to exert unprecedented influence on elections in swing states across the nation, including Arizona. Fontes has resisted the federal government’s efforts to scrutinize Arizona’s voting process, including by refusing to hand over the state’s voter roll to the Department of Justice. Kolodin has sided with the Department of Justice in that dispute, and also said that, if elected, he would require county recorders to run their full voter lists through an unreliable federal data tool known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, to check for noncitizens.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Here’s when to expect results in Arizona’s primary election

2026-07-21T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

It’s Election Day, and all eyes are on the desert as voters, pundits, and national politicos await primary results from Arizona. But when will those results be known?

The first batch of primary election results are expected to drop about an hour after the polls close Tuesday, with more to follow throughout the night.

But full results are likely to take days. Arizonans are allowed to drop off their mail ballots until polls close on Election Day, and those ballots must be processed before they can be counted. Specifically, mail ballots go through a signature verification process that acts as a safeguard against voter fraud. In total, the state gives county election officials about two weeks to completely wrap up counting.

Races with wide margins are likely to be called before counting is fully complete. Tight contests may take longer to determine.

Here’s what to know about the counting process and when to expect results.

When will ballots be counted, and which will be counted first?

Arizonans don’t just vote on Election Day.

Rather, voters cast ballots over a period of weeks, by various means — via mail, by ballot drop box, or early in person. That means their votes get tabulated, and the results reported, in a specific order after polls close.

Ballots cast in the weeks leading up to Election Day are usually the first to be counted.

The state allows election staff to start processing votes as soon as preelection tests are performed on vote-counting machines, or tabulators. That testing, a safeguard to ensure accurate results, occurred last month. Voting — and counting — has been ongoing since then.

As of Sunday, election workers in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, had counted about 462,000 early ballots. In Pima County, which encompasses Tucson, nearly 135,000 early ballots had gone to the tabulators.

Those ballots are likely to be included in the first round of results from the counties at about 8 p.m. MST on Tuesday. In Arizona, the vast majority of voters cast their ballots by mail, so that drop will represent a sizable chunk of the state’s results.

Already, the ballots counted in Maricopa and Pima counties represent more than half of the total votes cast in each jurisdiction during the 2022 midterm primaries: Around 867,000 in Maricopa and 228,000 in Pima. Overall, turnout statewide is trending lower than in 2022, which saw record-breaking participation.

On election night, workers will report results from ballots cast by in-person voters at the polls and mail ballots dropped off by voters who chose to show ID to verify their vote, a new option implemented statewide this year that aims to speed counting. Mail ballots that aren’t ID-verified must go through the lengthier signature verification process.

Many of the state’s counties are geographically massive, so it may take a few hours for polling places in the farthest reaches of each region to report results. Typically, counties post several rounds of results through the early morning hours on Wednesday.

In the days after the election, workers will process and tally early ballots dropped off immediately before and on Election Day. New batches of ballots are usually reported each day.

Finally, elections staff will process ballots that require a closer look. They’ll investigate provisional ballots, which are used when there are questions about a voter’s eligibility. They’ll ask voters to bring in photo ID to process conditional provisional ballots, which are used when a voter forgets to bring identification with them to the polls. They’ll also contact voters to “cure,” or verify, any questionable signatures on early ballots.

Those voters will have up to five calendar days — for this year’s primary, until Sunday, July 26 — to respond to election officials’ inquiries. Counties usually wrap up counting shortly thereafter.

Where can I find Arizona election results?

Results are available online. Check the Arizona secretary of state’s website or your county elections department’s website. Several media outlets will also post results on their websites; their results may differ slightly from those on government websites because they sometimes input results in a different order.

When do results become official?

Results on election night are unofficial.

Once all the votes are counted, counties across the state will officially report the results to the state, a process known as canvassing. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office then does its own canvass and certifies the results.

For this year’s primary, counties must complete their canvass by August 3. The state canvass is scheduled for August 6. Results are official once the state canvass concludes.

When will races be called?

Media outlets and political pundits usually don’t wait for results to become official to call races. Although these calls don’t have the force of law, media outlets will declare winners in a race when one candidate has a large enough lead that the uncounted votes are extremely unlikely to change the outcome of the contest.

That means races with large vote disparities can often be called on election night before full results are in. But in swingy Arizona, many races often have tight margins and take longer — sometimes several days — to call.

What happens if there are recounts?

In Arizona, any races decided by a margin of half a percentage point or less are subject to an automatic recount.

A recount truly means a complete recount. If a contest falls within the recount margin, election workers have to completely retest their county’s tabulators, retally the ballots, and repeat a hand count audit of a statistically significant number of ballots.

All of that happens after county officials certify election results, so recounts may not be completed until a few weeks after Election Day.

What happens if there are election challenges?

Candidates have a five-day window after the state canvass to challenge the result of an election in court. For this year’s primary, all challenges must be filed by August 11.

How quickly such a challenge would be resolved is up to the courts — and depends in part on how serious and complex the challenge is. But, given that general election ballots need to be printed with the correct candidates by September, courts typically try to resolve these cases as fast as they can.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Can Wisconsin voters void a returned absentee ballot? Issue heads back to court

2026-07-21T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Update, July 29, 3:00 p.m.: A Dane County Circuit judge upheld the Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance banning absentee spoiling after voters already returned their ballots, saying state law was unambiguous in prohibiting the practice.

Update, July 23, 1:30 p.m.: This story has been updated to incorporate a new lawsuit filed by three voters against the Wisconsin Elections Commission over its absentee ballot guidance.

Wisconsin election officials have reignited a legal battle over absentee voting with July guidance stating that voters cannot void a returned absentee ballot and cast a new one, even if Election Day is weeks away or the candidate they supported has dropped out.

Three Democratic residents in Dane County on Thursday sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission over the guidance, which was adopted by the commission on July 9, calling it an unconstitutional violation of the state’s absentee voting laws. All three plaintiffs voted for a gubernatorial candidate who have since dropped out of the primary, and under the commission guidance they cannot change their votes, even though those votes have not yet been counted. The legality of spoiling ballots just to change a vote has long been disputed.

The lawsuit says WEC’s guidance means the plaintiffs “will all be disenfranchised from meaningfully participating in this August election unless this Court steps in.”

Thursday’s lawsuit is the latest development in a legal dispute that began in 2022 and was reopened by an appeals court decision earlier this year. It was filed two days after the Democratic Party of Wisconsin sent the commission a letter urging it to rescind the guidance. The letter raised many of the same concerns later cited in the suit, including that the policy could disenfranchise voters and was adopted after early voting in the primary had already begun.

The July 9 guideline for clerks reverses the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s previous position and Attorney General Josh Kaul’s legal arguments on the agency’s behalf that voters should be allowed to replace absentee ballots they have already returned as long as they comply with statutory deadlines.

The WEC spent years arguing in court in favor of that broader definition of ballot spoiling, but its latest guidance effectively restores the rule imposed by a 2022 court ruling that banned the practice.

The commission adopted the guidance after clerks had already mailed ballots for the August 11 primary and, notably, after multiple candidates in the crowded Democratic gubernatorial race dropped their bids.

“It seems to me exceedingly likely that this is something that people are going to keep fighting about,” Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal law firm Law Forward, said ahead of the lawsuit.

He added that the timing of the guidance was unusual: Typically courts are skeptical of efforts to change rules close to an election. Some absentee voters in this election cycle probably cast their ballots under the assumption that they could spoil their ballot and cast a new one if their preferred candidate dropped out or they just wanted to change their vote, Mandell said.

Even if the commission’s guidance is in line with Wisconsin law, it creates a clear discrepancy between in-person Election Day and absentee voters, said Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk.

Election Day voters can receive up to three ballots at the polls if they make a mistake, he pointed out. On the other hand, he said, absentee voters now get no second chance once they return their ballots, even if Election Day hasn’t arrived yet.

“The inconsistency is hard to ignore,” he said, and it presents a policy question for the Legislature — or maybe the courts.

Spoiling controversy blew up amid similar political dynamics in the 2022 primary

The WEC’s more permissive August 2022 guidance on ballot spoiling was prompted by similar dynamics as that of the present: highly contested primaries with candidates dropping out throughout the race and at the last minute.

In September 2022, GOP voter Nancy Kormanik sued over that guidance allowing absentee ballot spoiling, arguing that clerks can only reissue an absentee ballot if a voter returns their absentee ballot in a “spoiled or damaged” condition. Voiding a ballot that’s already been submitted and getting a new one over a voter’s own mistake or a candidate dropping out didn’t fall under that category, she argued.

Kaul, the state’s Democratic attorney general, saw the issue differently. A few different laws allow ballot spoiling, he said in a court filing, and “none requires the elector to explain how or why the ballot is ‘spoiled.’”

Siding with Kormanik, a lower court banned the practice of spoiling absentee ballots in October.

The ban stood until February of this year, when an appeals court vacated the lower court ruling. But the new ruling wasn’t on the merits of the case. Rather, it came because the court said Kormanik didn’t properly serve documents to a legislative committee at the start of the suit.

After the February ruling, clerks sought the commission’s updated guidance about how to deal with spoiling. They didn’t receive it in time for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, and some municipalities offered instructions on how to spoil ballots. But with midterm primaries coming up — and particularly as rumors of gubernatorial candidates dropping out swirled — clerks were especially eager to know if the commission planned to stand by its earlier interpretation of the law and allow absentee ballot spoiling again.

On July 9, the commission provided an answer: It voted 4-2 that absentee ballot spoiling is prohibited after a voter returns an absentee ballot. Democratic commissioner Carrie Riepl, a former clerk, voted with the three Republicans in favor of the guidance. Democratic commissioners Mark Thomsen and Ann Jacobs voted against it.

The guidance came just one day after Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, dropped out of the race and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez for governor. Just over a week later, Rodriguez dropped out of the race and Crowley reentered.

Over 36,000 Wisconsin voters had already returned ballots by the day the commission issued its guidance, commission data shows. Voters had returned nearly 68,000 ballots by the time Rodriguez dropped out.

At the July meeting, commission chair Don Millis, a Republican, argued that voters should only be able to void — or spoil — ballots before they return them to the clerk.

“Once you’ve turned your ballot in, that’s it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Thomsen noted that in-person voters on Election Day can mark a ballot and receive a replacement ballot if they make an error, as long as the first ballot isn’t tabulated yet. But under the new guidance, an absentee voter couldn’t spoil a returned ballot even if it’s weeks from being tabulated.

“Why are we treating people that use mail differently than me if I show up?” he said.

On one hand, voters can argue that the inability to spoil ballots effectively disenfranchises them if they vote for a candidate that has since dropped out, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.

On the other hand, she said, others can cite the Wisconsin law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right, and argue that voters who exercise that right accept some risk in casting an absentee vote that can’t be taken back.

“The issue of whether ballot spoiling is or is not allowed under Wisconsin statutes hasn’t been definitively resolved,” she said.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Michigan voters can still change their primary vote if their candidate dropped out

2026-07-21T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

You did everything right: You voted early, putting that absentee ballot in the mail or dropping it in a local drop box to ensure your vote was counted.

Then your candidate dropped out.

What on earth are you supposed to do now?

Many Michigan voters may be asking that question this month after Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Cox both suspended their campaigns. Mail ballots for the Aug. 4 primary have been available since late June, so there are almost certainly McMorrow and Cox supporters who have already voted.

If you’re one of those people, all is not lost. Michigan law gives you the right to cancel (or, in legal parlance, spoil) your ballot and cast a new one. You don’t even need to give a reason why — so it doesn’t matter if it’s because your candidate dropped out or because you realized too late there was some other problem with your ballot.

How to spoil your ballot depends on whether you’ve already submitted it.

If so, you’ll need to sign and submit a written request to your township or city clerk (not your county clerk!) by the end of the day on Friday, July 24. That’s the day your request needs to be received by the clerk — not the day it needs to be postmarked.

That date may seem kind of early, but it makes sense when you consider other parts of Michigan election law. Statewide early voting begins Saturday, July 25. And communities with more than 5,000 people are allowed to start preprocessing absentee ballots eight days before the election, which for the primary is Monday, July 27. Preprocessing allows for everything but the actual counting of the votes — taking in the ballots, verifying signatures, opening the envelopes, and even putting ballots in the tabulator, which will eventually scan and count them.

As soon as your absentee ballot is removed from its envelope, it is no longer tied to you, so it can’t be taken back or changed. Clerks largely appreciate the option to process ballots before Election Day, because it means faster results, but it does limit your window to request a new ballot.

If you’ve already filled out your ballot but not yet turned it in, you have a few more options. You can go in person to an early voting location or to your polling place on Election Day and surrender your absentee ballot, at which point election workers will spoil it and give you a new one to vote there and then.

Alternatively, you can go to your local clerk’s office and fill out the same written, signed request to spoil your unsubmitted absentee ballot and get a new one.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania ranks last in new study of 18-year-olds’ voter registration rates

2026-07-20T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Pennsylvania has seen healthy turnout in recent elections, but one important segment of the electorate isn’t participating in such high numbers.

According to a recent study of 30 states, Pennsylvania has the lowest rate of 18-year-olds registering to vote of any of them.

Just 22% of 18-year-olds in the state are registered to vote, according to the study from The Civics Center, a nonprofit organization focused on registering high school students. That’s far below states like Oregon, which leads the pack at 86%, and even neighboring states like New Jersey and West Virginia, at 48% and 55%, respectively.

But it’s not the young people’s fault, said Laura Brill, CEO and Founder of The Civics Center.

“It’s not that young people in Michigan are so much more impassioned and and inherently organized than young people in Pennsylvania,” Brill said. “It’s that they’re involved in different systems and [have] different supports to help them do it.”

The positive news, Brill said, is that the factors that lead to low youth registration are all changeable. She said one of the biggest things states can do is to allow people to preregister to vote — at age 16, or even earlier.

“Half of U.S. teens live in states where they can preregister at age 16, and what we are definitely seeing is that states with preregistration have higher registration rates for 18-year-olds, just because there’s a bigger on-ramp for people to learn about it,” she said.

The top three states in The Civics Center study all allow 16-year-olds to preregister to vote, and Colorado recently reduced that to 15 years old.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, allows people to register only if they will be 18 by the time of the next primary or general election. If they are turning 18 between the primary and general election, they have to wait until after the primary to register. That creates a barrier for on-the-ground organizations trying to register youths, particularly through school-based programs.

Angelique Hinton, executive director of PA Youth Vote, said the tight window after the state’s primary — which takes place in the third week of May — and before students graduate or go on summer break makes it hard to capture those with in-between birthdays.

“It’s very disjointed and it makes it unnecessarily clunky and hard to do,” she said. “We also lose a lot of students that way.”

Brill said automatic voter registration is also a big factor in boosting numbers. But when Pennsylvania residents are first allowed to get their driver’s licenses at 16-and-a-half, they can’t also preregister to vote, like people 18 and older can.

Although Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced bills to allow young people to preregister to vote, none of the legislative efforts have succeeded.

Brill and Hinton also both separately mentioned financial factors. Brill said the data reveals that school districts in areas with higher income tend to have higher youth registration rates, and Hinton said she has noticed a problem with underfunded school civics programs.

“They’re not being taught how government works,” Hinton said. “They’re not provided with the education to really help them understand how to make government work for them, and so they grow up and they don’t participate. And because they don’t participate, then they are never a priority of their elected officials, and there’s a cycle that just perpetuates itself.”

Brill said, however, that another factor can overcome this: teachers. She said she has noticed that when a school district has teachers dedicated to helping students understand the importance of voting and running registration drives, more young people register. She said The Civics Center has done three separate studies showing that when students and educators run registration drives, registration rates increase by 6% — an increase anyone looking to improve voter registration rates would be “over the moon” about.

One school with such a program is Franklin Towne Charter High School in Philadelphia, which received the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award earlier this year for its student registration efforts. In 2025, the school registered 86% of eligible students.

Vincent Wisniewski, the school’s chief of staff, oversees its voter registration work and said he was surprised to see Pennsylvania rank so low in The Civics Center’s study.

“Honestly, I was shocked,” he said.

Wisniewski described a strong civic culture in Philadelphia, with organizations such as the Committee of 70, League of Women Voters, and the Office of the City Commissioners eager to help get the word out to young people. Wisniewski said the school takes advantage of every opportunity it can.

He agreed that having a point person to lead these efforts in a school makes a difference, though he noted that that takes resources. He thinks the governor’s award has been a good way to promote registration and that more friendly competition between districts could also help.

Brill said she hopes what people will take away from the study is that states have the power to improve their ranking.

“These are systems that we can change and do better,” she said. “The most actionable pro-democracy, nonpartisan things people can be doing right now [are] to help young people register to vote and guide them through the process.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Secretaries of state gathered against the backdrop of Trump’s election speech

2026-07-20T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Hi everyone,

We spent this week reporting from the National Association of Secretaries of State conference in Rapid City, South Dakota — Dion’s first NASS, and Jessica’s … ninth? Tenth? These things should come with a punch card.

It was a weird one. Several attendees described it as the strangest, or worst, NASS conference they could remember — not because anything happened there, but because of the drama elsewhere, hanging over the whole event.

President Donald Trump’s election speech Thursday night was not formally part of the conference. But the president’s remarks on elections took place, attendees pointed out, during a NASS summer conference with a striking lack of federal officials present: no Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, no U.S. Election Assistance Commission, no FBI, no Justice Department.

State election officials were gathering without the federal partners who, for years, have been fixtures at these meetings, and one of the big questions they are trying to game out as they prepare for the midterm elections is what those same federal institutions might do next.

That is not normal. EAC commissioners — who the Trump administration fired earlier this month — are usually here, often sitting on panels about voting machines, certification, and election administration best practices. CISA and the FBI typically give security briefings, sometimes including closed-door briefings for election officials about the threat environment heading into the next election. Those conversations have been a fixture of these conferences for years.

Leslie Reynolds, the group’s executive director, said she didn’t invite federal officials to speak at the summer conference because it typically focuses on state-level issues, while the winter conference focuses on outside speakers, including federal officials.

But still, state officials made it clear that diminished federal cooperation throughout the second Trump administration has left state officials trying to replace pieces of the federal election-security apparatus that, in some cases, can’t be replaced.

Several secretaries of state noted that DHS typically gives regular briefings to state election officials outside of the conference throughout the year, offering threat overviews and mitigation options. But not this year.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said that while states can pay outside vendors for security assessments and other services CISA now no longer provides, they can’t replicate briefings from the federal government.

“You can’t just buy that off the shelf,” Simon said. “You can’t hire a private vendor to give you a U.S. government-grade intelligence assessment.”

The hardest gap to fill, he said, is exactly what Trump discussed in his Thursday speech: the monitoring of foreign actors that might try to harm or interfere with U.S. elections.

Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat, said the lack of federal briefings creates unevenness across the country, with some states able to rely on in-state agencies and others less equipped to do so.

“We know these foreign actors have been ramping up their desire to sow chaos and put out disinformation, so it’s hard to operate in the gap, not knowing,” Thomas said.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, was less concerned. He characterized the federal intelligence briefings as having been of “limited value,” saying much of what he learned in classified briefings had already been publicly reported.

“Nothing ever came out of those briefings that I got from CISA that was like, oh my gosh, we’ve got to stop what we’re doing and go work on this now,” LaRose said.

The briefings were useful mostly for “vulnerability detection” and planning exercises and threat assessments, he said, but Ohio has continued doing that work without them.

And yet the federal government’s role in elections loomed over nearly every serious — and unserious — conversation in the room during the NASS conference.

For example, the Justice Department recently sent letters to election officials in several states warning that they could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly leave noncitizens on their voter rolls or allow noncitizens to receive, cast, or have ballots counted in federal elections, a move that prompted a sharp response from some of them.

The rest of the conference had an almost surreal normalcy. Held in a massive conference center that will soon host a Luke Bryan concert, the panels went on. Secretaries and their staff compared notes and watched the World Cup semi-final together. They visited the booths of companies that make the voting machines that Trump on Thursday night said are vulnerable — though election officials say they have long known that all electronic systems are vulnerable and have taken steps to mitigate known weaknesses. At the coffee kiosk, baristas would add a shot of Bailey’s to your latte for $8; it isn’t clear whether anyone opted for it.

Elections officials at the event spent lots of time between sessions talking about what Trump might say in his primetime address. But when it was time for the president’s Thursday night speech, most of them weren’t watching. While Trump was speaking, many of the state officials were eating dinner near Mount Rushmore and preparing to board buses for an evening lighting ceremony at the historic monument.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan and North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe talk during a visit to Mt. Rushmore for the lighting ceremony on Thurs., July 16, 2026.

Many of those at Mount Rushmore — from Indiana, West Virginia, Connecticut, North Dakota, and Georgia — said they’d watch Trump’s speech later.

Among the few to watch the speech live was Simon, who said Trump repeated “the same old rehashed and debunked ideas” he has shared before.

Nonetheless, it was just the latest hurdle the administration chose to throw at secretaries and their staffs with the election looming. Trump’s continued efforts to sow doubt in election security have left election officials feeling as if they are stuck in a game show — waiting for the next surprise challenge, and for which rules might change next.

The word conference participants most often used to describe their state of mind was “exhausted.”

At Wednesday’s lunch, the keynote speaker — a South Dakota motivational speaker who once finished fourth on Survivor — began her speech with a photo reel of her grandchildren before asking, “So what does a crazy lady from South Dakota have to do with public officials? Probably nothing.”

Maybe more than she realizes.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Robert Howden, Abbott aide, to succeed Jane Nelson as Texas’ top election official

2026-07-17T17:45:02+00:00

This story was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Robert Howden, a senior adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott, will be Texas’ interim secretary of state, Abbott announced Friday. Howden is a longtime Texas politico who has worked for GOP governors going back to Bill Clements, serving as Abbott’s legislative director since 2024.

Howden is replacing Jane Nelson, who left her post Friday as Texas’ top election official after three and a half years. Nelson’s resignation, announced in early June, set off a flurry of speculation about why she was leaving and who would replace her ahead of the contentious midterm elections in November.

Howden will need to be confirmed by the Texas Senate when the Legislature returns in January, but can serve until then without legislative approval. Nelson’s three immediate predecessors in the role resigned before the Senate got a chance to approve them.

“Robert Howden has served Texas with distinction in four Republican governors’ administrations,” Abbott said in a statement. “His experience in the legislative process and extensive public service have prepared him to protect the integrity of Texas elections and represent our state with strength on the global stage.”

Nelson has not commented on her departure, other than to say she worked hard “to ensure that voting in Texas is secure, accessible, and fair.” Abbott praised her as an “extraordinary” secretary of state.

Nelson was the longest-serving Republican woman in the Texas Senate and the first woman to lead the Senate Finance Committee. She presided over seven statewide elections and disbursed millions in grants to county election officials, according to a press release from her office.

But she clashed with GOP leadership toward the end of her tenure over closing the primaries, which would require voters to register with a specific party to vote in the primary. Last year, the Texas GOP filed a lawsuit arguing that it had the legal right to close its primaries. Attorney General Ken Paxton joined the party’s suit rather than defending Texas law, a move Nelson called “brazen and misguided.”

Nelson said in a filing that Paxton’s office gave her less than an hour’s notice about its plans, and said it was up to the Legislature, not the courts, to change the law. Abbott, who has joined the call for closing the primaries, agreed, telling Texas Scorecard that lawmakers “can and should be more responsive to Republicans than a judge may be.”

As chief elections officer for a state whose leaders are heavily focused on election integrity and the threat of voter fraud, Howden will have more to manage than just the November elections. Nelson often faced competing demands from the Trump Justice Department, state leaders, county election officials, and voting rights groups.

During her tenure, Texas was one of just 15 states that gave the U.S. Department of Justice access to its full voter roll, including identifying information about 18 million registered voters. The state also began using a federal database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, last year to verify voters’ citizenship, prompting at least two lawsuits by voting rights groups.

Nelson raised concerns about that system in an April letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Votebeat reported Wednesday.

Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said in a statement that Howden was assuming a position “which carries the tremendous responsibility of fostering trust in Texas’ election system.”

“It will be critical for Secretary Howden to help maintain that trust through the upcoming November general election in Texas, and we stand ready to be a resource and a partner to the new secretary from day one,” Miles said.

Trump rehashes claims of election vulnerabilities, foreign interference, and fraud in primetime speech

2026-07-17T05:02:34+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

After days of speculation among election officials and experts about what President Donald Trump might say in a heavily hyped primetime speech on elections, Trump on Thursday night delivered a mix of familiar claims, grievances, and assertions about election security that stopped short of alleging that votes had been altered or that results had been changed.

Instead, Trump revived years-old evidence that China attempted to gather American voter data and that election systems are vulnerable to hacking, information that has long been public and that election officials said they have taken steps to mitigate. He also claimed to have identified 270,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls — election officials said they weren’t sure how that number was arrived at — and resurfaced old fraud allegations related to voter registration in Michigan.

In conjunction with Trump’s speech, his administration released newly declassified documents related to election integrity — some still heavily redacted — that in many cases did not fully back up the president’s claims.

“Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately,” Trump said, alleging that current election systems fall “catastrophically short of that standard.”

As he spoke, many secretaries of state from around the country were at dinner in South Dakota, closing out the summer meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State. Many did not watch the address, convinced after years of Trump’s election-related allegations that he was unlikely to say anything he hadn’t said before — though many staff members attending the conference did watch, and some secretaries issued statements later.

Trump concluded the speech by again calling for passage of the SAVE America Act, his top legislative priority, which would impose photo ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements on voters nationwide.

“The kids playing wizard in the park have a firmer grip on reality than any of this,” one Republican staff member said as he entered Mount Rushmore.

NASS bussed conference participants to the monument on Thursday night, shortly after Trump’s speech concluded, as part of a preplanned event on a day when red, white, and blue was the recommended dress code. Secretaries and their staff filtered past state flags into five reserved rows of seats as “Yankee Doodle Dandy” played and the sun set.

Election officials, experts respond to Trump’s election speech

Not all secretaries of state were in South Dakota, and some did watch the speech. “I have seen zero new facts. I have seen zero evidence backing any of these claims,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat. “It appears to me to be a repackaged version of all of the stuff that we’ve known for years, and I was a little disappointed in the lack of new information.”

Election experts said the voting equipment vulnerabilities Trump appeared to be referring to in his speech have long been publicly known. “Everyone in this space knows that technology is vulnerable and works to put in safeguards and controls to secure it anyway,” said Geoff Hale, a visiting fellow for election security at the Center for Democracy & Technology, who previously worked for a decade at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Hale said he was still reviewing the documents released by the White House, but pointed out that nearly all Americans vote on systems that require a voter-verifiable paper ballot, to ensure a paper backup that can’t be hacked.

One declassified document, quoted by Trump in his speech, stated, “We judge that U.S. adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.” But Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting, noted that some components of election infrastructure — such as public-facing election websites — are more vulnerable than others — such as voting machines. “There was a lot of conflation, it seemed to me, of different types of technology, the vast majority of which doesn’t actually affect election outcomes,” she said.

According to Trump, China also illicitly acquired the data of 220 million U.S. voters. However, voter data is widely publicly available, and it wasn’t clear from Trump’s speech whether he was alleging that voter registration databases were breached. Trump did allege that “members of the deep state” tried to downplay China’s acquisition of the data, “covering it up from both the president and the American people.”

Election officials from various states were quick to clarify that their data was secure. “I have no information, either from the federal government or anybody else, that Arizona’s voter information has been compromised,” Fontes told Votebeat.

The Chinese government didn’t steal any Wisconsin election data either, Wisconsin Elections Commission appointee Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said on X. “If they bought our voter data, that is public data and they are allowed to buy it. So can you! So can anyone!”

Trump makes new claims about noncitizen voters

One new, or at least more specific, claim made by Trump in the speech is that there are 270,000 noncitizens registered to vote nationwide. According to a Department of Homeland Security memo released after the speech, that number appears to mostly be derived from a review of public voter files in four states: California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat who heads the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said his office hasn’t heard from the Department of Homeland Security. “We don’t even understand how they calculated those numbers,” he said, adding that Trump “truly does not understand elections, not even at the basic level.”

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, said in a statement that the state follows all laws and requires voters to take steps to verify their identity before casting a ballot, adding that “all evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania.”

“We welcome DHS sharing their methodology and list of potential ineligible voters so we can carefully review the validity of their claims,” Schmidt said.

The president and his allies have long alleged that voting by noncitizens is widespread, but election officials, audits, investigations, and academic research have found it to be extremely rare, and noncitizens who vote illegally are subject to criminal penalties and deportation.

Multiple states have audited their voter rolls and found tiny numbers of noncitizens registered, most of whom have never cast a ballot. Nonetheless, the Trump administration has made the search for noncitizen voters a driving force behind its election agenda. Last year, the administration revamped a Department of Homeland Security data tool, Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, and encouraged states to use it to check their voter rolls for noncitizens.

States that did so reported finding relatively small numbers of potential noncitizens, and at least some of those flagged voters were later determined to be citizens, prompting many experts and election officials to warn that the SAVE program was unreliable.

For example, in Texas, officials flagged 2,724 potential noncitizens, some of whom county officials have determined are citizens, though it isn’t clear exactly how many. They’ve also found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through the Texas Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship, such as a passport, and keeps copies of such documents on file. In April, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, a Republican, raised concerns about SAVE’s accuracy in a letter to federal officials.

In June, a federal judge blocked the overhaul of the SAVE program, saying it violated privacy and voting rights.

A Michigan case of suspected voter registration fraud

The president also spotlighted a six-year-old fraud allegation in Michigan as an example of election misconduct being “buried and covered up.”

Police reports showed that in the lead-up to the 2020 election, a woman working for a Tennessee-based company, GBI Strategies, submitted thousands of voter applications to the city clerk of Muskegon, a largely Democratic city. Most were legitimate, but the clerk identified irregularities with several hundred of them. The suspicious registrations were caught in time for the election.

The matter was initially investigated by Michigan State Police and Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office, but the investigation was turned over to the FBI in March 2021. The story made headlines at the time, but it was largely ignored on a broader scale until 2023, when a conservative news site amplified old reports about it, and it has been an occasional Republican talking point in the state since.

Nessel’s office said in a statement Thursday night that the incident provided a “perfect example of the system working exactly as it should,” meaning the clerk noticed suspected fraud and flagged it before anyone could vote improperly.

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state who is now running for governor, emphasized in a statement after the speech that the state’s elections are “secure and safe.”

“This was the case in 2020, 2022, 2024 and will be again in 2026,” she said in a release. “Because in every election, over 1,600 bipartisan professional election administrators and thousands of trained poll workers ensure that the law is followed and that every valid vote counts.”

Texas secretary of state raised concerns about the federal tool used to flag potential noncitizen voters

2026-07-16T20:51:58+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office used a controversial federal data tool to flag more than 2,000 potential noncitizens on the state’s voter roll last year. But in an April letter to federal immigration officials, Secretary of State Jane Nelson raised concerns about its accuracy.

In that letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials, obtained as part of a public records request by Democracy Forward — a nonprofit legal organization advocating for democracy through litigation and public policy — and shared with Votebeat, Nelson said her office wanted “to make sure that you are using the most accurate data,” and asked agency officials to notify her office if they are able to “confirm the citizenship of any individuals previously identified as non-citizens” in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said the agency has not yet received a response from USCIS. Nelson resigned from her role last month. Her last day is July 17, and the governor has not yet appointed a replacement.

The Trump administration overhauled SAVE last year, making it free for states to use and easier to search, and has urged election officials around the country to use it to search for potential noncitizens on their voter rolls. Texas was notably among the first states to start using the program to check voter eligibility.

But experts and election officials have raised concerns about the SAVE program’s accuracy, and officials in multiple states have said it incorrectly flagged at least some citizens.

“Texas’s use of DHS’s illegally-expanded SAVE system has always raised significant risks of voter disenfranchisement, given that system’s known inaccuracies—and these records prove that state election officials are concerned about this as well,” said Dan McGrath, special counsel, oversight at Democracy Forward, in an emailed statement to Votebeat.

States’ use of the revamped SAVE tool is currently in limbo in the wake of multiple court rulings. In June, a federal judge blocked the overhaul of the SAVE program, saying it violated privacy and voting rights. That ruling prompted the Trump administration to pause certain features in the SAVE system to comply. Earlier this month, though, a different federal judge ordered Homeland Security to restore access to the revamped system for four states — Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana — due to an earlier settlement agreement.

The rulings also do not prevent Texas or other states that previously used the revamped program from continuing to investigate the status of any potential noncitizens it flagged on the voter roll. In Texas, those investigations are still ongoing, but Nelson’s letter pointed to the fact that they have raised questions about SAVE’s accuracy.

“As my staff has informed you, county voter registrars have obtained citizenship documentation from some Texas voters who were identified in the SAVE system as potential Non-citizens,” Nelson’s letter says. “We are aware of instances in which state driver’s license records inaccurately reflect a person’s current citizenship status. In addition, we have learned of individuals who were mistakenly registered to vote—such as due to a clerical error by a voter registrar—even though they acknowledged on a voter registration application that they are not U.S. citizens.”

Nelson added that those examples are why her office urges county election officials to “use all available sources to confirm a person’s citizenship status.”

She praised the Trump administration’s move to make the tool free for states to use and said SAVE has “proven to be a critically important data set,” describing it as one of the many sources her office will use to ensure only qualified voters cast ballots.

Additional records obtained in the records request also show that Nelson’s staff in March met with Homeland Security officials, suggesting the meeting touched on the questions Nelson raised in her letter.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office last fall sent counties the list of potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s voter roll of more than 18 million registered voters against the SAVE program. Soon after the state released the list, counties began to investigate the eligibility of the flagged registrants and mail notices asking them to provide documented proof of citizenship.

County election officials have since confirmed some of the flagged voters were citizens, though it isn’t clear exactly how many. They’ve also found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through the Texas Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship, such as a passport, and keeps copies of such documents on file.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office in December told Votebeat and the Texas Tribune that it did not initially check the registrants flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to investigate. That decision prompted a March lawsuit from voting rights groups and some Texas voters who said the state should have done so. The lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

In May, Votebeat reported that the secretary of state’s office later asked DPS to check the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the SAVE program against its records to verify whether any of them had already provided proof of citizenship. In a meeting with election officials, Christina Adkins, the agency’s elections division director, said there were “discrepancies” between DPS data and the data provided by the SAVE.

Pierce said DPS has provided the data the agency requested, and that state officials are reviewing it and “will send to counties soon.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Trump teases ‘very big announcement’ about elections, but it’s unclear what it will be

2026-07-16T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Election watchers are buzzing about President Donald Trump’s speech to the nation on Thursday night — but so far, no one has any concrete idea what he’s going to say.

The White House has scheduled a rare primetime address for Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said the address would touch on multiple subjects but include a “very big announcement” about election security. “It’s really, really big news,” he said. “Without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”

Trump, of course, has said many things about the integrity of U.S. elections, few of them true. He has claimed repeatedly that voter fraud is rampant and cost him the 2020 election, despite numerous investigations and audits that have found no evidence of that.

Nevertheless, since Trump retook office last year, his administration has reopened investigations into that election on several fronts: The FBI seized ballots from an election office in Fulton County, Georgia; subpoenaed records from a partisan audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona; and has questioned election officials in Wisconsin. FBI Director Kash Patel said in April that the bureau would “soon” be making arrests in connection with the 2020 election, but those have yet to materialize.

The Department of Homeland Security is also investigating potential noncitizens on the voter rolls in Michigan, Texas, and other states. The Department of Justice recently sent letters to all 50 states warning election officials could be prosecuted if they knowingly keep noncitizens on the rolls.

The administration has also launched investigations into the security of voting machines. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence last year procured voting machines from Puerto Rico and probed them for security risks. Reuters reported the resulting report found vulnerabilities, such as machines running outdated software, but did not find evidence of vote manipulation.

Some reporting suggests Trump’s speech will focus on those alleged vulnerabilities. Reuters and MS NOW have reported that Trump will present newly declassified intelligence about voting machines and attempts at foreign interference in U.S. elections. A 2021 report from the Justice and Homeland Security departments found “no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor prevented voting, changed votes, or disrupted the ability to tally votes” in the 2020 election.

A National Intelligence Council report declassified in 2021 also found “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”

The speech also comes exactly one week after Trump fired all three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the agency responsible for certifying voting machines to voluntary federal guidelines that most states rely on. Reuters subsequently reported that Trump administration officials were frustrated with the commissioners’ inaction on voting machines and had been looking for ways to circumvent the agency for months.

For now, the White House is staying tight-lipped. “As usual, anonymous sources are speculating about what President Trump will say during his speech on Thursday evening,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The truth is, nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say, which is why everyone should tune in.”

One key question is whether Trump will actually announce a new policy or action. Preparations for the 2026 midterms are already well underway, and election officials would likely not be able to implement any major new policies in time.

Even if Trump does announce a new policy, he may not have the legal authority to order it. He has already issued two executive orders attempting to overhaul U.S. election procedures, including one last year that ordered the EAC to ban voting machines that use barcodes or QR codes for counting, with limited exceptions for voters with disabilities. But courts have blocked all their major provisions on the grounds that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally change election law. Instead, the Constitution delegates election rule-making to state legislatures and Congress.

Trump has repeatedly pressured Congress to enact his preferred election policies by passing the SAVE America Act and similar legislation, but they do not have enough support in the Senate to pass. It’s possible that a goal of Trump’s speech is primarily to ratchet up that pressure. When Newsmax asked him to give a preview of the speech in an interview on Monday, Trump responded by saying, “We gotta have voter ID, we gotta have proof of citizenship” — two provisions of the SAVE America Act — “and we have to do something about the mail-in ballots, which are just corrupt, crooked, and should not be allowed.”

Even if Trump does not try to use the speech to unveil new election policies, he could still use it to undermine the 2026 elections by sowing doubt about the legitimacy of U.S. elections in general. Election experts have decried Trump’s fearmongering around elections as attempts to intimidate election officials and lay the groundwork for challenging an unfavorable result.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Maricopa County’s election dispute is finally over — at least on paper

2026-07-15T19:54:22+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Officials in one of the nation’s biggest swing counties huddled in separate, windowless jury chambers at a courthouse Monday.

Outside, a summer monsoon storm unleashed dust, wind, rain, and lightning over Phoenix. Inside, long after business hours, a local judge hurried back and forth, carrying proposed terms from one room to the other.

Around 10 p.m., they reached a consensus. Maricopa County finally had a plan for running its elections, and its board of supervisors enacted it in a 3-1 vote at a hastily scheduled emergency meeting Tuesday.

The deal ends a long-standing legal battle over election control between Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, and the majority-GOP board. The county’s top election officials had been locked in litigation for more than a year, culminating in a state Supreme Court decision last week that found in Heap’s favor.

In a joint statement, both sides suggested the new deal was a win for county voters. But the compromise, crafted during a series of closed-door, hourslong sessions mediated by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury, effectively builds a wall between the board’s elections department and the recorder’s office — agencies that traditionally have worked hand in hand to administer elections for the county’s 2.5 million voters.

It’s unclear how the new approach will play out. The agreement doesn’t apply to the upcoming July 21 primary, which could leave the process for resolving disputes in that election unclear. While the agreement resolves officials’ legal battle, tensions remain high between their offices.

As a result, the first true test of the deal will come in the high-stakes general election on Nov. 3. In Arizona, highly competitive state and congressional races are underway. Voters in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous jurisdiction, are certain to drive the outcome of top contests and could help determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Bill Gates, executive director of Arizona State University’s Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory, said election officials can expect to be under the nation’s microscope.

“We know there’s no such thing as a perfect election,” he said. “It’s an important election. There will be a lot of eyeballs on it.”

But Gates, a former GOP county supervisor, also said the deal between election officials is “superior to the alternatives” at this point in the dispute and lays out “a rational framework” for election administration, though he would prefer “a more collaborative environment.”

Maricopa County has taken a long road to an election deal. Here’s what it says.

The fiery dispute between Maricopa County officials started well before they entered litigation.

Heap has long contended that county supervisors usurped much of his power to run elections through a deal they struck with his predecessor, Republican Stephen Richer, months before he took office. He sued over the matter last year — and after months of back-and-forth in county court, a judge ruled largely in his favor on April 16, ordering the board to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to the recorder’s office.

Supervisors moved to stay that ruling, arguing it was too close to the primary to implement the court’s directives without risking a tumultuous election. An appeals court ultimately sided with them.

Then, Heap took the matter to the Arizona Supreme Court, which reinstated the county court’s order and adopted a primary-specific plan proposed by Heap.

The new agreement is designed to draw clear lines between officials’ responsibilities, down to even the most minute details of election administration.

Heap will retain full control of voter registration under the deal. He will also oversee most aspects of early, in-person voting and mail voting, including locating ballot drop boxes across the county.

However, the board will still draw precinct boundaries and prepare all of the county’s ballots. Supervisors will also determine the maximum number of early voting sites and drop boxes operating in the county. The agreement stipulates that, in coming years, the number of early voting sites must equal at least 20% of the vote centers scheduled for Election Day.

Heap will also get his own IT team and system, as well as new staff for his office’s early voting division. To facilitate those changes, the board agreed to allocate millions of dollars to pay for the new positions and equipment. While Heap’s technology system is being built, he and the supervisors will jointly control the county’s existing system.

Supervisors will retain control over voting at the polls on Election Day. They will oversee emergency voting, which occurs the weekend before each major election, and all aspects of ballot counting. The board will also continue to vote to certify election results, as mandated by state law.

Will Maricopa County see a smooth election cycle?

While the deal ends the legal battle between the two parties, it’s unclear if lingering tensions will affect upcoming elections — especially the primary.

Heap and the board have butted heads on several occasions in recent months. In May, they argued over how to communicate a new voting option at polling sites during a local election. Then, another scuffle erupted over ballot drop box locations for the upcoming primary. Heap later asked a judge to hold the supervisors in civil contempt of court. He also sought to stop a special prosecutor’s investigation into whether his employees broke the law by removing a scanner from the county’s vote tabulation center during a local election earlier this year.

Even after this week’s agreement was struck, relations appeared to remain contentious. Heap, who did not appear at the board’s Tuesday meeting, said in a statement that the deal will “ultimately be measured by its faithful implementation.” Democratic Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the only board member to vote against the agreement, suggested Heap would try to put his “thumb on the scale” of the county’s elections. Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican, told reporters she was “not required” to trust Heap to execute the deal.

“We have a path forward,” she said, adding that her “personal opinion” was “not part of it.”

That path includes a framework for resolving future disputes, should they arise. Officials will take any further disagreements to a special master: Coury, the judge who mediated the deal. He will then make a determination on how to proceed.

If either party disagrees with his decision, they can ask the Arizona Supreme Court to hear the issue. The court is not required to do so, and no further appeals would be available.

The setup aims to avoid costly, time-consuming litigation in the future, but it could lead to some confusion during the upcoming state primary.

The agreement stipulates that prior court orders in the case will be vacated. It also states that officials will adhere to the Arizona Supreme Court’s recent ruling for the primary, which is already in motion.

That order adopted a temporary plan to divide election responsibilities and created its own framework for addressing disputes. It directs the board and recorder’s office to appoint operational and legal liaisons who would attempt to resolve issues jointly and file expedited lawsuits if they can’t reach a resolution.

However, it remains unclear whether those liaisons or the special master would resolve disputes that arise during the primary. Brophy McGee told reporters after the board’s vote that the primary was “in process” and that “the way it’s working is how it will continue to work through Election Day.” But Kory Langhoffer, an attorney representing four of the board’s five members, told Votebeat he believed the parties would resolve disputes using the special master process during the primary. A spokesperson for Heap did not respond to a request for comment on the dispute resolution structure for the upcoming election.

Vince Funari, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Superior Court, told Votebeat on Tuesday that judges would be on standby during the primary to handle urgent election matters. Even if emergency lawsuits aren’t the proper way to handle disagreements during the primary, other election matters could still arise unrelated to the officials’ infighting.

By November, county officials said the new agreement’s framework will be fully in place. But there’s still a question of how often county supervisors and the recorder’s office will need to use it.

Brophy McGee said she anticipates the deal will help make the county’s election functions “boring again.”

“It provides a lot of clarity,” she said from the dais Tuesday. “This agreement spells out, word for word, what the job is.” She added that she believes the deal will facilitate “elections that nobody will worry about, have anxiety attacks about, or have to ask about.”

But Gallardo, the lone vote against the agreement, was less confident.

“I don’t want anyone to fail, but I think we all know how this is going to play out,” he told his colleagues. He described Heap as “hyperpartisan” and predicted, “This is not the last of it.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania secretary responds to Trump administration’s threat of criminal charges over noncitizen voters

2026-07-15T11:55:17+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Pennsylvania’s top election official, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, gave no indication the state would be changing any policies or practices in response to a letter from President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice warning Schmidt could face criminal prosecution.

Last week, the Justice Department sent letters to all 50 states warning that their chief election officials could be criminally charged if they knowingly allow noncitizens to vote or be registered to vote.

In a response sent Monday, Schmidt told the Justice Department that he takes the prospect of ineligible voters seriously. But he gave no indication the Pennsylvania Department of State would make any changes to the administration of the 2026 election and noted that it is actually local officials who are in charge of maintaining the voter rolls.

“Be assured that these dedicated local officials, as well as our employees who serve at the Department of State, work tirelessly to ensure that Pennsylvania’s voter rolls are accurately maintained,” Schmidt’s letter said. “Furthermore, be assured that the Department refers instances of suspected voter fraud to our state and federal law enforcement partners, and we encourage our county election officials to do the same.”

The letter said that Schmidt’s department already works closely with the Justice Department, highlighting its cooperation in the investigation of an accused noncitizen voter who was charged criminally earlier this year. It also referred the Justice Department to the state’s most recent report on voter registration, which shows that, in 2025, the state sent more than 400,000 notifications to voters in an effort to update information on the voter rolls and that more than 300,000 registrations were canceled, including 120 for people who were ineligible to vote.

Schmidt himself also has a personal history with the issue of noncitizen voting. As a city commissioner in Philadelphia in the 2010s, he uncovered hundreds of noncitizens who had registered to vote and cast ballots in Philadelphia due to an issue in the state’s motor voter registration system, which was fixed after the discovery.

The Pennsylvania Department of State and Trump administration were already at odds prior to the latest round of letters. Since last year, the Justice Department has been seeking a copy of Pennsylvania’s voter roll that contains driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers, which it says it needs to ensure Pennsylvania is complying with federal law.

The Department of State declined to provide that information, citing privacy concerns, and the Justice Department sued. A federal judge recently ruled that the Trump administration didn’t have grounds to seek the information, though it is appealing that ruling.

Gov. Josh Shapiro also recently joined a coalition of states suing the administration over Trump’s March executive order on mail voting, which would have required the state to submit lists of voters who requested a mail ballot to the U.S. Postal Service and then only allow the Postal Service to send ballots to those voters. A federal judge recently paused that order from going into effect.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Green Bay clerk’s office faces investigations after duplicate ballot errors in a second consecutive election

2026-07-15T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Green Bay and state officials over the last month have authorized separate investigations to better understand how city election officials accidentally sent voters duplicate absentee ballots in two consecutive elections this year, including for the upcoming August 11 primary.

This set of investigations marks an unprecedented level of scrutiny for Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys, who has repeatedly come under fire for election administration mistakes and was placed on leave by Mayor Eric Genrich on July 9.

Jeffreys, whose job is nonpartisan, has served as clerk since 2021, running elections in the state’s third largest city. City spokesperson Michael Bergman said in a statement that the latest errors in the clerk’s office “are unacceptable.”

On Monday, city elected officials and nearby residents weighed in at a public meeting.

“I would hope that when you go through this process, you really evaluate how things are done, because you may not have the right person in that job,” former Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno, a Republican, said at the Monday meeting.

Others raised concerns that Jeffreys’ suspension could hurt the city’s preparedness for the upcoming primary election.

“I worry that Celestine is now sitting at home when she’s not able to prepare for the August 11th election,” said Jane Benson, a Suamico resident and a longtime poll worker. “This is a really busy time for any clerk, and I feel like we’re hamstringing the city from having more reliable elections by sending her home.”

Investigations arose quickly after second error

Before the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, Jeffreys’ office issued 152 duplicate absentee ballots, an error that drew scrutiny and prompted the Wisconsin Republican Party to file an administrative complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Election officials at the time made an effort to explain to voters how the state’s system prevents double votes from being counted.

When it happened again, though, officials on all sides became more critical of the Green Bay clerk.

“I am really concerned that, first of all, it happened once,” Ann Jacobs, a Democratic appointee on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said at the commission’s July 9 meeting, before commissioners voted to investigate the clerk’s office. “But then for the exact same error to happen a second time weeks later is unconscionable.”

Jeffreys, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, sought to explain the first error in an April response to the administrative complaint filed against her, describing it as the downstream result of a printing error.

Typically, after absentee ballot certificate labels — featuring voters’ names and addresses — are placed on absentee envelopes, Green Bay election officials put a copy of regular paper with the same label information in a folder to be retained for recordkeeping purposes, Logan Wood, an attorney for Jeffreys, said in a response to the complaint.

But in the April instance, Wood said, that sheet of paper wasn’t placed in a folder after the ballots were sent out — it’s unclear why. An election worker then mistakenly thought the batch of labels hadn’t been printed at all and made a duplicate copy, Wood said. The duplicate batch of labels was then affixed to envelopes and sent out to voters.

In late June, Jeffreys announced that election officials had again printed and mailed out duplicate ballots for the midterm primary election in August due to a certificate label printing error.

“I regret the printing error occurred,” she said in the June statement, without elaborating on how such an error happened again or how many duplicate ballots were sent out. She noted that affected voters will also receive instructions by mail on submitting only one ballot.

Jacobs said the errors can likely be attributed in part to city election officials using a tool other than WisVote, the state’s voter registration database and election management system, to print labels for absentee ballots. WisVote doesn’t allow officials to generate duplicate labels, she said, but other systems can lack that failsafe.

She said it would be helpful to know which system Jeffreys used, how workers exported the labels, who printed them, and why the duplication wasn’t caught.

“We can’t fix it if we don’t know how it happened, and I don’t think we can give proper direction to the clerk of Green Bay without knowing how this happened,” she said.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission probe, unanimously authorized at the July 9 meeting, seeks a response from the clerk’s office by July 31 explaining how the office accidentally sent duplicate absentee ballots to voters in two consecutive elections and how the city will ensure that only one ballot gets cast per voter.

The commission told the clerk’s office to come up with a plan by Aug. 14 to outline how the city plans to prevent another repeat error. The commission will separately investigate whether the city clerk’s office violated any laws. Meanwhile, city officials announced on July 9 that they’re also conducting an internal review into the mistakes.

It’s unclear if or when Jeffreys will return to her post. Bergman, the city spokesperson, said the city won’t comment on the matter until the city and state finish investigating the errors. Green Bay Deputy Clerk Stacy Menke is running elections in the meantime.

Jeffreys previously came under fire for assorted complaints

The sending of duplicate ballots isn’t the first election administration issue that Jeffreys has faced in Green Bay since transitioning in 2021 from being the mayor’s chief of staff to the clerk.

In late 2023, the Wisconsin Elections Commission stated that Jeffreys’ office’s policy of letting a third party return ballots for somebody who is “sick” but not disabled likely violated state law.

In 2024, Jeffreys admitted that, for several elections in a row, she had not followed the state’s legal requirement to deactivate the voter registrations of Election Day registrants after postcards sent by clerks to their stated mailing addresses were returned as undeliverable. Lindsay Mather, an attorney representing Jeffreys at the time, said the city clerk had also not been referring those voters to the district attorney, as required.

“The failure to do so was inadvertent and due to a lack of awareness of the statutory requirements, and not the result of any willful violation of state law,” Mather said.

Juno, the former Brown County clerk, said at the commission’s July 9 meeting that when somebody makes as many errors as Jeffreys has, that person doesn’t have the skills to be a good clerk.

But Sam Liebert, a former municipal clerk who served in nonpartisan roles, said that while accountability is important, highly publicized investigations could further increase clerk turnover in Wisconsin and dissuade other people from becoming clerks. He said the commission shouldn’t create an expectation for clerks to be perfect 100% of the time.

“Frivolous lawsuits and politically charged attacks over human error do not strengthen the systems that ensure our freedoms to vote,” he said. “They undermine confidence in these very systems that successfully prevented any improper votes from being counted.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Trump move to neutralize election administration agency creates chilling effect, but its impact may be muted

2026-07-13T15:04:46+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

President Donald Trump’s abrupt removal Thursday of the three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission leaves the agency unable to make key policy decisions, but is unlikely to disrupt preparations for the November elections, according to former staff members and election analysts.

Still, even though Trump’s move won’t bring the agency to a halt, it has created concerns that the president might take further steps to weaken the agency that distributes congressionally-apportioned election funding to states and certifies voting equipment.

The White House declined on Friday to give more detail on its reasons for dismissing the commissioners or explain what the president hoped to achieve by stripping the election oversight agency of its ability to enact changes to policy and voting system guidelines. But the move came at a time of rising concern over how the Trump administration could attempt to influence the outcome of November’s midterm elections.

Benjamin Hovland, one of the two Democratic commissioners fired by Trump, said it would be “challenging to operate without commissioners or a quorum.” Because the agency is small and lightly funded, commissioners play a much larger hands-on role than they do at many other federal agencies, he added. Still, he said, “There is a great team there and they’ll keep doing this work.”

Hovland was sitting at an airport waiting for a cancelled flight on Thursday when he got an unexpected two-sentence email from the White House letting him know he had been fired. Hovland said no one from the Trump administration had been in touch with him since they took control in 2025.

When the U.S. Supreme Court last month gave the president unprecedented new power to fire leaders of independent agencies, Hovland said he figured he would be dismissed “sooner rather than later.”

What the EAC can still do

Ryan Macias, an election technology expert who oversaw federal certification of voting systems at the EAC from 2016 to 2019, said the dismissals were likely to have little or no impact on the day-to-day business at the commission.

States are still expected to get federal election funding already in the pipeline for the November election, which is disbursed according to already-set formulas. While many states rely on the EAC’s federal certification of voting systems, the testing and certification of voting systems does not require action by the commissioners, meaning voting systems can continue to be tested, updated and certified to the standards commissioners had previously adopted, Macias said. Three commissioners would have to approve any updates or changes to the current guidelines.

Commissioners do play a role in some parts of the certification process, at least theoretically. If a voting system vendor disputes the outcome or process of a certification decision, commissioners would hear the appeal. But, Macias said, that’s never happened.

Trump’s actions could also renew debate in Congress over shutting down the EAC, which has been the target of repeated closure efforts, though those have quieted in recent years.

The EAC was created by Congress in response to the disputed, chaotic 2000 presidential election, whose outcome was ultimately decided by a Supreme Court ruling. The agency provides support to states by distributing federal election funds, maintaining the national mail voter registration form, testing and certifying voting systems, and offering best practices and guidance to state and local election officials.

The agency has a four-member commission split between Democrats and Republicans, and most major decisions require an affirmative vote from at least three. Commissioners are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Hovland’s nomination process took around 9 months, and was on the shorter side. Even if Trump moves quickly to nominate replacements, the agency appears unlikely to regain a quorum before the November election.

This is not the first time the EAC has operated without a quorum, though it is the first time it has been left with no commissioners at all. Between 2010 and 2015, the agency lacked enough commissioners to take official action after the Senate stopped confirming nominees — and some congressional leaders stopped recommending them — as lawmakers debated whether the agency should continue to exist. That prolonged vacancy delayed updates to the federal voting system guidelines and left the commission unable to take many policy actions.

Election officials see little immediate disruption

For election officials, the consensus is that the firings are unlikely to disrupt this year’s elections. But several said the longer-term implications are harder to forecast, particularly if the administration takes additional steps to reshape or weaken the agency.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who is a member of the EAC Board of Advisors, called the agency a valuable partner since it was created in 2002.

“I do not expect the changes at the EAC to have any immediate impact on the administration of elections in Minnesota or across the country,” he said. “Yet, the loss of the entire EAC leadership is another canary in the coal mine – and I urge Americans to take notice.”

Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, said Trump’s moves might not have a major impact on the upcoming elections, but suggested that they should be seen in the broader context of Trump’s widespread efforts to eliminate government election integrity programs and cast doubt on elections where Democrats fare well.

“In the short term, it’s another chilling effect,” Blacksberg said. “I don’t think there’s going to be an end to or a deescalation to these actions as the election gets closer.”

Hovland, who served seven years on the commission, defended the agency’s work.

“We weren’t perfect, and we weren’t a silver bullet, but we were someone in the federal government that was still trying to help,” he said. “I am so proud of the team and the agency.” He added, “I feel like people lose sight of why Congress created the EAC.”

Jessica Huseman contributed reporting.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Baseball fans complain about All-Star Game voting, but MLB gets a lot right

2026-07-13T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

“Vote early and often” is (hopefully) a joke when applied to American elections. But for Major League Baseball, it’s an earnest exhortation.

Every summer, the biggest stars in baseball face off in a much-hyped, albeit just-for-fun, All-Star Game. (This year’s is on Tuesday, July 14, in Philadelphia.) And, crucially for those of us who write for a news site about elections, the game’s starters are elected by the popular vote of millions of MLB fans.

Elections for the MLB All-Star Game, though, are a comically warped version of their political counterparts. During the first round of voting, which took place over three weeks in June, each voter could cast up to five ballots … per day. During the second round, fans are limited to “just” one vote per day. MLB, apparently, does not feel bound to the “one person, one vote” doctrine — although, in fairness, its goals are probably more about driving engagement than conducting a truly representative election. (Case in point: You can cast one additional vote per day by downloading a gaming app developed by MLB’s business partner Konami.)

MLB fans have complained about this voting process — or some version of it — almost since the very first All-Star Game in 1933. They gripe that it’s just a popularity contest, kvetch that deserving players got snubbed, and bellyache that it lets big fan bases drown out small ones.

“Can the Pittsburgh Pirates fan base ever compete with the [Los Angeles] Dodgers fan base? Never,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a Philadelphia Phillies fan. “That’s the equivalent of the Republican Party versus some minor party out there.”

And yet, there’s a lot to praise about the All-Star Game election too. It turns out that MLB’s voting process actually follows a lot of the same best practices that government-run elections do. For instance, just as localities with significant non-English-speaking populations offer ballots in other languages, the MLB ballot is available in Spanish and Japanese (after the U.S., Latin America and Japan are home to the most baseball fans). Just as election workers have accessible voting devices on hand for voters with disabilities, MLB worked with an accessibility-testing company to make sure its voting interface would work well for fans who rely on assistive technology.

And the design of the voting website itself gets high marks from experts who study ballots for a living. Whitney Quesenbery, the chief program officer at the Center for Civic Design and a New York Mets fan, noted the ballot “has a few fun features that make it easier to keep track of who you are voting for.”

Quesenbery specifically pointed to the stars down the center of the ballot (which get colored in when you vote for the player next to them, like a bubble on a paper ballot) and the avatars of each player that appear at the top of the ballot when you vote for them. “I’d give this a few points for cleverness, and helping tame a long ballot,” Quesenbery said.

And the ballot is long, especially in the first round of voting, when there are 30 candidates (one for every MLB team) for most positions. By default, they’re listed in alphabetical order, which could have been a problem given that some studies show that being listed first on a ballot gives candidates an advantage. Many states solve this by randomizing the order in which candidates are listed; MLB solved it by allowing voters to sort the candidates by stats like batting average and home runs.

Another problem that arises from having too many candidates in an election is that it increases the chance of someone winning without a majority. But MLB has a fix for this too: After all votes are tallied in the first round of voting, the top two finishers in each league at each position advance to a second round (except the top overall vote-getter across all positions, who automatically wins the right to start at his position).

That set-up should be quite familiar to political observers. “It’s akin to what a traditional runoff looks like,” said Becker, noting that the system prevents a winner who is opposed by a majority of the electorate. “If everyone else who voted for the other [eliminated] candidates thinks the second-place candidate is better, that guy will start.”

One thing that’s definitely not a best practice: the fact that the All-Star Game election is conducted online. While some states allow military voters and voters with disabilities to cast ballots online, cybersecurity experts agree that internet voting poses huge security risks and is impossible to verify. Although voters in many U.S. jurisdictions cast ballots on voting machines, there is almost always a paper trail, and the machines are not connected to the internet.

MLB says it has safeguards in place to prevent vote-hacking or ballot-box-stuffing. “We actively monitor for and automatically disqualify any votes generated by scripts, bots, or automated mechanics,” a spokesperson told Votebeat. However, that hasn’t stopped a movement among some fans for the league to return to paper ballots, which it discontinued in 2015.

That might also sound familiar — although election integrity probably isn’t the prime motivator in this case. Ballot boxes can be stuffed with paper ballots too — in fact, one of the most notorious examples of All-Star Game “voter fraud” came in 1957, well before the dawn of internet voting.

That year, fans of the Cincinnati Redlegs cast more ballots than every other major-league city combined. The local newspaper printed a daily ballot; a popular local TV host urged her viewers to vote; and a beer company supplied ballots to local bars. Redlegs won seven out of the eight races they were up for (the only exception was St. Louis Cardinal Stan Musial, who won the race to start at first base). In response, the then-commissioner of baseball unilaterally replaced two of the victorious Redlegs with future Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and took away MLB fans’ All-Star Game voting privileges for 13 years.

It turns out that, in MLB as well as in the U.S., there’s no silver bullet to running a perfect election. There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Trump fires all Election Assistance Commission members, leaving agency unable to act

2026-07-10T19:40:19+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update, July 10: This story has been updated with a comment from the White House.

President Donald Trump fired all three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, abruptly disabling the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration at a moment when Trump has sought to reshape federal voting rules.

The two Democratic commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were notified by email. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email said. It was signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President.

The third commissioner, Republican Christy McCormick, was allowed to resign, according to three sources within the agency. McCormick declined to comment when reached by phone. The agency’s fourth commissioner, Republican Donald Palmer, voluntarily departed the agency earlier this year to join the Heritage Foundation.

The firings leave the four-member commission with no commissioners, meaning it cannot take official action until new members are installed. They also come days after the Supreme Court granted the president power to fire leaders of independent agencies, weakening a legal framework that for decades had insulated bipartisan federal commissions from direct White House control.

The EAC was created by Congress after the 2000 election to help states improve election administration without federalizing elections.Its role is mostly supportive: distributing federal election funds, maintaining the national mail voter registration form, testing and certifying voting systems, and offering best practices and guidance to state and local election officials.

Trump cannot simply install replacement EAC commissioners on his own. Commissioners must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and no more than two can come from the same party.

A White House official defended the firings, saying, “The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so."

The official added that the administration has been working “across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse” and to strengthen election infrastructure ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The EAC did not respond to a request for comment.

A possible legal test after Supreme Court rulings

The Supreme Court issued two major removal-power decisions at the end of its term in late June. In Trump v. Slaughter, the court overturned decades of precedent and said that the president may remove leaders of independent agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, which was the subject of the case.

In a separate case involving the Federal Reserve, however, the court recognized a different rule for Fed governors, pointing to the long historical independence of central banking institutions.

Whether bipartisan election agencies fall into the first category, the second, or some yet-undefined exception remains unresolved.

“It’s an open question about the EAC and the [Federal Election Commission],” said Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA. “The question has not been tested as to whether political entities created with bipartisan balance might be subject to another exception.”

Earlier this year, Trump fired Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic commissioner on the FEC who had served for years in holdover status after her term expired. Weintraub did not sue, leaving unresolved whether the president can fire members of bipartisan election commissions at will.

If any of the fired EAC commissioners challenge their removals, the case could become the first direct test of whether the Supreme Court’s new removal-power doctrine extends to federal election agencies structured around bipartisan balance.

The Help America Vote Act, which created the EAC, says the president is supposed to consider recommendations from the Senate and House majority and minority leaders when nominating new EAC commissioners.

In practice, Hasen said, that means both parties typically work with the administration to identify nominees. But “that’s more a custom than something that’s in the statute itself.”

That means Trump could try to nominate Democrats acceptable to him, though they would still need Senate confirmation. HAVA does not appear to create a separate shortcut for temporary commissioners: Vacancies are filled “in the manner in which the original appointment was made,” meaning presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. A recess appointment could raise separate legal questions.

A bipartisan agency with no commissioners left

The EAC does not run elections or tell local officials how to run them, but the agency has long been politically contested. Congress designed it as a bipartisan commission, with no more than two members from the same party, but vacancies, partisan fights, and leadership turmoil have repeatedly limited its ability to act. Election officials and watchdogs have also criticized the agency at different points for failing to assert itself on election security, even as its responsibilities became more urgent after Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Hicks, the commission’s chair, had served on the EAC since 2014 and previously worked for Democrats on the House Administration Committee, which oversees federal election law and election administration. Hovland joined the commission in 2019 after being unanimously confirmed by the Senate and had previously served as acting chief counsel to the Senate Rules Committee and as a senior counsel on election matters.

McCormick had served on the EAC since 2014 and previously worked as a senior trial attorney in the voting section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

What happens while the EAC is frozen

The immediate practical effect is clear: The EAC cannot act.

That could stall not only routine commission business, but also any attempt by the Trump administration to use the agency to alter the federal voter registration form or voting-system standards before the 2026 midterms.The EAC also oversees the federal testing and certification program for voting systems, accrediting labs and certifying whether machines meet federal standards known as the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. Many states rely on that certification before allowing voting equipment to be purchased or used.

The EAC has been without a quorum before. For years, vacancies rendered the agency unable to perform major parts of its work, contributing to long delays in updating voting-system guidance. The agency regained stability only after the Senate confirmed new commissioners in 2019.

Now, with the 2026 election cycle underway, the agency is again frozen — this time not because commissioners resigned or terms expired, but because the president removed all of them at once.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Michigan could approve a constitutional convention this year. What would that mean?

2026-07-09T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

As Michigan works out who (and what) will be on ballots this fall, one proposal is already set in stone: Should the state “convene a constitutional convention?”

Proposal 1, as it will be known, pops up every 16 years and gives Michigan voters the chance to rewrite the state’s governing document.

On its face, the proposed convention — sometimes referred to as a “con-con” — could functionally reset everything about Michigan’s laws. But what would it look like? And what would a yes vote actually do?

Here’s everything you need to know about Proposal 1 in Michigan.

What is a constitutional convention?

A constitutional convention is exactly what it sounds like — a group of people convene to rewrite the state’s constitution.

If voters were to approve Proposal 1, it wouldn’t immediately mean the Michigan Constitution is thrown in the trash. Instead, it would simply mean that a group of people get together to draft a new document that could one day, if approved by voters, serve as the new state constitution.

How would a constitutional convention work in Michigan?

In many ways, it would function a lot like the constitutional conventions from centuries ago that you learned about in history class (although probably fewer horses). A group of delegates would get together starting in 2027 and write a new draft of the state’s constitution. They would then present the draft to voters in another statewide election for their approval or rejection. If voters vote down the new constitution, the old one would simply stay in effect.

Each state Senate and House district would send one delegate to the convention. Those delegates would be elected within six months of the certification of the 2026 election results (meaning campaigns would probably begin almost immediately). They would then convene on the first Tuesday in October — Oct. 5, 2027 — in Lansing.

From there, delegates would set most of the rules on how things will work, including who is in charge of the convention and how much assistants get paid. Nothing can go to the voters without majority approval from the convention, and anything that is approved will have to go before voters “not less than 90 days” after the convention is over.

There is no deadline for when the convention has to end. The last constitutional convention in Michigan — which started in 1962 — took nearly 10 months.

A convention would put every part of the constitution in limbo. Voters have for many years approved smaller constitutional changes via ballot measure, but a convention would likely mean changing the whole thing.

Why are we voting on this?

The current Michigan Constitution, which was passed by voters in 1963 and put into effect in 1964, requires voters to weigh in on whether to call a constitutional convention every 16 years — a requirement that’s been in each state constitution since the very first in 1850.

The current constitution is the fourth in Michigan’s history.

Michigan isn’t the only state with the option for a constitutional convention. Across the country, 14 states have it appear on the ballot automatically like Michigan. Some others allow their legislature to put a constitutional convention on the ballot, while a few others allow residents to petition for one. Only eight states have no mechanism for a convention.

Do constitutional convention ballot measures usually pass?

No. In fact, since 2000, no state has passed a constitutional convention ballot measure. That includes Michigan’s most recent, in 2010, which failed 67% to 33%.

Who is supporting it?

Two key Republican legislators have gone on the record in support of the convention. State House Speaker Matt Hall said during last year’s Mackinac Policy Conference “they stuff so many things in this constitution,” referring to voter-approved measures such as marijuana legalization and the independent redistricting commission, which both passed in 2018.

“Some of those proposals sounded good, but then had intentions that the public is frustrated about,” Hall said at the time.

State Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt also said there was a lot he wanted to update in the constitution, such as changing how university boards are selected.

However, according to state campaign finance records, there aren’t yet any official campaigns to support the ballot measure.

Who is against it?

A group known as Protect MI Constitution from Special Interests has formed to oppose a constitutional convention.

The coalition comprises a number of voting rights groups, including Voters Not Politicians, the League of Women Voters of Michigan, and the American Civil Liberties UnionACLU of Michigan. It also includes unions (such as the Michigan AFL-CIO and Michigan Council of Carpenters & Millwrights), a number of business groups (including the Detroit Regional Chamber, Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and West Michigan Policy Forum), and the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.

The group says that a full convention “opens a Pandora’s Box” that could have “potentially devastating consequences for Michigan citizens for decades to come.”

As of late April, the campaign had raised more than $680,000, according to campaign finance reports. That includes $385,000 from The Fairness Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group “dedicated to advancing social and economic justice,” according to its website.

What would a constitutional convention mean for voting in Michigan?

It could mean any number of things, and the exact impacts are hard to predict before a new constitution has been proposed (and before any delegates are even selected).

The first change could be fewer measures on Michiganders’ ballots. Many of the biggest changes to Michigan’s laws in the last few decades have been through constitutional amendment — including changes to legalize recreational marijuana, establish environmental conservation funds, codify access to abortion, and update election laws. A new constitution might not offer voters the chance to amend it as easily.

It is also possible that Michigan’s fairly liberal election laws would change. Michiganders have voted repeatedly over the last decade to expand voting access, voting in 2018 to let people register to vote on Election Day and vote absentee without an excuse and in 2022 for early voting and the creation of a permanent absentee voter list. Those rights could be protected under a new constitution, or they could go away entirely.

That is the tricky part of potentially reworking the constitution — it would be the entire document up for grabs, not just certain parts. It would, in many ways, depend on who controls the convention, which could be different from the makeup of the state legislature.

A Republican-controlled convention would likely try to enshrine GOP priorities such as eliminating no-excuse absentee voting — a bill proposed by five Republicans in late June — and requiring documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

A Democratic-controlled convention, meanwhile, might codify the Michigan Voting Rights Act into the new constitution. That proposal aims to fill in the gaps left by the federal Voting Rights Act, blocking laws that could discriminate against voters based on race and requiring ballot materials to be made available in languages other than English.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania elections could look very different if Democrats win full control of state government in 2026

2026-07-08T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

The movement to change voting laws in Pennsylvania is all but dead.

Despite bipartisan support for changes in Harrisburg, no major election bill has become law since the state implemented no-excuse mail voting in 2020. The issue has become deeply partisan since then. Bills routinely pass either the GOP-controlled state Senate or Democratic-controlled state House, then wither in the other chamber. And a board meant to advise the legislature on bipartisan solutions sits idle.

But could that change if Democrats win a state government trifecta — control of the state Senate, state House, and governorship — this fall? And what policies would they prioritize?

Republicans have controlled all three for stretches in recent decades, most recently from 2011 to 2014. During that period, they passed a major voter ID requirement that was ultimately overturned in court. Democrats in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, haven’t held both chambers and the governorship since 1993. Even then, the trifecta lasted just one year.

But a path, though difficult, exists for Democrats to regain unified control in November’s midterm elections.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro leads state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, his Republican challenger, by more than 20 points in several recent polls.

Democrats would also have to maintain their narrow majority in the House and flip the Senate, where Republicans currently hold a 27-23 majority. That would require them to retain a seat they flipped in Lancaster County last year and pick up new ones in potentially vulnerable districts in the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia suburbs.

Democrats have reason to think those seats are within reach. Conventional political wisdom holds that when a sitting president has low approval ratings, the opposing political party tends to have a good year in the midterms.

If Democrats succeed, they could have an easier time passing election law changes that have eluded them in recent years.

They may also face political pressure from their base to go further and pursue the kind of partisan mid-decade redistricting that other states under single-party control, like Texas and California, have recently undertaken.

Pennsylvania Democrats showed their election priorities this legislative session

Democrats have made it clear during this legislative session where their election priorities lie.

Last May, the state House passed an omnibus election bill sponsored by Democratic Speaker Joanna McClinton that would have significantly reshaped Pennsylvania elections.

The bill would have established true in-person early voting, instead of the current, time-consuming process of requesting and casting a mail ballot at a local election office; mandated at least two mail ballot drop boxes in every county; and required counties to adopt electronic pollbooks by 2027.

It also would have given counties more time to prepare mail ballots for counting before Election Day. Advocates say this preparation, known as pre-canvassing, leads to faster election results. The state House also recently passed pre-canvassing as a stand-alone bill.

Earlier this month, at a rally for voting rights in the state capitol, McClinton again called on the state Senate to consider her omnibus bill.

“We’ll have everything necessary so that we can continue to lift up our voices in this democracy,” she said of how things would look if her bill passed.

State Sen. Jay Costa, the Senate minority leader, responded to McClinton’s call on X, saying Senate Democrats were ready to take up the bill. But the bill hasn’t come up for a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate because GOP leaders have insisted that any election legislation include expanded voter ID requirements.

Asked how the election policy conversation would change under a Democratic-led Senate, Costa highlighted many of the issues covered in McClinton’s bill as well as other Democratic priorities: pre-canvassing, drop boxes, electronic pollbooks, preregistering voters who will be 18 by Election Day, early voting, and same-day voter registration.

He also mentioned opening up Pennsylvania’s primaries to independent and third-party voters. It’s a proposal that has been gaining some bipartisan traction in recent years.

“We want to make it easier for people to vote, but also have a system that has integrity,” Costa said.

Costa added that if Democrats pass these proposals next session, they would also try to provide counties with funding to implement them.

McClinton’s bill also included funding to help counties implement the changes. It would authorize up to $60 million in bonds for new equipment, provide $2 million for electronic pollbook vetting and approval, and designate about $100,000 annually, plus benefits, to pay a new staffer.

Would election changes be a priority for Democrats?

Should Democrats win a trifecta, they would surely have a lot of things other than election policy on their wish list. But Kyler Miller, a former Democratic Senate staffer who now works as a policy advocate with the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, thinks that election legislation would be fairly close to the top — perhaps even in the top three.

Miller said President Donald Trump’s attacks on voting have elevated the issue for Democrats, pointing to the Department of Justice’s attempts to obtain election materials and voter rolls, as well as threats to reject unfavorable election results.

“That playbook that is being deployed against American elections is very much a top issue for the Dems and their electorate,” he said. “People have fought for years for the right to vote, and it’s being slowly eroded over time by the administration and the Supreme Court.”

Miller agreed that a Democratic trifecta would likely focus on passing priorities they’ve already identified, such as pre-canvassing and codifying certain court rulings.

State courts in recent years have required counties to use a system that notifies mail voters if election officials determine their ballots will be rejected due to a fixable error. They have also affirmed voters’ right to have a provisional ballot counted if their mail ballot is rejected. Voting rights advocates cheered both decisions, but both advocates and jurists have expressed frustration that the legislature did not clarify those ambiguities itself.

Miller also said the state should provide more funding for election officials’ safety and training, given the exodus of experienced local officials in recent years.

Could Democrats try to redraw Pennsylvania’s congressional map?

With full control over state government, Democrats would also have the ability to redraw Pennsylvania’s congressional map to better advantage their party.

The current map, selected by the state Supreme Court in 2022 after a partisan deadlock in the legislature, elected 10 Republican representatives and seven Democrats to Congress in 2024. However, it’s possible to draw a map with as many as 12 or 13 safely Democratic seats.

Over the past year, several other states, including Texas and California, have redrawn their congressional lines as part of an unprecedented spate of mid-decade gerrymandering.

Last year, Shapiro said he was not pursuing mid-decade redistricting and called Texas’s redraw “shameful.”

A spokesperson for Shapiro’s campaign didn’t respond to questions about whether Shapiro would pursue partisan redistricting if Democrats won a trifecta or what specific election law priorities he would pursue. But press secretary Sam Reposa said in a statement that the Republican grip on power has been an impediment to election law changes more broadly.

“For over 30 years in the majority, Senate Republicans have stood in the way of more progress we could be making in the Commonwealth,” Reposa said, specifically citing “passing key reforms to protect our democracy.”

Erica Clayton-Wright, a spokesperson for state Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, responded in an email that Senate Republicans are the “last line of defense” protecting taxpayers on a variety of issues, including “safeguarding elections.”

“Pennsylvanians know [Democratic] policies are detrimental to positioning our Commonwealth for growth, which will prevent a trifecta in Pennsylvania,” she said.

Even if a Democratic trifecta did redraw Pennsylvania’s congressional map, it would likely face a court challenge. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution when it threw out a GOP-drawn congressional map.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Department of Justice warns election officials they could be criminally charged over noncitizen voters

2026-07-07T21:28:07+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update, July 10: This story has been updated with a comment from the Justice Department.

The U.S. Department of Justice has sent letters to election officials in several states warning that they could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly leave noncitizens on their voter rolls or allow noncitizens to receive, cast, or have ballots counted in federal elections.

The letters are the latest example of the Trump administration exercising unusual scrutiny over the way states run elections. At the same time, they are unlikely to have an immediate practical effect, as every state already has rules and procedures to prevent noncitizen voting.

A July 7 letter to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, obtained by Votebeat, says federal law requires state and local election officials to maintain election records and take steps to ensure that only eligible U.S. citizens vote in federal elections. Signed by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, the letter gives Michigan five days to explain how it will ensure compliance with federal law at both the state and local levels.

“State election officers, including the chief election officer of the state, could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” violations of federal laws barring noncitizens from voting, the letter says. It adds that “knowingly retaining noncitizens” on Michigan’s statewide voter-registration list, sending them ballots, and counting those ballots would constitute the “procurement, casting, or tabulation” of ballots known to be false.

All 50 states received the letter, though many did not immediately realize it; in several states, the Justice Department sent the letter to the generic email addresses listed on agency websites for use by the public.

“I had to go look for it,” said one state election official, who asked not to be named.

Kiersten Pels, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, said the letters sought “voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections.” She confirmed all 50 states received the letter.

None of the state election officials contacted by Votebeat expressed concern over the letter.

Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said the office “has led the nation in keeping American elections for American citizens only” through citizenship audits and securing improvements to the federal database to check citizenship implemented under Secretary Brad Raffensperger.

Other states also defended their handling of voter eligibility checks.

“Arizona election officials have always worked to ensure that only eligible citizens are registered to vote, and we will continue following Arizona law—not directions that come from political rhetoric or intimidation,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in a statement.

Michigan secretary of state spokesperson Angela Benander said the office has been “open and transparent about our work to ensure only eligible citizens can register and vote in Michigan” and that the Department of Justice was aware of Michigan’s processes.

“While all this information is either in the DOJ’s possession or easy reach, we will be happy to provide it again to help address any confusion,” she said.

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said election officials are unlikely to be intimidated by the warnings, but responding to repeated federal demands is draining time and attention from their work.

“It’s not a threat to the public servants who run elections, but it is exhausting,” he said.

Letters follow failed attempts to advance Trump voting agenda in court

According to Becker, the letters look less like the beginning of a criminal investigation and more like an attempt to pressure election officials.

“If you really thought they committed a crime, you wouldn’t be sending them a letter,” Becker said. “You’d be bringing criminal indictments.”

Becker pointed to the Justice Department’s recent losses in voting-related cases as evidence that the department’s strategy has been more aggressive than successful. Key parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting were recently blocked in court, and the Justice Department has yet to win a single lawsuit it has brought seeking access to state voter rolls.

Becker said that track record makes the letters look like “a last-ditch attempt” to intimidate election officials.

“It’s just sad,” he said.

Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, said the letters fit the administration’s pattern of sowing doubt in U.S. elections by raising the specter of noncitizen voting.

“This is in line with the Trump administration’s efforts to push the myth of mass noncitizen voting and to threaten and intimidate state and local election officials,” Hasen said. “They will try every lever and threat to keep this issue in the news.”

Justice Department says it wants to help states comply

The letter was accompanied by a four-page memo outlining election officials’ obligations under the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, National Voter Registration Act, and Help America Vote Act, including requirements to preserve election records, maintain accurate voter rolls, and verify certain information on voter-registration applications.

The memo, the letter says, is meant to outline “various responsibilities for state and local election officials under federal law and the potential criminal penalties for those who fail to carry out their duties.” Dhillon also frames the letter as an offer of help, writing that the Civil Rights Division “would like to assist” Michigan in complying with federal election laws.

The warning is part of a broader Justice Department push to examine state voter rolls and root out noncitizen voting ahead of the 2026 elections. Research and election audits have found that noncitizen voting is rare, even as proof-of-citizenship voting proposals have gained traction at the federal and state levels.

But the attached memo’s guidance also underscores a tension in the administration’s approach to election security. In a cybersecurity section, the Justice Department directs election officials to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s online Cybersecurity Toolkit and Resources to Protect Elections, telling them to follow “all applicable guidelines” to protect election systems from cyberthreats.

One of the resources linked through that CISA toolkit is the Center for Internet Security’s election-security page. The page remains online, but CISA ended federal funding earlier this year for CIS-run programs that had provided no-cost cybersecurity support to election offices.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Meet the Republicans who want to be Arizona’s top election official

2026-07-07T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

One is a rule-following election administrator. The other is a bomb-throwing election attorney.

That’s the choice voters face in Arizona’s Republican primary for secretary of state. The winner could oversee the high-stakes 2028 presidential race in the state — if they beat Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes this fall.

In many ways, Gina Swoboda and Alex Kolodin have similar profiles. Both have battled over minutiae of state laws in court, written election policy, and claim to have the support of President Donald Trump.

But the two would take vastly different approaches to the job as the state’s top election official.

Swoboda, the former chair of the Arizona Republican Party, previously worked for the secretary’s office and helped craft election legislation at the state Capitol. She pledges to work with local election officials, candidates, and other stakeholders to make behind-the-scenes technology improvements and run elections reliably and transparently.

Kolodin, a current member of the Arizona House of Representatives, is a teacher-turned-attorney who says voters don’t trust elections. He has heavily criticized election officials, has described existing election systems as dysfunctional, and says he cares more about the will of voters than the concerns of election officials.

The race seems to be getting less attention than the contests for governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction. Swoboda and Kolodin spent much of a televised debate on May 14 delving into fine details of election administration and attacking each other’s backgrounds. Another planned debate was cancelled because of scheduling challenges, leaving voters with relatively scant insight into the candidates’ stances on high-profile election issues.

Kolodin, who did not agree to an interview for this story, has cast Swoboda as a liberal in disguise. He said in May that she was “carrying water” for Fontes.

But Swoboda says Kolodin can’t win a general election and took aim at his legislative connections to the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus.

“They don’t negotiate with people,” Swoboda told Votebeat of the Freedom Caucus, adding that Kolodin had a “negative zero” chance of beating Fontes. “They don’t want to get to yes, they don’t want to have a meeting of the minds. They want it their way or no way, and they will break it and just refuse to cooperate.” She said that “would happen to the entire state election process” if Kolodin is elected.

Kolodin said in a statement to Votebeat that he was confident in his ability to beat Fontes.

“In November, we will defeat him at the ballot box, restoring confidence for all voters, regardless of party, once and for all,” he wrote.

How Swoboda, Kolodin would run Arizona elections

In Arizona, local officials are in charge of most day-to-day election and voter registration operations in their counties.

But whoever wins the secretary’s post will play a critical role in issuing voluntary guidance to election offices and dictating how voting must be run via the state’s Elections Procedures Manual.

That rulebook, reissued every two years, has the force of law in Arizona — and both Swoboda and Kolodin have called for changes to it.

Swoboda said she would seek to align the manual more closely with state law, noting that Arizona law doesn’t expressly authorize drop boxes for mail ballots. She said she’d push state lawmakers to codify the drop boxes and allocate money to standardize security features for them across counties.

“They will still likely exist, but you can’t have anything in the manual that’s not in Title 16,” she said, referring to the chapter of state statute that governs elections and voting. “The secretary of state should not be taking their personal viewpoints in life and just creating laws in the manual where the Legislature hasn’t done so.”

She also said the current version of the manual allowed voters to provide either their driver’s license number or their Social Security number to meet the minimum requirements for registration. Swoboda said voters should have to provide their driver’s license number if they have one, which would make it easier for election officials to check registrants’ citizenship status.

And she took aim at the manual’s description of activities that might constitute voter intimidation, which currently include “intentionally following individuals delivering ballots to the drop box when such individuals are not within 75 feet of a drop box” and “speaking to or yelling at an individual, without provocation, who that person knows is returning ballots to the drop box and who is within 75 feet of the drop box.” Swoboda said those provisions could infringe on free speech and have “got to go.”

Kolodin said in a letter to Fontes last year that his draft manual contained “free speech restrictions,” criticizing the same voter intimidation provisions as Swoboda. Additionally, he accused Fontes of “unauthorized tinkering with voter qualifications.” If a voter turns in a registration form without proof of citizenship, the manual currently directs election officials to attempt to verify their citizenship via state and federal systems before rejecting them — provisions that Kolodin described as “an intrusion on the Legislature’s turf.”

“Our voters demand ironclad election integrity to protect the voice of legal voters, not expansive rules that blur the lines and invite more chaos,” Kolodin wrote.

He also raised issues with Fontes’ assertion that counties must use tabulation machines for the initial counting of ballots, pointing to a line in state law that states that ballots “may be cast, recorded and counted by voting or marking devices and vote tabulating devices” — not “shall.”

“Voters and their local elected officials get to make this decision for their own communities,” he wrote.

At the Capitol, Kolodin has supported legislation to ban vote centers, forcing a statewide return to precinct-style voting, in which voters are assigned to a polling place. He has also sponsored bills to prohibit the state attorney general from prosecuting county supervisors who vote against certifying elections, shorten the early voting period, and require voters to confirm their address each election cycle to vote by mail. And he was the lead author of a November ballot measure that would require mail voters to provide ID, among other changes to state election law.

Swoboda said that she, too, believes the early voting period should be shortened. Voters, she said, shouldn’t be able to drop off their mail ballots on Election Day. Ideally, she’d like to require counties to provide seven days of in-person early voting and reserve mail ballots for those over the age of 65, voters with disabilities, and people with scheduled surgeries or planned vacations during the voting period.

“But that’s up to the voters,” she said, adding that mail voting is wildly popular and that it would take a ballot initiative to significantly change it. “People love it here. People use it here. I’m not interested in taking their choices away unless they themselves wish to limit it.”

Later, she said: “There’s a difference between what I think individually and what I think is proper as a secretary of state.”

Where Swoboda and Kolodin stand on Arizona and the feds

Whoever is elected secretary of state will also decide how far to let the federal government step into the state’s elections.

The race is taking place as Trump has made unprecedented calls to nationalize voting. Under his administration, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued Arizona for access to its full, unredacted voter roll, which includes sensitive information such as voters’ full birthdates and Social Security numbers. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has encouraged states to use a revamped, unreliable federal immigration tool to identify noncitizens on the voter roll, despite overwhelming evidence that such illegal voters are rare. Meanwhile, several federal agencies appear to be probing the state’s past elections.

So far, Fontes has fought such efforts. He has repeatedly refused to give the federal government an unredacted version of the state’s voter roll. His office has long used the federal immigration tool — called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — to verify the citizenship of those registering to vote without providing documents proving their status, but it hasn’t used it to attempt to remove voters from the state’s roll en masse. And Fontes has pushed back on federal inquiries into prior elections. Earlier this year, he penned a letter with Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes to county officials, telling them to keep voter data confidential amid probes by the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Swoboda said she would decline to hand over voter information to the Justice Department, absent a court order. She said local officials should retain control over voter list maintenance.

“I don’t understand why Republicans, who are constitutional conservatives, think it’s a good idea to put the federal government in charge of who is eligible to vote,” she said.

Swoboda previously worked as the executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation, an advocacy group that has raised concerns about voter list maintenance, but stopped short of embracing Trump’s false claims of rigged elections. She praised the updates that federal officials had made to the SAVE system, but said the state should also explore joining EleXa, a new, multistate coalition in which officials compare redacted versions of their voter rolls to look for double voters.

Kolodin said in a June 27 radio interview that he would require county recorders to run their full voter lists through the SAVE system. And in an April interview on the same show, Kolodin heavily criticized a court ruling against the Trump administration’s request for Arizona’s unredacted voter rolls, calling the request “common sense.”

“I don’t know why anybody would want to be delaying making sure that we only have U.S. citizens on our voter rolls,” Kolodin said. “That makes no sense to me.”

As a lawyer, Kolodin previously served as local counsel on a lawsuit claiming “massive, coordinated inter-state election fraud” in 2020. That case was dismissed, along with similar ones filed in other states. Kolodin later faced formal admonishment from the state bar and was assigned five legal ethics classes, including one focused on “meritorious claims and contentions.”

Who can actually win?

The three polls of the race that have been released so far this year show Kolodin in the lead — sometimes within the margin of error, sometimes not — with huge numbers of undecided voters.

The most recent of the group — from NextGen Polling, which surveyed 1,683 likely primary voters last month — put Kolodin at 16% and Swoboda at 11%. Nearly 73% of the electorate said they were undecided.

That suggests the race remains wide open. Several of the polls noted that Kolodin’s support was driven by voters who identified as extremely conservative. Those voters are among the most likely to participate in primaries — and at times, Kolodin has appeared to treat his victory as a foregone conclusion, spending precious minutes in interviews and on the debate stage to repeatedly punch at Fontes.

But Swoboda is betting that she can draw in rural voters. When she was chair of the state party, she said she built strong connections across farther-flung areas of Arizona. She believes primary voters there are open to her message.

“People aren’t going to tell you they’re going to go vote for me,” she said. “They’re just going to go vote for me.”

So far, there’s no polling on how Swoboda or Kolodin might fare against Fontes. But NextGen Polling noted its results suggested moderate voters in the primary preferred Swoboda.

Swoboda called herself “electable,” adding she wasn’t “a highly polarizing person” likely to alienate independent voters and crossover Democrats.

“When there’s a fight to be had, I’m willing to fight,” she said. “But I don’t believe everything is a fight, and I don’t believe that our system is helplessly broken. I do not want to burn it to the ground.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

How inconsistent standards led to dozens of disenfranchised voters in a Wisconsin city

2026-07-06T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

For years, Mequon election workers employed an unusually strict standard for judging the validity of witness addresses on absentee ballot envelopes — a standard not apparently used elsewhere in Wisconsin and that the Wisconsin Elections Commission has now said is illegal.

Under that standard, Mequon officials rejected absentee ballots if the witness address did not include a state or ZIP code and the municipality name was not unique nationwide. That’s despite the fact that Wisconsin’s absentee ballot envelope no longer specifically asks witnesses to provide the information Mequon treated as essential: a state or ZIP code.

But a Votebeat review of hundreds of April 2026 absentee ballot envelopes, the dozens of ballots Mequon at least initially rejected since 2024, and scores of city records found that the city’s strict standard was applied unevenly — and, in some cases, resulted in the initial rejection of ballots that did not appear ambiguous at all.

In April, election workers accepted several ballots with the same missing witness-address information as ballots they moved to the reject pile. In one case, poll workers appeared to override the city’s own recommendation to reject a ballot. And of the ballots Mequon rejected because officials said the witness address listed a municipality name shared by other places in the country, about a third were actually from uniquely named municipalities. All the rest had unique combinations of street number, street name, and municipality, even without a state or ZIP code.

Across several recent elections between 2024 and 2026, the city rejected at least 27 absentee ballots while allowing others with the same missing witness-address information to count. In the Wisconsin Supreme Court election this April, Mequon initially intended to reject five more ballots before the commission ordered city officials to count them — and to stop applying the unusual standard in elections moving forward.

Mequon followed the commission’s order to count the votes in April. But when Votebeat asked whether the city would abandon its practice in future elections, the city attorney was less definitive, leaving open the possibility that it could return.

Mequon officials have defended the rejections by saying voters are responsible for following the rules. Nancy Martin, a chief inspector at a Mequon polling place, said that she is unequivocally supportive of the city’s witness-address policy. She invoked a state law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right.

Because of that law, she said, “you need to make sure that you’re doing your job as a voter, and I don’t think that sending incomplete information is doing a complete job as a voter.”

How Mequon’s standard clashed with state practice

Wisconsin law requires absentee voters to have a witness sign the ballot envelope and provide an address. But state law does not define how complete that address must be. In a lawsuit filed by Rise, Inc., a nonprofit advocacy organization, a court in 2024 sided with the group’s more lenient view, ruling that an address is sufficient as long as a clerk can reasonably discern where the witness lives.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has since said that means clerks should not reject ballots simply because the witness address does not include a state or ZIP code. In fact, the WEC-approved state absentee ballot envelope doesn’t specifically designate spaces for a witness to provide their state or ZIP code. Mequon has taken a stricter view than WEC in rejecting ballots that do not provide that information.

Around August 2024, Mequon officials discussed the state commission’s witness-address standard at a training for chief inspectors. City records pertaining to that meeting show that City Attorney Brian Sajdak expressed that he disagreed with the commission on what constitutes a valid address. Since then, the city has repeatedly rejected ballots the commission deemed properly witnessed.

Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk, said it’s normal for city attorneys to be in touch with clerks to decide or interpret election policies.

“But in Mequon, it is pretty alarming and jarring that an attorney would so blatantly not be in agreement with WEC’s interpretation of the Rise ruling,” he said.

Sajdak and Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment about who came up with the controversial policy, though a letter from a chief inspector endorsing the policy says they both played a part.

Inconsistencies within polling places that rejected ballots

The unevenness showed up even within the same polling places.

Mequon officials at the same polling places who initially rejected the five ballots from the April election counted six others in that same election — three from Cedarburg, one from Waukesha, one from Rib Lake, and another from Shorewood — even though their witness addresses were also missing ZIP codes and states, and the municipality names were not unique nationwide.

In this rare instance, Mequon poll workers appeared to override a suggestion to reject a ballot.

In one instance, poll workers even appeared to override a city official’s instructions to reject a ballot from Shorewood that didn’t list a ZIP code or state. It arrived at the precinct with a handwritten note affixed to it saying “Reject — multiple ‘Shorewoods’ in US.” There is a Shorewood near Mequon and others in Illinois and Minnesota.

In different handwriting, an election worker wrote that the street name listed on the address, Farwell Avenue, was in the nearby Shorewood, and accepted the ballot.

Mequon’s controversial practice came to light in April 2026 as a result of a letter to Fochs from Law Forward, a liberal law firm, warning that the city’s policy may be wrongfully disenfranchising absentee voters.

In response, Sajdak said the city’s ballot rejection practice is a “policy of last resort utilized only when all other reasonable attempts have failed.”

But it appears that city officials did not use simple techniques that would have shown that the witness address provided on each of the rejected ballots was unique.

All rejected ballots did have unique address

Of the 32 ballots Mequon initially rejected in recent elections, about a third did not meet even the city’s own standard for rejection: They came from uniquely named municipalities, like Fox Point and Chicago.

All the rest were also traceable to unique addresses. Even without a state or ZIP code: The street number and street name on those ballot envelopes pointed to only one location in the United States, even though the municipality name wasn’t unique.

Votebeat sought to better understand the process by which Mequon officials rejected those ballots, which the city has described as extensive. But the city has provided little transparency about what specific steps are actually taken to verify witness addresses.

In response to a records request for election workers’ online searches, Mequon initially said it had no responsive records. After Votebeat explained how to export browser history, the city produced records showing that Mequon officials searched Google on April 6 and 7 — Election Day and the day before it — for whether there were multiple cities in the United States named Baltimore and Verona.

The records do not show that the searches went further. Had city officials entered the complete street names and numbers, they would have found that both addresses were unique to just one of those cities. Ballots from both cities were rejected before the commission ordered Mequon to count them.

Fochs did not answer follow-up questions about whether she took other steps to determine whether the addresses were sufficient.

“I do what I can, and we do go through a lot of hoops,” Fochs said in an earlier April interview, saying the clerk’s office contacts voters with insufficient witness addresses when time allows.

But Liebert, from All Voting Is Local, saw it differently: “It does seem sort of just like a lack of due diligence.”

Mequon election workers appear split on city policy

Alisha Campbell, who was an assistant chief inspector at a Mequon polling place in April, said that every absentee ballot went through the clerk’s office before being delivered to an individual ward. The general instruction from her chief inspector, Campbell said, was to reject the ballots that the clerk’s office suggested rejecting.

She also said she was told by her chief inspector that ZIP codes were paramount, and that if a ballot is missing a ZIP and the municipality name isn’t unique, poll workers could not count it. While Votebeat found instances in which pollworkers overrode a decision by the central election offices, Campbell said most were generally just following the instructions of the city clerk’s office rather than making decisions on the fly.

Campbell would not say whether she agreed with the city policy.

“What you think independently isn’t always what you are told to do,” Campbell said. “I will leave that at that.”

Martin, the Mequon chief inspector who defended the city’s policy, took a different view. In her letter supporting the policy, which five other Mequon chief inspectors signed, Martin expressed hope that the election commission would “correct their position” by calling for a state and ZIP code in the witness address field.

Instead, the commission did the opposite. In its new manual, published in June, the commission said using the same witness address standard that Mequon employed would constitute “an abuse of discretion.”

Martin said she was disappointed in the commission’s new language and plans to write to her local legislators asking them to change the law to require ZIP and state. She was noncommittal on how she would handle the address standard moving forward, but said she will largely rely on the clerk’s office’s guidance.

Liebert questioned whether other cities and towns in Wisconsin were implementing policies that don’t follow state law or court decisions. Wisconsin has the most decentralized election system in the nation, with 1,850 municipalities each running elections at the local level.

But he said the commission’s intervention in Mequon this year shows a silver lining. While Mequon had rejected ballots against WEC guidance in several recent elections, the commission went further by ordering the city to count the initially rejected ballots from the April election. All five were included in the final results.

“It’s disappointing what happened in Mequon, but I think also at the end of the day, the system shows that it works,” Liebert said, adding that the commission vote to count those ballots was bipartisan. “That should give voters confidence in the system and that people are looking out for them.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

What 250 years of voting rights battles tell us about today

2026-07-04T12:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Happy Fourth of July, on this 250th anniversary of the United States. We’re living through extraordinary times in American democracy, as President Trump presses for greater federal control over elections and redistricting slips loose from its once-a-decade rhythm. As always, Votebeat is focused on an essential part of it: who gets to vote, who makes the rules, and what those votes are worth.

That question has loomed over the nation from the beginning. Voting history is often framed as a steady expansion from white male landowners to everyone else. The truth is messier. States have always experimented with expanding the franchise, retracting it, and expanding it again.

Voting rights have long varied from state to state

The Constitution has never contained a broad, affirmative right to vote, which helps explain why voting in America has always depended so much on where you live.

Some states expanded the vote earlier than we typically remember. Vermont, for example, adopted a broad franchise before the federal Constitution existed. Others expanded the franchise and later narrowed it: Revolutionary Pennsylvania extended voting rights to taxpaying men before limiting the vote to white men in 1838. Taken together, these examples show that American voting rights have never moved in one direction for everyone at once.

Let’s start with Vermont, one of the earliest examples of a state taking an unusually expansive view of who should have the vote. In 1777, before the federal Constitution existed, Vermont adopted its own, eliminating both property and taxpaying requirements for voting. Why? Because of a man whose name you’ve probably heard before: Ethan Allen.

A painting depicts Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys demanding the surrender of British forces at Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775. Allen’s militia is better remembered for its Revolutionary War exploits, but its fight against New York’s authority also helped create the breakaway political community that adopted Vermont’s unusually broad early voting rules.

Allen led what historian Alexander Keyssar describes in his book “The Right to Vote” as an “unruly political—and military—process” involving his militia group, the Green Mountain Boys. Allen’s men roamed what ultimately became Vermont back when New York still claimed the territory, resisting New York’s authority by stopping sheriffs, intimidating New York-backed settlers, burning buildings, and sometimes flogging opponents.

Their campaign was not specifically about expanding the franchise. It began as a fight over land, sovereignty, and New York’s authority in the territory that became Vermont. But by helping create a breakaway political community outside New York’s control, the Green Mountain Boys also helped create the conditions for a very different constitution — one that rejected New York’s property-based voting system and allowed any adult man who took the Freeman’s Oath to vote.

Then came the U.S. Constitution. The 1787 document did not grant anyone the right to vote, instead deferring to states to determine the makeup of their own electorate. Whoever a state allowed to vote for its own legislature could also vote for members of Congress from that state. States, not the federal government, were left to decide who “the people” were. Vermont, therefore, could continue to coexist with neighboring New York despite radically different approaches to the franchise.

That flexibility produced inconsistency. In 1780, Massachusetts dropped racial exclusions for voting but kept property ownership at the center of political rights. That meant a free Black man who met the property requirement could vote while a poor white man who did not meet it could not. Property, race, gender, dependency, and local law interacted unevenly in the early American electorate.

Some states also gave voting rights and then took them away. In New Jersey, the state’s 1776 Constitution and a 1790 election law allowed some property-owning women and Black men to vote. That changed in 1807, when the Legislature limited voting to “free, white male” citizens.

An 1808 article in the Trenton Federalist said the new law “restricted all that has made our elections disagreeable, contentious and corrupt; all Females and Negroes being now deprived of a vote, who, not being eligible to nor much acquainted with the affairs of government, need not any longer be made use of to answer a party purpose.”

The same state-by-state experimentation complicates another assumption we often make now: that citizenship and voting have always been inseparable.

For much of American history, they were not. Some territories and newer western states used the franchise as an inducement to settlers. If they wanted people to move west, build towns, work land, pay taxes, and bind their futures to a new place, the vote was often part of the offer.

Wisconsin became the clearest example. In 1848, it allowed immigrants to vote if they had lived in the United States for two years and filed papers declaring their intent to become citizens. Michigan and Indiana soon followed, as did the Oregon and Minnesota territories. Later, similar rules spread across parts of the South and West.

But here, too, societal pressures prompted change. States began repealing noncitizen voting laws in the late 19th century. The backlash accelerated around World War I, amid rising xenophobia and suspicion of immigrants’ loyalty. Arkansas was the last state to end the practice, doing so in 1926.

Which brings us to the arguments over voting that Votebeat covers now.

Today, the fight for voting rights revolves around equal representation

For much of American history, the central question around voting rights was who could get through the door: who could register, who could cast a ballot, and who was excluded by law. But there is another question on the other side of the franchise. In 1976, legal scholar Gerhard Casper argued that American debates had long focused on “the right to be a voter,” rather than the harder problem of representation. Voting, he wrote, “is supposedly performed with a goal in mind — representation; but voting does not in itself necessarily entail representation.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 tried to answer both problems. It gave federal force to the principle that citizens could not be denied the ballot because of race, and Section 2 later became one of the main tools for challenging election rules and maps that diluted minority voters’ ability to turn votes into representation.

That issue is at the core of the modern fights over gerrymandering. A voter can be eligible, registered, and able to cast a ballot, and still live under maps that weaken the political power of that vote.

Louisiana is the latest example. After years of litigation over whether Black voters in the state had a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, the Supreme Court’s Callais decision struck down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district and narrowed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act applies to redistricting. Many voting rights scholars and advocates have described the decision as a major rollback — not because it removes anyone from the voter rolls, but because it changes what legal protection remains when votes are diluted by district lines.

That is not the same thing as states limiting or even taking away voting rights based on property requirements, gender, or citizenship status. But it belongs in the same history. The rules change. The line moves. And sometimes, as American history keeps reminding us, it moves backward.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Trump administration asks federal judge to quickly lift ban on planned mail voting restrictions

2026-07-02T17:29:31+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The Trump administration is asking a federal judge to quickly lift her recent ruling against major provisions of a presidential executive order on elections, arguing in an appeal that the court’s action will effectively prevent the government from putting new voting restrictions in place before the November election.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani halted President Donald Trump’s efforts to create centralized lists of adult citizens and give the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented authority over who can vote by mail. Her 37-page ruling concluded that the president did not have the constitutional authority to regulate state elections, as his March executive order tried to do.

The executive order directed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to create a nationwide list of verified U.S. citizens over 18, and thus presumably eligible to vote in federal elections. It also called on the U.S. Postal Service to create a system to handle and accept mail-in ballots only from voters on preapproved lists.

Talwani’s order prevents the federal government from enforcing those provisions of the order against the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) whose attorneys general and governors brought the lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts. The list includes most Democratic-led and swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

This week, the Trump administration appealed Talwani’s ruling to the First Circuit Court of Appeals and said it is still proceeding with its efforts to set up the new system for the rest of the states. But it warned that the judge’s order will make it impossible for the U.S. Postal Service to create a bifurcated system for the November election, even if the administration ultimately prevails on appeal. Government attorneys asked Talwani to lift her ban by Monday.

The request for a quick decision suggests that the Trump administration may be trying to speed things up so the case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as possible.

“Operationally, it would not be possible for us to put a two-tiered system in place where one set of rules apply to the ballot mail of the Plaintiff States, and another applies to the remaining states,” Steven Monteith, the Postal Service’s chief customer and marketing officer and executive vice president, said in a court filing. “Doing so would cause operational confusion and significantly increase the complexity and efficiency of implementing any final rule.”

But the Trump administration’s nationwide efforts to use the Postal Service to regulate who gets ballots also hit a separate legal roadblock this week when another federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the executive order violates a years-old agreement requiring the federal government to ensure voters who request mail-in ballots get them in time to ensure they can be counted.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan concluded that the Trump administration’s plans to send ballots only to voters on preapproved lists breached a 2021 agreement between the Postal Service and the NAACP meant to ensure that the agency prioritized ballot delivery. In contrast to Talwani’s ruling, Sullivan’s decision applies nationwide.

“These proposed rules directly undermine commitments that the Postal Service made to ensure mail-in ballots are delivered and counted,” said Anthony Ashton, senior associate general counsel for the NAACP, in a statement.

The U.S. Postal Service and Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Mohave County will debut new ballot paper with added security measures in July primary

2026-07-02T13:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Officials in Mohave County, Arizona, walked into a public meeting last year with bad news for their bosses.

The rural, bright-red county wanted to adopt a type of ballot paper with watermarks, embedded fibers, microprinting, and other security features for future elections. Its elected supervisors had previously voted to approve a new contract for such paper with Runbeck Election Services, a voting materials company in Phoenix, because they firmly believed the change would improve voter confidence.

But election officials had recently tested the paper, called Ballot Guard, with the county’s vote-tabulating machines and found that it wasn’t performing as hoped.

A team of staffers took the podium to lay out the situation. The paper, they said, caused the tabulators to pull multiple pages at once, leading to paper jams and other errors that required rerunning ballots. ES&S, the company that manufactured the county’s tabulators, had done its own tests and seen similar results.

Elections Director Allen Tempert warned that using the paper in a live election could significantly slow results and increase the possibility of inaccurate tallies. He urged the county’s all-Republican board of supervisors to consider another type of paper that included watermarks and had already worked successfully elsewhere.

The board appeared open to considering the alternative. But months later, another round of testing returned improved results. In January, with election officials’ blessing, supervisors voted unanimously to use Ballot Guard in upcoming elections.

“It works well,” Tempert told Votebeat, adding that he was “comfortable” with county supervisors’ decision.

Now, the stage is set for a make-or-break moment in the state’s northwest corner — starting with the state primary, scheduled for July 21. A successful debut could inspire other counties to pick up the paper. But if the paper causes problems, it could lead to an election night mess — and deal a major blow to Republicans’ longstanding efforts to encourage such security features on ballots across the state.

From bamboo to Ballot Guard: How election security concerns inspired new ballot paper

In Arizona, the push to put security marks on ballots began with a widespread conspiracy.

After the 2020 presidential election, false claims began circulating that someone had flown fake ballots from Asia to Maricopa County to rig the race for President Joe Biden. That prompted auditors assisting with a GOP-led review of the county’s election results to shine blacklights on ballots in search of bamboo fibers or watermarks.

No bamboo ballots were ever found. Arizona has a plethora of checks to ensure only ballots cast by registered voters are counted. There’s no evidence that counterfeit ballots have ever found their way into the state’s elections.

But since that episode, some GOP state lawmakers — including then-state Sen. Sonny Borrelli, who now serves on the Mohave County Board of Supervisors — have repeatedly tried, and failed, to pass legislation requiring security features on ballots.

Nationally, California has long used ballot paper with watermarks. In recent years, the push for such paper has also caught on some swing states. Georgia now requires watermarks on its ballots. In Michigan, some counties have chosen to do the same.

But Mohave County would be the first in the country to use Ballot Guard specifically. In recent elections, leaders there have also considered hand-counting ballots and voting against certifying vote tallies.

Board Chair Travis Lingenfelter, a Republican, told Votebeat that his constituents were deeply concerned about election integrity and hesitant to trust election results. He believes the new paper can help assuage those fears — particularly if other jurisdictions are inspired to pick it up, too.

Mohave County Supervisor Travis Lingenfelter, pictured at a Nov. 20, 2023 meeting, told Votebeat that his constituents were hesitant to trust election results. He and other county leaders believe using a new type of ballot paper with anti-counterfeiting measures will improve voter confidence.

Lingenfelter said the county’s contract with Runbeck was purposefully structured as a cooperative one. A number of counties — including Maricopa, the state’s most populous county and a key swing region — use it to procure their own voting materials, and any of them could opt to use Ballot Guard in the future.

A spokesperson for the Maricopa County Elections Department said it currently had no plans to use the paper. Still, Lingenfelter said he hoped other counties might follow Mohave’s lead if it proves the paper can be used successfully.

“I feel like Mohave County is contributing positively to this big overarching issue of voter confidence and election integrity,” he said, adding that his county was “proud” to serve as a trailblazer.

Ballot Guard won’t cost Mohave County any money — for now

While legislation to require security features on Arizona ballots never passed, the state did greenlight a $1 million grant program in 2022 that offered counties a chance to test out ballot paper with specialized security features.

Former Cochise County Recorder David Stevens signed up for that program, but he didn’t anticipate how long it would take to get up and running. He missed the grant’s deadline, and county officials decided to scrap the project.

But Stevens had already used grant funding to pay Runbeck to order 10 tons of ballot paper and commission a giant watermarking machine. The county’s decision left that paper sitting unused on the floor of the company’s warehouse in Phoenix.

Since then, the county had been grappling with what to do with it. Cochise County Recorder Billy Cloud urged local leaders to give it away, noting that the paper wasn’t of use to the county anymore. So in May, Cochise chose to transfer its paper to Mohave County, free of charge.

Mohave will now use that same exact paper to print its ballots for upcoming elections. Tempert and Interim Elections Director Karina Sumner — who is set to replace Tempert when he retires on July 4 — said the paper should get the county through the state primary and general election.

“For 2026, it’s a wash,” Tempert said. “We ain’t paying no more money in 2026.”

But the county could see increased election costs in 2028. Tempert said Ballot Guard costs up to 15 cents more per ballot than the county’s usual paper. There are approximately 150,000 registered voters in the county, so that could add up to an extra $22,500 per general election.

That represents a tiny fraction of Mohave County’s $600 million budget. Still, the county has long faced revenue challenges. In recent years, it has at times needed to institute temporary hiring and employee travel freezes to stave off budget deficits.

Nonetheless, officials appeared undeterred. Lingenfelter said that because his county had coordinated a cooperative contract with Runbeck, it gets a small revenue kickback if other counties sign on. He said that should help the county offset its costs.

Officials say paper is working well, despite mixed test results

In initial tests, the difference between Mohave County’s typical ballot paper and Ballot Guard was stark.

Officials found that the new paper was prone to so-called “multi-feed” and “pick” errors, both of which occur when a tabulator accidentally grabs more than one ballot at a time. On average, 3.6% of ballots printed on the new paper saw multi-feed errors and about 0.8% saw pick errors — far higher error rates than that of the county’s usual ballot paper.

In 2024, about 111,000 voters cast ballots in the county. Officials estimated it would have taken up to six hours longer to count those ballots if they were printed on the new paper, a notable timesuck for a department with just a handful of full-time employees.

“In conclusion, though the Ballot Guard paper properly tabulates every time, we would not recommend its use,” officials wrote in a testing report that they presented on Sept. 15. “The process is significantly slowed by multifeeds and pick errors, which would not happen on original Runbeck paper stock. The security added by the paper is irrelevant when counterfeit votes would never make it to the ballot tabulators in the first place.”

Later, Sumner said Runbeck hypothesized that the errors may have been the result of static electricity in the stacks of testing paper. Static causes ballots to stick together, but the issue could be solved by letting the paper sit out for a day or two.

In December, the company sent the county more paper — this time, letting it rest before shipping it out. When election officials tested ballots with that batch of paper, Sumner said, they saw dramatically improved results. On average, just 0.7% of the ballots were met with multi-feed errors, and another 0.7% with pick error messages.

That’s still more than the 0.3% and 0.0% error rates that the county’s regular paper encountered in initial testing, on average. But Sumner noted that multi-feed and pick errors happen in live elections no matter what type of paper is being used. The error rates seen with the new paper, she said, shouldn’t slow officials down too much in the counting process.

As a result, election officials say they are now on board with Ballot Guard. “The limited multi-feed and pick error rates are deemed acceptable for ballot feed errors with ballot tabulation,” a January test report read.

Katina Granger, a spokesperson for ES&S, said the company still doesn’t recommend the paper for use with its tabulators. Ballot Guard does not meet the same specifications as its recommended paper stock, she said.

“We’ve identified several differences in physical characteristics, like surface texture, thickness, stiffness, coating, and fiber composition, which can impact how ballots move through the equipment and are scanned,” Granger said, adding that ES&S had communicated “potential performance risks” to Mohave County. “We recommend jurisdictions use paper with specifications within the recommended parameters to guarantee performance.”

But Sumner said the paper has also been tested during pre-election audits and ran smoothly. She said she was confident that the paper will work well in upcoming elections.

“It’s not going to affect the tabulation or the results at all,” she said. “It’s all going to be fine.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Supreme Court allows states to accept mail ballots after Election Day, rejecting Republican challenge to voting access

2026-06-29T16:38:52+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, as long as they are properly postmarked — a key victory for voting rights advocates and another setback to President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on absentee voting.

In an uncommon 5-4 ruling, the justices found that nothing in federal law prevents states from enacting grace periods for absentee ballots to be received, as long as they are actually cast and mailed by Election Day. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia currently have such grace periods.

The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, centered on a Mississippi law that allowed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrived up to five business days later. The national and state Republican parties challenged the law in 2024, arguing that, because Election Day is set by federal law, states should not be about to count ballots received after it.

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A federal judge initially upheld Mississippi’s law, but an appeals court sided with the Republicans who challenged the ballot rules. Mississippi then brought its case to the Supreme Court in March.

The high court eventually sided with Mississippi. “The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose.”

The ruling crossed ideological lines, with conservatives Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joining liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor in the majority.

The status-quo ruling was good news for those who worried that eliminating the absentee-ballot grace period would disenfranchise voters. A Votebeat analysis of data from 11 of the 15 jurisdictions with grace periods found that more than 745,000 absentee ballots arrived after Election Day in 2024, representing no more than roughly 3 percent of the total vote in any state.

“The Court’s decision is a direct message to all voters who rely on mail ballots, including military and overseas voters, rural voters, seniors, and people with disabilities: Your voices matter equally to voters who can easily access a polling place,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan voting security group. “This ruling ensures that a postal delay outside of any voter’s control does not erase a lawfully cast ballot and supports election officials’ ability to capture the will of voters.”

Carolina Lopez, executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, said she was pleasantly surprised by the court ruling. She said the decision would come as a relief to election administrators who weren’t sure when the absentee ballot receipt deadlines would be in their states.

“For election offices, this clarity matters,” she said.

Republicans, however, criticized the ruling. “Democrats are inviting chaos at the ballot box by allowing elections to drag on for days and weeks after voters cast their ballots,” Joe Gruters, chairman of the RNC, said in a statement. “Republicans are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the RNC will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day as Americans want.”

In a post on social media, Trump called the ruling a “tremendous loss” and said it should be a catalyst for Congress to pass his long-stalled election overhaul, the SAVE America Act.

“There is only one reason to oppose — CHEATING!” Trump wrote. Studies show that mail voting fraud is exceedingly rare, accounting for only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast, on average, in the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections.

Trump has long criticized mail-in ballots, blaming them for delayed election results and arguing unsuccessfully in court that they cost him the 2020 presidential election.

“We should know the result of the election on Nov. 3, the evening of Nov. 3,” Trump said on the campaign trail in 2020. “That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it should be.”

As post-Election Day vote tallies in key states that year showed a swing toward Democrat Joe Biden, Trump called for a halt to counting ballots. The late swing reflected timing, not fraud: Studies show misinformation made Republicans more wary of mail voting in 2020, so later-counted mail ballots skewed Democratic.

“STOP THE COUNT!” Trump wrote on social media two days after Election Day. “ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!”

Last year, Trump issued an executive order that gave the federal government power to withhold federal funding to states that allowed ballots to be counted if they arrived after Election Day. Several states sued over the order, and federal courts have largely blocked it from taking effect.

On Monday, conservative Justice Samuel Alito embraced Trump’s arguments in his dissent. Alito argued that the ruling “creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government.”

In the wake of the ruling, Mississippi’s Republican attorney general urged the state legislature to eliminate the state’s grace period anyway.

“I am hopeful that the Mississippi Legislature will take this opportunity to amend the law and require absentee ballots be received on the same day ballots are cast at the polling place,” said Attorney General Lynn Fitch. “President Trump is right to prioritize improving public trust in our elections.”

During two hours of oral arguments in March, some conservative Supreme Court justices pressed the lawyers about whether late-arriving ballots could create the perception of voter fraud. At the time, Alito asked whether “confidence in outcomes can be seriously undermined if the apparent outcome of the election on the day after the polls close is radically flipped by the acceptance later of a big stash of ballots that flip the election.”

“We don’t have Election Day anymore,” Alito said. “We have election month, or we have election months.”

The more liberal justices questioned the impact that nullifying Mississippi’s law could have on voting by Americans and soldiers living overseas.

“You believe that absentee voting by the military and overseas voters, the… federal laws under which states have proceeded with respect to those votes are illegal?” asked Sotomayor.

Dion Nissenbaum is a senior national reporter for Votebeat and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Legal ruling blocking Trump hunt for noncitizen voters may not help those already flagged

2026-06-29T09:00:00+00:00

A few days ago, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s use of a revamped immigration database to identify noncitizens who have registered to vote across the country.

The pointed 75-page ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the federal government’s actions threatened Americans’ privacy and voting rights.

But what does it mean for the estimated 24,000 registered voters that the Department of Homeland Security said it has already identified for further investigation using the revamped system that’s now been deemed a threat to Americans’ privacy?

Sooknanan’s ruling doesn’t put a halt to any of the investigations that have been carried out in more than two dozen states that used the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, better known as SAVE, over the past year to identify potential noncitizens on their voter rolls.

“The ruling turns the spigot off of a broken system, but it doesn’t go backwards in time,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “The reality is that the thousands of people that are caught up now in the system are still at risk.”

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Texas, for example, flagged more than 2,700 people as potential noncitizens using the SAVE database. Last fall, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it had sent lists to county elections officials and asked them to investigate. As Votebeat previously reported, hundreds of the voters flagged for investigation had likely already proven their citizenship when registering to vote.

Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said most Texas counties had already completed their investigations. County officials sent out letters to those on the list and gave people 30 days to provide proof they were eligible to vote.

“Most of our jurisdictions went through the process and, I hate to say, kind of wiped their hands of it,” McGinn said. “As far as the counties are concerned, they completed their part of the process.”

While the exact number of people removed from voter rolls because of the check has not been made public, McGinn estimated that 75% to 80% of those in smaller counties have already been taken off the lists because they did not respond within the 30 days.

“Candidly, I think it was more political than practical in Texas,” he said. “You have 19 million registered voters in Texas and 2,700 is a small percentage. We still can’t consistently find evidence that ineligible voters are having an impact on elections, which speaks to how secure our elections process is.”

Dan Vicuña, the senior policy director for voting and fair representation at Common Cause, which filed a legal brief in support of the League of Women Voters’ lawsuit, said the judge’s ruling would at least give people who had been improperly removed from voter registration lists because of states’ use of SAVE a chance to challenge the decisions.

“It will provide some strong avenues for people who have been tossed to challenge that,” he said. “Obviously it would have been better if they had never had to deal with it in the first place.”

Vicuña said other lawsuits could provide more help to individual voters. Common Cause is currently suing several Texas counties that removed voters from their rolls based on the revamped SAVE system.

Other states using SAVE so far have flagged much smaller numbers of potential noncitizens registered. Louisiana said it identified about 400 potential noncitizen voters on its rolls (out of nearly 3 million registered voters) and found 83 who had voted in at least one election since the 1980s. In 2024, Georgia identified 20 potential noncitizen voters on its rolls (out of more than 8 million registered voters).

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger said in a statement that he was disappointed with the judge’s ruling and said he was still proceeding with a new check of its voter rolls to ensure no noncitizens were on the lists.

A top election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, recently referred more than 200 cases of potential noncitizen voters to the state and local prosecutors for potential prosecution.

Initially, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap said in February that his office had used SAVE to identify 137 potential noncitizens on the rolls and found 60 of those had voted in prior elections. That’s about 0.2% of the 60,000 voters it ran through the system, and a tiny fraction of the county’s total 2.5 million voters. Heap’s office and the state attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment on how the legal ruling might impact ongoing investigations.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Judge dismisses Department of Justice lawsuit seeking Pennsylvania voters’ private information

2026-06-28T14:35:50+00:00

What happened?

A federal district judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice seeking a copy of the state’s voter roll containing voters’ personal identifying information.

“Public statements from government officials reveal its intentions: to create a nationwide voter-database, for potential weaponization in future elections; as a “fishing expedition,” hoped to advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting; and as a tool for immigration enforcement,” Cathy Bissoon, district judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, wrote in a decision Saturday.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for access to state voter rolls containing personal information such as driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers.

What’s the dispute?

The department sued Pennsylvania in September. The Justice Department has said it is seeking the nonpublic information in order to ensure states are complying with federal voter registration laws. In December, the Pennsylvania Department of State urged the court to dismiss the case on the grounds that the laws the Justice Department was citing — the Help America Vote Act and National Voter Registration Act — don’t actually give them authority to demand the nonpublic versions of the voter rolls, and that the specific information the Justice Department sought was unnecessary to accomplish its objectives.

The Justice Department has submitted requests to every state. Seventeen Republican-led states, including Alaska and Texas, have voluntarily turned the unredacted rolls over. Other states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, have opted to provide only the publicly available versions of the voter rolls, which do not contain driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers, citing privacy concerns and state laws barring such disclosure. So far, federal judges have ruled against the Justice Department in nine states, including Oregon, California, and Michigan.

What happens now?

Gov. Josh Shapiro touted the ruling on X, saying “no matter what the Trump Administration tries next, we’re going to stand up to protect Pennsylvanians’ right to privacy — and our fundamental right to vote.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling or whether it plans to appeal. The department has appealed similar rulings in some, but not all, other states. The first of those appeals, in Michigan, was recently decided, and agreed that the state did not have to share its data.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the Justice Department’s request for voter rolls:

- U.S. Justice Department presses Pennsylvania for answers on how it manages voter rolls, July 9, 2025

- Why states should scrutinize the Justice Department’s requests for voter rolls, August 11, 2025

- U.S. sues Michigan, Pennsylvania and four other states over request for voter rolls, September 25, 2025

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Federal judge blocks key pillars of Trump executive order restricting mail voting in 2026 election

2026-06-25T15:14:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update, June 25, 2:05 p.m.: This story has been updated to include comments responding to the ruling.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked key pillars of President Donald Trump’s efforts to overhaul the 2026 elections, declaring unconstitutional his attempts to create centralized lists of adult citizens and giving the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented authority over who can vote by mail.

The 37-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani concluded that the president did not have the constitutional authority to regulate state elections as he tried to do in a March executive order.

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Talwani’s decision came one day after the head of the Postal Service said the agency would refuse to deliver mail-in ballots to voters that were not on lists approved by the federal government, making explicit what the agency’s proposed new rules had previously implied.

In her ruling, Talwani said that the federal government could not use the postal system to regulate who gets ballots.

“No law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS,” Talwani wrote.

Talwani issued an injunction specifically preventing the federal government from enforcing those provisions of the order against the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) whose attorneys general and governors brought the lawsuit. The list includes most Democratic-led and swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

However, the injunction applies only to this year’s elections. Talwani granted the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ legal challenges to the executive order as not yet ripe when it comes to future elections.

The White House implied that it would appeal the ruling. In a statement, Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman, said the administration is “confident that we will ultimately prevail.” The U.S. Postal Service didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some Democratic secretaries of state who brought the case hailed the ruling as a major victory for voters.

“Trump will not be able to use the Postal Service to control which voters receive a mail ballot, and cannot use the DOJ to intimidate election officials into following his unlawful order,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. “The Constitution is clear: States run elections, not Trump. This is a major victory for American democracy.”

The ruling is the latest in a series of judicial rebukes to Trump’s efforts to impose federal control over American elections, something that the Constitution leaves to Congress and the states.

The executive order is the second election-related one issued by Trump. The first one, issued in March 2025, sought to require prospective voters to prove their citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and impose restrictions on states accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day. Federal courts have so far blocked major portions of the first executive order, including the effort to require documented proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

During the hearing in the case over the second order, in early June, Talwani expressed concerns about the executive order.

“What’s the harm if I say no one can use this list for the November election?” Talwani asked.

The Trump administration has cast the president’s efforts as an attempt to compel federal agencies to enforce existing laws barring noncitizens from voting in elections.

Trump has consistently targeted America’s electoral system and, without evidence, accused Democrats across the nation of “rigging” elections.

The president has repeatedly claimed that he was cheated out of the presidency in 2020 when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, even though federal judges, state elections officials, and independent investigations have repeatedly debunked those allegations.

Before Thursday’s ruling, the Trump administration had been forging ahead with implementing the executive order.

A different federal judge declined in late May to block major parts of the executive order, arguing that the issue was premature because the U.S. Postal Service had yet to take any steps to set up the new system. The following day, the Postal Service unveiled its proposed rules, which would give the agency the power to block delivery of mail-in ballots to Americans across the nation unless they were on a verified list of voters.

And in early June, the Trump administration said that it was taking steps to create a new nationwide mechanism aimed at verifying voter citizenship, per the executive order.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Everything to know about voting in Michigan’s primaries

2026-06-25T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Election season is officially kicking off in Michigan.

We’re still months out from the general election, but ballots start going out this week for the August primary election. And the sheer number of critical races means it’s an election you won’t want to miss. Here’s everything you need to know about how to vote.

When is the Michigan primary election?

Primary Election Day in Michigan is Aug. 4. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time.

But you can vote earlier if you choose. Absentee ballots will go out starting June 25 and can be returned any time between then and 8 p.m. on Election Day. Your community is also required to offer early in-person voting — you can check when and where that will be for your city or township at the Michigan Voter Information Center, which is maintained by the state.

Who can vote in the Michigan primary election?

All registered voters can vote in primaries in Michigan. The state doesn’t give voters the option to affiliate with a political party, meaning you will have to choose which partisan section of the ballot to fill out: Democratic or Republican. (Other parties, meaning any that got less than 5% of the statewide vote in the last secretary of state election, instead choose their candidates for all offices at conventions.)

It’s important to vote in only one of those sections. But who you voted for, including the party you selected, remains a secret.

How do I check if I’m registered to vote?

Some communities may send you a notice with your polling place and districts on it, but the fastest and most efficient way is to look yourself up on the Michigan Voter Information Center. There, you can see if you’re registered — and if you’re on the list to automatically receive an absentee ballot by mail.

How do I register to vote in Michigan?

Registering to vote in Michigan is relatively easy and very quick.

If you have a Michigan driver’s license, the fastest way to do it is to register online. You’ll need to affirm you’re a U.S. citizen, a Michigan resident, and at least 18 years old (although those 16 to 17.5 can pre-register to vote). You’ll need to authorize the secretary of state’s office to use your stored signature — usually in the system from when you got your driver’s license — for your registration.

From there, the hardest part is pulling out your wallet to input your driver’s license number. You’ll affirm your information as it appears on your license, input the last four digits of your Social Security number, and then answer a few more questions.

Any eligible voters can also register by mail by printing and mailing in the forms here, which are available in a variety of languages. And finally, you can register in person by bringing a photo ID and proof of where you live to your local clerk’s office. You can look up your local clerk here.

The deadline to register online or by mail and participate in the primary is 15 days before the election — which, for the upcoming primary election, is July 20. But you can still register in person at your clerk’s office after that — as late as Election Day itself.

Where is my polling place?

Your polling place may have moved since you last voted. A number of communities have consolidated their precincts in recent years in response to changes in state law.

You can look up where to go on the Michigan Voter Information Center. It will have the addresses and hours of your polling place, as well as all of your early voting locations and mail ballot drop boxes.

What offices are on my ballot?

This ballot is a long one, so don’t be concerned if it takes you a little while to fill it out. However, remember to vote in only one of the two partisan sections (the Democratic column or the Republican column). If you vote in both, none of your votes in any partisan races will count. (This mistake, known as crossover voting, inadvertently disenfranchises thousands of voters each primary, so make sure you’re paying attention!)

In the primary, voters will decide each party’s nominees for the November election for the following offices:

Governor
U.S. senator
U.S. representative
State senator
State representative
Certain local offices, such as township clerk, roads commissioner, and county executive
Delegate to county convention

Your ballot may have a nonpartisan section as well, if your community has any races like that this year. Mount Pleasant, for example, will vote for a nonpartisan city commissioner, while Clawson voters will weigh in on judges.

Most communities will also have on the ballot proposals, millages, or whatever endeavors local officials are looking to approve. These often come from school districts, but they can also be to support roads, parks, animal shelters, and more.

To check specifically what’s on your ballot, visit the Michigan Voter Information Center, click “What’s on the ballot?” and then put in your jurisdiction. You can also see it on your own voter information page, which you can access by putting in your driver’s license number or other identifying information at this link.

What should I bring to vote?

If you choose to vote in person, the process will go fastest if you bring a photo ID. That can be a driver’s license, a passport, a tribal card with photos, or a student ID — a number of things can work as long as it comes from a government institution and has a photo attached. You can find a list of acceptable IDs here.

But photo ID is not required to vote in Michigan if you don’t have one or don’t bring it with you. State law allows you to instead fill out an affidavit confirming your identity. On that form, you’ll confirm your name and address. Lying on the form is considered perjury, which comes with the potential for fines or jail time.

If you need help voting, you have a right to bring someone along. That person cannot be your employer or someone acting on the behalf of your union, but otherwise they can help you cast your ballot.

Can I vote early in person in Michigan?

Yes! State law requires that any election with federal or statewide races — think U.S. senators or the governor — has at least nine consecutive days of early in-person voting, starting on the second Saturday before the election (which, for this year’s primary, is July 25).

Communities are also allowed to offer additional days of early voting, although not all of them do (early voting requires money and staff resources that are difficult for some smaller communities to wrangle). You can check your community’s specific hours and locations by putting in your information here.

How do I vote by mail in Michigan?

Absentee ballots — which are used to vote by mail — will go out starting June 25. If you are already registered to vote and would like to request one, you can do so online here. Voters with disabilities can request an accessible ballot here.

Michigan voters have the right to be on what is referred to as the permanent absentee list, which means their local clerks will automatically send them a ballot for every election. If you’re on that list, your clerk will mail your ballot on June 25. You can check if you’re on the permanent absentee list by putting your information in here — it will be in a box in the top corner labeled “Absentee Ballot,” and you can check your status by seeing if it says “yes” or “no” under “Permanent Ballot List.” If you’re not already on the list, you can request to be added to it when you request your absentee ballot.

The deadline to request an absentee ballot is 5 p.m. on the Friday before the election, which for this election is July 31. Your clerk’s office will do their best to get it to you by Tuesday, but if it doesn’t arrive in time, you can still show up to your polling place on Election Day, ask them to cancel the absentee ballot, and vote in person.

In order for your absentee ballot to count, it must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day; postmarks don’t count. If you’re returning it by mail, most experts recommend putting it in the mail no later than a week before the election to give it time to make it back to your clerk. If you’re running later than that (or want to ensure it arrives in time), it’s recommended to use a drop box instead. Each community is required to set up drop boxes where voters can return their absentee ballots. You can look up drop box locations in your community by putting your information in here.

It’s worth noting that drop boxes don’t function like mail boxes — you can’t drop your ballot just anywhere and expect it to make it to your clerk. Make sure you return it in a drop box designated for your specific city or township.

Who can I ask if I have more questions on voting in Michigan?

Your first stop is probably your clerk’s office. Your clerk and their staff are extensively trained in election administration, and they can probably answer your questions. You can find your clerk here.

You can also reach out to Votebeat if you see something strange or run into problems. We’d love to hear from you — reach out at mich.tips@votebeat.org.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Appeals court rules against Trump administration in Michigan voter roll dispute

2026-06-24T21:10:24+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

What happened?

A federal appeals court has ruled that Michigan does not have to turn over its unredacted voter roll to the Department of Justice, dealing the Trump administration its highest-profile loss yet in its quest to obtain voter data from states ahead of the 2026 midterms.

What’s the dispute?

Since last year, the Department of Justice has demanded lists of registered voters from virtually every state, including Michigan in July. The state turned over the public version of its voter file but refused to turn over personally identifying information such as partial Social Security numbers.

In response, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Michigan in September but lost in district court in February after a judge dismissed the case, arguing that none of the laws cited by the department required the disclosure. The department then appealed the case to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed with the lower court’s reasoning.

In addition to Michigan, the department has sued 29 other states and Washington, D.C., to compel them to share their voter rolls. (Seventeen states have complied voluntarily.) So far, lower courts have dismissed several of those lawsuits, with none finding in favor of the Department of Justice.

What is the plaintiff asking for?

The Department of Justice has argued that a number of federal laws, including the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, entitle it to access to the unredacted voter rolls, including voters’ personal information. Many states have declined to provide that information, arguing that it would pose privacy concerns and violate state law. Federal officials have not provided an official reason for their requests, but they appear to be looking for noncitizen voters on the rolls.

What happens now?

Michigan’s case is the first to be heard, and be ruled on, at the appellate level. The next step up would be to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but Department of Justice officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Even if the case is taken up by the country’s highest court, a resolution — particularly one that could be meaningfully implemented — before the midterm elections is unlikely. Absentee ballots for the Michigan primary election start going out Thursday.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the DOJ’s fight for access to voting rolls:

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Texas lawmakers want fixes to statewide voter registration system ahead of midterm election

2026-06-24T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for assurances that issues with the state’s voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election.

“Those fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don’t, we can’t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Harris County, during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing that addressed voter registration and voter list maintenance issues.

Bettencourt said he’s heard complaints about the system, known as TEAM, from election officials in Travis, Austin, and Jackson counties, among others.

Christina Adkins, the elections division director at the secretary of state’s office, said the agency is “dedicating every possible resource that we have within our office to resolving these issues.”

“There is nothing more important in our office than this project,” Adkins said.

TEAM was redesigned and redeveloped by the state and relaunched last summer. Election officials say they have struggled with it since then, and though some functionality issues have been resolved, others continue to come up.

For example, election officials have reported that processes such as voter registration status lookups and precinct assignments frequently don’t work properly. In addition, the system often malfunctions when attempting to produce reports of registered voters and voters who have requested a mail ballot, forcing some election officials to produce their own spreadsheets to keep track.

The problems, election officials say, have added financial and staffing strains on counties already strapped for resources.

The system was developed by Civix, a Louisiana-based vendor. The majority of the state’s 254 counties rely on TEAM to plan elections and maintain their voter rolls. Even counties that instead use software from a state-approved private vendor to manage their voter rolls are required by state law to sync their data with TEAM daily, and are required to use TEAM to verify a voter’s identity and their eligibility to cast a ballot.

Groups representing election officials across Texas have asked the agency to halt the TEAM update rollout and address issues that they said “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.” The groups first outlined their complaints in a letter to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson in October, and sent another one in February.

Earlier this month, Nelson announced she’d be stepping down as of July 17. Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to appoint her successor.

Secretary of state, vendor working together on fixes

According to public records, the state’s contract with Civix is for $17 million. The secretary of state’s office told Votebeat last year that the money for it came from a mix of state dollars and federal funds allocated under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, earmarked for improving election administration.

Bettencourt raised questions about Civix’s work during the hearing. “When I get half a dozen counties with their hair on fire, and some counties are small, and some of them are big, that means that the vendor is behind on actually delivering fixes to the system,” Bettencourt said.

He directly asked Adkins whether Civix was up for the task. “Yes, sir,” she responded, adding her office is working with the vendor on fixes. Civix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Civix, Adkins said, also manages voter registration systems for other states, including Louisiana and Iowa, but Texas is the vendor’s biggest election management and voter registration software customer.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has said it anticipated technical issues with this “once-in-a-decade upgrade,” though it pointed to some unexpected challenges that have exacerbated the issues.

The agency specified that it didn’t anticipate the updated system having to handle significant amounts of data from large counties that abruptly stopped using a vendor that had financial problems. It also noted that redrawn boundaries following last year’s unexpected midcycle redistricting created additional complications that prevented counties from mailing out voter registration certificates on time.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

To accommodate overseas voters, Michigan changes start dates for local officials

2026-06-23T19:28:11+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Michigan’s first election legislation of the 2025-26 session has made it over the finish line — and more voters could see their ballots counted as a result.

On Monday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed four bills into law that would delay the start of some local officials’ terms. The laws are designed to ensure that people don’t take office until every vote is counted in their elections.

In many communities, local officials previously took office almost immediately after Election Day, meaning ballots counted later might not be considered at all. That functionally disenfranchised military voters or those voting from overseas, whose ballots can be counted as long as they arrive within six days of an election.

In November 2024, for instance, 1,440 ballots were returned in that six-day window — 303 from military voters and 1,137 from civilians overseas.

Under the new laws, elected officers for cities, townships, and villages — supervisors, trustees, clerks, and so on — won’t be able to start their job any sooner than noon on the first day of the month following their election, which for many positions means Dec. 1. And no one will be able to start until the election is certified by the appropriate canvassers.

“We must take the … step to ensure our local elected officials are not sworn in before the election results are certified,” Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat from Bloomfield who sponsored two of the bills, said in a news release. “This bipartisan solution sets a uniform date for local oaths of office to take place and gives our community leaders a firm expectation of when to prepare for their new roles.”

Voting legislation has not found much success in Michigan since the 2024 election, when Republicans took control of the House but Democrats kept control of the Senate. Numerous bills have made it through one chamber but have gone untouched in the other.

The four bills enacted Monday, however, had support from both major parties. Moss’ bills had the co-sponsorship of Republican Sens. Ed McBroom, of Waucedah Township, and Ruth Johnson, the former secretary of state from Holly. The two others, introduced by Republican Reps. Mike Hoadley, of Au Gres, and Pat Outman, of Six Lakes, had a number of members of both parties sponsoring them.

Hoadley said in a release that the change “protects the will of the voters,” while Outman said his bill “gives local communities more flexibility and helps ensure continuity in local government.”

The bills take effect immediately.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s overhaul of SAVE database

2026-06-22T23:08:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update, June 30, 7:22 p.m.: The Trump administration has paused certain features in the SAVE system to comply with the June 22 ruling, preventing state and local election officials from performing bulk searches or using voters’ Social Security numbers as search criteria, according to public records obtained by Votebeat.

A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s overhaul of an immigration verification system to check voter eligibility across the nation, striking down a central pillar of the government’s efforts to exercise more federal control over elections.

The judge cited Texas’ use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database, which flagged several voters who were actually citizens as noncitizens, as evidence that it threatened both privacy and voting rights less than five months before the November midterm election.

“The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said in her 75-page ruling. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Sooknanan’s decision does not eliminate SAVE, a decades-old immigration-status verification program. But it blocks the Trump administration’s 2025 overhaul of the system, which made it easier for states to check their voter rolls against the federal database, which includes individuals’ citizenship status and Social Security numbers.

Election officials have found that the modified database, however, is prone to error, something Sooknanan referenced in her decision. Federal officials, she wrote, “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”

The ruling could strengthen challenges by voters who were removed, flagged, or placed under review by the system.

“States have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information,” the judge wrote.

Voting rights groups, Trump administration react to ruling

The case was filed by the League of Women Voters and other groups who argued that the SAVE system was inaccurate and that using it to check voter rolls violated citizen privacy rights.

“Today’s decision is a resounding victory for voters,” said Marcia Johnson, chief of activation and justice for the League of Women Voters. “Efforts to create a federal voter database to facilitate voter purges threaten the fundamental right at the heart of our democracy.”

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who worked in the White House on democracy and voting rights issues under President Joe Biden, agreed that voters would benefit from the ruling.

“This provides incremental reassurance that they won’t be inaccurately singled out and have to jump through even more hoops to vote,” he said. “It stops the use of a deeply flawed process to cause trouble for real eligible citizens.”

However, James Percival, the general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, which maintains the SAVE database, criticized the ruling as a misguided effort to block the Trump administration from trying to address voter fraud.

“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,” Percival said in a statement.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Michael Morley, a professor at the Florida State University College of Law and faculty director of the FSU Election Law Center, said the ruling prevents the federal government from using all the information at its disposal to ensure that only eligible voters take part in elections.

“It seems to leave the government in a somewhat tenuous position of being able to provide citizenship data to states for voting purposes that is less accurate than it otherwise would be,” he said. “It restricts the government’s ability to take advantage of all of the most accurate sources of information it has in order, in most cases, to confirm people’s citizenship status.”

Judge cites Texas’ use of SAVE database in ruling

Texas intervened as a defendant in the case since it had been actively using SAVE to verify the citizenship status of its more than 18 million registered voters. The state gained access to the database in March 2025 after signing a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Homeland Security.

In October, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced SAVE had flagged 2,724 people as “potential noncitizens” and sent the list to county election officials to investigate. That process involved mailing letters to each person flagged, requesting additional information to verify their citizenship. If county officials received no response after 30 days, the person’s registration was canceled.

Some voters who responded to the notices turned out to be U.S. citizens after all; others had their registrations canceled, although a specific number hasn’t been released. Hundreds of other registrants who were flagged had registered at the Texas Department of Public Safety, the agency that issues driver’s licenses and state IDs. In Texas, proof of citizenship is required to obtain those documents.

In the ruling, Sooknanan said the state’s use of the database burdened and risked disenfranchising voters by incorrectly flagging naturalized citizens as noncitizens. The judge pointed to examples of voters in Texas who were U.S. citizens and had to provide proof of citizenship to keep their registration active and at least one U.S. citizen whose registration was revoked without their knowledge.

Sooknanan also pointed to an amicus brief filed by Travis County voter registration officials as evidence that the use of the overhauled SAVE database was inaccurate. The state flagged 97 potential noncitizens in Travis County. Voter registration officials found that about a quarter of those voters had registered at DPS and therefore had likely provided proof of citizenship.

Travis County officials were later able to confirm that at least 11 people who were flagged as potential noncitizens were in fact citizens.

“Texas threatened to revoke their voter registrations because of information obtained through the modified SAVE system; and they were required to confirm their citizenship to maintain their voter registrations,” Sooknanan said.

The secretary of state’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Celia Israel, the Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said the ruling is “validating.”

“We have asked a lot of questions in the past several months about the SAVE database and about its accuracy,” Israel said. “The lawsuit confirms that there are inaccuracies and that it is worthwhile for us officials at the county level to ask the state questions.”

Other civil rights groups and voters have also challenged Texas’ use of the database in a federal court in Austin. The lawsuit is still pending.

Sasha Hupka contributed reporting.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Trump administration’s search for noncitizen voter fraud is driving its election agenda

2026-06-22T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Every week, it feels like President Donald Trump’s administration is making a new piece of news about elections. It is investigating past elections in at least four states. It is exploring what feels like every possible avenue to get ahold of voter data in individual states and counties. It is attempting to create new administrative hurdles to mail voting and prioritizing major voting legislation over all else.

But it all ties back to one thing: the repeated assertions from the president and his allies that noncitizens are voting in significant numbers.

No evidence has emerged to support that. Election officials and experts have repeatedly said those assertions are false and such cases are rare. But they appear to be the animating force behind everything the administration is doing.

Scattered reports that investigators for the Department of Homeland Security are requesting detailed data on individual registered voters confirm the administration’s ongoing focus on finding and prosecuting any such cases.

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the Justice Department was pressing prosecutors to focus on 90 open investigations into potential noncitizens voting as a top priority. Federal prosecutors have already brought some cases against individuals that officials are touting, including one in Louisiana last week.

But despite the administration’s zeal, it isn’t clear how many such cases there are to bring. States have run more than 60 million records of registered voters through a revamped federal immigration database that the administration has encouraged state election officials to use to validate the citizenship of registered voters, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That’s around a third of the voters registered in the U.S., according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Out of those, the department told Votebeat, the system has flagged around 24,000 as potential noncitizens — about 0.04%. All those cases “have been referred to ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations for further investigation,” the department said in a statement.

As Votebeat reported in April, the Department of Homeland Security is sending subpoenas to local elections officials in Texas, searching for detailed information about individual voters. Investigators have also contacted at least one county in North Carolina, a development reported last week by Axios.

The Department of Homeland Security said it is “actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found,” and declined to comment on specific cases.

Twenty-four thousand potential cases sounds like a lot, but election officials have already found that at least some of those potential noncitizens have turned out to be citizens.

It also isn’t clear how many of those people have actually voted. Experts across the political spectrum agree that noncitizens who don’t understand the laws may accidentally register to vote, so that in and of itself is not necessarily a sign of intentional fraud. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to questions about how many cases of noncitizen voting the agency has documented, or how many registered voters flagged as potential noncitizens have turned out to be citizens.

But administration officials and those who support the investigations have been quick to dismiss questions about whether the small number of cases means noncitizen voting isn’t a big issue.

Last weekend, CNN anchor Kasie Hunt asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about data from the conservative Heritage Foundation that showed only 25 cases of people being prosecuted for voter fraud where citizenship was an issue.

“Well, 25 is too many,” said Mullin. “It’s kind of like one illegal death, one individual that dies from the hands of an illegal is one too many. It’s all preventable. One person voting illegally is one too many. We shouldn’t have to worry about even one.”

Justin Riemer, president of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, a conservative nonprofit focused on voting issues, agreed with Mullin’s perspective.

“Why is it such a bad thing that they are enforcing federal law?” Riemer said. “To me, any election crime is serious and needs to be prosecuted. I don’t think it’s a good system that this happens, regardless of how often it happens.”

Ken Cuccinelli, who during the first Trump administration was acting deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said outside investigations are no substitute for federal investigations that have much more authority to examine potential fraud.

“It may be that they bring nothing of it and that will tell us more than anything else, but I suspect that’s unlikely,” he said.

Ultimately, Cuccinelli said, “this is as much about confidence in who is participating in the voter rolls and whether our states themselves are helping, hiding, or hurting the security and transparency of our elections system.”

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who worked in the White House on democracy and voting rights issues under Joe Biden, characterized the Trump administration’s search as an unproductive hunt for a “boogeyman” to cast doubt on American elections.

“The notion that noncitizens are voting in elections in sufficient quantities to swing those elections, particularly in statewide contests, is a fiction,” he said.

Lorraine Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor and author of a book on voter fraud, suggested that the Trump administration investigations were an effort to create “maximum chaos and intimidation” across the country.

“The picture of the federal government sending Homeland Security to investigate is such overkill that you have to believe that they are trying to create a spectacle to intimidate people and go on a fishing expedition using bad data,” she said.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Arizona Court of Appeals pauses judge’s ruling on election powers in Maricopa County

2026-06-18T21:48:50+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Update, June 18, 3:30 p.m. MST: This story has been updated to include comments from Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap.

The Arizona Court of Appeals has temporarily blocked a ruling that was favorable to Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap in his long-running legal battle with the board of supervisors over control of the swing county’s elections.

Two of its three justices ruled to stay enforcement of a lower court’s order in the case to avoid disrupting the upcoming state primary. The other — Justice Brian Furuya, who was appointed to the bench in 2021 — dissented and said he would not have ordered the stay.

The ruling puts the fiery feud within county government on ice just days before voting begins in a high-stakes primary election.

The dispute has been ongoing since Heap took office and contended that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors usurped much of his power in a deal they struck with his predecessor. Heap, a Republican, sued over the matter last year.

After months of back-and-forth in court, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled largely in Heap’s favor on April 16, issuing an injunction that ordered the majority-GOP board to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to Heap’s office.

The board appealed that ruling, arguing it was too close to the primary to implement the court’s directives without risking a tumultuous election.

In the meantime, the officials have continued to butt heads. Last month, Heap asked Blaney to hold the supervisors in civil contempt of court, accusing them of flouting his earlier ruling.

He also sought to stop a special prosecutor’s investigation into whether his employees broke the law by removing a scanner from the county’s vote tabulation center amid a local election earlier this year.

Ultimately, the appellate court sided with the board, issuing a majority opinion that leaned heavily on the so-called Purcell principle. That legal guideline, named after former Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, calls for avoiding rule changes in the immediate leadup to an election.

Justices Andrew Jacobs and James Morse wrote that Blaney’s ruling mandated changes that could result in “concrete, operational impacts on the public’s voting experience.”

“The practical impacts of these changes, and even the injunction’s claim to mitigate practical harms for the voter, all demonstrate that this is no mere backroom dispute over accounting principles or organizational charts,” their ruling read. “It is, by everyone’s assessment, a live conflict hurtling toward real-world consequences in elections about to begin.”

Heap said in a statement that he would immediately appeal the case to the Arizona Supreme Court.

What does the appellate court’s decision mean for the Arizona primary?

Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican, said in a statement that the court’s decision was “a win” for voters.

“Simply put, this court order averts potential chaos at the polls that may have resulted from the lower court decision, which sought to force the county to enact broad changes in election administration in the middle of one election and on the eve of another,” she said.

Heap said in his statement that the ruling didn’t address the underlying legal issues at play in the case and that it was “not the final word on Arizona law.”

“We remain confident that the courts will ultimately affirm the Legislature’s clear assignment of responsibilities to the county recorder’s office,” he said. “We will continue fighting to ensure Arizona’s election laws are faithfully followed.”

For now, the decision appears to halt his efforts to hold the board in civil contempt and avert investigation into the scanner removal incident at the county’s election center. Blaney said in a June 15 hearing that his authority to address those matters would evaporate if the appellate court issued a stay in the case.

After that hearing, Blaney also ordered the parties to attend a mediation session. Spokespeople on both sides did not immediately respond to a question from Votebeat about whether that meeting would proceed as scheduled on June 22.

It’s also unclear what the decision means for a separate grievance filed by Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who contends that Heap’s legal team is encroaching on her duties as the county’s top lawyer. Spokesperson Erin Pellett told Votebeat on Thursday that Mitchell and her legal team were “still evaluating the impact on their case.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Bipartisan election board languishing as governor fails to appoint new members

2026-06-18T16:00:07+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

In 2020, Pennsylvania’s elections were facing a major crisis. The presidential primary was set for April 28, but the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, restricting travel and complicating in-person activities — such as voting.

So the state legislature came up with a solution. In a unanimous vote in both chambers, the primary was moved to June and, simultaneously, the state created a new bipartisan body meant to review and recommend changes to Pennsylvania’s near-century-old election law.

The Election Law Advisory Board, as it is called, was heralded at the time as a way to thoughtfully reform the state’s elections. But six years later, the board has fallen into a state of disuse, in part because Gov. Josh Shapiro has so far failed to fill seven seats he’s responsible for. The board has not met in nearly three years, even as county election officials are still clamoring for changes to the state’s outdated, contradictory election code.

The Election Law Advisory Board initially seemed promising

The idea of a board to advise the legislature on Pennsylvania election law was first born out of a 2017 report on the state’s aging voting equipment. When Republican state Sen. Elder Vogel introduced the bill that was signed in 2020, he told the Beaver County Times that the board was designed to provide the legislature with a road map to enacting election reform.

The board was designed to be bipartisan, bicameral, and representative of the entire state, and to include critical voices in the voting space, such as advocates and county officials. It is composed of majority and minority members from each legislative chamber, a representative from the Pennsylvania Department of State, and one member from each federal congressional district appointed by the governor.

The board met a dozen times in its first two and a half years, discussing everything from processing mail ballots to standardizing training for election workers.

“Back three years ago, when we were getting together and working, we were coming up with bipartisan solutions,” Joe Kantz, a Republican county commissioner and the current vice chair of the board, said.

To be sure, Kantz said, there was disagreement between the members on the issues, “but we found ways to work together in a time when we often see Harrisburg not working together.”

The yearly reports produced by the board offered tangible solutions to election law issues. For example, after the 2020 election, the state took several days to report unofficial results due to counties’ inability to pre-canvass, or prepare mail ballots for counting beforehand. The board’s first report recommended 14 days of pre-canvassing and provided language for the legislature to pass.

“The amendments would allow election results to be known within hours, rather than days, of the conclusion of in-person voting on election day,” the report said.

In 2022, the board suggested amending state law so that sources other than the Pennsylvania Department of Health or obituaries could be used to remove dead voters from the rolls; the following year, it recommended prohibiting counties from rejecting mail ballots for lacking a date on the exterior envelope, a requirement that has tripped up many voters and remains mired in litigation.

Shapiro has left 7 Election Law Advisory Board seats vacant

While statutorily mandated yearly reports are still being produced, the Election Law Advisory Board hasn’t met since September 2023. Part of the reason is that seven congressional districts are lacking a gubernatorial appointee.

According to emails obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA, in October 2024, Kantz emailed an official from the Joint State Government Commission, which oversees the board, to inquire about the status of the appointments and express his dismay that the board wasn’t meeting in a presidential election year.

“We have done all we can on our end to remind the Governor’s Office that we are awaiting the appointment of new members,” Yvonne Hursh, the commission’s counsel, wrote back. She added that the executive nominations calendar, which tracks gubernatorial appointments awaiting Senate confirmation, had “placeholder names” in the open positions.

Many of those same placeholder nominees remain on the current calendar, and others listed as Election Law Advisory Board nominees are also nominated to several other positions, suggesting they may also be placeholders.

Kantz said that the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania also raised the issue directly with Shapiro in a meeting earlier this year.

“I know what it’s like to make appointments,” Kantz said. “I know it’s not easy to find people that want to be on a board, but I don’t think that’s an issue here. I think there is some level of prestige, pride in being on a board that’s been created by the [legislature] to do what we do. Everyone knows how important it is.”

Hursh said her understanding is that the governor is “actively seeking new appointees.”

A spokesperson for the governor’s office did not answer a question about the status of finding appointees, but said the Department of State works closely with stakeholders to provide guidance and make improvements to the voting process.

“The Shapiro Administration is constantly engaging with and listening to election stakeholders and has a team of experienced professionals who work full-time to ensure elections in Pennsylvania are free, fair, safe, and secure,” Rosie Lapowsky, the governor’s press secretary, said.

According to Hursh, the vacancies have made it difficult for the board to convene. Board meetings require a quorum of at least 11 members, she said, and although 15 members are currently active, that doesn’t leave much room for absences.

“All of our members are busy people, and it is always difficult to find [a] date where we can be sure of enough attendance,” she said via email. “We have been very uncomfortable with trying to schedule a meeting, rearranging people’s schedules and prepping materials for a meeting that may fall apart due to a lack of a quorum at the last minute.”

The law that established the board says that a quorum is a “majority of appointed members,” raising the possibility that a majority of sitting board members would be sufficient. But Hursh said that the board follows a legislative rule which says the “majority of the membership” constitutes a quorum.

“The majority definition that would not count vacancies would give 8 out of 22 positions the power to convene meetings and make decisions,” she said in an email. “We do not believe that outcome was the intent of the legislature, given that the overall intent of requiring a quorum is to ensure that a body’s decisions are not made by a small, potentially unrepresentative group.”

The board has also said in recent reports that the missing members aren’t just a concern for forming a quorum, but also because they feel it is “unwise” to convene and debate issues with so many parts of the state not represented.

Christina Iacono, a Democrat appointed to the board from the 5th Congressional District and a former poll worker coordinator for Delaware County, agreed that the board was doing good work and was frustrated that the board hasn’t met recently.

Even though the legislature hasn’t passed any of the board’s recommendations, Iacono said it still has value in informing the proposals lawmakers do introduce and providing non-legislative readers, like judges, with detailed information on how elections work directly from officials involved in making them happen.

“I would hope the legislature will eventually look at what we have created,” she said. “Everyone in government has a tough job, and I do think partisanship gets in the way of many things getting done, but I think overall having a group that gets together that puts together guidance is a good thing.”

Hursh said the Joint State Government Commission is “uncomfortable with the amount of time that has elapsed since the group last met” and is hoping to schedule a meeting for the fall, but so far it hasn’t been able to find a date that works for the remaining members.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Why the GOP wants closed primaries in Texas, and what that could mean for voters

2026-06-18T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

During the Texas Republican Convention last week, Gov. Greg Abbott publicly backed a push to close primaries and require voters to register with a party.

“We are going to make clear that in the future, only Republicans vote in Republican primaries,” he said Friday, addressing the convention in Houston.

After an unsuccessful legislative push last year to close the primary elections, when voters choose a party’s nominees for the November general elections, state Republicans sued to make it happen. That litigation is still pending in federal court, but Abbott wants state lawmakers to try again. Lawmakers “can and should be more responsive to Republicans than a judge may be,” Abbott told the Texas Scorecard, a conservative news outlet.

During the convention, Abbott noted that closing the primary will require a “thoughtful process” laying out “how we’re going to make sure we get all Republicans registered to vote and identified as Republicans.” Abbott’s comments were received with cheers and applause. The party also made closing the primaries one of its top legislative priorities for next year’s legislative session.

Here’s what you need to know about the GOP’s push to close the primaries:

When did the recent push to close Texas primaries begin?

For years, Republicans in Texas have made closing primaries a top legislative priority, but haven’t gotten anywhere. The push intensified in 2024 when two incumbent state representatives viewed as moderates, former House Speaker Dade Phelan and Gary VanDeaver, held off challengers in their primary races by fewer than 800 votes.

Some Republican leaders claimed Phelan and VanDeaver only won because they’d received votes from Democratic- and independent-leaning voters — which is allowed under the state’s open primary system that doesn’t require party registration and allows any voter to cast a ballot in whichever primary they want.

That same year, more than 70% of voters in the Republican primary supported a nonbinding proposition calling for closed primaries.

How do primaries work in Texas?

Texas’ open primary system has been in use since the early 1990s, when the state moved away from using party conventions to nominate candidates.

Eligible voters in Texas do not have to select a party affiliation when registering to vote, and may choose to vote in any one party’s primary during a given election cycle.

Unlike most other states, where county and state officials are responsible for managing the primary election, Texas gives the political parties a lot of authority. On primary Election Day, the parties have discretion to choose where and how voters cast ballots and how the votes are counted. The state then reimburses them for many expenses and administrative costs.

Why did closing the primaries become such a hot topic?

The issue heated up last fall, when the Texas Republican Party sued Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, a Republican, arguing that the state’s open primary system is a violation of their freedom of association rights under the First Amendment. Then, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sided with the GOP in asking a federal judge to strike down parts of the election code that allow for open primaries. Paxton’s office gave Nelson less than an hour’s notice of his filing.

Nelson, who earlier this month announced she’d be stepping down as secretary of state, opposed Paxton’s motion and argued that it’s up to the state Legislature to make changes to election law. This sparked backlash among some Republicans, and scattered calls on social media for Abbott to fire her.

The lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

What would it actually take to close the primaries?

The law would have to change. Republican lawmakers’ proposals to close the primaries haven’t been successful so far, but Abbott’s recently declared support could push the proposal forward during next year’s legislative session.

Alternatively, the federal judge presiding over the GOP’s lawsuit could also at some point rule the current state law unconstitutional, which would also force a change.

What would closing the primaries in Texas mean for voters?

Administratively, changing the state’s current system could be complicated because the state’s more than 18 million registered voters have never had to declare a party affiliation. And the state’s voter registration system is not designed to accommodate that.

In its lawsuit, the GOP suggested that if the judge were to rule in their favor, the party could maintain its own voter registration lists, “develop its own verification procedures,” and work with county election officials to provide them with access to the GOP’s system. Under that model, Democrats would presumably need to take similar action.

But the change could also require administrative action by the state. Election policy experts are wondering whether switching to closed primaries would mean requiring all voters to re-register with a party affiliation. That could be a big lift not just for voters but for the state, which would have to redesign its forms and software to allow for voters to list a party affiliation. It’s not yet clear how long that would take and how much it could cost.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

FBI probe of Ohio voting rights group expands to include an affiliated national advocacy network

2026-06-17T20:44:16+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update, June 17, 6:55 p.m.: This story has been updated with a statement from America Votes.

Federal officials have served a subpoena on one of the nation’s leading nonprofit voter outreach groups, which has financially supported the Ohio election advocacy group at the center of a deepening investigation by the Trump administration, according to a source familiar with the probe.

The FBI served the subpoena on America Votes, a Washington-based organization founded by prominent Democratic leaders that works to turn out voters nationwide, the sources said.

America Votes, which has given the Ohio Organizing Collaborative at least $500,000 in recent years, according to its tax filings, issued a statement Wednesday confirming it had received a subpoena “asking for basic records related to funding of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. We have been informed America Votes is not a target of the investigation.”

The subpoena signals a broader FBI investigation into the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a statewide nonprofit group founded in 2007 that works on voting rights efforts. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s sister organization, Ohio Organizing Campaign, said it registered nearly 160,000 Ohio voters in 2024, describing the effort as the largest independent voter registration program in the country.

Prentiss Haney, an Ohio Organizing Collaborative board member and former director of the group, said the FBI appeared to be seeking information from America Votes and other voting rights groups that worked with his organization.

“This is very far reaching,” he said. “They seem to be fishing for any- and everything related to civil rights and voting rights infrastructure.”

The FBI and Justice Department did not respond to emails seeking comment. Last week, FBI special agents searched the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s offices and questioned staff members and volunteers about potential voter registration fraud, according to Haney and others familiar with the investigation.

Haney said he did not know the full extent of the FBI investigation.

The FBI probe comes amid rising concerns ahead of the November midterm election about Trump administration efforts to question the legitimacy of voting in America. Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that voter fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election. Most recently, he accused Democrats, again without evidence, of rigging results in the California primary earlier this month.

FBI agents have seized ballots from the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County, Georgia, and secured election records in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, has been at the forefront of efforts among elections officials to scrutinize potential voter fraud. Last year, LaRose referred more than 1,200 cases to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, largely related to alleged unlawful voter registration of voting activity. LaRose said he found more than 1,000 noncitizens who had registered to vote, including 167 noncitizens who appeared to have voted in federal elections between 2018 and 2024.

But the figures represent allegations, not yet proven cases. Previous batches of LaRose voter-fraud referrals have produced few prosecutions: AP reported that of 621 criminal referrals sent to Ohio’s attorney general, prosecutors secured indictments against only nine people for voting as noncitizens over a decade.

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare across the country and studies, audits, and court cases have found no evidence that it occurs at anything close to the scale needed to alter modern statewide or federal election outcomes except in very unusual cases.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Everything you need to know about how to vote in Arizona’s primary election

2026-06-17T19:46:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Get ready, Arizonans — it’s almost time to vote in the state primary election.

It’s a midterm year, which means key congressional seats and top state positions are up for grabs. The primary is an important part of the election cycle, as it determines which candidates will proceed to the general election on Nov. 3.

Arizona’s primary is scheduled for July 21, but voting starts on June 24.

We compiled answers to some common questions about the election. Here’s everything you need to know to cast your ballot.

What offices are on the ballot in Arizona’s primary election?

At the federal level, voters will select nominees for seats in the House of Representatives. Neither of the state’s U.S. Senate seats is up for election this year.

Voters will also choose nominees for all of the state’s top positions, including governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. Every seat in both chambers of the Arizona Legislature are also up for election this year.

Finally, a number of local offices and ballot measures will appear on voters’ primary ballots — but in most cases, those races are nonpartisan, meaning voters won’t be nominating candidates to run under a party’s banner in the general election. Rather, they’ll typically decide the outcome of those seats and propositions outright. In some cases, local candidates may proceed to a runoff election, depending on the results of the vote and the municipality’s rules.

Who can vote in the primary election?

All registered voters, regardless of party affiliation, are eligible to participate in the state primary.

If you are a member of one of Arizona’s five registered political parties, you will receive that party’s ballot.

The state also allows voters not registered with a political party to pick which ballot they would like to use to vote — Democratic, Republican, or No Labels. The Libertarian and Green parties hold closed primaries, meaning only party members can participate.

How can I check my voter registration status?

You can check your registration status through My.Arizona.Vote.

To use the site, you’ll need to provide one of the following:

Your driver’s license number.
Your tribal identification card number.
The last four digits of your Social Security number.

How can I register to vote or change my political party affiliation?

You can register to vote online if you have an Arizona driver’s license or state ID.

Otherwise, you’ll need to register with a paper voter registration form. You can return the form to your county recorder by mail or drop it off at their office.

If you register with a paper form, you must provide proof of citizenship to be eligible to vote a full ballot. Remember to include a photocopy of one of these documents:

Your Arizona driver’s license.
Your Arizona non-operating identification card.
Your birth certificate.
The photo identification page of your U.S. passport or passport card.
Your naturalization documents.
Your alien registration number.
Your U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs or tribal identification card.

If you do not provide proof of citizenship, you may still be registered to vote, but will only be eligible to participate in federal races — not state or local contests.

How can I tell if I’m eligible to vote?

In Arizona, you are qualified to vote if you are a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years old by the date of the election, and a resident of the state for at least 29 days before the election.

You cannot register to vote if you are a convicted felon and your rights have not been restored, or if you have been adjudicated as an incapacitated person.

When is the deadline to register to vote in the primary election?

The voter registration deadline for the state primary is 11:59 p.m. on June 22. Be sure to check your registration status before the deadline if you wish to participate in the election.

When is the voting period?

Mail ballots go out starting on June 24. That’s also the first day of in-person voting. Election Day is on July 21, and is the last day to vote.

How can I get a ballot in the mail?

If you are registered with a political party and have signed up for the state’s Active Early Voting List, you will automatically receive a ballot in the mail.

If you’re not on the list but want to vote by mail, or if you are not registered to vote with a political party, you must contact your county election officials to request a one-time mail ballot.

The deadline to request a mail ballot is July 10.

I’m out of town. Will my ballot be forwarded?

No, your ballot will not be automatically sent to your temporary address, even if you’ve set up mail forwarding. State law does not allow the U.S. Postal Service to forward official election materials, such as ballots.

If you need a ballot forwarded, you should contact your county recorder.

When is the deadline to mail in a ballot for the primary election?

Your primary ballot must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day, July 21, or else it won’t be counted. To account for possible mail delays, you should put your ballot in the mail seven to 10 days before the election — by July 14 at the latest.

Postage is prepaid, so your ballot does not require a stamp.

Can I drop off my ballot in person instead?

Yes. Counties typically offer freestanding drop boxes where voters can return their ballots. Check with your local election officials for locations.

Voters can also return their mail ballots at polling sites during the early voting period or on Election Day.

Those who do so can opt to show ID when dropping off their ballots to have them counted sooner. If you choose to show ID, you may have to wait in line at the voting location. Some counties may offer a separate line for voters who are dropping off their mail ballot with their ID. Others may require you to stand in the same line as in-person voters.

If you choose to drop off your ballot without showing ID, you can skip the line at the polls. Your ballot will go through signature verification, a process that safeguards against fraud, before being counted.

I want to vote in person. How can I do that?

All Arizona voters can cast their ballot in person, regardless of whether they were mailed a ballot. You can vote early in person or on Election Day.

If you received a mail ballot, election workers will void that ballot and give you a replacement ballot to vote. If you were not mailed a ballot, you will receive one when you arrive at the polling place.

Some counties assign polling places to voters based on their voting precinct. Others use a vote center model in which voters can go to any polling place in the county to cast their ballot. Check with your county election officials for details.

Polls are open on Election Day from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Early voting hours vary by location; contact your local election officials for details.

Do I need to bring anything with me to the polls?

ID is required if you vote in person. Acceptable forms of ID include:

Your valid Arizona driver’s license.
Your valid state identification card.
Your tribal enrollment card.
Other government-issued identification.
Two items, such as a utility bill and a bank statement, that bear your name and address.

Can I track my ballot?

Yes. Maricopa County voters can track their ballot at BeBallotReady.Vote. Pima County voters can track their ballot on the county recorder’s website. Voters in other parts of Arizona can track their ballot via BallotTrax.

I have more questions. How can I contact my local election officials?

The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office provides contact information for election officials by county.

All voters can contact the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office at 1-877-THE-VOTE or 602-542-8683.

If you run into any problems, we want to hear about them!

If you have any other questions or concerns about voting in Arizona, please let us know. We can be reached at az.tips@votebeat.org.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Alleged Wisconsin fake elector accomplices plead not guilty as Trump seeks to rewrite 2020 election

2026-06-15T18:34:53+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

As three alleged planners of Wisconsin’s fake elector scheme pleaded not guilty Tuesday to eleven forgery-related criminal charges in Dane County court, the criminal charges against them are moving forward in a national legal and political landscape that looks dramatically different from the one in which they were filed.

When Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed the charges in June 2024, Joe Biden was president, Donald Trump was battling a criminal case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and state prosecutors in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada were bringing criminal cases tied to the fake elector scheme.

That scheme arose in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when Trump allies tried to keep him in power despite his loss. Those allies, who became known as fake or false electors, attempted to cast electoral votes for Trump in multiple states he lost and submit those certificates to Congress.

Now, as the three defendants in the Wisconsin case await trial , the case enters what is expected to be a lengthy legal process. It will unfold as Trump has regained the presidency, and he and his allies are undertaking extensive efforts to rewrite what happened in the 2020 election.

Since returning to office, Trump has issued a federal pardon to those involved in the 2020 scheme, and his administration has sent the FBI to investigate the 2020 election in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

The federal criminal case against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election has been dismissed. And, until recently, his administration had plans to allocate $1.8 billion to compensate people it claimed had been unfairly prosecuted by the federal government, raising questions about whether participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and those involved in the fake elector schemes could receive taxpayer funds.

Other state cases have also faltered. Georgia’s election interference case has been dismissed, though not before the prosecution secured some guilty pleas from Trump’s allies. Michigan’s false elector case has also been dismissed. Arizona’s remains unresolved after a major setback for the prosecution, and Nevada’s just resumed after its Supreme Court revived charges that a lower court had thrown out.

Kaul faced criticism for filing his charges so late — it was the last criminal case to be filed regarding the fake electors. But two years later, that timing has left Wisconsin’s as one of the last cases standing in the broader, mostly failed effort to prosecute Trump and his allies for their attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

“The direction of activity has completely flipped, from prosecuting the people who were disrupting the election or inhibiting the normal flow of events to now going after Trump’s adversaries,” said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor who founded the Elections Research Center.

The Trump administration’s new investigation into the 2020 election in Wisconsin and elsewhere, Burden said, “seems to be a targeted effort at people who were mostly upholding the law and trying to administer an election in a very difficult environment.”

Amid the federal government’s current activity, and nearly six years removed from the 2020 election, Burden said any guilty finding in the Wisconsin fake elector case would likely have a muted effect.

“If we wanted the public to believe that there were ramifications for that kind of unlawful behavior, it would have to happen quickly and publicly, and feel like it was an immediate response to what people had done after the 2020 election,” he said. “But that’s not where we are six years later.”

‘Shocking’ if there are no ramifications in Wisconsin

The Wisconsin criminal case is still in its preliminary stages. Although it was filed two years ago, a number of motions and an appeal have set the case back significantly.

The defendants — former Dane County Judge Jim Troupis, who was Trump’s Wisconsin campaign attorney in 2020; attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who advised Trump on legal matters; and former Trump aide Mike Roman — each face 11 felony charges for his part in allegedly guiding Wisconsin’s 10 fake electors to send documents to the U.S. Capitol falsely stating that Trump had won Wisconsin in the 2020 election.

All entered not-guilty pleas on Tuesday during a brief proceeding attended by a couple dozen people in attendance in the several pews in the back of the courtroom.

Chesebro and Roman appeared virtually. Troupis, who briefly worked in the same courthouse where he was arraigned, was there in-person. He showed little emotion during the quick arraignment but smiled as he greeted supporters afterward. He told the press after the proceeding that he didn’t have anything to say.

The 10 false electors from 2020 aren’t defendants in the current case, but they separately settled a civil lawsuit in Wisconsin by acknowledging that Biden won the 2020 election and pledging not to violate election laws in the future.

Chesebro and Troupis separately reached a settlement in that case, turning over a trove of documents outlining their role in 2020 and agreeing not to participate in similar schemes in future elections.

Text messages and emails show that Chesebro was a primary architect behind the 2020 plan to have Wisconsin’s GOP electors attest that Trump won the state while Trump’s court challenges seeking to overturn the election were still ongoing. Troupis discussed that plan with the Trump campaign, and Roman helped craft the language of the documents Republicans planned to send to the Capitol from states that Biden won.

Troupis has since asked the federal government to reimburse him $3.2 million from the proposed $1.8 billion fund, saying his life has been a “nightmare” since he stepped up to represent Trump.

“My experience is a poster-child for what weaponization can do,” he wrote in a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, adding that “the entire legal system is at risk if compensation is not paid.”

Attorneys for Chesebro and Roman didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Troupis’ attorney declined to comment.

Burden said it is striking that the case is still ongoing nearly six years after the election, but he said the conduct at issue remains extraordinary.

“These were among the most serious challenges to elections we’ve seen in modern times,” Burden said.

“To think that there might be no ramifications of that really would be shocking,” he said, “and, I think, at odds with how the American criminal justice system has typically operated.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Trump’s moves to erect voting hurdles face race against the clock

2026-06-15T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

President Donald Trump is in a race against time.

Since returning to office last year, Trump has repeatedly tried to remake American elections, including by issuing two executive orders that would erect new federal rules and restrictions on voting and various aspects of elections. Voting rights advocates and a variety of states have filed lawsuits that have already frozen key tentpoles of Trump’s first executive order on voting and could do the same for the second. If Trump wants to see these measures impact this November’s elections, his administration has to move fast.

In recent days, the Trump administration has taken new steps to erect the architecture it would need to implement key pieces of the president’s most recent election executive order, which called in March for the Department of Homeland Security to create “State Citizenship Lists” of all U.S. citizens who are over 18.

In response to the order, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled plans to set up a special system by the end of this month — then revised its plans just days later, showing how quickly the administration is moving to try and put these measures in place.

The executive order also calls on the U.S. Postal Service to set up a new process where it could block voters from receiving mail-in ballots if they are not on a vetted list provided to the federal government 60 days before an election, and the agency has proposed new rules to do so. Many election officials say the move could cause chaos, and is beyond the president’s authority.

Setting aside the constitutional questions around the efforts, voting rights advocates say that it could be practically very difficult for the agencies involved to create a workable system before the November election.

“Elections are like a battleship, it’s not like you can turn them around on the fly,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA political science professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. “It seems exceedingly unlikely that any of this will be in place by November.”

The administration’s court filings hint at some of the difficulties.

On Friday, June 5, the Trump administration filed a four-paragraph notice to a court in Boston overseeing a legal challenge to the March executive order. In that notice, the Department of Homeland Security said it was moving ahead with plans to allow states to check voter eligibility by submitting their entire voter lists to a federal database known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE.

It also said the department would create a portal that would allow state election officials to “securely access citizenship-related data” from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, the Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Department of State — by June 30.

But three days later, this past Monday, the Trump administration changed plans and filed a new notice with the court, outlining a new memorandum rescinding the previously stated policies. Per the notice, that memo walks back some of the specifics of the earlier implementation plan, promising only to provide by June 30 “a mechanism for States to receive secure, state-focused citizenship-related information from each agency.”

The previously mentioned portal would come sometime later this year, the revised notice said, and the new memo also rescinded the proposal that would let states submit their voter rolls to SAVE because, the notice said, that approach wasn’t specifically called for in the executive order.

Some states have already used the system — which was previously used to verify immigrants’ eligibility for benefits — to check voter eligibility after the administration revamped the database and vigorously encouraged states to do so, but others have questioned the accuracy of the SAVE system and declined to use it.

The initial notice also said that the Homeland Security department “contemplates working with” the U.S. Postal Service to access its data on mail ballots and use it to “monitor mail-in and absentee ballot flows, identify anomalies that may suggest voter fraud or misuse, and generate authorized investigative leads.”

In the second notice, the administration instead told the court the two agencies were having “preliminary conversations” on potential data-sharing, and decisions would be contingent on final legal and policy determinations.

Beyond the logistical challenges, the proposals are facing legal challenges that could block them from taking effect. A coalition of Democratic party committees and some nonprofit groups have challenged the Trump executive order as unconstitutional. And while a federal judge in Washington, D.C. declined to immediately halt major provisions in that case, a federal judge in Boston could still do so. That judge expressed concerns last month during a hearing on a separate case brought by Democratic officials from twenty-three states, the District of Columbia, and a different group of nonprofits, and is expected to rule soon.

John Davisson, deputy director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the latest Trump administration move “a five-alarm fire for the protection of privacy and voting rights” across the country.

“Building a citizenship registry is beyond the federal government’s power, illegal under the Privacy Act, impossible to construct without introducing catastrophic error, and guaranteed to cause untold numbers of perfectly legal voters to be denied their right to vote if implemented,” he said.

The Trump administration says its efforts are a way to integrate federal systems to help ensure there is no fraud in the country’s electoral system.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment. In April, Lauren Bis, a spokesperson, said SAVE “is a critical tool for state and local governments to safeguard the integrity of elections across the country.” The Trump administration has sued a majority of U.S. states in an effort to secure access to their voter registration databases.

Votebeat Brunch: Is your election rigged? Separating fact from fiction.

California’s primary election set off a new wave of unsubstantiated allegations — including from Trump — that the vote was rigged. To separate fact from fiction, Votebeat spoke to Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and an expert in disinformation. DiResta served for five years as technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory and co-led a nonpartisan Election Integrity Partnership that studied misinformation during the 2020 election. The interview was conducted in writing and has been lightly edited for clarity, brevity, and style.

Q: The California election has triggered a new flood of unsupported allegations that the vote is rigged. What advice do you have for voters trying to separate fact from fiction?

Many election rumors spread because they are emotionally compelling, not because they’re supported by facts. When people encounter a claim that an election was “rigged,” they should ask a few questions:

- What is the original source of the claim?

- Is there any evidence, or just screenshots, anecdotes, or speculation? “It just seems weird” isn’t evidence.

- Have election officials, courts, or independent observers said anything?

- Do multiple credible sources support the claim?

People should also be careful about treating isolated irregularities as proof of widespread fraud. Every election has some mistakes, and administrative errors. Those are not automatically evidence that they were manipulated. Officials will often explain what happened quickly, but you sometimes have to go check because their posts generally don’t go viral. A useful rule of thumb is: The stronger the claim, the stronger the evidence must be.

Q: What are some tools people can use to get reliable information amid a flood of misinformation?

A good starting point is official election information from state and local election offices, since they can provide direct information about procedures, vote counting, and certification, and they know the local rules better than anyone else. Fact checks are helpful as well. Keep in mind that getting answers takes time. Asking an AI for facts isn’t going to get you an immediate answer in most cases because it has to work with what’s out there, too. Asking Grok or another AI can help, but it’s sometimes dependent on how recent or specific the issue is. Be wary and double check, or check again later.

Q: Is there more state and federal officials should be doing to address election misinformation?

Election officials who communicate quickly and responsively about voting procedures, counting, audits, and certification tend to leave less room for rumors to thrive. Communicating in advance can help, too. And strengthening influencer disclosure rules would go a long way toward shifting incentives.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Republican legislators put measure to change voting procedures on November ballot

2026-06-13T16:57:48+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

In a contentious late-night vote, the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature on Friday placed a measure on the November ballot that, if passed by voters, would significantly alter voting in the state.

The measure, HCR 2001, would make various changes to voting procedures, most notably requiring all voters, even those who vote by mail, to provide “valid government-issued proof of identity.” If voters approve the measure, it would take effect in 2028.

State lawmakers voted along party lines to pass the referral, also known as the Fast, Accurate, Secure, Transparent Election Results Act. In Arizona, legislators can refer measures to the ballot with a simple majority vote in both chambers, bypassing Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto pen.

State law already mandates that voters casting ballots in person show photo ID or two non-photo documents bearing their name and address, such as a utility bill. But the vast majority of the state’s voters cast ballots by mail. State law currently does not require these voters to provide ID, although they do have to provide identification upon registering to vote and sign their ballot envelopes when voting. Those signatures are then compared against their signatures on file to safeguard against voter fraud.

It’s unclear exactly how mail voters might prove their identity should the measure pass in November. State Rep. Alex Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican who sponsored the legislation in the Arizona House and is running for secretary of state, told members of the Senate Judiciary and Election Committee in March that there were “many potential options,” including a system by which county recorders would issue each voter a unique identification number and require them to write the last four digits of it on their ballot envelope.

He suggested state lawmakers should revisit the topic next year if voters approve the measure.

The measure is part of a national movement by Republicans to restrict voting by mail. Earlier this week, the GOP-controlled Ohio legislature passed a similar photo ID requirement for mail voters, sending it to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine for his signature. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March giving the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented oversight over mail voting. That order has been challenged in court, and it remains to be seen if it will be implemented for the 2026 election.

“For years, the people of Arizona have been calling out for real election reform,” Kolodin said in March, adding that tightening voter ID requirements was also a priority of the Trump administration. “This measure gives them the opportunity to take it into their own hands.”

Voter ID measure aims to speed up vote-counting

Among the other changes the measure would make is the one that inspired its acronym, the FAST Election Results Act.

It would require counties to give voters who drop off their mail ballot at a polling place on Election Day the option to have their ballot counted on site, rather than transported back to a central location for tabulation. That could speed up the reporting of election results without “even a minor inconvenience” to voters, per Kolodin.

A similar law, passed in 2024, just took effect this year. That law gives mail voters the option to show ID when dropping off their ballot, eliminating the need to check their signature later.

But unlike state lawmakers’ proposal, that law does not require counties to physically count those ballots at voting sites. Most counties currently transport all ballots back to a central election office after voting ends to tabulate them.

Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, said in March that the measure would pose huge financial and logistical challenges for those counties. At the time, the measure would have taken effect immediately after passage, giving counties little to no time to adjust.

The version of the measure that ultimately passed, however, is not effective until 2028 and includes a provision requiring the state to fund new equipment and other costs associated with its implementation.

Marson did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday.

The legislation would also prohibit noncitizens from contributing money to influence state elections and prohibit any candidates from knowingly accepting such contributions. Additionally, it contains a provision asserting that the state’s elections “shall be decided solely by the votes of eligible citizen voters.”

Some other provisions of the measure are already in state and federal law, including that only U.S. citizens are eligible to register to vote. Still, Republicans said on the floor that the legislation addressed many concerns their constituents have about the integrity of the state’s elections, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud or a rigged vote.

“These reforms are necessary,” Rep. Neal Carter, a Republican from San Tan Valley, said on Friday. “They really are.”

But Democrats in both chambers viewed it differently. On Friday, they repeatedly described it as an attack on mail voting, which is wildly popular in Arizona.

“The intention of this is to eliminate early voting,” said Sen. Analise Ortiz, a Democrat from Phoenix. “We shouldn’t be tiptoeing around the impact of this, because what it means is that senior citizens, rural voters, tribal voters, people with disabilities, people who work multiple jobs and can’t wait in long lines, are going to lose their access to vote by mail. That is shameful.”

Voting-rights advocates propose counterinitiative

The measure may not be the only voting-related question on the November ballot.

A group called Protect the Vote Arizona is collecting signatures to qualify a different ballot initiative that would counteract the Republican-supported one.

That measure, the Free, Fair and Secure Elections Act, would enshrine a fundamental right to vote in person at countywide polling places or by early ballot in the state constitution.

It would further prescribe that voters who sign up to get a ballot by mail keep getting one until they move, die, or opt out — canceling out a state law scheduled to take effect next year that would remove voters from the early voting list if they haven’t voted using a mail ballot in more than two years. And it would codify the state’s current rules around voter ID in the state constitution to prevent new mandates from being placed on mail voters.

In Arizona, if two measures with conflicting provisions both pass, whichever one receives more votes takes effect.

It’s unclear exactly who is funding the group behind the initiative. Protect the Vote Arizona’s officers have a history of working with left-leaning politicians and causes. But Stacy Pearson of Lumen Strategies, which is helping manage the campaign, said the effort was “grassroots.”

“We didn’t start with big funders telling us what to do,” Pearson said. “We started with, there’s an opportunity here in Arizona to protect what works.”

The organization had not received any donations as of March 31, according to a campaign finance report. It will file its next report on July 15.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Michigan revokes Antrim County clerk’s access to voter roll after unauthorized cancellations

2026-06-12T22:13:55+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections revoked Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s access to Michigan’s voter roll Friday, the latest salvo in the dispute between the state and the controversial Republican election official.

Jonathan Brater, Michigan’s director of elections, said in a letter to Bishop that she is “taking actions ... that do not comply with the Michigan Election Law and fall outside the scope of your statutory authority” after she allegedly changed or even canceled some voters’ registrations earlier this year.

Under Michigan law, maintaining the Qualified Voter File — the state’s central database of registered voters — is the job of city and township clerks, not county clerks. Brater noted in his letter that Bishop does “not have authority to alter QVF records except in certain situations,” including to flag voters who have died.

However, Brater wrote, the state’s review of Bishop’s QVF activity found that that was not what she was doing. He also reprimanded her for sending notices to voters about the cancellations that were insufficiently complete, based on unreliable information, and also supposed to be sent only by city and township clerks.

“Based upon your actions, it appears there is a lack of understanding regarding your responsibilities and authority as it relates to voter registration, list maintenance, and use of QVF,” Brater wrote. He concluded by notifying her that her QVF access has been suspended until she completes a series of trainings on QVF security, promises to comply with Michigan’s election law in the future, and responds adequately to the state’s initial inquiries on whose voter registrations were changed and why.

Bishop did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon on the suspension. However, she has previously argued she has a “mandate” from voters to “rectify long-standing vulnerabilities in the county’s registration data” after Antrim County elected her on promises she would clean up the county’s rolls.

Bishop has been in hot water with the state since April, when Votebeat first reported that she had been altering people’s voter registrations. Interlochen Public Radio later reported that she had sent notices of confirmation or cancellation to some 1,800 voters in the county of about 25,000 people, confusing voters and irritating township clerks who had to deal with the fallout.

After Bishop failed to correctly respond to the state — she initially sent her response to an incorrect email address and did not answer a number of questions — the Department of State formally demanded she stop. Bishop and her husband, a radio host best known as Trucker Randy, threatened their own legal action against the state. They raised a few hundred dollars for the effort before ultimately unpublishing their fundraiser. It does not appear a suit was filed.

Michigan State Police also investigated the Bishops after it came to light that her husband was alone in the clerk’s office using her computer in February. The Bishops told investigators that he was using the computer to watch a public county meeting as he was waiting for a phone call. The attorney general’s office confirmed Friday that investigation is ongoing.

Voters should not see services interrupted by Bishop’s lack of access to the QVF, as her deputy clerk, Annette Marcus, will still have access, and the bulk of work in the QVF is done by city and township clerks.

The county’s next elections are the primaries in August.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

The state has taken over elections in a Texas county. It’s not the one everyone expected.

2026-06-12T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Three years ago, Texas Republicans approved a state law that was designed to allow unprecedented state oversight of elections in Harris County, a Democratic stronghold that is also the state’s most populous county and includes most of Houston.

State Republican lawmakers said at the time they were responding to problems and irregularities with Harris County’s elections, while some election and policy experts decried the partisan overtones of the new law and said it amounted to an intrusion on local control of elections.

But the law also said the state could take control of elections in smaller counties, if it found problems there when conducting state-required random audits. Now, the state is using the law for the first time — but not to take over in Harris County.

Instead, the state has assumed administrative oversight of voter registration in Val Verde County, which sits along the Rio Grande west of San Antonio and has around 30,000 registered voters. The county voted Republican in the past two presidential elections.

The county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registration officials, who are responsible for voter registration duties, have repeatedly failed to maintain accurate voter registration records despite on-site training and help from officials with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, according to the agency’s preliminary audit of the county, released last year.

“A recurring pattern of problems with election administration and voter registration exists and the problems impede the free exercise of citizens’ voting rights,” the preliminary audit report from the state said.

The findings prompted the state to take control, the first time it has used that provision of the 2023 law. The agency did not answer questions about how long the county will remain under administrative oversight but in an emailed statement, said a full report with details on the parameters of the state’s oversight is expected in July.

The law’s author, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, said the bill’s application beyond Harris aims to address lingering voter registration and election administration issues that some election officials may be failing to resolve.

“This is an example of how we’re just trying to make sure that we’re following the law and it’s not specific to just one county,” Bettencourt said. “We need to make sure that if there are problems, that they’re followed up on, and that they stay fixed.”

A state audit finds problems

In 2022, Harris County, under the leadership of newly appointed election officials, had to extend voting for an hour after various polling places had malfunctioning voting machines, paper ballot shortages, and long waiting periods. Losing Republican candidates filed more than 20 lawsuits against the county, citing those problems and seeking a redo of the election. All but one of those lawsuits was dismissed. A judge ordered a new election in one race, though it never happened because the previously elected candidate resigned before it could be held.

During the 2023 legislative session, Bettencourt said the county’s election woes inspired him to craft a bill granting the Texas secretary of state the authority to investigate election “irregularities” after complaints are filed specifically in counties with more than 4 million people, a category that includes only Harris County.

The bill was later amended before passage to also apply to any counties that are selected at random for a state-required biennial audit of elections. In 2024, Val Verde was among the counties selected from a drawing to be audited.

This law gives state officials the ability to follow through and help county officials resolve ongoing problems uncovered by the audits when necessary, Bettencourt said.

The secretary of state’s office, until now, has had less rule-making authority over counties’ election procedures than nearly any other state’s chief election authority. But under this law, secretary of state officials can remove a county election administrator or file a petition to remove an elected county officer overseeing elections — such as a county clerk or a tax assessor-collector overseeing voter registration duties — if “a recurring pattern of problems” isn’t resolved.

That’s what ultimately happened in Val Verde. According to the preliminary audit report, the state found that Val Verde’s tax assessor-collector and voter registration office had no written voter registration policies. It found that staff created new voter registration records instead of updating existing ones, which resulted in duplicates. The staff could not explain how voter registration accuracy was verified, and provisional ballots were not processed promptly.

According to the preliminary audit report, state officials said the voter registrar’s failures led to some voters being assigned to the wrong jurisdiction and receiving the wrong ballot style, as well as voters often having to cast provisional ballots, which are at more risk of not ultimately counting. Due to these consistent issues coming up at polling locations across the county, the county clerk requested additional help from the secretary of state during the audit process.

In 2023 and 2024, the secretary of state sent teams to Val Verde County to provide “in-depth training” on voter registration and redistricting processes. “The state team worked with all offices to ensure that the jurisdictional boundaries were accurately reflected in the statewide system. However, the audit revealed that Val Verde County has not consistently updated this information since the Secretary of State provided assistance last year,” the preliminary audit report says.

The county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, Elodia Garcia, said in an email that her staff has since reviewed its list of registered voters to merge duplicates, though some are still pending, and that they have resolved the issues with jurisdiction boundaries by visiting the addresses of affected voters and double-checking street numbers. She also noted that her office has now implemented a policy manual for voter registration, that voter registration data is entered in a timely manner, and that they now use time stamps to have proof of dates on records.

When Bettencourt’s bill was first proposed, election policy experts raised concerns about how punitive it would be and the unprecedented authority it gave the state over local elections.

But the state’s implementation of the law in Val Verde indicates the state is so far using the law to resolve ongoing issues, not to punish local officials or make sweeping changes to local policies. Daniel Griffith, senior policy director for Secure Democracy Foundation, one of the experts who initially voiced concern, said that he’s interested to see whether the state oversight could lead to improvements in Val Verde and set guardrails for all 254 counties.

“If that is something that is enhanced by this or is a benefit that can be realized, then that’s definitely a good thing, and something that I think most election observers would certainly be in favor of,” Griffith said.

‘We gotta fix it’

Val Varde County Judge Lewis Owens, a Democrat, said the county welcomed the audit and findings from the state.

“You can’t fix what you don’t know is broke. So, with them coming in and giving us the detailed report like they did and pointing out exactly what needs to be fixed, we gotta do it,” Owens said, adding, “We gotta fix it.”

Owens said he expects another report from the state in August detailing the county’s progress. If the issues aren’t fixed by then, he said, the Val Verde County Commissioners Court will decide whether it needs to create a county elections administration position and appoint an official whose sole responsibility will be election administration and voter registration.

“It’s good that they’re holding our feet to the fire. We gotta do a better job,” Owens said. “We can’t afford for a person to go in to go vote, and they’re having to vote provisional because we screwed up.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

You’re invited: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered

2026-06-11T19:25:51+00:00

Will the 2026 midterms happen? Short answer: Yes.

Watch the event recording below:

Got more questions about the midterms? Submit them to Votebeat reporters with your RSVP on Eventbrite, and they’ll give you the long answer live on July 13 at 5 p.m EDT.

Live event: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered

Virtual webinar event
July 13 at 5 p.m. ET
RSVP for free on Eventbrite.

Dion Nissenbaum is a senior reporter for Votebeat National. He spent much of his career as a Wall Street Journal foreign and national security correspondent based in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Turkey, Belgium and Washington. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting. He is also a filmmaker, most recently of “Who Killed Shireen?” about the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

Natalia Contreras is a senior reporter for Votebeat Texas. She has covered a range of topics as a community journalist, including local government, public safety, immigration, and social issues. She previously worked at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Indianapolis Star, and the Austin American-Statesman, where her reporting focused on the impacts of government policies on communities of color.

Carter Walker is a senior reporter for Votebeat Pennsylvania. He was previously a reporter at the LNP in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he covered political extremism, including election misinformation. After working at the Times West Virginian, he returned to Pennsylvania to cover government and politics with a focus on investigative work.

Special prosecutor investigating latest election-control disagreement in Maricopa County

2026-06-09T19:37:32+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

With mere weeks until voting begins in a high-stakes primary election, a long-standing disagreement over election control in Maricopa County is only getting more combative.

In a new twist of the feud, a special prosecutor is looking into whether employees in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office broke the law by allegedly removing a scanner and provisional ballot envelopes from the county’s vote tabulation headquarters amid a local election earlier this year.

Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, said in a recent legal filing that he wanted possession of the scanner, which he said belongs to his office — a claim that the county’s mostly-GOP board of supervisors disputed.

He also requested a court order barring any criminal prosecution of his employees related to the incident, which occurred as votes were being tallied in the March 10 election for three seats on the Tempe City Council.

Heap’s latest filing in his lawsuit with the board of supervisors raises further questions about top officials’ ability to work together to administer this year’s midterm election in the key swing county. It comes less than two months before the state primary on July 21 — and as the special prosecutor looking into the scanner incident draws close to completing his investigation.

Former Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer, a Republican, told Votebeat that he was tapped by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to investigate the matter in April. He said he’d hired an off-duty, reserve deputy with the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office to assist with the case, and that the investigation was “wrapping up.”

Erin Pellett, a spokesperson for Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, said in a statement that Mitchell had appointed special counsel after receiving an “allegation” and determining a conflict of interest was present. As the county’s top prosecutor, Mitchell, a Republican, represents both the recorder’s office and the board of supervisors.

Volkmer declined to share many details of the investigation, noting that it still remained active. But he said the investigation wasn’t initiated to target specific employees in the recorder’s office. Rather, Volkmer said he was looking into the incident to determine “whether there was, in fact, criminal behavior.”

“This wasn’t, ‘Hey, go look at this person,’” he said. “That’s not how this came about.”

Volkmer added that it is standard practice for investigators to attempt to contact individuals who could have knowledge of a potential criminal matter.

“I would say you’re not doing your job if you don’t try,” he said, adding that he believed his investigator would be “thorough” in examining the incident.

What happened with Maricopa County Recorder’s Office employees and the disputed scanner?

Heap said in his court motion that multiple employees from the recorder’s office had attempted to “retrieve” a scanner from the election center in March, with the intent of repurposing it to scan inbound provisional ballot envelopes.

He said the scanner belonged to his office. Heap noted it was purchased with funds from the recorder’s office and was never “lawfully transferred” to the county elections department, which is overseen by the board of supervisors. He added that the scanners were acquired specifically for early voting services, “a function under the sole authority of the recorder.”

But the board saw it differently. In a statement, Supervisors Kate Brophy McGee and Debbie Lesko said two workers — including Chief Information Officer Brian Colby, who is named in court filings as one of the employees who was later approached by an investigator — were caught on security cameras loading the piece of equipment into the back of an unmarked pickup truck on March 12. The supervisors said it appeared to be a personal vehicle.

The supervisors called the machine a “pre-tabulation” scanner and said it was controlled by the board. Furthermore, they said Colby had been notified on “at least one occasion, in an inter-office message on March 5,” that the scanner was the property of the board.

Brophy McGee and Lesko, both Republicans, said the workers returned the scanner about an hour later, after elections department staff contacted the recorder’s office about the matter.

But they said Colby also appeared to take envelopes that potentially contained live provisional ballots, creating “grave chain-of-custody concerns.” They added that a count the following day confirmed that all ballots were accounted for, and that a human resources investigation substantiated their accounting of the incident.

Later, Heap said his employees were approached at their homes by “Pinal County Sheriff’s deputies.” He said Colby was specifically told he was under investigation for theft.

Filing comes as Maricopa County elections dispute continues to escalate

The filing adds fuel to the flames of a long-running feud within county government.

Heap has long contended that county supervisors usurped much of his power in a deal they struck with his predecessor months before he took office. He sued over the matter last year — and after months of back-and-forth in court, a court ruled largely in his favor on April 16, ordering the board to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to Heap’s office.

The board unsuccessfully moved to stay that ruling, arguing it was too close to the primary to implement the court’s directives without risking a tumultuous election. Later, they filed for an appeal, which is still pending.

In the meantime, the officials have continued to butt heads.

During a May 19 local election, they argued over how to communicate a new voting option at polling sites. Emails show the recorder’s office and the board’s elections department disagreed over whether poll workers should verbally inform voters that they could opt to show identification at voting sites to have their mailed ballot counted faster.

Then, another scuffle erupted last month over ballot drop box locations for the upcoming primary. The board has set such sites for years under a provision of the state’s election rulebook, and it planned to approve the locations at a May 20 meeting. But just before the supervisors met to do so, Heap sent a letter to the board citing state statutes that he said granted his office authority over ballot drop boxes. He also warned that election workers who handle ballots deposited in “unauthorized” receptacles could face criminal penalties.

The suggestion that election workers could be charged with felonies drew strong condemnation from the supervisors. One, Democratic Supervisor Steve Gallardo, accused Heap of attempting to sabotage election operations. Ultimately, the board unanimously approved a slate of voting locations — including the drop box sites — for the primary.

Later, Heap asked a judge to hold the county board in civil contempt of court, accusing supervisors of flouting the April ruling. If supervisors failed to quickly adhere to the recent decision, he asked that the court levy substantial fines and give the money to his office.

Heap reiterated that request in his most recent filing, asking the court to set an expedited hearing on the issue in light of “these new factual developments.”

He also said the board was targeting his employees and doing “exactly what it had falsely accused the recorder of doing” amid the drop box saga last month.

“It has actively initiated a criminal referral against a Recorder’s Office staff member for doing something entirely lawful, in the middle of active litigation, just over two weeks before early ballots are scheduled to be mailed to voters,” Heap wrote in the filing.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Here’s how the Texas secretary of state’s resignation could complicate the midterm elections

2026-06-08T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s unexpected departure only a few months before the November midterm election, which includes one of the most hotly contested U.S. Senate races the state has seen in years, has some local election officials and voting rights advocates worrying the transition will complicate their ability to administer a smooth election.

“It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that is scary,” said Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator. “Are we going to continue to receive guidance? Are we going to be ensured that we’ll be prepared for any coming changes? We just don’t know.”

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is required by law to appoint a new secretary as soon as possible. His office, in an emailed statement, said the new appointee would be announced “at a later date.”

Nelson, who has been the state’s chief election official for more than three years, last week announced that she’d be stepping down from the role effective July 17. Nelson’s departure will happen just as election officials across the state are preparing in earnest for the November general election. In the summer months, they’ll be recruiting election workers, seeking polling locations, and processing voter registration applications, among other duties.

Some voting rights advocates say a new appointee may want to direct local election officials to change election procedures, which could lead to chaos and confusion for voters. Although the secretary of state’s office has no law enforcement authority and can’t change the law, it can issue election law opinions on how to implement election and voting rules.

“If the new secretary of state has a laundry list of demands that election administrators can’t meet, that’s going to throw our elections into disarray,” said Emily Eby French, policy director at Common Cause Texas. French noted that there were three secretaries of state between 2017 and Nelson’s appointment in 2023, some of whom remained in the role only for about a year before resigning.

“I am very concerned that we are going to go back to that period of instability that we were in before Jane Nelson,” she said.

In the months leading up to the March primary election, county election officials across the state navigated challenges including a rare mid-decade residistricting cycle and issues with the statewide election management and voter registration system, known as TEAM. The majority of counties in the state rely on the system, which was overhauled last summer by the secretary of state’s office, to manage elections and to maintain voter registration lists.

The Texas Association of County Election Officials has twice publicly asked Nelson’s office in the past six months to act and resolve the problems. The secretary of state’s office has said that problems with a new version of the system were expected, especially given that the system handles the data of more than 18 million voter registration records. They’ve also said the situation was aggravated by the unexpected midcycle redistricting and problems with an outside vendor that forced some counties to suddenly add large amounts of data to the state system with little warning.

But despite these tensions, state election officials have consistently remained supportive of local election officials through politically tense periods and have maintained a nonpartisan approach when interpreting the law, said Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.

The agency has also often promoted the idea that county election officials are the election experts in each of their communities.

“There’s a fear that that could change to where the office is dictating how counties should operate with a more political approach,” he said.

Others, including some local election officials, are less concerned about top-down interference and say that a leadership transition in the office now won’t affect election officials’ ability to conduct a smooth election in November. That’s because ultimately, the election is handled by local officials in each of the state’s 254 counties.

Nelson’s sudden departure “shouldn’t have any noticeable impact on the ability of the election officials in Texas to run free and fair elections,” said Joshua Ferrer, an assistant professor of government at American University. Ferrer has done research on the recent heightened turnover of state and local election officials across the country.

“Even when officials leave, the replacements, and the staff that are still there are able to do an equally good job,” Ferrer said.

Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator, said she’d like to see the incoming secretary of state advocate for more funding and resources for county election departments.

“Funding is something we’ve talked about for years,” Smith said, recalling when a tornado touched down in the North Texas county during the 2024 primary runoff election and her office had to scramble to ensure polling locations stayed open. “We want to be able to provide secure facilities for our voters and to make sure that there are no delays when there are storms of that nature, but funds are limited.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

The Trump administration’s multiple investigations of the 2020 election may have more to do with 2026

2026-06-08T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The FBI agents arrived at David Bolter’s Milwaukee home on a cool, cloudy Wednesday morning in late May. They were armed with a list of questions for the 2020 poll worker, who had raised concerns about the way local officials handled the 2020 election, Bolter told Votebeat.

President Donald Trump relied on Bolter’s claims in an unsuccessful 2020 lawsuit that sought to throw out more than 220,000 votes. That would have been more than enough to move Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes from Democrat Joe Biden, who won the state, to Trump. Though courts, several election reviews, and many audits rejected Trump’s claims, the Republican never stopped believing that he was cheated out of the presidency in 2020.

That appears to be why, last month, the FBI sent agents back to Milwaukee to question Bolter as part of an expanding national effort by the second Trump administration to investigate long-debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

The investigation into the 2020 election appears to be relying on already disproven allegations from people like Bolter. Bolter declined to divulge more about his conversation with the FBI, which has not been previously reported, but allegations from Bolter’s 2020 affidavit were central to some conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. For example, he alleged that somebody in Milwaukee’s absentee ballot counting facility announced around midnight on Election Day that a “huge truckload of ballots” was going to be delivered — an accusation for which there has so far appeared to be no additional evidence.

Around the same time Bolter says he talked to the FBI, two plainclothes agents with FBI badges showed up at the apartment of a former Milwaukee resident and 2020 poll worker about an affidavit she submitted, according to the former poll worker, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Christine, to give her the freedom to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Christine had also submitted an affidavit about the 2020 election, saying election workers had been told that all votes were counted, but she then saw workers continuing to count ballots around midnight. That affidavit was the focus of the agents’ questions, Christine told Votebeat.

“I suspected wrongdoing, but I’m not saying that it actually happened,” she said. “I’m just one lowly person that was working there.”

During the interview, she added, an agent showed her a photograph of Claire Woodall, the former Milwaukee election chief, asking her if she recognized the former election official who has been central to false allegations about the 2020 election. She identified her by name. Woodall didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Caroline Clancy, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Milwaukee office, declined to comment.

While investigators seem mainly focused on the 2020 vote, some elections experts believe the Trump administration’s wide-ranging probe is actually designed to create more doubts among Americans about future elections, as Republicans face strong political headwinds that could cost them control of Congress later this year.

“This isn’t about the 2020 election, this is about the 2026 and 2028 elections,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research. “This is about intimidating election officials. This is about creating a stream of disinformation designed to delegitimize an election the president may believe he’s going to lose. This is designed by the president’s underlings to satisfy the unrealistic expectations of a president that still cannot comprehend that he lost an election that he definitely lost, and it’s incredibly destabilizing.”

Wisconsin is the latest known target of the Trump administration’s 2020 investigation. The FBI is looking to interview elections officials and Milwaukee police officers in what some worry could be a precursor to an effort to seize ballots from the 2020 presidential race, as it already has in Georgia.

The Trump administration is revisiting allegations of election fraud that have been repeatedly scrutinized

In January, federal investigators seized 600 boxes of ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. The heavily Democratic county, home to Atlanta, was key to Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the state.

As in Wisconsin, the FBI in Georgia has built its investigation on allegations that have already been repeatedly scrutinized by audits, investigations, and courts without unearthing any evidence of fraud or tampering that could have overturned the results.

The Georgia search represented an unprecedented intervention by the federal government into local administration. Even more unusually, Tulsi Gabbard, who will step down at end of this month as director of national intelligence, personally oversaw the seizure and arranged for Trump to speak directly to the FBI agents via cell phone after they carried out the operation.

The Trump administration investigations stretch from Arizona, where federal officials subpoenaed computerized records of a partisan review state lawmakers conducted of Maricopa County’s 2020 election, to Puerto Rico, where the Office of the Director of National Intelligence procured voting machines to examine for potential security risks.

The administration’s investigations aren’t entirely limited to 2020. The U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter in April to Wayne County, Michigan — home to Detroit — demanding all ballots cast in the 2024 election, which Trump won. But even in that case, to support the request, the Justice Department cited accusations of fraud made after the 2020 election, including a lawsuit that was quickly dismissed after a judge wrote that “plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.” Wayne County never handed over the ballots, because it doesn’t have possession of them.

What do the 2020 elections mean for 2026?

The FBI faces challenges in pursuing cases tied to the 2020 election since the five-year statute of limitations that applies to most of the likely charges expired last year. Law enforcement veterans said it is possible that the Justice Department could pursue broader conspiracy charges in the case, but the prospect remains unclear.

FBI Director Kash Patel suggested in April that the Justice Department would soon announce arrests related to the 2020 election, but that has not yet occurred. Officials with the FBI and Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

John Keller, a former acting head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section who resigned in 2025 after refusing the Trump administration’s demands to drop corruption charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, said the administration appeared to be trying to normalize federal investigations of state elections to pave the way for future intervention.

“They are using enforcement directed at the 2020 election as a test run for what they can get away with on Election Day this year, or after, to try and delay certification or invalidate an election” if the results don’t go their way, he said.

Injecting federal law enforcement officials into an ongoing election is a more extreme and serious action than investigating a past one, and it could face stiffer opposition. But it’s clear, at least, that the administration is scrutinizing current elections closely.

Trump last week blasted California’s long vote counting process in its primary election and asserted that Democrats were trying to steal the election and federal authorities were investigating. Last month, Trump also said he was ordering the Justice Department to investigate an error that led to some voters in Maryland receiving ballots for the wrong party in the state’s upcoming primary. State officials in both cases have explained the true causes of the issues and that nothing nefarious was behind them.

Any effort to seize ballots in an ongoing election would create unprecedented new issues, such as a breach in the chain of custody over cast ballots, that could prevent election officials from declaring a winner and throw results into uncertainty.

Catherine Engelbrecht, co-founder of the Texas-based conservative group True the Vote, which has promoted debunked theories about the 2020 election, said she understands Trump’s intentions but believes the 2020 election questions should have been resolved “in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election.”

“This is not necessarily the way I would have recommended that it would be handled,” she said. “The fact that it wasn’t addressed has left this lingering void.”

In most cases, however, Trump’s claims of voter fraud were addressed in the wake of the 2020 election. Time and again, courts, state investigations, and even the Justice Department concluded that there was no evidence of problems or fraud that would have changed the results.

Engelbrecht said she views the Trump administration’s ongoing investigations as an effort to dig into long-standing concerns about the voting process it wants to address for future elections.

“The past is prologue,” she said. “If we don’t understand what happened, we are doomed to repeat it.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Here’s why California’s election results take time

2026-06-08T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

President Donald Trump, a Republican, quickly took to social media after California’s primary on Tuesday to accuse Democrats in late-night posts of trying to steal the election, pointing to the state’s long timeline for counting votes and large share of mail-in ballots. He asserted that the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles was investigating. On Friday, Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor for Los Angeles, said he is overseeing “multiple election fraud investigations” in California.

“We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent,” he wrote on X. “My office will not look the other way. We will investigate and prosecute. Every legal vote deserves to be counted. Every illegal vote cancels one out.” For their part, multiple California officials said — again — that the state’s long counting time doesn’t mean anything is wrong.

Why does it take so long for California to count votes and declare winners? The question has dogged the Golden State for years and drawn additional scrutiny because of a partisan divide in voting methods. Republicans have long lamented that their candidates lead in early results and watch their advantage vanish as mail-in ballots are counted in the days and weeks after Election Day. But while Republicans claim this is evidence of fraud, it actually reflects the fact that Republicans are more likely to vote in person and Democrats more likely to vote by mail — meaning more Democratic votes get counted later in the process.

By Friday afternoon, California voters still didn’t know which candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor would be on the November ballot.

California is one of eight states that sends mail-in ballots to all registered voters. And a majority of California voters — nearly 90% in last year’s special election — use them. The Catch-22 is that it takes elections officials a lot longer to verify mail-in ballots than it takes to confirm in-person voting, creating long delays while they make sure there is no fraud.

And in California, a large number of voters drop off their mail-in ballots on or right before election day, creating a huge bottleneck of ballots that have to go through a signature check and other steps to make sure the vote can be counted.

Kim Alexander, founder and president of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, refers to it as the “pig in the python” problem.

“The truth is we are taking extra steps to ensure the voting process is accessible and the vote count is accurate and reliable, and that’s why it takes a long time,” said Alexander.

Delays are compounded by state laws that allow elections officials to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive up to seven days later, and a lengthy process that requires counties to inform voters if there are problems with their mail-in ballots — such as missing signatures — that they usually have several weeks to fix.

Jesse Salinas, the voter registrar, assessor, and clerk-recorder of California’s Yolo County who serves as president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said there is a tradeoff between speed and security.

“If you want speed, not as many people’s votes are going to be counted that could legitimately be counted,” he said. “So this tension exists between accessibility and speed.”

California leaders admit there is a problem. “We wish the votes were counted faster, too,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, wrote on social media.

Two decades ago, California used to count 80% of its ballots within the first two days after an election, according to a California Voter Foundation analysis. That fell to 50% in 2022. The state has gone some ways toward reversing the decline, with the figure rising to 66% in November 2024.

More resources could speed things up

One unique factor for California is its size. California is home to 23 million registered voters, far more than any other state. (Texas comes closest, with about 18.7 million registered voters.)

Last year, Newsom signed a law that requires California counties to count most votes within 13 days of the election. This is the first election where we will see whether that speeds things up. Counties can ask for an extension, and they still have up to 30 days to certify the results, so the law only goes so far.

Local election officials and voter advocates say another major issue is funding, and the state doesn’t provide counties with the money they need to speed up counting.

“If I have more space, more equipment, and more staffing, things could be done quicker,” Salinas said.

Voting rights advocates like Alexander worry that the long vote counts, and the persistent criticism coming from the White House and others, are taking a toll on American confidence in the electoral system. One recent study found that Americans’ trust in elections fell from about 67% to 60% when people heard about unexplained delays in results. Another study found that voter trust that votes will be accurately counted in the upcoming election fell from 77% in 2024 to 60% this year.

“I do see voter confidence eroding and the long vote count doesn’t help restore it,” said Alexander. “Even people who aren’t buying into those myths and disinformation, people who trust the process, ask why we have to wait so long for the vote count. It allows lies to spread and conspiracy theories to grow, and we need to minimize the opportunity for nefarious actors to cast doubt on the reliability of our results.”

Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy in California, challenged the narrative that California has a problem and suggested that people should look at the issue from a different perspective.

“We don’t have a vote counting problem. We have a lot of votes,” she said.

Along with more money for counties and expanded voter education efforts, Romero suggested steps to shorten the California timeline for certifying results.

“Anything structurally will be considered voter suppression by voters,” she said, “and you have to think about weighing the size of the problem that you’re trying to fix.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Federal government investigating potential noncitizen voters in Macomb County

2026-06-05T16:26:52+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

The Department of Homeland Security is conducting “an active investigation” of potential noncitizen voters in a swingy suburban Detroit county, according to a subpoena obtained by Votebeat.

Homeland Security Investigations sent the subpoena to Macomb County in January, days after County Clerk Anthony Forlini said his team had discovered 15 potential noncitizens registered to vote.

The subpoena requested “all available information” on noncitizen voters from Macomb County in Michigan’s Qualified Voter File, the state’s official voter roll. The request includes applications to vote, “types of voting conducted,” and “any signed documents.”

Forlini told Votebeat on Wednesday that he hadn’t heard the results of any investigations related to what his office shared. When requests come in from other government entities, he said, they are routed through the county’s attorneys.

“We always cooperate,” Forlini said, calling the request “pretty standard.” He said that anytime the federal government asks the county for something, “we provide it.”

The request appears to be another recent example of the federal government trying to sniff out noncitizen voters. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, but it has become something of a rallying cry for Republicans in Michigan and across the country.

In April, the Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed at least three counties in Texas for detailed records about individual voters after the state turned over its voter roll to the U.S. Department of Justice. A number of states have declined to share that data, including Michigan, and have been sued by the federal government as a result.

Forlini — who is also Republicans’ candidate for secretary of state this fall — has repeatedly called attention to noncitizen voting and said it is the result of “a problem in the system.” He dove headlong into the issue in January, when his staff compared a list of people who had claimed to be noncitizens to get out of jury duty to a list of registered voters. They found three people who both had claimed a lack of citizenship and who had a history of voting.

Later that month, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced that of those three people, one was a citizen, one was a noncitizen who had last voted in 2018 before their registration was canceled in 2022, and one was still under review.

Comparing two separate databases to try to find noncitizen voters has a spotty track record, in part because it’s easy to mistake two different people as one because they have similar names or addresses. Jury questionnaires are also not 100% reliable — people sometimes lie about their citizenship to get out of jury duty.

In March, the Michigan Department of State sent a letter to county clerks and election directors across the state warning them against using jury pools to find noncitizen voters, lest eligible voters find their registrations canceled or are “accused of improper conduct or subject to undue criminal investigation.”

But Forlini has stood by his effort. Last month, he said he had found seven additional noncitizens registered to vote. This time, he was more confident than ever that the people in question were not citizens because, as he told Votebeat, he was working with federal officials who had access to a database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. The Michigan Department of State is still investigating these potential noncitizens, and it remains unclear if any of them ever cast ballots.

Forlini said Wednesday that he believes he has “a duty” to use all the tools at his disposal to root out noncitizen voters, and he believes the secretary of state’s office has that duty as well.

Noncitizen voting is “a flaw that just can’t happen,” Forlini said, adding that the issue went beyond partisan politics and individual officeholders. “We have to fix it.”

Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, said Thursday she was not aware of any other counties in Michigan receiving similar subpoenas. The only other attempt to go through a local government to get Michigan voting records she knew of, she said, was the Department of Justice’s recent request for 2024 ballots from Wayne County. Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett denied that request last month, as municipal governments — townships and cities — have custody of ballots in Michigan.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it does not comment on ongoing investigations, but added that Homeland Security Investigations “remains committed to investigating and combating election fraud wherever it is found.”

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Students across Pennsylvania step up on Election Day to keep democracy working

2026-06-05T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

If you’ve voted in person in Pennsylvania recently, you may have noticed that one of the poll workers checking you in was a high school student. And if you ask one of them why they wanted to be a poll worker, most will give a similar answer.

“My school was offering it, and I thought it would be a good piece of money,” explained Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School in Philadelphia.

Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

But, once the allure of a paycheck and a day off school has faded away, they’ll tell you something else as well: They enjoy getting to see the voting process up close.

“I kept going back afterward because it was interesting to see everyone in my community … and how seriously they took voting,” Martinez said. “It kind of inspired me to come back, and for my last year that I worked there, I voted too.”

In Pennsylvania, 17-year-olds are eligible to be poll workers, and each year high school students staff voting sites across the state. And they’re not just stuck in corners or being sent to fetch coffee, either; they are meaningfully involved in running the polls.

Advocates of the practice say it both helps counties fill a staffing gap and gives students valuable life experience.

In Lebanon County, student poll workers have become an integral part of the county’s Election Day workforce. During the May 2026 primary, students made up 13% of all poll workers, and Jamie Shoemaker, the county’s poll worker coordinator, said she’s trying to increase that number.

Shoemaker had hands-on experience with the program before taking it over full time. Shoemaker was a pollworker in her mother’s precinct before joining the county elections office, and one year her own high school aged daughter helped out as well. Her daughter, she said, ended up enjoying the experience.

That was in 2019, when Lebanon County was mainly working with Lebanon High School to find students to work the polls. But after Shoemaker began working at the county elections department full time, she expanded the program to other high schools in the area. The county now averages about 50 to 55 student poll workers each election.

Kayla Marshall, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School, stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Jeannetta Dormil, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Andrew Abreu, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Tanicha Cadesca, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School walks throug a hallway during a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards in Harrisburg.

Rebecca Torres, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School sits for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Rubiel Gutierrez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School sits for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Shane Hannigan, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt stands alongside students from Franklin Towne Charter High School after they received the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award.

The students do all types of jobs in the polling place, from checking voters in to keeping track of turnout and helping voters feed their ballots into tabulation machines.

Many non-student poll workers in Lebanon — and nationally — skew older. And as elections become more technologically integrated with devices such as electronic pollbooks, older poll workers sometimes struggle to adapt.

“Having the student there helps bridge that tech gap,” she said. “They can just look at it and know [what the issue is].”

Keith Rolon is the cooperative education teacher at Lebanon High School and manages the school’s student poll worker program. His goal is to have two students at each of the city’s polling sites, including at least one who is bilingual to help translate for the city’s large Spanish-speaking population.

“For me as a civics teacher, it was important for me to show them voting is important and elections are safe and here’s what goes into them,” he said.

It’s also an opportunity for students to learn valuable life skills like self-advocacy that Rolon said can’t be learned in the classroom. During the primary, as he does every Election Day, he traveled around to all the polling places in the city to check on his students.

At the Lebanon County Senior Center in the city’s 10th ward, he stopped in to see senior Ella Whalen and junior Emely Liriano. Whalen was recording which voters came in on a numbered list, and Liriano was seated next to her checking them in on the polling place’s e-pollbook.

The judge of elections gave Rolon a positive review of their performance so far, and Rolon reminded them it was their responsibility to speak up for themselves when it was time for them to take a break or get lunch.

Whalen and Liriano agreed the money they got from working the polls was nice, but the act of being civically engaged was appealing too. Their parents are politically active, and Whalen said it was good to help out.

It was both Whalen’s and Liriano’s first time working an election, and although turnout was rather low (as usual for a primary), they said they still learned about the voting process.

“It surprised me how quick it was,” Liriano said. “You just go in, you check off the boxes, you put [the ballot] in the thing, and then you leave. I didn’t even know there was a machine that you just put your ballots in.”

Students from Franklin Towne Charter High School walk out before receiving the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

Diane Gordian, the civic engagement and language access engagement coordinator for the Pennsylvania Department of State, helps organize student poll worker programs across Pennsylvania. She said a benefit of the programs is that they help students, and importantly also their families, build habits of democratic engagement.

“Those students come home and say, ‘Hey Mom and Dad, I want to do this,’ and that gets those parents motivated, not only to register to vote, but they sign up to be poll workers,” she said.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt hands one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards, to a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

The state is still tallying numbers from the primary, but Gordian said she expects this year to have the highest-ever rate of students serving as poll workers.

Each year, the state honors certain students and their schools with the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award for registering eligible student voters and for working as poll workers.

Martinez, from Franklin Towne Charter High School, was one of the 633 students who received that award this year, and he and eight of his peers recently spoke about their experiences at a press conference with Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt.

Kayla Marshall, another student at Franklin Towne Charter, said the poll worker programs give students a chance to actually experience civic engagement rather than just hearing about it “in a PowerPoint at 8 in the morning while trying not to fall asleep.” Marshall worked the polls in three elections starting in November 2024.

Kayla Marshall delivers remarks on the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards, alongside fellow students from Franklin Towne Charter High School at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

“Working the polls taught me more than just how elections work,” she said. “It taught me responsibility, teamwork, patience, and the importance of giving back. It also showed me that young people don’t have to wait until ‘someday’ to make a difference.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Madison former deputy clerk removed from election tasks after misplacing 23 Supreme Court race ballots

2026-06-04T19:49:06+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The former Madison deputy clerk who claimed responsibility for the 23 late-arriving ballots in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election has been reassigned within the clerk’s office to non-election tasks.

Jim Verbick — the election office’s former second-in-command who was previously scrutinized and sued for the clerk’s office losing 200 ballots in the 2024 election — admitted to losing track of the absentee ballots that didn’t end up arriving at several polling places until after 8 p.m. on Election Day in April, according to public records obtained by Votebeat.

He told Votebeat that he’s only partially to blame, that understaffing and a lack of communication led to the mistake, and that it’s unfair that he got reassigned away from elections. Verbick is now the city clerk’s office’s lead worker for licensing.

“I do admit that I had forgotten about the ballots I secured when I left the post office,” he said, adding that he said the error was exacerbated by unexpected absences and mistakes made by others.

The issue went to court after the Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison not to count the ballots because they arrived after the 8 p.m. deadline in Wisconsin law. A court reversed the commission’s decision, and the ballots were counted in the final canvass.

Verbick’s reassignment was part of a set of personnel changes designed to improve how the clerk’s office manages “the many logistical tasks of administering elections,” Madison Clerk Lydia McComas said in a statement. The city is also hiring two new deputy clerks and a lead employee for absentee voting. But this move doesn’t amount to a net gain of three election positions because one election staff member recently left the office and Verbick was reassigned.

Madison officials said after the election that the clerk’s office — not voters — was responsible for the ballots’ late arrival. Election officials had received and sorted the ballots in time to be delivered: They arrived on the Monday before Election Day and were sorted that same evening, then put on a shelf to be delivered in the afternoon of the following day, records show.

Emails, spreadsheets and Microsoft Teams messages obtained by Votebeat show that Verbick was in charge of absentee ballots and accepted some blame for their late arrival.

Around 4 p.m., Verbick sent a message on Microsoft Teams that he realized he sent out officials to deliver ballots that afternoon without the batch of absentee ballots including the 23 votes that would end up arriving late, former clerk’s office staff member Bonnie Chang said in an email to McComas.

Per that same email, Chang said that about an hour later, she scanned a spreadsheet that showed polling sites were still missing absentee ballots. She then contacted Verbick to find out how many ballots were in the late-discovered bin and whether he needed help delivering them. She wrote that he wouldn’t say how many ballots were found or whether more staff were needed to deliver ballots.

At around 6 p.m., Chang said, the clerk’s office sent additional staff to help deliver the ballots as early as possible. She said most got reassigned to other tasks.

By the time that additional help arrived, Verbick told Votebeat, the ballots had already been sent out for delivery. He said he didn’t think the couriers who were already dispatched to deliver the ballots would have trouble delivering them on-time.

In hindsight, Verbick said, he would have used those additional staff to lighten their load. But he also said he could have planned for the additional staff better had anybody told them that they were en route to help him out.

That night, Verbick sent an email to McComas taking blame for not putting the batch containing the 23 ballots on the planned afternoon drop-offs to polling places.

“Missing the bin of envelopes with the initial afternoon route is my fault,” he emailed McComas at about 10:45 p.m. on Election Day. “I had all of them reviewed this morning and ready to be run with the mail delivery.”

Verbick told Votebeat he forgot about the ballots because election workers in the clerk’s office hadn’t told him about a planned USPS delivery around noon that Tuesday. Believing the delivery had not happened, he went to the post office to investigate.

Before leaving, he said, he moved the batch of ballots that later arrived late into a secure area because there were no other full-time clerk’s office staffers available to watch them while he was gone. It was there that he forgot the ballots.

The error, Verbick told Votebeat, reflected chronic understaffing in the clerk’s office — a problem exacerbated by the increase in absentee voting since the 2020 election.

In an email to McComas, Verbick said he didn’t get additional staff that he thought would help process ballots, and that he didn’t intentionally ignore messages from office staff.

Relying on hourly and temporary workers to fill those gaps is not enough, he told Votebeat.

In an email to Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway sent the night of the incident, McComas said that she would “firmly address the lack of communication” and would have more staff in August and November, including the new deputy to oversee absentee ballots.

Wisconsin Elections Commission chair Ann Jacobs called the latest error “absurd” at a commission meeting in late April. The commission voted to investigate Madison over the error, meaning the agency’s first two authorized investigations in its history both center on Madison: one for the 2024 ballot snafu and one for the latest one.

Ultimately, the votes affected by this year’s error were counted. Officials said these 23 ballots were correctly, legally cast, counted and checked into the pollbooks just like any other valid absentee ballots — the only problem was that they were delivered and counted after polls formally closed. The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted that the city and county erred in counting the ballots since state law held that ballots must be delivered to polling places “no later than 8 p.m. on election day.”

A Dane County judge, however, reversed that order, ruling that the ballots should be counted because they were properly cast, and precedent held that voters shouldn’t be disenfranchised because of clerk errors.

Verbick scrutinized for 2024 election snafu

This was the second time in about two years that Verbick has faced scrutiny over allegations that he failed to act decisively when absentee ballots were at risk of being left uncounted.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission previously scrutinized Verbick for his inaction after the 2024 presidential election, when nearly 200 voters were disenfranchised.

When Maribeth Witzel-Behl, the clerk at the time, was on vacation after the election, Verbick was in charge of the office, Witzel-Behl told the commission in a deposition.

Verbick, on the other hand, “testified that he is generally in charge when Clerk Witzel-Behl is not in the office, but that he is ‘not always the point person on everything in the office,’” and wasn’t sure who the point person would have been, according to the commission investigation.

The commission stated that Verbick’s involvement was “minimal” by his own account, and that nobody took responsibility for those ballots: “It was always someone else’s job.”

After learning about the ballots, the commission stated, Verbick “did not instruct anyone to determine how to get the ballots counted.”

Verbick was sued in his personal capacity for his role in the error, and declined to comment about the 2024 snafu. The case is ongoing, and the plaintiffs are demanding financial damages for being disenfranchised.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Arizona Supreme Court declines to review fake electors case, leaving prosecution in limbo

2026-06-04T18:51:42+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

The Arizona Supreme Court won’t review lower court rulings that crippled Attorney General Kris Mayes’ fake electors case, leaving the prosecution of 18 people who attempted to overturn the state’s 2020 election results in limbo.

The case is one of several that arose in the aftermath of the 2020 election when allies of President Donald Trump, who lost the election, tried to install him anyway. Those people, who became known as fake or false electors, attempted to cast electoral votes for Trump in multiple states he lost and submit those certificates of votes to Congress.

In Arizona, those people — alongside other Trump allies — were later indicted on felony charges of fraud, conspiracy, and forgery. Their case has been on pause since Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers sent it back to a grand jury last year, ruling that prosecutors had failed to provide a full copy of the relevant federal election law before the original jurors handed down their indictments in April 2024.

Mayes, a Democrat, unsuccessfully appealed the decision, which would have effectively forced a re-do of the case. Then, she asked the state’s top court to take up the matter.

In the wake of the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling, Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for Mayes, said in a statement that her office would “return this case to the grand jury.”

But the high court’s decision suggests that case is now likely to stretch into 2027 or 2028. Mayes faces reelection this year. Her GOP opponents — Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen and military attorney Rodney Glassman — have both pledged to drop the case if they take the attorney general’s office.

The ruling comes as similar cases in other key swing states also flounder. In Georgia, prosecutors dropped their fake electors case last year. In Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel announced in March that she wouldn’t appeal a ruling dismissing her state’s fake electors case. In Nevada, a judge is set to issue a decision on a fake electors case later this month, but seemed skeptical of the charges during court hearings.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s fake electors case is moving forward. Attorneys who represented fake electors there are set to be arraigned later this month.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

New study finds that ballot curing helps more mail ballots get counted

2026-06-03T19:07:53+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Mail voters who are informed and have opportunities to fix ballot errors ahead of elections are much more likely to have their votes counted, a new study of the 2024 election in Pennsylvania has found.

The study, from the University of Pennsylvania, provides hard evidence to back up the arguments that county officials have used for years to justify such “notice and cure” policies for defective mail ballots.

“Vote curing policies help balance the tension between promoting both access and integrity in mail balloting,” the study’s authors wrote. “In short, vote curing can reduce the number of eligible voters whose deficient mail ballots become ‘lost votes.’”

Mail ballots can be rejected for a variety of reasons, including lacking a signature on the outer envelope or lacking the inner secrecy envelope. In some elections, ballots have also been rejected for lacking a date on the outer envelope, although this requirement is currently being litigated in state and federal court.

Pennsylvania counties have a wide array of methods for letting voters fix these errors. Some ask voters to fix the errors in person at the county election office — for example, by adding a missing signature — while others automatically return deficient ballots to voters, or cancel deficient ballots and reissue new ones. Other counties only allow voters to correct the error by casting a provisional ballot at their polling place on Election Day.

The study examined how many voters corrected their deficient mail ballots across counties that use these different methods and found that voters were 25 percentage points more likely to have their vote counted if they were told of a disqualifying error before Election Day, and 10 points more likely to have their vote counted if they had an opportunity to correct that error before Election Day, rather than just on Election Day.

The study also found that when deficient ballots were automatically returned or replaced, allowing voters to make a correction by mail, voters were 25 points more likely to have their vote counted.

Jim Allen, the election director of Delaware County, one of the counties that automatically replaces deficient ballots, said this method roughly doubled the rate at which voters were able to cure their ballots.

“Also, it reduced traffic at our Voter Service Center and reduced provisional ballots,” he said via email.

Likewise, counties have a variety of methods for notifying voters of deficiencies with their mail ballots, including calls, emails, and publishing lists online. The study measured if a voter was notified by looking at when their ballot was recorded as deficient in the state public ballot tracking system, where voters or political parties could see the issue and which also automatically emails voters if there is an error with their ballot.

But providing an email is optional when applying for a mail ballot. According to data from the just-concluded 2026 primary election, roughly 20% of mail ballot requestors didn’t provide an email address. For those voters, what happens next depends on what county they live in. Some may not be notified at all that their ballot may be rejected.

The mail ballot application says the email “may be used to contact you about important information” but not expressly that it could be used to notify voters of errors with their mail ballots that may disqualify their vote.

Michael Morse, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study’s coauthors, said that more explicit language on the application could lead to more voters providing their email address and, therefore, getting notified if their ballot is at risk of rejection. He also suggested that the state could use email addresses they may have for the voter in other databases, such as the state’s voter rolls.

The Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement that it encourages voters to fill out the email section, and that it was reviewing the study and “is always open to considering ways to improve communication with voters.”

The study also highlights the equal protection principle, which could be the next frontier in legal fights over Pennsylvania’s mail ballot curing rules.

In a case from the 2000 election, Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Florida’s recount of that year’s presidential election violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause because counties were using inconsistent standards to decide which ballots counted.

Pennsylvania’s system, in which voters across the street from each other might have vastly different opportunities to cure their ballots based on what county they live in, could also test this principle. The argument has been made in cases before, Morse noted, but hasn’t yet been fully litigated in Pennsylvania.

Morse said when and how the equal protection principle applies in the context of election administration is unclear, since the decentralized nature of elections means there will always be variation across counties, and they can’t all violate the principle.

“That fight really hasn’t developed much … [because] it hasn’t mattered yet to the Pennsylvania outcome,” he said. “The only reason it was going to come up in 2024 is if the number of deficient mail ballots was within the margin of victory, and it wasn’t.”

The equal protection question may not have had much of a bearing on Pennsylvania’s curing policies yet, but in other states it has. A recent decision in a case in North Carolina found that the state’s cure process violated the equal protection principle for some voters.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Secretary of State Jane Nelson, Texas’ top election official, steps down

2026-06-02T21:51:28+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced Tuesday she will resign effective July 17, capping off three and a half years as the state’s top election official.

“It has been my goal to ensure that voting in Texas is secure, accessible and fair,” Nelson said in a press release. “We have worked extensively to ensure accurate voter rolls and to educate voters about what they need to know to vote with confidence.”

The press release did not say why Nelson is resigning from her role. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.

How the Texas secretary of state’s resignation could complicate the midterm elections

By law, Gov. Greg Abbott is required to nominate someone to fill the vacant position “without delay.” It’s unclear how quickly Abbott will move to fill Nelson’s role or whom he is considering for the job.

Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the governor praised Nelson in the press release. “Secretary Jane Nelson has been a true champion for the people of Texas and an extraordinary Secretary of State,” he said. “I am deeply grateful for her long and loyal service and outstanding leadership.”

Nelson, a Republican, served in the state Senate for 30 years before becoming secretary of state in 2023. Nelson was the longest-serving Republican woman in Senate history and the first woman to lead the Senate Finance Committee, which writes the state’s budget.

She was also the first secretary of state to be confirmed by the Senate since 2017. Nelson’s three immediate predecessors resigned without receiving a full-Senate confirmation vote.

The release noted that Nelson presided over “seven successful statewide elections with a cumulative 27 million ballots cast,” and managed the disbursement of millions of dollars in grants to local counties, among other things.

During her time as the state’s top election official, Nelson’s office complied with the U.S. Department of Justice’s request for access to the state’s full voter roll, one of 15 states to do so. The data Nelson’s office handed over included identifiable information about the state’s 18 million registered voters, including dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Election security experts and voting rights groups criticized the move, saying it was a violation of voters’ privacy.

Nelson’s office also began using a federal database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, last year to verify the citizenship status of registered voters. The state said the review identified 2,724 potential noncitizens on the voter roll, but county election officials later determined some of the flagged voters were actually citizens after all. In addition, they found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through the Texas Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship, such as a passport, and keeps copies of such documents on file.

Nelson’s use of SAVE has led to at least two lawsuits by voting rights groups who claim the database is inaccurate and could lead to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters. They also argued the state should have checked DPS records before sending the list of potential noncitizens to county election officials for investigation. Last month, Nelson’s office asked DPS to check the entire list of potential noncitizens against its driver’s license records.

The lawsuits are still pending in federal court.

In the past year, Nelson’s office has also come under scrutiny from county election officials following the overhaul of the state’s election management and voter registration system, known as TEAM.

Since its release a year ago, election officials have repeatedly asked Nelson’s office to fix the system’s functionality problems, which they say make completing already time-consuming voter registration tasks less efficient.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Arizona promised these voters privacy. It accidentally broke its vow.

2026-06-01T18:46:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Staff at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office accidentally publicly released the home addresses and telephone numbers of hundreds of voters whose information the state had pledged to keep private, an incident that potentially risked exposing them to physical harm and harassment in the months leading up to the 2024 election.

Emails obtained by Votebeat show that the error affected a fraction of voters in the state’s address confidentiality program, which includes victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. It also exposed information about certain voters who were protected via court order, such as judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials.

Records show the error went undiscovered and uncorrected for nearly nine months. During that time, the voters’ personal information was released to a number of political and consumer data firms via the office’s routine public records request process.

State law says the secretary of state “shall not disclose any address or telephone number” of voters enrolled in the state’s address confidentiality program unless required by a court order or in response to a request by another state or local government entity.

Weeks before the presidential election, state election officials attempted to claw back the information and notified impacted voters, according to the emails. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, demanded accountability “ASAP” upon hearing of the issue, according to emails sent by Keely Varvel, his chief of staff. The office ultimately fired its director of voter registration, administration, and technology, who it said had caused the error by incorrectly instructing a records analyst on how to pull data from the state’s voter registration system — although records suggest that the director disputed those allegations.

Nonetheless, some voters were left alarmed and confused. Only a handful of the 373 people affected by the error responded to the notice sent out by the secretary’s office, but those who did were concerned about what entities had obtained their addresses and phone numbers.

One voter said they wanted to know “what date this breach happened, and who you released my information to.” Another asked election officials to “elaborate on how the information was released and exactly what steps you have taken to ensure the information will not be released again.” A third, a police officer, said they’d long had their information protected through the court system.

“What does the AZ Secretary of State plan to do about this to protect us,” the voter asked. Records show the secretary’s office responded to concerned voters by releasing documents showing what entities had received their information and those recipients’ responses to the state’s efforts to claw back the information.

Ian Lamoreaux, a forensic psychiatrist who specializes in violence risk assessment, said the situation was “definitely unsettling” for those on the protected list — even though it’s unclear whether any of the voters faced actual harm as a result of the state’s mistake.

“There’s some expectation of privacy,” said Lamoreaux. “There’s an expectation that there’s a system in place that is going to protect you, that’s going to keep you safe from those who are out there wanting to do harm, and then that protective layer is pretty suddenly and kind of strikingly just stripped away.”

State Sen. J.D. Mesnard, who sponsored the legislation that established Arizona’s voter confidentiality program, called the error “a breach of trust.”

“It’s possible that they’ll have covered their tracks sufficiently enough that there won’t be any damage, and no one will ever know the difference,” said Mesnard, a Republican. “But it’s definitely, I’m sure, going to put doubt in people’s minds. The trust factor is broken, and they’re always going to wonder, how protected is it?”

Varvel said in an interview with Votebeat that she regretted the matter. She said the secretary of state’s office had “policies and procedures in place which should have prevented it.”

“Unfortunately, we have members of our staff that fell down on the job and didn’t follow those policies and procedures,” she said. “So, we have done what we can to try to rectify the problem, but we certainly know that’s not making it go away.”

“We certainly apologize for it, and we’re doing all we can to try and make sure [the affected voters are] aware that it happened, be transparent about it, and frankly, hold people accountable,” she added.

How the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office exposed voter information

The error appears to have originated in February 2024, when a records analyst asked Craig Stender, then the director of voter registration, administration, and technology in the secretary of state’s office, for help with pulling voter data to fulfill public records requests, according to emails between senior staffers working to piece together the cause of the issue.

Varvel said in an email to the office’s human resources department that Stender should have instructed the analyst to run an existing, public-facing report in the voter registration database. That report is constructed to remove protected voters from the list that it ultimately produces. The office’s protocol then requires another staff member to double-check the final list to ensure that the query was correctly executed.

Instead, she said he advised the records analyst to pull the information in a way that exposed protected voters’ addresses and telephone numbers and bypassed the second check. The analyst, unaware of the error, eventually sent the records out to requestors.

“If the right process was followed, the redaction would have been made automatically,” Varvel told Votebeat. “That’s how it fell through the cracks — because the right process, which is in place to make sure this is always redacted, was not followed.”

For months, nobody knew that the office was releasing confidential information. Varvel said Stender had worked directly with the office’s public records staff, rather than sending the analyst to one of the people on his team.

Then, the matter came up by chance during a meeting on Oct. 9, 2024. An employee in the room was familiar with the office’s process for pulling voter data and realized the mistake.

Votebeat attempted to reach Stender for comment on this story, but then found an obituary posted by his family. The obituary suggested that he died a few weeks before a reporter reached out to him. The secretary’s office later confirmed he was deceased.

Emails suggest that his version of the story differed from that of senior staff in the secretary’s office. On Oct. 17, 2024, just before he was fired, Stender told the records analyst who had asked him for help that he had never instructed her to use the registration database’s “ballot search” function to incorrectly pull voter information.

“I never did such a thing,” he wrote, adding that the allegation “does not make any sense” because he didn’t know much about the ballot search function. “I was not even aware you were using ballot search until you asked if party could be included. I assumed you meant with one of the canned reports so that is when I went to your desk and asked you to show me how you were generating the data.”

He asked the analyst to “please elaborate on when and where you believe this training happened.”

“This issue is now causing me problems and I do not think it is fair at all that my name is being associated with training you,” he wrote.

In response, the analyst said she recalled Stender showing her the feature “back in February, just before the ballots for the [presidential preference election] were mailed.”

“Looking back, there might have been a miscommunication during our discussions,” she wrote.

Records show protected voters’ data was ultimately delivered to four different out-of-state political data firms and an in-state researcher at the University of Arizona. Three of those firms also openly advertise consumer data offerings on their websites. Combined, at least eight people had access to the voters’ data directly from the secretary of state’s office.

One of those recipients unknowingly passed on the confidential information to another group, a Florida-based polling operation called American Promise. Records show the recipient believed American Promise had deleted the protected voters’ personal information from its database and servers, but it’s unclear whether that organization ever directly confirmed that it did so with the secretary’s office. A person listed in records as a point of contact for the group did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the secretary’s office, said in a statement that staff “went through the proper investigative channels to get the data back from those who originally requested it and are looking into the possible ‘spreading’ following the initial release.” She later said she had “no update” on whether any additional organizations had access to the confidential information.

Arizona’s confidentiality program is supposed to protect vulnerable voters. Is it working?

Former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican, said he ran across the idea for a state address confidentiality program at a national conference for election officials in 2010.

He pitched the idea to Mesnard, who successfully shepherded the legislation through the Capitol.

“There are bad people in this world, and I’m hoping we can all agree that one function of government — the primary function of government — is protecting people from harm,” Mesnard told lawmakers during a committee hearing at the Arizona Senate on March 23, 2011.

Former Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed the program into law on April 19, 2011. It began operating the following year. Bennett said he considered it “an important thing” for domestic violence victims.

“It seemed to be doing what it was intended to do, which was providing these folks protection about their addresses and things getting out to people who meant them harm,” he said. “We tried to solve that problem, and I think we did for quite some time.”

But the recent error at the secretary’s office raises questions about how secure the program actually is — especially because it isn’t the first time that the state accidentally released confidential information about voters it pledged to protect.

In an October 2020 complaint to the State Bar of Arizona, then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, wrote that she had learned of a “functional error” in the state’s voter database that caused it to generate early ballot reports that included 76 protected voters’ confidential information.

“Certain counties provided those reports to the state’s political parties during the election,” she wrote, adding that she “took immediate action to remedy the issue,” including fixing the error in the database and contacting the political parties and affected voters.

Years before that leak, as a state legislator, Hobbs had voted to establish the address confidentiality program. She was a social worker before entering politics and called the legislation “a very important bill” in helping victims of domestic violence “achieve safety once they make the decision to leave their abuser.”

“Many victims of violence don’t feel safe even when they’ve made that break, and this bill will provide them a confidential address,” she said from the floor of the Arizona House on March 7, 2011.

Liliana Soto, a spokesperson for Hobbs, who is now governor, said in a statement that the address confidentiality program is “critical to protecting vulnerable Arizonans.” Soto said Hobbs has “long prioritized voter privacy and safety, including during her time as a legislator and secretary of state,” and that Hobbs acted “immediately” to mitigate risk to protected voters upon learning of the error in 2020.

“The governor believes safeguarding this highly sensitive data must remain an absolute priority,” Soto said, describing any data breach involving the program as “a serious matter.” “She expects state systems to uphold the highest standards of data security.”

Varvel said the previous incident was the impetus behind the office’s existing policies and procedures around how to pull information from the voter registration database in response to public inquiries.

During her interview with Votebeat, she said the office’s rules about handling protected voters’ data hadn’t changed following the most recent error, but that the incident put public records staff on high alert with requests involving any voter information.

However, Jones later said in a statement that the office had also created a new internal list of protected voters and directed public records staffers to compare it against any requests for voter data. She said this “stop list” was implemented “shortly after the incident” in 2024 and is intended to prevent any future accidental leaks of confidential voter information. She added that the office requested funding for its address confidentiality program during state budget negotiations, but was waiting to hear whether it would receive the money.

Votebeat asked Varvel whether she could promise the state’s protected voters that their confidential details wouldn’t be erroneously released again.

“I will say that I always am concerned — like, things are going to happen with data that you’re not anticipating,” she responded. “But, yes, I think that we’re very, very sensitive to this issue.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.