Votebeat

Milwaukee audit logs show no evidence of election fraud, experts say

2026-09-11T21:02:39+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.

It took mere minutes for conspiracy theorists to seize on a Milwaukee election error after the August primary, when officials initially forgot to extract election results from five of the city’s nine absentee ballot tabulators. They lobbed baseless accusations that election officials had switched votes or otherwise tampered with the results.

But audit logs from those five tabulators show no evidence of tampering between the time officials initially left the facility and returned again to correctly extract results, experts told Votebeat.

“I don’t see a ‘there’ there,” said Duncan Buell, a chair emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina who has been analyzing election data and voting systems since 2010.

Ryan Macias, an election consultant who previously worked for the arm of the Election Assistance Commission that certifies voting machines, agreed there were “no signs or evidence that anything was done outside the norm” between the initial error and the successful extraction of the results.

More than three weeks after the primary election, city officials released audit logs from all nine tabulators to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the public on Sept. 4. The files detail every action on the nine Milwaukee tabulators used to count absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 election.

On each of the five affected tabulators, the logs tell the same story: Officials mistakenly selected “export audit log” instead of “export files” during the initial extraction, which happened between 10:15 p.m. and about 10:40 p.m. Then, officials locked the machines.

Officials began turning the machines back on at around 11:30 p.m., after they realized they had made a mistake. They extracted the correct files shortly after midnight. The audit logs show no ballots being scanned, votes being deleted, or that the data contained on the tabulators was manipulated in any way.

The error didn’t change the vote count at all. It just delayed election results by a couple hours.

When Macias first learned of the issue, he assumed that the problem was human error and would be resolved.

“Now, looking at the audit log, I can tell you with a 100% fact that what I assumed happened [is what] happened,” he said.

Other experts agreed.

Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, said she reviewed the audit logs with her team of experienced election experts.

“From what I see, those logs match the public account exactly,” she said.

“In the roughly two hours between those two exports, there’s no scanning or counting activity recorded in the logs on any of those five machines,” she said. “And just as importantly, the ballot counts on every machine match the officially reported.”

Conspiracy theories percolated well before Milwaukee released audit logs

Conspiracy theories about what may have transpired in Milwaukee on Election Day began circulating almost immediately after Milwaukee officials announced the mistake. Popular social media accounts questioned the credibility of election officials and others suggested that officials were directly involved in fraud.

Three days after the election, Votebeat requested the audit logs — the records that could show exactly what happened on the tabulators during the period conspiracy theorists were questioning. Milwaukee did not release them until Sept. 4, more than three weeks later, and after the Wisconsin Elections Commission also asked the city to make them public.

Experts said that delay was not unusual.

“Releasing audit logs — these machine logs — that’s not a typical part of the documentation that election offices normally produce,” Morrell said, adding that it’s likely that Milwaukee would have needed legal approval before releasing the logs. “The fact that they did make them public, I think that’s a responsible process — not a cover up.”

More important, she said, is that the officials retained the records in the first place.

“The fact that the log is there, the fact that these things are recorded should be seen as a positive even though it was slow for them,” she said. “I think the more concerning thing would be if the log just didn’t exist at all.”

Milwaukee plans better documentation for the future

In response to the error, Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez outlined several changes meant to prevent similar problems.

Written instructions for extracting results will now include images showing election officials which options to select on screen, Gutiérrez said in a letter to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Those instructions will also be made available to observers at the city’s absentee ballot facility.

Before the results are downloaded, she said, the extraction teams will be briefed on the process. As workers move through the steps, they will verbally identify each selection they make so other members of the team can confirm they have followed the correct procedure.

“In this instance, an error occurred during the results-download process,” she told the commission. “At the same time, the safeguards surrounding the election worked as intended: the discrepancy was identified, the underlying election results remained intact, the correct files were retrieved, and Milwaukee’s accurate election results were ultimately reported.”

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

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.

Live event replay: 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? Email us at community@votebeat.org.

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.

Watch the full event recording below:

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes officials send duplicate ballots. Here’s how security measures prevent double voting.

2026-05-29T14:37:38+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 Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, Green Bay election officials accidentally sent duplicate ballots to 150 voters, prompting an administrative complaint before the Wisconsin Elections Commission and conspiracy theories online.

In a slightly different example from this year, some voters in Maryland initially received primary ballots for the wrong party. Election officials then intentionally issued new ballots for the correct party to all voters who had requested a mail ballot, and the original ballots were voided. Nonetheless, President Donald Trump falsely suggested that nobody knew what was happening with the original ballots and that “any Republican running in Maryland doesn’t have a chance” because voters who received them, which were disproportionately Democrats, would be allowed to vote twice.

Despite the heightened attention, election officials accidentally sending duplicate ballots — or sending out an erroneous batch before intentionally sending corrected ballots to the same voters — is a rare but well-understood mistake nationwide that hardly ever results in the type of double voting Trump has warned of.

“Once any ballot is received and accepted, it locks down that voter’s record, so that a second ballot could not be accepted for that same voter,” said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer of the National Association of Election Officials. “That’s the way it works everywhere.”

Two primary mechanisms keep these accidental duplicate ballots from getting counted: proper record-keeping and deterrence, said David Levine, an election security expert and the election director in Richmond, Virginia. Generally, that record-keeping is done by putting unique barcodes on absentee ballot envelopes, which prevent people from voting more than once.

“It’s usually not an issue because, one, election officials are pretty good about contingency planning and having procedures in place, so if something like this happens, they know how to either void ballots or segregate them appropriately, so that they’re not going to be counted,” Levine said.

Second, he added, most voters understand that double-voting is a crime, and it’s not a practice they want to engage in. A study of 2012 election results found that, at most, one in 4,000 votes cast could be a double vote, but that clerical errors in marking turnout records — not actual double voting — may account for most if not all of that number.

Some of the attention on these mistakes comes from people who are genuinely unaware of the protections that keep double votes from being counted, Levine said. But, he said, there’s also scrutiny from people who are familiar or should be familiar with those safeguards but “choose to try and make a lot of hay out of something that’s largely much ado about nothing.”

Why do duplicate ballots get sent out?

Simply put, election season is an extraordinarily busy time for clerks and the vendors that print their ballots. Sometimes amid their multitasking, they mistakenly send two batches of absentee ballots to the same group of voters, or send an incorrect batch and have to send a second, correct one.

In the Green Bay instance, Jeffreys said election officials were scrambling because a mid-March blizzard closed much of the city, and her staff faced a time-crunch to send ballots out on time. The city sent notices to the 152 affected voters before Election Day. Ultimately, just one voter returned two ballots, and both were voided after Green Bay officials alerted the voter about it.

In Maryland, the State Board of Elections said the initial batch of ballots was erroneous because of a coding error with the board’s mail ballot vendor. Since the vendor couldn’t identify which voters received the wrong ballots, the board decided to send new ballots to everyone who had requested a mail ballot in that election and void the old ones in the state’s registration database, so they wouldn’t count even if voters returned them.

Similar errors have happened around the state and country. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Madison, Wisconsin, officials sent around 2,200 duplicate ballots because of a data processing error. In Racine, Wisconsin, this year, election officials intentionally sent voters a second batch of ballots because the first set left off a municipal race. Other incidents have happened in Pennsylvania and California.

What keeps those erroneous ballots from getting counted?

One of the best tools election officials in Wisconsin and elsewhere have at their disposal are unique barcodes printed on the absentee ballot certificates that voters receive.

Those barcodes in Wisconsin connect to the statewide voter registration database and are unique to each voter. Other states have similar systems, with unique identifiers tying an absentee ballot to each voter. If an election official scans a duplicate ballot, the system shows that the voter already returned one, and one of the ballots is rejected.

That’s a “very, very established process,” Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe said after the Green Bay incident.

In examples like Racine, when voters receive a ballot missing a race or containing another error that can be corrected before Election Day, officials will intentionally send another, correct ballot to the voter. The first ballot becomes known as the “A” ballot and the second one is known as the “B” ballot.

If a voter returns just one ballot, that vote will count — including only valid votes from the erroneous ballot, if that’s the one submitted. If a voter returns both ballots, officials will scrap the “A” ballot and count the “B” since the latter is the correct form.

That’s different from Maryland, where election officials voided all of the original ballots and reissued new ones.

How specific instances of duplicate ballots get resolved — whether that’s canceling out all the original ballots or planning for “A” and “B” ballots like in Racine — can depend on state laws, officials’ discretion and court rulings, Patrick said. How close the error is to election day and the jurisdiction’s budget can also influence how election officials handle duplicate ballots, she added.

Patrick also drew a distinction between officials sending out duplicate absentee ballots and the rare but occasional instances of double voting.

“More often than not, the rare instances where we see it, it’s an individual voting in two different jurisdictions or two different states,” she said. “It’s not so much that a single person is voting in the same election, in the same jurisdiction, under the same name.”

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

Cochise County asks feds to investigate disputed claims about voting machine testing — again

2026-03-03T19:19:13+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.

Four years after a conservative southeastern Arizona county tried to defy election laws, it may be gearing up to do so again.

The Cochise County Board of Supervisors voted on Feb. 24 to send a letter to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asking her to investigate whether the laboratories charged with testing voting machines nationwide were properly accredited ahead of recent elections.

Cochise County officials have doubted the laboratories for years, despite the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s reassurances that they were properly accredited. Those doubts were part of what prompted two of the county’s supervisors to vote to delay the certification of its election results past the legal deadline in November 2022.

A judge ultimately ordered the supervisors to certify the midterm election results, but their doubts about the laboratories — and the voting machines they test — have apparently persisted. The board sent an identical message to the U.S. Department of Justice less than six months ago.

The letters asked federal officials to review the Election Assistance Commission’s processes for accrediting testing facilities that ensure tabulators and other voting machines meet federal standards, to determine whether the county’s equipment remains properly certified, and to advise supervisors on “the proper interpretation of federal and state requirements regarding voting system compliance and lawful ballot tabulation.”

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi never responded to the county’s initial inquiry — and it’s unclear whether Gabbard will, either. A spokesperson for her office did not comment when contacted by Votebeat.

Still, Supervisor Tom Crosby, a Republican, said that the board decided to send the letter to Gabbard after she appeared at the unprecedented federal raid of an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, last month. Gabbard later said in a letter to the U.S. Congress that President Donald Trump had requested her presence at the scene and that she had “broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate and analyze intelligence related to election security.”

Crosby said the document established her as the “grand poobah of elections” in Washington, D.C. — so he and Board of Supervisors Chair Frank Antenori both voted to send their letter her way.

The county’s board has three members, all of whom are Republicans. Supervisor Kathleen Gomez was absent from the Feb. 24 meeting, but previously voted with her colleagues to send the same request to Bondi.

Crosby and Antenori framed their vote to reup their request as a simple inquiry designed to increase confidence in election equipment.

“It’s one tiny little piece of trying to restore integrity and confidence in the election system,” Antenori said. “That’s all this is. Nobody is doing any fishing expeditions.”

But Allison Morse, a county resident who has long voiced opposition to the supervisors’ actions in 2022 and the lone public speaker on the item, wasn’t convinced. She slammed the letter as “another futile attempt to uncover some dubious shred of evidence that there is, or was, something wrong with our voting machines.”

“Your relentless quest to find fault as a way to justify a criminal act is extraordinary,” she told the supervisors. “I don’t think you, or Ms. Gabbard, will find what you’re looking for.”

Cochise County officials continue to fight battles from 2022

The letters to the federal government are not the only signs that Cochise County officials are laying the groundwork for election challenges similar to that of 2022.

After voting to delay the certification of the election, Crosby and former Supervisor Peggy Judd were indicted on felony election interference and conspiracy charges in 2023.

Judd did not seek reelection to her seat and later took a plea deal. But Crosby pleaded not guilty and continues to fight the case. He has repeatedly attempted to get his charges dismissed and has unsuccessfully asked higher courts to review the criminal case against him.

Crosby’s new colleagues on the board appear sympathetic to his case. Over the past year, they have repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked the Arizona Counties Insurance Pool to cover his legal bills.

When appointing a new county recorder in early 2025, Antenori also said that he wanted a candidate who could handle the “political” parts of the job and was willing to “fight” for the county’s elections. And in an August 2025 meeting, the supervisors expressed an interest in re-testing Arizona’s laws regarding voting machines and election certification.

Meanwhile, Crosby’s trial has been pushed back several times — most recently because an internal report on a lead investigator for the prosecution found that he had falsified timecards and a police report unrelated to Crosby’s case.

Now, Crosby may not stand before a jury until after the midterms. In legal filings, his attorneys suggested postponing trial dates to early 2027, noting that key witnesses for both the prosecution and defense won’t be available until then.

But that delay could jeopardize Crosby’s prosecution. The case against him is being brought by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat. However, she is up for reelection in 2026, and her most prominent Republican opponent — Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen — says he would drop the case if he were to win the seat.

“This flies in the face of the theory of legislative immunity,” he told Votebeat, referencing a legal privilege that is designed to insulate legislators from punitive efforts by the executive or judicial branches of government. Crosby’s attorneys have repeatedly referenced legislative immunity while attempting to get the case against him dismissed, but judges have so far shot down the argument.

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

Navajo County, Arizona, seeks a new top election official after resignation

2026-02-25T23:23:40+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.

Navajo County Recorder Tim Jordan was done fighting.

He’d served as one of the county’s top election officials for a year — and spent most of that time wrapped up in a legal fight after being indicted on criminal charges connected to a road rage incident. That included one count of disorderly conduct with a weapon, a felony charge that threatened to disqualify him from holding office.

Former Navajo County Recorder Timothy Jordan posing during a training in Maricopa County in Dec. 2025 in Phoenix, AZ.

As 2026 dawned, he seemed ready to move on. He agreed to a plea deal on Dec. 30 and, about a month later, announced that he planned to resign on April 15, opening up a key election-administration job in the politically divided county.

“I feel my decision is within the best interest of all,” he wrote in his resignation letter. “I choose to leave quietly as possible to avoid further media and social distractions.” He signed off his letter with “much love.”

Jordan’s announcement — which came after a “sit-down conversation” and “verbal agreement” with county leaders, per his letter — brought a quiet end to a highly publicized saga that drew media attention to the northeastern Arizona county.

Now, county supervisors must find someone to pick up the pieces and run the recorder’s office during the heated and fast-approaching 2026 election cycle. Whomever they appoint will serve out the rest of Jordan’s term, which lasts through 2028 — meaning the new recorder will also help oversee voting in the next presidential election.

The county’s board of supervisors is divided 3-to-2, with Democrats in the majority. But any appointee they pick must be a Republican. When there is a vacancy in an elected office, state law dictates that it be filled by an appointee of the same political party as its most recent occupant.

But it’s unclear whether the person supervisors pick will hold the same views as Jordan, who promoted false claims of rampant voter fraud while running for his seat. On the campaign trail, he said past elections had been rigged and claimed without proof that there were dead voters and noncitizens on the county’s voter rolls.

Board Chair Daryl Seymore, a Republican, said he wants the county’s voter lists to be accurate, but suggested he was more concerned about the board’s appointee following routine processes to remove deceased people from the rolls than noncitizens.

“That’s the cleanup part that needs to be done, and done thoroughly,” he said, adding that he wanted someone who could “do the job that’s required.”

“That’s something that we want to see always happen, regardless of what party. That’s the role of the recorder’s office.”

Ultimately, supervisors said they want to find someone with a healthy respect for the job and the county’s voters. Seymore said he wants a candidate who will approach the role with “seriousness”and who also can handle the non-voting side of the job, which includes recording official documents like contracts and deeds. Vice Chair Dawnafe Whitesinger, a Democrat, said she’s looking for a new recorder with “a public servant’s heart.”

But finding someone qualified might be difficult in the remote county. Other rural areas have struggled to locate qualified applicants for high-level positions involving elections, particularly when their previous occupants have come under close scrutiny.

Even if someone already in the office steps up, it could create a cascading chain of vacancies that experts say pose challenges for counties with fewer resources.

“These smaller counties are often run with a small workforce,” said Bill Gates, executive director of Arizona State University’s Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory and a former GOP supervisor in Maricopa County. “You don’t have the capability to have a deep bench.”

Candidates have until March 6 to apply for the job. Navajo County Manager Bryan Layton said the county has received nine applications so far — including one from Jose Lerma, a voter registration coordinator in the recorder’s office whom Jordan recommended as his replacement.

Lerma has worked for several years in the office’s voter registration department. Prior to that, he worked for the county as a child support enforcement officer. He said he previously was not affiliated with any specific political party, but recently registered as a Republican so that he could apply for the recorder’s seat.

“I believe that I could bring a lot to the table, if they just allow me the opportunity,” he said.

Lerma said maintaining clean voter rolls is important and that the recorder’s office currently does “a great job” of ensuring that only eligible voters are able to cast ballots. He said elections have been “clean and fair” in the county — although he expressed less certainty about elections in other areas of the state.

“I want to believe that,” he said of whether election results were accurate statewide, adding that he “can’t speak for other counties.”

Seymore said Jordan’s recommendation wouldn’t have any bearing on his evaluation of the candidates. He said he was looking for the most qualified applicant.

“We have the time to vet people, and to do it in a process where the entire board of supervisors will be involved,” he said. “I think that’s the best thing that we could do.”

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

Kristi Noem’s hastily-arranged Arizona visit stokes rumors in wake of feds’ unprecedented actions

2026-02-13T22:36:16+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.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a hastily-scheduled appearance in Arizona on Friday to push for federal legislation that would institute photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements for voters nationwide.

The announcement that Noem was planning to hold a press conference about “election security” at an undisclosed location in Maricopa County sparked rumors, ultimately baseless, about the purpose of her visit and whether it signaled an election investigation. Her press conference was scheduled to be held just hours before her agency was set to run out of funding and face a partial shutdown.

Ultimately, her focus on the SAVE America Act highlighted the emphasis that President Donald Trump’s administration is placing on the legislation, which just passed the U.S. House of Representatives but faces a difficult path in the U.S. Senate.

Materials initially distributed to journalists announcing the event contained few details — just that Noem would be joined by local leaders to discuss election security.

The announcement came as the Trump administration has been taking increasingly aggressive steps on elections. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently conducted an unprecedented search of an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, another critical election battleground. Last week, Trump said Republicans “ought to nationalize the voting.” The Justice Department is also suing Arizona for its unredacted voter rolls, one of 25 such lawsuits that it has filed against states and Washington, D.C..

As word of the event began to spread locally, supervisors in Maricopa County called an emergency, closed-door meeting to receive “legal advice” about their “authority and responsibilities regarding election administration.” Jason Berry, a county spokesperson, declined to confirm whether the sudden session on Thursday afternoon was related to Noem’s planned visit.

Meanwhile, election officials statewide told Votebeat that Noem’s visit caught them by surprise, and that they hadn’t been briefed on it.

Reporters who had RSVPed to attend the event were notified late Thursday that they should report to a DHS office in Phoenix. They would then be taken by shuttle to an undisclosed location with limited cell service and no Internet access, per the message.

That location turned out to be an office building for Homeland Security Investigations in Scottsdale, located about 30 minutes from the meeting point in Phoenix. Journalists were transported in unmarked government SUVs, and upon arrival, waited more than an hour for Noem to take the podium.

When she did, she asserted that it was “a fact” that noncitizens were voting in elections, and added that the SAVE America Act was “absolutely critical to our country’s future.” She was joined at the event by several GOP officials from Arizona, including U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, and others.

Evidence overwhelmingly shows that noncitizen voting is rare. Arizona already requires its voters to show photo identification at the polls and to provide proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate or passport — in order to register to vote in state and local races. Voters can register to cast ballots in federal elections without showing such documents, but must still attest to their citizenship status under penalty of perjury.

Later, Noem blasted Arizona’s election processes and procedures, saying it needs “more improvement” than any other state.

“Your state has been an absolute disaster on elections,” she said. “Your leaders have failed you dramatically, by not having systems that work, by disenfranchising Americans who wanted to vote, that had to stand in lines for hours, because machines failed or software failed.”

Those remarks drew quick condemnation from top state officials. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, accused Noem of “grandstanding” and “spreading misinformation.” Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office, said that Noem had not reached out to Fontes to meet with him about election security during her visit.

“Don’t come into Arizona there from Washington, D.C., and tell us how to run our elections,” Fontes said in a taped statement responding to Noem’s comments. “We’re doing just fine without you, thank you very much.”

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

Election officials draw on sobering 2020 lessons as Trump calls for nationalizing voting

2026-02-03T23:30:08+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.

When President Donald Trump pressured state and local officials to intervene in his behalf in the 2020 election, it wasn’t a matter of abstract constitutional theory for the people running elections. It was armed protests outside offices, threats against their families, subpoenas for voter data, and months of uncertainty about whether doing their jobs would land them in legal jeopardy.

Now, Trump says he wants Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” language that evokes the pressure campaigns he and allies mounted during that contentious 2020 period.

Trump’s 2020 effort ultimately stalled when even some Republicans refused to take steps they believed were unlawful. And his call to nationalize voting this week prompted pushback from some GOP members of Congress and other Republican figures.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Trump’s proposal raised constitutional concerns, and he warned that nationalizing elections could make them more susceptible to cybersecurity attacks. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska was more blunt, saying he has long opposed federal control of elections. “I’ll oppose this now as well,” he wrote on X.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s comments referred to his support for federal legislation commonly called the SAVE Act.

Election officials say the lesson of 2020 was not that the system is invulnerable, but that it can be strained in ways that cause lasting damage long before courts step in. While it’s unclear whether Trump’s latest demands — and possible future actions— would lead to the same level of disruption, legal experts say some of the backstops that ultimately stopped him last time are now weaker, leaving election officials to absorb even more pressure.

Memories of 2020 shape the response

Kathy Bernier, a Republican former Wisconsin lawmaker and Chippewa County clerk, was the chair of the state Senate’s election committee following the 2020 election and repeatedly pushed back on Trump’s claims of widespread fraud. As Republicans launched a prolonged review of the results, Bernier criticized the effort publicly, saying Wisconsin’s elections were secure and that “no one should falsely accuse election officials of cheating.”

She faced extensive backlash, including calls for her resignation, and Bernier said the dispute escalated to the point that she carried a gun for protection. She ultimately left the legislature, a decision that she said wasn’t politically motivated.

A key takeaway from the 2020 election for election officials, Bernier told Votebeat, was the importance of radical transparency — not just following the rules, but showing people, in real time, that the rules are being followed “to a T.”

“When there’s a paper jam,” she said, “announce it.”

Still, she said, officials also learned the limits of that approach. After she tried to boost election confidence across Wisconsin, she came to a blunt conclusion: “There’s nothing you can do with ‘I don’t believe you.’”

In the years that followed, Bernier said, a bigger danger than Trump himself were the “charlatans” who took his words and turned them into a business model, spreading conspiracy theories for profit. The misinformation and disinformation those people spread, Bernier said, continue to resonate among the conspiratorial segments of the GOP.

The impact of their campaigns has been felt acutely by election officials. Many received death threats, and some had to relocate and enhance their security protections. Large cities redesigned their election offices to better protect their workers, and election official turnover increased dramatically, reshaping the profession long after the votes were counted.

Stephen Richer, a Republican who became recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, shortly after the 2020 election, had similar advice: Follow the law, tell the truth, and consult attorneys, national associations, and state associations before making key decisions, because “the likelihood that they are dealing with your jurisdiction alone is limited.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is among the Republicans who prominently resisted Trump’s calls to overturn the 2020 election. He and his wife received death threats, and were assigned a protective team by the state. He declined an interview with Votebeat, but in a statement this week, he urged lawmakers to improve state election administration “rather than rehashing the same outdated claims or worse — moving to federalize a core function of state government.”

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, another Republican who pushed back on Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread fraud following the 2020 election and faced similar retaliation, told Votebeat that the state’s elections are freer and fairer than ever before, and that the Constitution stops Trump from unilaterally nationalizing elections.

The Michigan Department of State, similarly, said this was a settled constitutional matter.

On the other hand, Michigan Republicans have asked the U.S. Justice Department for increased federal involvement in elections in the state, calling for monitors — not atypical in American elections — as well as “oversight,” although GOP leaders didn’t elaborate on what that would mean.

Richer, who lost his reelection bid for recorder in 2024 to another Republican, said Trump’s comments, combined with similar calls for federal involvement, suggest the Republican Party is drifting from its traditional commitment to federalism and local control. He also pointed to increased legislation at the federal level seeking to standardize elections, which has received little pushback from the Republican Party. That’s despite Republicans criticizing an earlier Democratic legislative effort as federal overreach.

“Clearly the federal government is going to do things that it’s never done before,” he said. “The FBI going in and taking materials from an election that happened over five years ago is unprecedented, so maybe we’re destined for additional unprecedented actions."

Election officials and courts the most significant ‘line of defense’

One of the key reasons that Trump failed in his efforts to delay and then overturn the 2020 election was the “men and women of principle” in his administration, said David Becker, an election lawyer who leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research. Becker, a former Justice Department official, said the experience offered an uncomfortable lesson: Those internal guardrails existed because individuals chose to enforce them — and there is less reason to assume they would be there again.

After the 2020 election, Bill Barr, the attorney general at the time, disputed Trump’s claim that there was widespread fraud; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency similarly disputed the president’s claim that swings in unofficial results during election night meant that there was election fraud; and national security officials reportedly warned Trump that he couldn’t seize voting machines.

“That line of defense is largely gone,” Becker said, because “the primary and perhaps only qualification for being hired by this administration — particularly in those key roles in the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security — is loyalty to this man.”

With fewer internal checks, Becker said, the second and most important line of defense this election cycle is courts and state and local election officials. Courts have already stymied many of the election policies Trump has tried to carry out via executive order, and “election officials are holding firm.” But he cautioned that court challenges take time — time in which “untold damage” can be done to erode public trust and to the officials caught in the middle.

That gap between what Trump can say and what he can actually do is where the risk now lies, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University who advised President Joe Biden’s administration on democracy and voting rights. Levitt said Trump does not have the legal or operational authority to unilaterally nationalize elections, even if he were inclined to cross legal boundaries.

He contrasted the president’s ability to control elections with ICE’s use of force in Democratic-run cities. In immigration enforcement, Levitt said, Congress has given the executive branch authority that can be exercised aggressively or improperly, even when courts later find those actions unlawful. In those cases, Levitt said, the president has “his finger on a switch” — the practical ability to act first and answer questions later. “No such switch exists” in elections, said Levitt.

But with fewer administration officials pushing back on Trump’s claims compared with his first term, Levitt said election officials can expect Trump’s messaging to get “much, much, much worse this year,” and for those claims to be given more oxygen by the rest of the federal government.

“It’s up to us to choose to believe him or not,” he added. Obedience in advance isn’t required, and treating Trump’s claims as commands would grant him authority he does not have, Levitt said, adding, “We have agency in this.”

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

Social media post shared by Trump misinterprets the way Wisconsin manages its voter rolls

2026-01-29T21:48:31+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.

A misleading claim that Wisconsin has more registered voters than people eligible to vote is gaining traction on social media, including in posts shared this week by President Donald Trump.

It’s just the latest in a long-running series of claims that misinterpret basic data about voter rolls to create alarm about the risk of voter fraud.

The posts circulating this week cite videos asserting that Wisconsin’s voter rolls contain more than 7 million names — far more than the state’s voting age population — and are overlaid with text reading, “This Is Not a Glitch — This Is Election Fraud Waiting To Happen.”

The videos feature Peter Bernegger, an entrepreneur who has been convicted of mail fraud and bank fraud. Bernegger has repeatedly promoted false theories about the 2020 election in Wisconsin legislative hearings and repeatedly filed unsuccessful lawsuits against election officials in search of proof for his claims.

But his claim conflates two different datasets in Wisconsin’s voter registration system: the Wisconsin voter list and active registered voters.

As of July 2025, the state had about 8.3 million names on its voter list — in line with the number Bernegger cites. But of them, only 3.7 million were active registered voters. The remaining roughly 4.6 million are inactive voters. Inactive records include people who previously registered to vote but later moved out of state, died, lost eligibility because of a felony conviction, or were ruled incompetent to vote by a court. Those individuals haven’t been removed from the voter list, but because of their inactive status, they cannot vote unless they re-register, which requires proof of residency and a photo ID.

Bernegger claims in his video that the list of voters generally grows every day, going down only once every four years, when voters who haven’t cast a ballot in four years are sent postcards asking whether they want to remain registered, and then removed from the active list if they don’t respond.

Part of that claim is true: Wisconsin never deletes voter records, so the total database of active and inactive registrations only grows. But the active voter roll, which includes only voters currently eligible to cast a ballot, can shrink.

By email, Bernegger disputed Votebeat’s characterization of his claims but provided no further proof for them.

The confusion stems from a common misunderstanding about Wisconsin’s voter system, Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, told Votebeat. The pollbooks used to check voters’ eligibility on Election Day contain only active voters, while the broader voter database also retains inactive records.

The inactive records also detail why a voter was deactivated. Wisconsin state law allows for several reasons for a voter’s registration status to be changed from eligible to ineligible, but there’s no state law calling for the destruction of voter registration records, not even for a voter who has died.

And Jacobs said there’s a good reason for that: Keeping these inactive records indefinitely helps prevent fraud: If somebody tries to register using the identity of a dead voter, for example, clerks can flag that application, because the prior record — including the reason it was deactivated — is still on file.

“It’s actually pro-list-hygiene to have access to that information immediately,” she said.

Interstate databases also play a role in maintaining accurate voter rolls. One such organization, the Electronic Registration Information Center, has helped states including Wisconsin identify hundreds of thousands of voters each year who have moved across state lines, and tens of thousands of voters who died. But the system has gaps. Some Republican-led states have left the program, leaving just 25 states and Washington, D.C., participating.

Experts say voter fraud is extremely rare, but Republicans have long argued that dirty voter rolls could enable fraud and reduce confidence.

Similar misleading claims about voter rolls have circulated in other states, including Michigan, amplified by right-wing figures such as Elon Musk.

Democrats and many election officials typically support regular voter roll maintenance but warn that aggressive cleanup efforts may risk disenfranchising lawful, active voters.

Wisconsin’s own data shows how infrequently fraud occurs. In its latest report, which covers five elections, the WEC identified just 30 potential instances of fraud. One relates to a voter seeking to vote in two states. Most involved voting after a felony conviction or double-voting by casting an absentee and in-person vote in the same election.

Correction: This story was updated to reflect the number of names on the state’s voter list was 8.3 million and the number of suspected instances of fraud in a 2024 Wisconsin Elections Commission report as 30.

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

Why Trump can’t cancel the 2026 midterms — and why that fear distracts from the real risk

2026-01-26T10:00:00+00:00

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

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump floated the idea of canceling the 2026 midterm elections, drawing widespread attention and concern even as White House officials later dismissed the remarks as facetious.

But election experts consistently agree that Trump has neither the legal authority nor the practical ability to cancel elections. And state and local election officials consistently say they will carry out the elections they’re legally required to run.

Live event: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — 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.

Stephen Richer, the Republican former recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, said the idea that a president could simply halt or meaningfully cancel an election misunderstands how elections function on the ground. The system, he said, is “made up of so many disparate actors” — thousands of local officials, courts, vendors, and administrators operating under different authorities and timelines. Even if there were a coordinated attempt to get these people not to go through with the election, “you’ve got to figure at least half of those people aren’t big fans of the president, and many of the rest are on autopilot regardless of what they think of the president.”

Some election processes are fixed by law and timing. Military and overseas ballots, for example, must be sent on a specific schedule — a deadline Richer described as “an immutable deadline, like gravity.” Any attempt to disrupt that selectively would quickly become obvious. “How absurd would it be that one county got ballots and the next one didn’t?” he said, predicting “a gazillion lawsuits” and court orders compelling officials to move forward.

Richer also pointed to the scale of U.S. election administration: more than 9,000 jurisdictions and more than 90,000 polling locations nationwide. “You are not going around and shutting those down,” he said. He noted that even voter-intimidation efforts would face immediate legal challenges and injunctions, while plenty of voters would have cast ballots via other means (e.g., early or mail voting) anyway.

That assessment is echoed by David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who speaks regularly with local election officials. (When we spoke, he was driving to a conference for Colorado election officials — and had just come from a conference of 300 officials in Texas.) Becker said nearly 1,500 local officials across 47 states have participated in his monthly informational sessions, which he’s held since Trump put out his executive order last March, and none of them have suggested canceling the election or violating state law.

“Every single one of them is committed to putting on the best election they possibly can,” Becker said. Even under pressure, officials aren’t signaling they’ll stop. “They are getting it done,” he said, adding that if support doesn’t come from the state, “they will band together and do it themselves.”

But state election officials aren’t backing down, either. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, says elections will proceed as planned regardless of what Trump might say. The academics and media stars gaining popularity and attention for saying otherwise are being “disingenuous” and “dangerous,” he said.

Courts have also played a critical role when local officials have threatened to overstep their authority. In 2020, even light suggestions that Trump might delay the election to accommodate COVID were met with outrage. After the 2020 election, judges made clear that certification is not discretionary and ordered officials to follow election law and move the process forward, even amid intense political pressure.

Those same state and local laws remain in place today. Courts and election offices are also better positioned than they were four years ago, with legal strategies drafted, training in place, and judges already familiar with these arguments. Across the country, clerks and secretaries of state describe updating contingency plans, consulting attorneys, and stress-testing procedures much as they would for a natural disaster or cyberattack.

If you’re worried about what lies ahead, election officials say there are meaningful ways to respond — and that spreading fear isn’t one of them. Richer said the bigger danger now is renewed distrust of election results. That distrust makes it easier for those in power to make bad-faith attempts to twist the math after votes are cast.

His advice is straightforward: “Continue being a repository for facts and truth about election administration, and kindly and sensitively inject those into conversations that you are a part of if you hear something you know to be wrong.” He added, “Don’t be dismissive. It never works.” And, he said, “you are responsible for the false information you spread.”

Aguilar said that academic voices predicting doom “don’t understand the nuances” of state and local law and that voters should be skeptical of them. Those who want better information should go to their local and state elections offices.

There’s also a risk that continually framing elections as likely not to happen — or as already lost — could have the opposite of the intended effect, discouraging participation rather than protecting democracy. If you’re concerned about what might happen in your county, there are concrete ways to help now: sign up to be a poll worker, volunteer to help register voters, offer your business or community space as a polling location, or donate to organizations preparing to defend election laws and certification in court.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

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

Judge dismisses Texas lawsuit over ballot numbering, threat to secrecy

2026-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

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

A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative activists who challenged the use of electronic voting equipment to randomly number ballots in Texas on the grounds that the practice compromised ballot secrecy.

Judge David Alan Ezra of U.S. District Court in Austin ruled that the case, filed in 2024 by longtime Texas election activist Laura Pressley and voters from three counties, was moot, because the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has since prohibited counties from using electronic pollbooks to generate and print numbers on ballot paper.

He also wrote that two of the counties named in the suit, Williamson and Bell, had taken steps to eliminate the use of pollbooks to number ballot paper, and that the third, Llano County, doesn’t use them for that purpose.

In court filings, Pressley had said she used public records to find what she described as an “algorithmic pattern” that could link more than 60,000 voters in Williamson County, north of Austin, to their ballots and expose how they voted, though she did not reveal her exact method.

Ballot secrecy has become a growing concern in recent years, as Texas passed laws that made it easier for the public to access various election records and datasets — anything from voter lists to the labels on election office computers and printers. Votebeat and the Texas Tribune in 2024 reported that the increased availability of records made it possible, in limited instances, to determine the ballot choices of individual voters, compromising their right to a secret ballot.

Following that reporting, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office directed counties to redact any information on election records and materials released to the public that could tie a voter to their ballot. Election officials have offered other solutions to address the state’s ballot secrecy concerns, but Texas lawmakers have yet to take action to tighten access to any publicly available election records.

In court filings, Pressley argued that ballots in the three counties she named in the lawsuit included unique identifier numbers generated and randomized by electronic pollbooks, the devices that are used to check in voters at polling places. Pressley alleged that these numbers were key in allowing ballots to be traced back to voters, though she didn’t specify how.

Pressley argued the ballots should instead be numbered sequentially, starting with 1, and then shuffled before they are issued to voters to protect ballot secrecy. She cited a 19th-century state law that calls for numbering ballots sequentially, but for years, the Secretary of State’s and and Attorney General’s office have said that randomized numbering complies with the law.

Pressley has sued at least twice before over ballot numbering, but those cases haven’t gone anywhere. Ezra said that Pressley and the other plaintiffs may file similar claims in the future, but they can’t “be based on facts alleged in this case.”

Pressley told Votebeat in an email that she’s planning to appeal Ezra’s ruling. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment.

A federal lawsuit against Harris County election officials filed last year by the national conservative nonprofit group Public Interest Legal Foundation also alleges that the county’s voting system violated at least three voters’ right to a secret ballot. The plaintiffs allege that Harris County officials failed to follow the state’s directive and released unredacted election records. The case, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Houston, is pending.

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

Here’s why Milwaukee elections are always viewed with suspicion

2025-12-19T10:00:00+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 nearly two weeks following Election Day in 2024, former U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, a Republican, refused to concede, blasting “last-minute absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m., flipping the outcome.”

But, just as when Donald Trump blamed Milwaukee for his 2020 loss, Hovde’s accusations and insinuations about the city’s election practices coincided with a surge of conspiratorial posts about the city. Popular social media users speculated about “sabotage” and “fraudulently high” turnout.

Hovde earlier this year told Votebeat that he believes there are issues at Milwaukee’s facility for counting absentee ballots, but he added that he doesn’t blame his loss on that. He didn’t respond to a request for comment in December for this article.

In Wisconsin’s polarized political landscape, Milwaukee has become a flashpoint for election suspicion, much like Philadelphia and Detroit — diverse, Democratic urban centers that draw outsized criticism. The scrutiny reflects the state’s deep rural-urban divide and a handful of election errors in Milwaukee that conspiracy theorists have seized on, leaving the city’s voters and officials under constant political pressure.

That treatment, Milwaukee historian John Gurda says, reflects “the general pattern where you have big cities governed by Democrats” automatically perceived by the right “as centers of depravity [and] insane, radical leftists.”

Charlie Sykes — a longtime conservative commentator no longer aligned with much of the GOP — said there’s “nothing tremendously mysterious” about Republicans singling out Milwaukee: As long as election conspiracy theories dominate the right, the heavily Democratic city will remain a target.

Milwaukee voters and election officials under constant watch

Milwaukee’s emergence as a target in voter fraud narratives accelerated in 2010, when dozens of billboards in the city’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods showed three people, including two Black people, behind bars with the warning: “VOTER FRAUD is a FELONY — 3 YRS & $10,000 FINE.”

Community groups condemned them as racist and misleading, especially for people who had regained their voting rights after felony convictions. Similar billboards returned in 2012, swapping the jail bars for a gavel. All of the advertisements were funded by the Einhorn Family Foundation, associated with GOP donor Stephen Einhorn, who didn’t respond to Votebeat’s email requesting comment.

Criticism of Milwaukee extends well beyond its elections. As Wisconsin’s largest city, it is often cast as an outlier in a largely rural state, making it easier for some to believe the worst about its institutions — including its elections.

“One of the undercurrents of Wisconsin political history is … rural parts versus urban parts,” said University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee political scientist and former Democratic legislator Mordecai Lee. As the state’s biggest city by far, “it becomes the punching bag for outstate legislators” on almost any issue.

“People stay at home and watch the evening news and they think if you come to Milwaukee, you’re going to get shot … or you’re going to get run over by a reckless driver,” said Claire Woodall, who ran the city’s elections from 2020 to 2024.

Election officials acknowledge Milwaukee has made avoidable mistakes in high-stakes elections but describe them as quickly remedied and the kinds of errors any large city can experience when processing tens of thousands of ballots. What sets Milwaukee apart is the scrutiny: Whether it was a briefly forgotten USB stick in 2020 or tabulator doors left open in 2024, each lapse is treated as something more ominous.

Other Wisconsin municipalities have made more consequential errors without attracting comparable attention: In 2011, Waukesha County failed to report votes from Brookfield when tallying a statewide court race — a major oversight that put the wrong candidate in the lead in early unofficial results. In 2024, Summit, a town in Douglas County, disqualified all votes in an Assembly race after officials discovered ballots were printed with the wrong contest listed.

“I don’t believe that there is anywhere in the state that is under a microscope the way the City of Milwaukee is,” said Neil Albrecht, a former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Black Milwaukeeans say racism behind scrutiny on elections

Milwaukee grew quickly in the 19th century, built by waves of European immigrants who powered its factories and breweries and helped turn it into one of the Midwest’s major industrial cities. A small Black community, searching for employment and fleeing the Jim Crow South, took root early and grew substantially in the mid-20th century.

As industry declined, white residents fled for the suburbs, many of which had racist housing policies that excluded Blacks. That left behind a city marked by segregated schools, shrinking job prospects, and sharp economic divides. The split was so stark that the Menomonee River Valley became a shorthand boundary: Black residents to the north, white residents to the south — a divide Milwaukee never fully overcame.

The result is one of the most segregated cities in the country, a place that looks and feels profoundly different from the overwhelmingly white, rural communities that surround it. That contrast has long made Milwaukee an easy target in statewide politics, and it continues to feed some people’s suspicions that something about the city — including its elections — is fundamentally untrustworthy.

The Rev. Greg Lewis, executive director of Wisconsin’s Souls to the Polls, said the reputation is rooted in racism and belied by reality. He said he has a hard enough time getting minorities to vote at all, “let alone vote twice.”

Albrecht agreed.

“If a Souls to the Polls bus would pull up to [a polling site], a bus full of Black people, some Republican observer would mutter, ‘Oh, these are the people being brought up from Chicago,’” he said. “As if we don’t have African Americans in Milwaukee.”

After former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes — a Black Milwaukeean and a Democrat — lost his 2022 U.S. Senate bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, emailed constituents saying Republicans “can be especially proud” of Milwaukee casting 37,000 fewer votes than in 2018, “with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.”

The message sparked backlash, though Spindell rejected accusations of racism. Asked about it this year, Spindell told Votebeat he meant to praise GOP outreach to Black voters.

Milwaukee organizer Angela Lang said she finds the shifting narratives about Black turnout revealing. “Are we voting [illegally]?” she said. “Or are you all happy that we’re not voting?”

History of real and perceived errors increases pressure on city

The scrutiny directed at Milwaukee falls on voters and the city employees who run its elections.

Milwaukee’s most serious stumble came in 2004, when a last-minute overhaul of the election office contributed to unprocessed voter registrations, delayed absentee counts, and discrepancies in the final tally. Multiple investigations found widespread administrative problems but no fraud.

“It was hard coming in at that low point,” said Albrecht, who joined the commission the following year, saying it gave Milwaukee the reputation as an “election fraud capital.”

In 2008, the city created a centralized absentee ballot count facility to reduce errors at polling places and improve consistency. The change worked as intended, but it also meant Milwaukee’s absentee results — representing tens of thousands of votes — were often reported after midnight, sometimes shifting statewide margins.

That timing is largely a product of state law: Wisconsin is one of the few states that prohibit clerks from processing absentee ballots before Election Day. For years, Milwaukee officials have asked lawmakers to change the rule. Instead, opponents argue the city can’t be trusted with extra processing time — even as they criticize the late-night results all but unavoidable under the current rule.

That dynamic was on full display in 2018, when former Gov. Scott Walker, trailing in his reelection bid, said he was blindsided by Milwaukee’s 47,000 late-arriving absentee ballots and accused the city of incompetence.

Proposals to allow administrators more time to process ballots — and therefore report results sooner— have repeatedly stalled in the Legislature. The most recent passed the Assembly last session but never received a Senate vote, with some Republicans openly questioning why they should give Milwaukee more time when they don’t trust the city to handle the ballots with the time it already has.

“The late-arriving results of absentee ballots processed in the City of Milwaukee benefits all attempts to discredit the city,” Albrecht said.

Without the change, to keep up with other Wisconsin municipalities, Milwaukee must process tens of thousands of absentee ballots in a single day, a herculean task. “The effect of not passing it means this issue can be kept alive,” said Lee, the UW–Milwaukee political scientist.

Some Republicans acknowledge that dynamic outright. Rep. Scott Krug, a GOP lawmaker praised for his pragmatic approach to election policy, has long supported a policy fix. This session, it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

Krug said a small but influential faction on the right has built a kind of social network around election conspiracy theories, many focused on Milwaukee. Because the tight counting window is part of the fuel that keeps that group going, he said, “a fix is a problem for them.”

2020 marked the shift to ‘complete insanity’

Albrecht said that while Milwaukee had long operated under an unusual level of suspicion, the scrutiny that followed 2020 represented a shift he described as “complete insanity.”

That year, in the early hours after Election Day, Milwaukee released its absentee totals, but then-election chief Woodall realized she’d left a USB drive in one tabulator. Woodall called her deputy clerk about it, and the deputy had a police officer take the USB drive to the county building. The mistake didn’t affect results — the audit trail matched — but it was enough to ignite right-wing talk radio and fuel yet more conspiratorial claims about the city’s late-night reporting.

The scrutiny only intensified. A joking email exchange between Woodall and an elections consultant, taken out of context, was perceived by some as proof of fraud after Gateway Pundit and a now-defunct conservative state politics site published it. Threats followed, serious enough that police and the FBI stepped in. Woodall pushed for increased security at the city’s election office, saying that “there was no question” staff safety was at risk.

Paulina Gutiérrez, the city’s election director, has faced conspiracy theories over some Milwaukee voting practices.

A similar dynamic played out again in 2024, when workers discovered that doors on absentee tabulators hadn’t been fully closed. With no evidence of tampering but anticipating backlash, officials zeroed out the machines and recounted every ballot. The fix didn’t stop Republicans, including Johnson, from suggesting something “very suspicious” could be happening behind the scenes. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, errors in other Wisconsin communities, sometimes far more consequential, rarely draw similar attention. Take Waukesha County’s error in 2011 — a mistake that swung thousands of votes and affected which candidate was in the lead. “But it didn’t stick,” said UW–Madison’s Barry Burden, a political science professor. “People don’t talk about Waukesha as a place with rigged or problematic elections.”

In recent years there was only one substantiated allegation of serious election official wrongdoing: In November 2022, Milwaukee deputy clerk Kimberly Zapata was charged with misconduct in office and fraud for obtaining fake absentee ballots.

A month prior, she had ordered three military absentee ballots using fake names and sent the ballots to a Republican lawmaker, an effort she reportedly described as an attempt to expose flaws in the election system. Zapata said those events stemmed from a “complete emotional breakdown.” She was sentenced to one year of probation for election fraud.

“We didn’t hear as much from the right” about those charges, Woodall said.

More recently, the GOP has raised concerns about privacy screens — a curtain hung last November to block a staging area and, earlier this year, a room with frosted windows. Republicans seized on each, claiming the city was hiding something.

Paulina Gutiérrez, the city’s election director, told Votebeat the ballots temporarily kept behind the curtain “aren’t manipulated. They’re scanned and sent directly onto the floor,” where observers are free to watch the envelopes be opened and the ballots be counted.

But the accusations took off anyway. Even Johnson, the U.S. senator, suggested the city was “making sure NO ONE trusts their election counts.”

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

Wisconsin election reforms sought by clerks are stalled by GOP infighting

2025-11-14T11:00:00+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.

A Republican lawmaker’s plan to regulate drop boxes and give Wisconsin’s clerks more time to process absentee ballots ran into obstacles last week, including skepticism from fellow Republicans and a rival GOP bill to ban drop boxes entirely.

The cool reception for Rep. Scott Krug’s ideas, especially to let clerks process ballots on the Monday before an election, underscores the GOP’s persistent internal divide over election policy in Wisconsin, with advocates of reforms long sought by election officials of both parties running into distrust fueled by conspiracy theories and misinformation. Last week, the resistance appeared strong enough to stall or complicate efforts by Republicans who aim to address clerks’ needs and craft workable policy that can gain Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ support.

That split was on full display at a Nov. 4 hearing of the Assembly Elections Committee, chaired by Rep. Dave Maxey.

Krug, a former committee chair who championed the draft bill to regulate drop boxes, argued that his colleagues should adopt a “reality-based” mindset with their approach to drop boxes. Liberals, he said, control the governor’s office, making it all but certain that GOP Rep. Lindee Brill’s bill to ban drop boxes would get vetoed by Evers.

To that, Brill responded: “I am a believer in God and a follower of Jesus Christ, so do I think there’s a chance that [Evers] would change his mind and sign this into law? Sure. But I’m taking this on because our Republican president believes this is the direction we should be heading.”

In response to questions, she dismissed an Associated Press survey of election officials that found no widespread fraud from drop boxes in the 2020 presidential election that could have affected the results, saying she wasn’t sure she considered the AP a valid source.

“You and I find truth in different spots,” she told a Democratic lawmaker.

During the hearing, Maxey let others speak at length, including Peter Bernegger — a conspiracy theorist fined by the Wisconsin Elections Commission for making frivolous complaints — who echoed unfounded claims of widespread drop box fraud in Wisconsin.

When Krug scrutinized Brill’s proposal, though, Maxey interrupted him, leading a visibly frustrated Krug to ask him to “give me the last sentence, like we’ve let others have.”

Republicans have slim majority, divided caucus

This clash between the two views on election policy “is longstanding and is not going to be resolved anytime soon,” said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor and founder of the Elections Research Center. “Right now, it seems like neither path is really working.”

Assembly Republican leaders typically only advance bills that have 50 GOP votes, enough to pass without Democratic support. They once held 64 of 99 seats, nearly a supermajority, but now have just 54, meaning they can afford to lose only four GOP votes to advance legislation. That math, and the internal distrust, make passing even modest reforms difficult. Unless they can rally the more skeptical voices in their caucus, Burden said, Republicans have to be willing to cross the aisle and court Democratic votes.

Maxey, who co-authored Brill’s bill, told Votebeat that drop boxes “are about as effective for election integrity as a mask is at preventing COVID,” an analogy that left his meaning muddled: Drop boxes in Wisconsin have never been proven to be a means for widespread fraud, whereas masks have been shown to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Maxey said his worries weren’t “wild conspiracy theories” but came from past ballot issues in Madison, though none of those involved drop boxes. He told Votebeat that he fears tampering and that voters using drop boxes might be unable to fix ballot errors.

Burden noted that valid ballots deposited in drop boxes are like any other absentee ballot, and contain voters’ and witnesses’ information, which helps prevent fraud.

Monday processing proposal in doubt

Krug’s draft proposal to let local clerks begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before an election was a change long sought by election officials to help speed up the reporting of results, but blocked by a few conservative lawmakers. Krug and other GOP leaders hoped his proposal could win them over because it was part of a broader package that included measures conservatives want, including an explicit ban on clerks fixing, or curing, errors on absentee ballot envelopes, and the stricter regulation of drop boxes.

But at a hearing on Nov. 6, Krug conceded that both the preprocessing and drop box proposals were in jeopardy because of GOP opposition. Those measures were stripped out of the package after pushback from Brill, Maxey, and other conservatives, who released their own bill to ban drop boxes entirely.

Maxey told Votebeat that he would likely give a Monday processing proposal a hearing in his committee but would vote against it — adding that he knows other Assembly Republicans are against it, too.

Krug — who previously told Votebeat that he “would use every little ounce of political capital effort created on elections to get Monday processing done” — appeared to downplay the measure’s importance, saying it was only an issue in Milwaukee, where late-night reporting of election results often leads to conspiracy theories about fraudulent ballot dumps.

Clerks elsewhere disagree that the problem is so localized. Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, told Votebeat she hopes Krug “hasn’t entirely given up” on the Monday processing proposal, though “that’s what it sounds like for this session, at least.”

Krug also blamed its failure so far on the governor’s office, which he said received the draft Monday processing proposal months ago but never got back to him.

“Scott Krug has taken enough you-know-what in every community in the state of Wisconsin for being bold on this issue and saying we have to do it,” Krug said. “I need partners.”

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

Trump pardons alleged ‘fake electors’ and other allies who tried to undo his 2020 election loss

2025-11-10T21:38:44+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 issued a sweeping federal pardon on Sunday for Rudy Giuliani and dozens of others involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, including the so-called fake electors who participated in a scheme to cast electoral votes for Trump in states that he lost.

The pardons were announced by Justice Department Pardon Attorney Ed Martin on X, in a post that referred to the fake electors as “alternate electors.” Along with Giuliani, those pardoned included John Eastman and Sidney Powell, who were also members of Trump’s legal team, and Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff.

“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” the announcement said.

The pardons are largely symbolic, since the people receiving them aren’t facing federal charges. Several of them face state charges, for which the president has no pardon power. Still, it represents another step by Trump to wipe away consequences for allies who participated in efforts to overrule the will of voters and overturn his 2020 election loss.

One of the first steps he took in his second term was to grant a blanket pardon to more than 1,500 people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to disrupt the certification of the 2020 results. Trump, who was impeached, and acquitted, on charges of inciting that attack, has praised the attackers and refused to acknowledge publicly that he lost the election.

Trump has also used executive orders to target lawyers and law firms involved in pursuing cases against Jan. 6 rioters, and investigations of his 2016 campaign and first-term administration.

“This is yet another expression of the fact that Donald Trump does not care for democracy,” Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in California and former Justice Department official, said of the pardons.

Levitt said the broad language of the pardon might have an effect the administration did not intend: that it could also be read as absolving state election officials who Trump allies have said should be prosecuted for their roles in administering the 2020 election.

What was the ‘fake elector’ plot?

The fake elector plots sought to exploit ambiguities in the laws and processes that Congress uses to certify the Electoral College votes for president.

Presidential elections are determined ultimately by the votes of the 538 members of the Electoral College; a candidate needs 270 votes to win. Each state is represented by a certain number of presidential electors based on its population. Before the general election, each presidential nominee selects a slate of electors.

After the election, nearly all states award all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in the state. Nebraska and Maine allocate them proportionally.

In 2020, Joe Biden won the popular vote in Democratic strongholds, as well as key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and his electors in those states were then authorized to submit a certificate of their votes to Congress.

But attorneys with the Trump campaign urged alternate, or “fake,” electors in those states to cast votes for Trump and submit them to Congress, part of an effort to overturn the results on the grounds that the Biden’s victory was illegitimate. Courts, audits, and investigations have repeatedly found the results were sound.

After that, prosecutors in several states brought criminal charges against the electors who participated in the plan to submit electoral votes for Trump. Some of those cases are still ongoing. Here’s a look at where the cases stand in the key swing states:

Arizona

In Arizona, a grand jury in April 2024 indicted 18 people on nine criminal charges, including six counts of conspiracy; fraudulent schemes and artifices; fraudulent schemes and practices; and forgery. The indictment alleged that they conspired to prevent the lawful transfer of presidency when they claimed to be the “duly elected and qualified Electors” from Arizona.

The case hit procedural roadblocks when Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Attorney General, was ordered by a judge to return to the grand jury for a fresh hearing because jurors weren’t shown the full text of the Electoral Count Act of 1887. An appeals court recently declined to hear an appeal of that order.

Georgia

Three of Georgia’s 16 fake electors were charged as part of a sweeping election interference case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in 2023. Eight others were granted immunity in exchange for their cooperation.

Willis’ case was derailed, however, due to allegations of a romantic relationship between her and one of the top prosecutors on the case. Willis was removed as prosecutor. The state Supreme Court declined to hear Willis’ appeal of that decision, and the case is now on hold. A Fulton County Superior Court judge has issued a Nov. 14 deadline for prosecutors to appoint someone new to take up the case, warning that the case will be dismissed unless a lead prosecutor is named or a valid extension is requested.

Michigan

In Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, charged 16 people with eight felonies each in 2023 in the fake elector case, but one had his charges dropped in exchange for his cooperation.

In September, the remaining 15 defendants had their felony charges dismissed by Judge Kristen Simmons, of 54-A District Court in Lansing, who said she didn’t believe there was enough evidence to prove intent.

Nessel has since said she is not ruling out an appeal of Simmons’ decision. In a statement Monday, she called Trump’s pardons part of an “all-out assault against American democracy.” She said her office is trying to get court transcripts from the day Simmons dismissed the charges.

Once her office has the transcript of Simmons’ ruling, she said, it will decide whether to challenge it.

Meanwhile, the accused have largely remained active in conservative politics in Michigan.

Defendant Meshawn Maddock, for example, came second in the race for Michigan GOP chair last year after winning Trump’s endorsement. Stan Grot, another accused elector, won an uncontested race to remain Shelby Township clerk in November 2024, even though he isn’t allowed to administer elections while his charges are pending.

Nevada

Nevada’s six fake electors were charged by the state attorney general in 2023 with felony counts of “offering a false instrument for filing” and “uttering a forged instrument.”

But a judge dismissed the case just a few months before the 2024 election, saying that it had been brought in the wrong county.

Aaron Ford, Nevada’s attorney general, refiled the two types of fraud charges in the proper county in December 2024, but the statute of limitations on one had passed.

Pennsylvania and New Mexico

Unlike the participants in other states, the purported Trump electors in Pennsylvania and New Mexico did not face criminal charges because of an important legal caveat they added to their documents.

Electors in both states said their votes for Trump should be counted only if pending court cases were resolved in Trump’s favor.

The elector certification from Trump’s 20 Pennsylvania electors said the votes they were casting should be counted only if a court found that they were the “duly elected and qualified Electors.”

New Mexico’s five Trump electors wrote in their certificate that they were casting their votes “on the understanding that it might be later determined that we are the “duly elected and qualified Electors.”

Prosecutors in both states have said these caveats prevented the electors’ prosecution.

Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, Attorney General Josh Kaul filed 11 felony charges in 2024 against each of three Trump aides associated with the state’s fake elector scheme. The case is ongoing.

The judge overseeing the case has refused efforts by the three defendants — attorneys Kenneth Cheseboro and James Troupis, and former Trump aide Mike Roman — to dismiss the charges. None have been granted. The charges relate to felony forgery and forgery meant to defraud the Republican electors who cast votes for Trump despite Biden winning the state.

Kaul hasn’t charged the 10 Republican electors who signed the fake elector documents. But they were sued in civil court, eventually reaching a settlement that included them issuing a statement saying Biden won Wisconsin. Separately, they vowed never to act as presidential electors again.

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

Pima County official blasts threats spurred by video of election workers

2025-11-07T22:21:45+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.

A video circulating on social media of Pima County election workers emptying an overfilled ballot drop box prompted threats against them that county officials have reported to law enforcement, county officials said.

Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly said she reported the threats this week to Tucson police and the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center. Cázares-Kelly also said the workers followed all laws and required procedures.

“I’m surprised people didn’t quit on the spot,” she said in an interview with Votebeat Arizona Thursday.

The video was shot Tuesday as a bipartisan team of two workers and a supervisor began unloading the drop box, which has a capacity of 1,500 ballot envelopes but at the time had 3,000 stuffed into it, Cázares-Kelly said.

The 42-second video shows the workers pulling out ballot envelopes and placing them into a transfer bag. It also shows one of the workers telling a woman that the box is full, and she can instead place her ballot envelope directly into the transfer bag. The video was reposted by some social media accounts with large followings, though Votebeat couldn’t immediately determine the initial source of the video.

Cázares-Kelly said the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center — which says it is a joint effort between the Arizona Department of Public Safety, Arizona Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other agencies — initially alerted her to the posts about the video late Tuesday.

Cázares-Kelly said she became aware Wednesday of threats posted on social media, some of which she said have since been removed. She read some to Votebeat, including one that said, “Shoot them, shoot them. Why are people just standing there and filming rather than stopping them?”

In a statement and a subsequent interview, Cázares-Kelly, a Democrat, stressed that the workers, who were making an emergency pickup because the box was overfilled, were following all laws and protocols. They wore lanyards with identification badges and were putting the ballot envelopes into transfer bags, which they subsequently sealed with zip ties and logged according to chain-of-custody procedures, she said. One of the workers is holding the zip ties as she moves envelopes from the box to the bag in the video.

In the statement, the Pima County Recorder’s Office said the team followed all necessary protocols, including taking the ballots to the ballot processing center “in a rental car clearly marked as an Official Election vehicle,” notifying the main office of arrival and departure times, and completing required transfer documentation.

The drop box was at a county recorder building, and in the video, a surveillance camera can be seen on the wall.

Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda, who is also a certified elections officer in Arizona, said she saw the video and also saw nothing wrong.

“What I see is three election workers doing their job,” Swoboda said. “They open the drop box and it’s full and that’s the sign of a good turnout.”

Swoboda said she tried calling the Pima County Recorder’s Office after seeing the video and the social media response, but the lines were jammed. Swoboda said the posts on the social media platform X mischaracterizing the video are part of a pattern in which innocent people are endangered by posts inaccurately suggesting they are doing something wrong. She said this trend is dangerous amid rising political violence.

Among those reposting the video Tuesday was state Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Republican, who wrote, “Well this looks super duper secure,” adding a frowning emoji. Reached for comment about whether he had done due diligence before reposting the video and told of the threats, Hoffman, a Republican, said the questions show why people don’t trust the media.

“What did I say that would lead to them getting death threats?” he askefd.

Hoffman and others, including state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Republican who is running for secretary of state, also posted on Election Day citing reports that Cázares-Kelly’s office was turning away political party observers at polling places. But there were no polling places, since the election in Pima County was a mail-only election. The observers were turned away from ballot-replacement centers.

The state Republican Party account, controlled by Swoboda, tweeted that there is no legal requirement to allow observers into a ballot replacement center, and that Pima County has never allowed them there.

Hoffman said Swoboda “sounds more like a Democrat these days.” Kolodin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cázares-Kelly said people should call her office for verification when they see social media posts accusing election workers of wrongdoing.

“I really hope that people can recognize the impact this is having on the security of our elections and our democracy,” Cázares-Kelly said. “Our elections are secure, they’re transparent, and I want to say that they’re safe, but right now I can’t say that with this type of activity.”

Contact Votebeat at az.tips@votebeat.org.

State Rep. Scott Krug emerges as GOP’s voice of pragmatism on Wisconsin election law

2025-09-24T12:28:25+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.

PRESTON, Wisconsin — On a quiet Friday at Mo’s Bar, a lakeside dive where regulars gossip over beer and fried perch, Rep. Scott Krug blended in easily.

He nursed a Miller Lite and gestured out the window toward Big Roche a Cri, one of the lakes that he said had taught him everything he needed to know about surviving the Capitol’s sharpest fights.

“I was the water guy in the Legislature for years and years,” said Krug, an eight-term Republican who represents a region of farms, lakes, and rivers stretching south and west from Wisconsin Rapids. Instead of sticking to the party line, he said, he tried to balance the interests of farmers, the tourism industry, and clean water — ultimately winning support from both conservation and agricultural groups.

“I don’t give a shit about getting my head kicked in by both sides,” Krug said.

That willingness to buck party orthodoxy has mattered even more in recent years amid Wisconsin’s fierce battles over election administration. As many Republicans leaned into Donald Trump’s false claims about fraud, and the Assembly’s elections committee became a stage for conspiracy theories, Krug carved out a different role: the pragmatist trying to keep the system running.

He took over as chair of the committee in late 2022, after his predecessor’s hardline tactics cost her influence. This session, Krug has moved up to assistant majority leader, a role that puts him at the center of GOP caucus strategy. That might mean winnowing 18 election ideas down to five bills, huddling with Wisconsin Elections Commission appointees, talking with clerks across the state, or working the halls to find a path for bipartisan proposals long stuck in gridlock.

It has been hard for Krug to overcome the conspiracy theories embraced by a small GOP faction and rally his colleagues behind his proposed election reforms. When Republicans do unite on election policy, their bills usually face Democratic opposition and a veto from Gov. Tony Evers.

Still, Krug has kept pushing for the policies that clerks have long asked for, like allowing absentee ballots to be processed the day before an election.

He said he measures his success not only on whether he can get his proposals enacted, but also on whether he can change the tone of the debate, increase confidence in elections, and cool the conspiracy talk on the elections committee and in his party, even as Trump and his allies help fuel it.

“Messaging,” he said, “has become more important than actual policy.”

The era Krug replaced

Krug took over the election committee from Rep. Janel Brandtjen, a Trump loyalist who regularly invited conspiracy theorists to testify. Groups like True the Vote and people like Peter Bernegger, a prolific election litigant, used the committee’s platform to veer into unsubstantiated accusations of malfeasance or outright fraud by election officials.

Brandtjen also routinely exceeded her authority as chair, issuing invalid subpoenas to counties and other election offices.

She also embraced former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s partisan review of the 2020 election, which floated the idea of an unconstitutional decertification of the election, threatened to jail mayors, and ultimately cost taxpayers more than $2 million.

While Trump praised Brandtjen’s loyalty, her standing within her own caucus weakened. Assembly Republicans voted to bar her from closed caucus meetings in 2022, writing to her that past issues “led our caucus to lose trust in you.” Brandtjen dismissed the note as “petty.”

Krug saw an opportunity to restore order, and told Assembly Speaker Robin Vos: “Give me the election committee,” he recalled. Vos handed him the gavel that December.

At the Wisconsin state Capitol, election administration fights carry national weight — but some lawmakers see openings for real progress.

The tone changes, while legislation stalls

The tone shifted immediately.

In one of the committee’s first sessions, Krug held public hearings on bipartisan bills to limit polling place closures and compensate local governments for holding special elections. In the next session, he held a hearing on another bipartisan bill to increase penalties for harming election officials.

He didn’t shy away from giving space to Republican-backed priorities either — including a bill to specially mark noncitizens’ IDs as not valid for voting, and an informational hearing to investigate whether noncitizens were on the state’s voter rolls. The first was vetoed by Evers, and the second didn’t go far after the Department of Transportation declined to turn over the necessary data. (Krug told Votebeat he thought the number was minuscule but still wanted the department to share its data.)

Still, for clerks and legislators across the state, Krug has been a welcome change.

Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, who has been advocating for clerks in the Legislature for about eight years, told Votebeat that Krug was the best chair she’s worked with so far. “He wants to understand the system the most,” she said.

Rep. Lisa Subeck, a Madison Democrat and former member of the election committee, said Krug brought a civility back to the committee that had disappeared after the 2020 election. She also praised some of his ideas, though she questioned the effectiveness of his advocacy, noting many proposals he supported never got Assembly approval.

Krug said a lot of the obstacles come from the state Senate, which blocked the Monday processing bill last year. The Senate, he said, has more “further-outs” on elections.

Kim Trueblood, the Republican county clerk in Marathon County, called Krug’s leadership “refreshing” but said she doesn’t know what to do to convince some GOP senators “that the bogeyman under the bed is not real.”

Krug said he’ll keep trying, and his record suggests he won’t shy away from intraparty disagreements.

He tried to calm down the rhetoric after 2024 U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde delayed conceding for two weeks, blaming his loss in part on “improbable” absentee ballot totals in Milwaukee. Krug recalled Hovde raising the issue again in a phone call during this year’s Supreme Court election. Krug, who was observing Milwaukee’s absentee-ballot counting facility, said he told Hovde: “I’m telling you, it’s not the issue here.”

Hovde said he couldn’t recall the exchange. He told Votebeat that while he does not blame his loss on central count, he’s still skeptical of the process.

Other states, meanwhile, are still battling the ghosts of 2020 in their legislative committees. In neighboring Michigan, Republicans rebranded their House’s Elections Committee into the Election Integrity Committee and placed it in the hands of a legislator who believes the 2020 election was stolen, and regularly invites the type of firebrands Brandtjen once welcomed. In Georgia and Arizona, hearings on election-related legislation regularly erupt into partisan shouting matches.

Vos, the Assembly speaker, said Krug has treated election concerns as “a problem to be solved,” rather than “milked.” He praised Krug for being practical with legislation rather than holding out until he found perfection.

“I think he’s really done a good job of bringing people together,” Vos continued. “He’s been an incredible leader to try to showcase that it doesn’t have to always be partisan.”

Walking the GOP tightrope on election policy

Krug stepped down as committee chair this session, shifting to vice chair and taking on a new role as the Assembly’s assistant majority leader, where he’ll help rally Republican votes. He said he hopes to bring the same spirit of compromise to his leadership role.

The new role means he can write his own bills for the election committee, which he was unable to do last session, as committee chairs generally are not allowed to preside over their own legislation.

Rep. Scott Krug has collected bobbleheads since 2012, and it has become a running competition with Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers. Krug's most prized bobbleheads are his his collection of players from the legendary 1982 Brewers team — the only year the team ever went to the World Series.

Krug said one of his biggest hurdles this session is dealing with election conspiracy theorists — a faction he argues has lost influence in Wisconsin but remains disruptive.

The tougher challenge, he added, will continue to come from Washington. Trump and his allies have called for banning mail voting, overhauling voting machine standards, requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and using the Department of Justice to scrutinize the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Krug has tried to give where he can, incorporating some provisions of a Trump executive order on elections into draft legislation.

But his tone changed when Trump posted on social media that he wanted to ban mail-in voting and criticized voting machines. “My whole goal is to get results quicker,” he said, “not to go back to hand-counting and wait for results until the Friday after the election.”

Usually, when his constituents or other Assembly members come to him espousing these ideas, he can calm them down with “truth and data,” a strategy he says works until another press release comes from the Trump administration.

“And that’s our struggle,” he said. “You see this ebb and flow, and it’s all based on what comes out of Washington. So we put the fire out. He stokes it, then I put the fire out, he stokes it.”

Krug, a real estate agent, parent of six, and grandparent, said he’ll stay busy even if his tactics make him politically unpopular. If his constituents force him out for telling the truth, he said, he’ll just go sell more houses — and keep adding to his bobblehead collection, a running competition with Evers.

Republican Scott Krug is in his eighth term in the state Assembly, representing a large section of Central Wisconsin.

Krug sees promising signs in his party

At Mo’s Bar, where workers and patrons greet Krug like a neighbor, it’s clear his independence hasn’t yet cost him local support. Despite the headwinds, he insists the atmosphere around elections has changed.

“I feel it when I talk to everybody,” he said. “It used to be my first conversation when I walked in here: ‘What are you gonna do about the goddamn election?’ It’s over. People don’t do that.”

Buoyed by that shift, Krug is scheduled to introduce several election-related bills on Wednesday, telling Votebeat he expects most to win bipartisan support. The measures would let clerks process ballots the day before an election, add new auditing requirements, regulate the use of drop boxes, and repeal a law critics say puts ballot privacy at risk.

He also sees promising signs of improvement from within his own party.

In April — when Hovde and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson were still criticizing Milwaukee’s election operation — losing Republican Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel conceded defeat without caveat or complaint.

As some supporters booed him, Schimel said, “You’ve gotta accept the results.”

Krug said he hoped the concession would be a sign to other GOP candidates that the “shine has worn off” of holding radical election positions.

“I’ll never find a way to fix it entirely,” he said, but he has to keep at it, because the effort will shape how Wisconsinites view the Legislature on all other issues.

“Everything starts from elections,” he said.

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

How do we build public trust in elections?

2025-09-22T09:00:00+00:00

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

Public trust in elections is the key to turning out voters — and to accepting the results when an election is done. So how do you build it?

Votebeat this week sat down with election expert and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Charles Stewart; Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein; and Karen Brinson Bell, the former executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections to talk about the factors that drive trust in elections.

The conversation and online forum were moderated by Votebeat Editorial Director Jessica Huseman.

Stewart, who has studied trust extensively as part of his work with MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, pointed out that for partisan voters, the level of trust tends to shift depending in part on whether their party won the last election.

But a July report Stewart authored about the 2024 election found that overwhelmingly, people are very confident in their own vote being counted correctly, and 60% of respondents feel very confident their local government is counting votes correctly as well. That’s partly because most people have a good experience when they vote, Stewart said.

But just 53% of people have the same level of confidence in elections across their state, and only 37% of respondents reported being very confident in ballot counting nationally, though 46% reported being “somewhat confident.”

“That’s really where voters rely on politicians, people in the media, to interpret what’s happening,” Stewart said Friday. “With the polarization of new media, we’re seeing much more partisan inflection into confidence in elections.”

Bluestein, a Republican election official in a predominantly Democratic city, said he’s seen that very effect. Even before polls closed in 2024, Donald Trump was suggesting without any evidence that there was cheating happening in Philadelphia, Bluestein said, forcing local leaders to defend against that in real time.

“We have to do a lot of work on the ground as election officials to try and counteract that,” he said. “It takes leadership from both sides to have cooler heads and to actually look at what’s really happening.”

The importance of transparency and communication

One forum attendee asked the panelists whether people actually want to know more about elections, and whether more information would improve trust.

By and large, Stewart said, the general public isn’t interested in the minutiae of elections. But those who do care — politically active neighbors, pastors, local precinct captains — tend to be vocal members of their communities who then shape the opinions of others.

Inviting those people in for explanations, facility tours, and other conversations can have tradeoffs, he said, but studies have found that it does bolster local trust.

Brinson Bell, from North Carolina, said efforts to reach people where they are, such as social media hashtags, person-on-the-street style videos, and resources distributed through county officials, were effective in helping people understand the complex issues without requiring them to dive into what would “make for about a 4-inch law book on how you have to conduct elections.”

Another thing officials can do is to make sure people know that many parts of the process are open to the public. Brinson Bell pointed to the provisional ballot process in North Carolina as one example of a transparent process.

Those meetings are public, offering anyone who wants it a look into how local officials determine which provisional ballots should be tallied.

The panelists agreed that direct engagement with the public is a priority in the period leading up to the 2026 midterms.

“The more people you get involved, whether it’s as poll workers or volunteers at the election warehouse, the more people who experience running elections, the better we are,” Bluestein said.

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

Erie, Pennsylvania, nuns who stood up to claims of election fraud win national award

2025-08-26T09:00:00+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.

As the 2024 presidential election approached, tensions were high, and activists were, once again, hunting for fraud.

Cliff Maloney, a Republican activist working to get GOP voters to return their mail ballots, said on the social network X that one of his door-to-door canvassers had discovered an address in Erie, Pennsylvania, that had no residents but 53 voters registered to it.

“Turns out it’s the Benedictine Sisters of Erie and NO ONE lives there,” he wrote in a post that went viral, adding that he would not let “Dems count illegal votes.”

But that wasn’t true. And Maloney found himself being called out by the nuns, who didn’t appreciate being accused of fraud.

“We do live at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and a simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie,” Sister Stephanie Schmidt, of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, said in a statement, calling Maloney’s post “blatantly false.”

Now, the sisters are being honored with an award from the National Association of Secretaries of State for their efforts to push back against misinformation. The 2025 Margaret Chase Smith American Democracy Award honors recipients for “individual acts of political courage, uncommon character and selfless action in the realm of public service.”

Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, who is not related to Sister Stephanie Schmidt, nominated the sisters.

“The Sisters thoughtfully confronted the baseless claims and used their time in the spotlight to warn the public that ‘a free republic depends … on a discerning and conscientious citizenry who do not unquestioningly accept the word of anyone who has a social media platform,’” Secretary Schmidt said in a statement.

The award will be presented at the 2026 NASS winter conference in Washington, D.C.

Votebeat and Spotlight PA recently spoke with Sister Linda Romey, director of communications for the monastery, about its response to the accusations and the lessons of the experience.

Romey told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that in addition to the statement it put out, the monastery invited Maloney to visit — an invitation that still stands — but he has yet to come.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity:

How did you first become aware of Maloney’s post? What was your reaction?

I came into work, and we have a very large email list and have friends across the country. So people who know who we are and what we stand for saw this post, and they were emailing me and Stephanie Schmidt, who was our prioress, our elected leader at the time. … So Stephanie called and she said, ‘How should we respond?’ And I said I think we should put out a press release and address this.

Pennsylvania was a battleground state, a very key battleground state in the election, and Erie County was key to Pennsylvania. So we knew that everything here would be scrutinized, and in addition to just wanting to counter what was blatantly false, we wanted to contest that. But we also knew that if Kamala (Harris) were to win the election and then her victory be contested, we didn’t want to become any part of that saying, you know, here’s 50 some false votes that the Democrats came up with and because nobody lives here. We wanted on record that we contested the falsehood immediately.

What kind of response did you get?

Overwhelming support, overwhelming. We don’t have an X account, so friends were telling us how the numbers were climbing on the views and the shares, or whatever they call them at X, but even on our social media pages, the support just continued to grow, and then we started getting phone calls. We had more than 25 media outlets contact us over the course of a couple of weeks.

Secretary Schmidt called and spoke with our prioress, Stephanie Schmidt, and offered his support, as did our local election officials. We were in touch with them, and they did support us. Our local mayor knows us and supports us. And other local political figures were behind us also. They all know us, and they know what we do in the city of Erie, and they spoke on our behalf. So yes, we were very, very well supported.

What lessons do you hope others will take away from your experience?

To stand up for truth. Not to back down … if you fall victim to this. But the other thing is, read with conscious discernment. Everybody needs to look at something and read something and then do the necessary background work to know whether or not something should be believed. Because it seems to me that as soon as something is out on social media, it’s taken for fact or for truth, and things are very rarely just that black and white. There’s always room for question, for more information.

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

Trump’s latest pivot and the endless battle over mail ballots

2025-08-25T09:00:00+00:00

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

President Donald Trump has long criticized the integrity of mail ballots. But leading up to the 2024 election, Republicans spent millions of dollars encouraging supporters to vote early, including by mail, hoping to bank votes ahead of Election Day. Even Trump encouraged his supporters to use them.

“ABSENTEE VOTING, EARLY VOTING, AND ELECTION DAY VOTING ARE ALL GOOD OPTIONS,” Trump, then the Republican nominee, posted on social media in April 2024.

That embrace didn’t last. In a new social media post this week that was full of false claims about elections — and signaled solidarity on the topic with Russian President Vladimir Putin — Trump promised to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” among other things, and wrote that an executive order “to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections” is coming.

Trump is only the latest to swing between support and skepticism of mail voting, a method that has divided the parties for decades.

Mail voting has been in use in American elections since the Civil War, though even then, as now, there were differences in how states administered it. Today, all states allow some form of it, and 28 states allow voters to cast ballots by mail for any reason. Eight states, including Republican-dominated Utah, as well as Washington D.C. allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail.

A bipartisan 2005 report from a commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a Republican, concluded that absentee ballots were the greatest potential source of fraud, a finding often cited by critics of the method.

Voter fraud happens, but experts agree that it’s exceedingly rare and leaves a long paper trail. Election officials have multiple safeguards designed to catch any attempt.

Since 2008, an MIT Election Lab project called the Survey of the Performance of American Elections conducted after every federal election has asked voters whether they support running all elections by mail. Republican support was typically flat, while growing numbers of Democrats and independents supported the idea. Then, in 2020, when the pandemic supercharged mail ballot use, Democratic support spiked, while Republican support declined.

The partisan gap shrank considerably in 2024, the survey found, even as mail ballot use dropped from pandemic-fueled heights. But it’s still a bigger gap than it was before the pandemic. The survey also found Republicans are more likely than Democrats to believe that voter fraud, including absentee ballot fraud, happens frequently.

Public opinion, of course, shifts. As Votebeat has reported, Republicans in 1991 made Arizona one of the first states in the country to allow voting by mail with no excuse, and the option has been wildly popular. But by 2022, against the backdrop of Trump’s claims about mail-in ballots, Republicans in the state were trying (so far unsuccessfully) to eliminate the option.

Even Carter and the Carter Center urged states to expand mail voting in 2020 during the pandemic, stressing the commission’s earlier conclusion that fraud was rare when safeguards were in place.

It isn’t clear what steps Trump will take to attempt to limit use of mail ballots. Under the Constitution, states have authority over the “time, place and manner of elections.” Congress also has some authority. Any attempt by Trump to eliminate mail voting by fiat would be quickly challenged in the courts, and legal experts stress it would be unlikely to succeed. Federal judges have already blocked key provisions of an executive order on elections Trump issued in March, citing his lack of authority over elections.

Comments from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt this week signaled a legislative effort could be in the works.

“The White House continues to work on this, and when Congress comes back to Washington I’m sure there will be many discussions with our friends on Capitol Hill, and also our friends in state legislatures across the country, to ensure that we’re protecting the integrity of the vote for the American people,” she said.

Ultimately, the fight isn’t just in the courts — it’s in public perception. And there, the verdict is far from settled.

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

Trump’s call for a new census: Could it happen? Would it be constitutional?

2025-08-14T09:05:00+00:00

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

Just as he did during his first term in office, President Donald Trump is trying to reshape the census to serve his political goals.

This time, he’s calling for an extraordinary mid-decade population count that would be used for apportioning congressional seats, and that would explicitly exclude undocumented immigrants. He announced his intentions where many of his policy pronouncements start out, on social media.

It’s another effort by his administration to influence redistricting and congressional apportionment in ways that could benefit the GOP, though it’s not clear what the outcome of such a census would be. Democratic-leaning states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have large numbers of undocumented immigrants, but so do some Republican strongholds like Texas and Florida.

Trump’s previous attempt to change census procedures involved the scheduled 2020 census, and ran into a wall at the Supreme Court. This time, he’s trying to do it mid-decade, and for the purposes of apportionment, which would run into many more obstacles.

Here, we address some key questions about Trump’s proposal: the legality, the logistics, and the political strategy driving it.

Can a president order a mid-decade census?

Not unilaterally. The 1790 Census Act governs the census and gives authority over this process to the secretary of commerce and the Census Bureau. Certainly, the president has influence over this part of the executive branch. But Congress still controls the pursestrings and decisions over timing. A process like the one Trump is proposing must be authorized by law and funded through congressional appropriation, which Trump doesn’t control.

What does the constitution say about excluding undocumented residents?

There’s not a lot of ambiguity in the Constitution’s language about the census, or the way the Supreme Court has interpreted it: A census used to determine congressional seats needs to count everyone.

The 14th Amendment requires that the “whole number of persons” residing in the United States should be counted — it doesn’t mention immigration status, or any other condition. The phrase “whole number of persons” was written to replace the Three-Fifths Clause in Article 1 (which said enslaved persons were to be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportionment), and was deliberately written to be inclusive, experts say.

Historical interpretations of this amendment reaffirm that. In 2016, Texas residents challenged the state’s use of total population, rather than just citizens, in deciding how to draw districts of roughly equal size, the process that follows the census and reapportionment of seats among states. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a ruling that total population was the correct standard, based on the 14th Amendment, saying it “promotes equitable and effective representation.”

“What constitutional history and our prior decisions strongly suggest, settled practice confirms,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court. Switching to apportionment based on eligible voters “would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 States and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries.”

How feasible would a new census be at this time?

It would be very expensive, if it could be done at all, and especially difficult to pull off on Trump’s timeline for influencing next year’s midterm elections. Election administrators, campaigns, and parties have already begun preparations for those elections based on figures from the previous census.

It’s difficult to pull off even when both parties want to do it.

In 1975, there was bipartisan interest in conducting a mid-decade census in order to provide better data for federal programs. Congress passed legislation authorizing a census for data collection only, not for congressional apportionment. But it didn’t get done. It proved too expensive, and the Census Bureau lacked the time and the infrastructure.

Getting Trump’s politically motivated proposal would have a tougher time just getting through Congress. And any attempt to politicize the census would be fraught. The data collected and compiled by the Census Bureau informs not just apportionment and redistricting, but many other public and private endeavors, from emergency planning and housing construction to wildlife conservation and school lunch programs. People and institutions that depend on census data want the most complete picture possible, not one clouded by political motives.

What legal obstacles does Trump face?

Beyond the statutory and constitutional limitations we’ve already talked about, the Census Act limits the White House’s ability to do what Trump is trying to do. And the president has no authority to compel states to draw new maps even if he’s successful at forcing a new census.

Along the way, judging by past disputes, we should expect a deluge of lawsuits that would diminish any chance of a census, reapportionment, and redistricting all getting done in time for next year’s midterms.

Is this related to the current redistricting effort in Texas?

Both reflect efforts by Trump to manipulate regularly scheduled democratic processes for partisan motives.

Redistricting after the census every 10 years has long been a politically driven process, where the party in charge at the state level typically tries to solidify — and perpetuate — its advantage. Texas Republicans did so in 2021, and as we’ve reported, Trump wants them to do it again this year, midway through the cycle, in an attempt to create five new Republican-leaning congressional districts. That way, Trump and his allies figure, Republicans would have a better chance of retaining their narrow majority in the U.S. House after the midterms, when the party in power typically loses seats.

Other states are threatening to do the same, to either help Republicans or try to thwart them.

A midcycle census would effectively broaden this battle for political power to all states. The carve-out for undocumented immigrants in population counts would shift political influence away from large Democratic strongholds, like California, New York, and Illinois, though it could also affect some GOP-dominated states that have large and growing populations of undocumented immigrants.

Hasn’t Trump tried something like this before?

During his first administration, Trump sought to influence the 2020 Census by calling for it to include a citizenship question. His explanation then was that the data was necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act. But others saw it as a first step toward ultimately excluding noncitizens from the population counts used to apportion congressional seats and diminishing the power of states with large immigrant populations.

The Supreme Court ultimately blocked the administration’s effort, ruling that it lacked the authority to push through the change, and the 2020 census went out without the citizenship question. But immigrant rights groups complained that the publicity over that dispute may have compromised the data anyway. They raised concerns that noncitizens, whether they were in the country legally or not, would be afraid to respond to the census. The court battle also compressed the preparation time for the census, leaving less time for people to complete the surveys.

In July 2020, while the census was underway, the White House issued a presidential memorandum directing the Census Bureau to exclude noncitizens in the count it issues for apportionment, even though it had no citizenship question from which to sort out this number. Multiple Democratic-led states sued, arguing that the policy was unworkable and unconstitutional. The courts agreed, and blocked the plan from moving forward.

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

What the election case in Rockland County, N.Y., tells us about the tide of voter mistrust

2025-07-14T09:00:00+00:00

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

Donald Trump is leaving little doubt about who’s president right now, but in one corner of the country, a lawsuit is helping to fan skepticism about the results of the 2024 general election.

The case against Rockland County, New York, claims that there were irregularities in the county’s vote tallies, judging in part by what the plaintiffs characterize as statistical anomalies — notably the mismatch in support between Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and the person at the top of the party’s ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris. Gillibrand won the suburban county by about 8,000 votes, while Harris lost to Trump by more than 17,000.

The plaintiffs say it’s a suspicious pattern of ticket-splitting that suggests vote-rigging or errors, an echo of the spurious claims made by Trump allies when he lost several swing states in 2020. They want the court to invalidate the Senate and presidential election results and order the county to redo the election.

A state court dismissed most of the plaintiffs’ requests in March, but Justice Rachel Tanguay is allowing discovery in the case to proceed after the county Board of Elections acknowledged it might amend its response. (The original plaintiffs included a third-party senatorial candidate, two voters, and an activist group that has long opposed some voting machines, though only the activist group remains.) So the case continues for now.

Unlike Trump in 2020, Harris herself hasn’t amplified the lawsuit’s claims about 2024. And many experts say there’s no reason to question the validity of the election results, in Rockland County or elsewhere.

In a recent blog post, Charles Stewart III, an MIT professor and well-known election expert, carefully broke down the precinct-level data for Rockland County and said he found no signs of errors or manipulation.

Examined closely, Stewart wrote, the anomalies are mostly centered on a small number of polling locations in the town of Ramapo. There, he wrote, many members of Orthodox Jewish communities supported Gillibrand, but declined to support Harris, which explains the gap.

“The Rockland County election results in this case are a nothingburger,” he wrote unequivocally.

Nonetheless, the lawsuit’s claims have begun circulating online, and some commenters are pointing to them to suggest that something may be wrong with the election’s results more broadly.

We’ve written about this type of election denialism as a problem on the right, and it remains true that Republican leaders, from the president all the way down to municipal officials and candidates, have pushed election conspiracy narratives far more than Democratic leaders. Across the country after the 2020 election, Republicans went to extraordinary — in some cases, extralegal — lengths to delegitimize Joe Biden’s victory, and some still haven’t quit.

But the response to the Rockland County case shows that there’s an appetite for it on the left as well. A recent YouGov poll found that 41% of voters who reported casting a ballot for Harris in 2024 did not believe that Trump “legitimately won the election.” And claims about “statistical anomalies” in the election results — a common theme of the conspiracy theories about Trump’s 2020 loss — are increasingly being used by those who want to sow doubt in the integrity of the 2024 election and, in some cases, Trump’s victory specifically.

Which brings us to why this matters beyond the borders of Rockland County — and to leaders of both parties.

A new report from the States United Democracy Center, shared exclusively with Votebeat, shows that people are more likely to vote when they are confident that their ballots will be counted as intended. That’s long been the theory, but thanks to this study, it’s now backed by validated voter file data. States United matched survey responses about voter confidence with actual turnout records and found a clear, consistent pattern that crossed partisan lines: Confidence drives participation. Doubt keeps people home.

According to the research, if all voters had felt confident their vote would count as intended in 2024, turnout might have increased by as many as 5.7 million people.

The study is “concrete evidence of the impact on voter participation,” said Kelly Rader, States United’s research director. It’s the “so what.”

And that applies to Democrats as well. Even now, they haven’t been nearly as active in circulating election misinformation as Republicans have been since 2020, but when they do, they can expect the same effect to kick in: Supporters get disillusioned and stay home.

“Americans overwhelmingly believe it’s more important that every legal vote is counted than that their preferred candidate wins,” the States United survey found. That’s a good thing. But it only works if everyone stops playing fast and loose with election integrity claims.

So here’s the takeaway: If parties want to win elections, they have to stop telling voters the system is rigged every time they lose. Because when you chip away at people’s trust in democracy, you’re chipping away at your own turnout, too.

Clarification, July 14, 2025: This story has been updated to clarify that some plaintiffs have withdrawn from the case since it was first filed.

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

Trump and the 2020 election: We’re witnessing the rewriting of history in the making

2025-06-16T09:00:00+00:00

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

Donald Trump’s second term is shaping up to be just as much about the past as the future. Not the past as it unfolded, but the version of events as he wants them remembered.

There are a few troubling examples of how the president and his allies are actively attempting to reshape public views of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — and how these efforts are starting to affect real people and real institutions.

Take Oklahoma. Teachers there are now facing updated social studies standards that instruct students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results” — not to examine election systems or to discuss voter confidence, but to presume that the election was flawed. This language is a quiet but profound distortion: It accepts Trump’s false narrative of fraud and requires educators to teach that falsehood as fact.

This illustrates the insidious consequences of partisan narratives hardening into policy. Oklahoma’s education chief, Ryan Walters, has aligned himself with efforts to eliminate so-called left-wing indoctrination in schools. But he’s supporting these new standards, which contradict the facts made plain in every credible post-election review, from Trump’s own first-term Department of Justice to GOP-led audits. Courts, including those with Trump-nominated judges, rejected dozens of spurious legal challenges, and officials in every state certified the results.

These facts have been sidelined in shaping what schoolchildren learn, which has long-term implications for public trust in elections.

Or consider the protests against aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. Trump has called the demonstrators there “insurrectionists” and is moving military forces into the city.

And what about the convicted insurrectionists who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol? Trump issued them pardons and commutations as one of the first acts of his second term, erasing the crimes and violence of that day — including threats to execute his vice president — from the historical record. (A plaque honoring law enforcement officials who defended the Capitol that day still hasn’t been installed, despite pleas to House Speaker Mike Johnson.)

Trump’s administration is also reportedly developing a plan to pardon the “fake electors” and other Trump allies charged or convicted in connection with attempts to overturn the election, as well as the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, as part of a broader effort to shield MAGA supporters from legal consequences, and perhaps convey the sense that these events never happened.

That is, the president is using both his immense influence and his constitutional authority to bend justice, public education, and public memory toward a false understanding of the past. And his allies are bending to his will.

What does this tell us about Trump’s capacity to reshape perceptions in the face of actual facts? And can anything stand in his way?

Some answers may come from a federal courtroom in Denver, where one of the more surreal chapters of the 2020 fallout is still playing out. That’s where the defamation trial against Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — brought by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer — is underway.

Lindell, who has claimed that Dominion and Coomer were part of a scheme to steal the election from Trump, once promised that this trial would prove him right. But his lawyers seem to be arguing now that he’s so erratic, so impulsive, that nothing he says could be taken seriously enough to count as defamation.

“It’s just words,” said Lindell’s attorney, according to a Denver reporter covering the trial. “All Mike Lindell did was talk.”

That’s a hell of a defense, and itself a rewriting of history. The problem with it is that millions of people did believe Lindell, and still do.

Coomer may get to clear his name in the case against Lindell, but the broader effort to rewrite the past is gaining ground where it matters most: in classrooms, in Congress, and in the minds of voters. Juries and the judiciary can punish lies, but they can’t reach every classroom or undo every pardon.

With so many institutional guardrails already buckling under pressure, the remaining checks are public memory, a free press, and a willingness — from enough of us — to keep insisting on saying what actually happened.

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

Arizona’s Mohave County approves security marks on ballot paper for 2026

2025-04-23T17:12:07+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’s Mohave County plans to add security features to its ballot paper for the 2026 midterm election, a measure officials hope will improve voter confidence.

The features could include watermarks or invisible fibers, according to a contract with election printing vendor Runbeck Election Services that county supervisors unanimously voted to approve Monday.

The features will cost somewhere between 10 to 15 cents a ballot, according to Runbeck’s proposal. About 83,000 Mohave County voters cast ballots in the last midterm election.

Supervisors Chairman Travis Lingenfelter said in an interview Tuesday that he thinks the change is worth the cost if it improves voter confidence, and he hopes other counties will follow.

The decision, by an all-Republican board representing the conservative northwest corner of the state, comes four years after GOP activists began to spread false claims that fake ballots were inserted into the state’s 2020 presidential election to rig the election for Joe Biden — claims that were then repeated by GOP candidate Kari Lake about the 2022 election after she lost the governor’s race.

Several audits proved Biden and Gov. Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, won Arizona, and courts have rejected any claim of widespread fraud in the elections. The state has multiple checks and balances to ensure that only ballots cast by registered voters are counted, including physical security and auditing protocols, such as those that reconcile the number of ballots cast with the number of voters who participated.

But persistent claims about fake ballots, and others, have caused voter confidence to tank in the state and across the country. Meanwhile, interest in adding security marks to ballots has increased in swing states. While California has long had watermarks on ballots, Georgia and a few Michigan counties, at least, recently added watermarks to their ballots as well.

In Arizona, the same GOP leaders who spread false claims about the election were among those who began to push for security features on ballots — including state Sen. Mark Finchem, a state representative at the time, who had ties to the founder of a firm that stood to benefit, Authentix.

Finchem has repeatedly tried, and failed, to pass legislation requiring all Arizona ballots to have security marks. Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed his latest effort, SB1123, last week, saying that she is “confident in the ability of Arizona’s elections officials to administer free and fair elections without added expense and complexity.”

Authentix did not bid for the Mohave County ballot printing contract this year, according to county officials. Runbeck was one of two companies that applied through a competitive bidding process.

Runbeck said it can offer invisible fibers, a watermark, an infrared taggant — which is difficult to duplicate — and paper that doesn’t respond to UV light. It’s unclear at this point which features Mohave County will add, or how much it will ultimately cost. A recent test in Cochise County found that voting machines from Election Systems & Software, which Mohave County also uses, can properly tabulate ballots using Runbeck’s features.

Runbeck itself has been the target of conspiracy theories, including a claim from Lake that tens of thousands of ballots were inserted at its Phoenix facility during her election.

During public comment at the Mohave County meeting on Monday, Kingman resident Jennifer Esposito told supervisors that they should consider other companies for ballot printing, in part because she has read about “issues that Runbeck has had in the past.”

Supervisor Sonny Borrelli, who took office in January and was previously one of the state senators pushing for greater security of mail ballots, assured residents before the contract vote that Runbeck was “top rate.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

News report feeds false claim about 50,000 noncitizens on Arizona voter rolls

2025-04-14T21:23:43+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, April 15: Fox News deleted its story and published a new one late Monday with the headline “Arizona to verify up to 50K people from voter rolls who failed to prove citizenship.”

Arizona has not identified up to 50,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls, nor have counties begun canceling any voter registrations, despite news reports over the weekend suggesting otherwise.

The misleading claims showed up in reports by Fox News and other outlets that mischaracterized a recent legal settlement between Arizona counties and the grassroots organization Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, known as EZAZ.org.

Sunday’s Fox News story carried the headline “Arizona to begin removing as many as 50K noncitizens from voter rolls following lawsuit.” It said that the settlement led to all counties beginning “the process of verifying and removing noncitizens from their voter rolls, including nearly 50,000 registrants who did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship.”

“The story is wrong,” said Sam Stone, spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which led settlement negotiations on behalf of all 15 counties.

What county officials are doing as a result of the settlement, Stone said, is asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide an additional way for county officials to check voter citizenship.

Counties are not yet sharing voter information with DHS. Maricopa County will not do so unless it can submit the information securely and ensure that the citizenship checks are accurate, Stone said.

The settlement involves a case in which the conservative group America First Legal sued Arizona counties on behalf of EZAZ.org, claiming that election officials were not using all available databases to check voter citizenship, as required by state law. The settlement required counties to send a letter to DHS expressing their intent to submit voter information to get help checking citizenship; reminding the agency of its obligation under federal law to share database information with states; and requesting information about how to submit the voter information, said Merissa Hamilton, founder and chairwoman of EZAZ.org.

Still, Republican leaders such as Kari Lake, the State Department aide and 2024 Arizona Senate candidate, seized on the Fox report to claim that large numbers of noncitizens were voting in Arizona. Lake posted on the social media platform X that “it’s a pyrrhic victory knowing Arizona had to be sued into submission before agreeing to follow the law, & take upwards of 50K illegal voters off its rolls.”

Fox News and Lake did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Fox News headline still appeared on its website with the same language as of midday Monday.

Election officials in Arizona counties already check a person’s citizenship in multiple ways under state laws that require proof of citizenship to register to vote in state and local elections.

Only a handful of other states have passed such laws requiring proof of citizenship for registering to vote. Federal law requires only that a voter attest to their citizenship — under penalty of perjury — by checking a box on their voter registration form.

President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on elections, as well as the SAVE Act, which passed the U.S. House last week, call for requiring citizenship proof nationwide.

In Arizona, around 49,000 active or inactive voters are eligible to vote only in federal elections because they did not prove their citizenship. Another 200,000 longtime residents will need to verify their citizenship status in the coming months because they were affected by a state error in tracking citizenship that was disclosed last summer.

Stone said most of these voters are likely U.S. citizens who simply haven’t submitted the necessary documents.

There’s no national database of U.S. citizens, so county officials in Arizona currently check driver’s license numbers, birth certificates, immigrant IDs and other documents to verify citizenship. The Department of Homeland Security can verify the citizenship status of potential voters individually, Stone said, but isn’t set up to check large groups of voters at once.

The request from Arizona county officials to the federal agency “is really for the creation of a system that would allow for an accurate comparison between county databases,” Stone said.

Trump’s executive order also called for DHS to share database information with states upon request.

America First Legal’s news release about the settlement between the counties and EZAZ.org did not imply that Arizona had 50,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls.

James Rogers, senior counsel for America First Legal, wrote in the release that the settlement will help recorders “find and remove any aliens on their voter rolls.”

“It will also potentially enfranchise federal-only voters whose citizenship is confirmed,” Rogers wrote, “which would allow them to vote in State and local elections.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Election officials alarmed as Trump orders probe of former cybersecurity chief

2025-04-10T20:32:26+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 Trump issued a presidential memorandum Wednesday demanding an investigation by the Justice and Homeland Security departments into his former top cybersecurity official, escalating a campaign of retribution aimed at those who contradicted his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The memo directly names Christopher Krebs, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director; a second memo named Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official during Trump’s first term. Trump’s move shocked many who work in elections. While some current and former officials brushed off the order as political theater, others are taking it far more seriously — for example, hiring an attorney, scrubbing social media, and warning their spouse.

The range of reactions reflects both the extraordinary nature of Trump’s use of executive authority to target individuals and a deep uncertainty about how far it might go.

Trump has repeatedly made clear he has no intention of letting go of his allegations over the 2020 election. Election officials across the country said this week’s actions are an attempt to punish those who, like Krebs, defended the integrity of the vote.

Krebs was the first director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, created under the Trump administration, and he was nominated by Trump himself. During the 2020 election, as Trump and his allies pushed baseless claims of widespread fraud, CISA launched a rumor control site to debunk falsehoods about voting systems. After the election, both the agency and Krebs publicly affirmed the security of the vote — statements that drew Trump’s ire. He ultimately fired Krebs via tweet.

“I think [Krebs] said this is the safest election we’ve ever had, and yet, every day you read in the papers about more and more fraud that’s discovered,” Trump asserted without evidence in the Oval Office as he signed the memo Wednesday. “He’s the fraud. He’s a disgrace. So, we’ll find out whether or not it was a safe election, and if it wasn’t, he’s got a big price to pay, and he’s a bad guy.”

Krebs did not respond to Votebeat’s request for an interview. On Wednesday night, he reupped on X — formerly Twitter — a post from November 2020. “Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomrorow [sic]. #Protect2020,” it read.

Ann Jacobs, a Democrat and the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, expressed outrage over Trump’s targeting of Krebs. “The 2020 election was neither stolen nor rigged,” she said. “It is shocking that the current administration cannot admit this, and instead has targeted people who have declared this obvious truth.”

In addition to revoking Krebs’ security clearance, the memorandum revokes the security clearances of any employee of Krebs’ security firm, SentinelOne. In a statement, the company said that it would “actively cooperate in any review of security clearances held by any of our personnel,” which includes fewer than 10 employees. The company said it does not expect this to “materially impact our business in any way.”

President Trump’s memorandum directs the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary to conduct a full review of Krebs’ activities during his time as a government employee, including any potential dissemination of classified information, and a “comprehensive evaluation” of CISA’s activities over the past six years. In an unusual move, it also instructs DHS and the attorney general to issue a joint report with recommendations.

David Becker, a longtime elections attorney who formerly worked for the Justice Department and executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the president’s request itself illustrates the weakness of the allegations over the 2020 election.

“As we sit here four and a half years after the election, there has still not been one single shred of evidence introduced in any court that would suggest the 2020 election was stolen. You can understand why the president would not want his claims to be vetted in court,” he said, adding that the election has withstood “more scrutiny than any election in American history.”

In addition to the memos targeting Krebs and Taylor, Trump this week issued the latest in a series of executive orders targeting law firms, this time naming Susman Godfrey, the law firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its successful defamation cases. Fox News settled the case in 2023 for a staggering $787 million, one of the largest known media defamation settlements in U.S. history.

The move came on the same day a Delaware judge again ruled that conservative outlet Newsmax aired false and defamatory claims about Dominion — a case in which Susman is leading Dominion’s legal team.

“Anyone who knows Susman Godfrey knows we believe in the rule of law, and we take seriously our duty to uphold it. This principle guides us now. There is no question that we will fight this unconstitutional order,” the firm said in a statement. Justin Nelson, the attorney managing Dominion’s cases, declined further comment.

State and local election officials watched the executive actions with a mix of exasperation and fear. Combined with last month’s executive order on elections — already the subject of multiple lawsuits — the latest moves have deepened concerns about the growing use of presidential power to target individuals for defending the democratic process.

Many were reluctant to speak on the record out of concern for making themselves targets of Trump’s ire, but said the actions feel less like policy and more like personal retaliation, fueling an increasingly hostile environment for election officials. Some described the orders as not just disruptive but dangerous — eroding trust in nonpartisan institutions and chilling the work of public servants already under threat.

The uncertainty around how the orders will be enforced, what precedent they set, and what other election-related directives Trump may issue has heightened alarm for some. Votebeat has granted some people anonymity to speak about the memorandum because of concerns about retribution. “I’m terrified, honestly,” said one official, who has spoken with legal counsel.

Aaron Thacker, a spokesperson for Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said there is “a heightened sense of anxiety, about who is next, or what is next.”

“This is a form of retribution,” he said.

One former election official in a swing state who was targeted by Trump after the 2020 election said seeing the executive order on Krebs triggered immediate anxiety. That person reached out to an official in another state to share their concerns about what might come next. A reminder that they hadn’t done anything wrong helped calm them down — at least for now.

Others are less fazed.

“I’m not hiring a lawyer,” said one swing state election official. “I’m making some soup.”

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

Trump wants to ‘go back to paper ballots.’ Most of America already uses them.

2025-03-17T09:00:00+00:00

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

President Donald Trump recently repeated his calls for exclusively using paper ballots, lauding them before the first cabinet meeting of his second term. For the sake of honest elections, he said, “We have to go back to paper ballots.”

In reality, the overwhelming majority of the country already uses paper ballots.

Most states use one of two methods: either voters hand-mark a paper ballot that is then read by a machine, or they use a ballot-marking device that prints a summary of their choices on a sheet of paper for verification before it’s fed into a tabulator.

Both are examples of a voter-verified paper trail, a system that blends paper ballots with machine verification and tabulation for accessibility, efficiency, and security.

Election security experts overwhelmingly consider this the gold standard because it ensures that voters can check their selections before casting their ballot, and it creates a physical record that can be used for an audit or recount later if needed.

Using paper ballots, in other words, does not necessarily mean eliminating the use of electronic voting equipment and hand-counting election results. It means doing things the way they are normally done, and ensuring that there’s a paper trail to check for errors.

Estimates vary, but according to Verified Voting more than 95% of U.S. voters already cast their ballots on paper. Before the November presidential election, the Brennan Center for Justice estimated that around 98% of votes cast in that election would be cast on paper, more than four years ago.

The only state that does not use paper ballots statewide? Louisiana — a Republican stronghold that has consistently supported Trump in past elections.

Meanwhile, a handful of counties in states like Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Indiana still use electronic voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail. These counties tend to be rural and lack the funds to replace their voting systems. Trump has not proposed any federal funding to support such a transition, leaving these localities without a clear path to comply with his vision.

So what does Trump mean by his call to “go back” to paper ballots? And how far back into the paper era does he really want to go?

Some of his allies appear to believe he means getting rid of all electronic equipment used to mark or count ballots, and that’s what they’re pushing for.

“We will not stop until we have paper ballots counted, and we’re going to melt down all the voting machines and turn them into prison bars,” MyPillow CEO and ardent Trump backer Mike Lindell told ABC News after he was held in contempt of court this month while fighting a defamation case over his false claims about Smartmatic voting machines.

This month, a Georgia state senator proposed a bill that would eliminate voting machines entirely, requiring that ballots be both hand-marked and hand-counted.

“I know many of you listen to everything that President Trump says, and you may have noticed a week or two ago, President Trump asked for paper ballots,” Republican Colton Moore told fellow senators, “and I have a piece of legislation that accomplishes that very thing.

Lindell’s pledge and Moore’s legislation highlight the risks of misunderstanding the system we currently have, or interpreting Trump’s wishes for paper ballots so literally as to mean eliminating scanners entirely in favor of hand counting. I won’t dive into the details here, but Votebeat has repeatedly reported on why hand counting is inefficient, not secure, inaccurate, and extremely costly. It’s fair to wonder whether anyone who advocates such a switch is more interested in creating suspicion about our election system than in improving it.

What a real advocate for election integrity wants is a way for voters to be sure that they are casting the votes they intend to cast, and for election officials to be able to verify that those votes were correctly counted. Those goals are already achieved through the vast majority of existing systems.

There can be political debates about ballot access, election funding, and the infrastructure needed to support secure and efficient voting.

But before we go melting down our voting machines, it’s important to ground this discussion about how we vote in facts. Paper ballots are not a partisan issue. They are a standard election security measure that the country has largely adopted.

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

U.S. agency has stopped supporting states on election security, official confirms

2025-03-11T17:19:54+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 federal government has halted election security activities and ended funding for the system that alerts state officials of election security threats across state lines, a representative of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told state election officials last week.

The March 3 email, obtained exclusively by Votebeat, confirmed for secretaries of state and state election directors what they had read in news reports and noticed happening in practice: that President Donald Trump’s administration has suspended or dismantled federal support for election security, at least for now.

The administration stopped funding the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC, which alerts state officials of active election threats in other states, because it “no longer supports Department priorities,” CISA’s acting chief external affairs officer, Erin Buechel Wieczorek, wrote in the email. CISA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

CISA has also taken “appropriate actions” against employees who under the Biden administration had helped states monitor false information about elections posted on social media, Wieczorek wrote, adding that those actions were “ongoing.”

The message went to leaders at the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State.

A spokesperson for CISA declined to comment further, or to confirm the number of employees fired. In initial cuts, in line with the administration’s goal of reducing the size of the federal government, about 130 CISA employees were terminated, according to press reports.

Federal-state partnership on election security unravels

The changes at CISA unravel a long-established partnership between the federal government and the states, which have long relied on the agency to help secure their electronic and physical infrastructure.

Election officials say the EI-ISAC, which was established in 2018 during Trump’s first term following an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, will not be easy to replace.

The rest of CISA’s election security activities are on pause, Wieczorek wrote, as the agency conducts a “broader internal assessment” of funding, products, activities and personnel.

Cyberscoop, a cybersecurity news site, said this assessment was complete as of March 7. A CISA spokesperson did not directly confirm that, but said the assessment “is an internal document that is not planned to be released publicly.”

NASS and NASED officials told Votebeat that states remain committed to ensuring election security, despite the federal pause. But Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes warned U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a March 7 letter that the halt in services and lack of communication from its officials “raises serious concerns for the security of Arizona’s elections going forward.”

“What was until just last month a longstanding partnership on critical security matters is now complete radio silence from CISA staff except one designee,” Fontes wrote.

Officials in Fontes’ office had invited CISA to join them on election security tours with counties, office spokesperson JP Martin said. CISA often provides physical and cyber security assessments to local election offices across the country.

But Martin told Votebeat that, in mid-February, CISA pulled out of a tour of two northern Arizona counties. Communication stopped after that point.

CISA has now missed tours hosted by the secretary of state in eight of Arizona’s 15 counties, Martin said.

What will CISA’s role in elections be?

As media reported on the cuts and service changes, NASS and NASED officials asked CISA for details about the changes in writing, so they could share it with their members.

But even with the March 3 response, “much remains unknown” about what role the federal agency will play in the future, said Amy Cohen, NASED’s executive director.

Maria Benson, an NASS spokesperson, called that the “the million-dollar question.”

Trump has made it clear, through a Jan. 20 executive order, that CISA will no longer help election officials monitor social media for false claims about elections, which sometimes prompted requests for tech companies to entirely remove some posts. CISA had stepped away from that practice, especially after a 2023 congressional report criticized the agency for unfairly censoring free speech.

At the direction of the Trump administration, CISA completed an initial review of that work, Wieczorek wrote in the email, and is “taking appropriate actions regarding employees found to have participated in these activities.”

Regarding EI-ISAC, Wieczorek wrote, the Center for Internet Security, which ran the system, can still manage it if it chooses. But the center has posted on its website that it no longer supports EI-ISAC because the funding was terminated.

As for the physical and cyber security assessments election officials around the country relied on, Noem told NASS officials in a March 7 letter that the assessments are still available.

State and local officials can continue to receive the assessments, incident response planning resources, and tabletop exercises, Noem wrote.

Officials at Pennsylvania’s Department of State are hopeful that CISA will continue to provide election-related services such as real-time access to threat analyses and warnings about imminent threats, as well as training resources and security services, said Matt Heckel, the department’s press secretary.

Those services were “particularly invaluable to the rural areas of the Commonwealth that cannot replicate those resources,” he wrote.

Votebeat reporter Carter Walker contributed to this report.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

How Guadalupe County’s Citizens Elections Academy is strengthening trust in voting

2025-03-11T09:55:00+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.

Leonard and Marylou Jones know elections well. They have been poll workers for the past three years in Guadalupe County, and Marylou recently took on a part-time role at the county elections office.

But they had never seen one part of the process up close: how exactly the votes were counted and what steps were taken to ensure accuracy.

Last week, they got a firsthand look.

“I see that it is verified and reverified,” Leonard Jones said, adding that he’s aware that what he and his wife see on election day as poll workers isn’t the full extent of the process. “It’s quite intense.”

The couple was among a small group of Guadalupe County residents who participated in the county’s fourth Citizens Elections Academy. Over two evenings, participants got a hands-on introduction to every step of the local election process — from voter registration and roll maintenance to election security and vote tabulation.

The program is the brainchild of Lisa Hayes, the county’s elections administrator, who modeled the idea after a similar initiative by local law enforcement. Across the state, counties and cities offer local government citizens’ academies and local law enforcement agencies run police department academies, but Guadalupe County’s academy — launched in the fall of 2023 — is the first to focus solely on elections.

The goal, Hayes said, is to increase confidence and trust in the election process. It’s part of a broader effort by Texas election officials to address rampant spread of misinformation following the November 2020 election. Across the state, election officials have hosted open houses, workshops, and additional public testing of voting equipment beyond what’s required by law to try to regain voters’ trust.

In Guadalupe County — a solidly red, mostly rural area east of San Antonio — more than 20 people, including elected officials, county workers, candidates, election workers, and residents who have been skeptical of the election process, have attended the class.

And so far, Hayes says the program is working.

“I have seen people’s attitudes change after completing it,” Hayes said. “We’ve had people who would come in the first night hostile and wanting to push back to what we were sharing. But at the end of it, they were a lot more receptive and wanting to know more.”

Now other cities and counties — including the city of La Porte in Harris County — have followed her lead, creating their own citizens’ elections academies. Additional jurisdictions, including Collin County, are planning to do so in the future. The program has also been recognized by the Texas Association of Counties and from the International Association of Government Officials.

A closer look at the process

Guadalupe County residents cast their votes on voting equipment as part of a logic and accuracy testing on Tues. March 4, 2025 at the Guadalupe County Elections office in Texas. The exercise was part of the county’s Citizens Elections Academy.

The academy walks participants through each step of the election process: how a voter registers to vote, how the elections department processes applications, and the state law governing both. Attendees tested voting equipment for accuracy and security and followed step-by-step instructions to open and close the polls on Election Day.

Hayes also explains the dozens of state-mandated deadlines election officials have to meet, including for testing and programming voting equipment, designing ballots, mailing absentee ballots, training poll workers, and posting public notices. Participants also learn how staff members use geographic information to make sure each voter receives the correct ballot style based on district boundaries.

Hayes also covers the rules for mail-in ballots, the steps voters must take to return them, and the specific steps elections officials take to process them. That part of the program was of particular interest to Virginia Rotge, a former election clerk who had previously observed the early voting ballot board at work.

That board — a bipartisan group responsible for reviewing mail-in ballots before they’re counted — plays a crucial role in election security. At the academy last week, Rotge got to step into their shoes, helping process mail-in ballots herself.

She reviewed the carrier envelope to ensure that signatures and identification numbers matched, while also looking for any errors a voter may need to correct. Using a letter opener to carefully access the ballot inside, she and other participants ensured that there were no illegible marks or unclear marks that would require a committee to determine the voter’s intent.

The staff also showed the steps the office takes to ensure ballot secrecy is kept — separating envelopes with identifiable information from the voted ballots.

“It’s a good system,” Rotge said. A team of two people from each political party have to agree to accept the ballot to be counted or send the voter a notice to make corrections. “[The ballot board has] to take the time to carefully go over everything. And I think it’s good that it’s done by a team,” she said.

Election officials in the city of La Porte told Votebeat they were inspired by Hayes’ idea to host their own academy. Although some cities may contract with their county elections department to conduct their elections, La Porte officials run their own city and school district elections.

The city’s first Citizens Elections Academy, which followed Guadalupe County’s topics, was held in February and a dozen people completed the course, said Lee Woodward, the La Porte City secretary.

Woodward said residents were surprised to learn the dozens of state law-required deadlines that election officials have to meet year-round and between elections, highlighting a wide misconception that election officials are done working after election day.

“When people understand what election workers do in the process, especially one that is as important and as frequently misunderstood as elections, they feel better about it, there’s more confidence in it, and then they go share that with other people in the community,” Woodward said.

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

Can VotingWorks’ publicly viewable software code help restore faith in voting machines?

2025-03-03T10:00:00+00:00

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

At a recent gathering of election officials in Washington, D.C., a technology vendor called VotingWorks demonstrated the systems that it has submitted for federal certification this year.

VotingWorks set up test voting stations in a room, with a tabulation machine off to one side awaiting sample ballots (races on the ballot included best Election Day food). On another side, a crepe station.

It all looked like typical stuff for a vendor presentation to the National Association of Secretaries of State. But VotingWorks wasn’t a typical vendor. While the U.S. voting machine market is dominated by three for-profit companies that guard their technology closely, VotingWorks is a nonprofit and makes its code available online.

The group says its mission is to make voting equipment everyone can trust “through transparency, simplicity, and demonstrable security.” It’s the first technology company to seek federal certification for a voting system relying on publicly available code.

“I think it’s a big deal,” said Pamela Smith, CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections, who sees the election technology industry moving toward more transparency. “I think it’s a good step forward.”

Ben Adida, founder and executive director of VotingWorks, demonstrates a voting machine during the National Association of Secretaries of State conference on Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington.

Transparency could be a critical selling point following years of unfounded conspiracy theories about the accuracy and security of voting machines. The machine manufacturers, fighting off false accusations, have won settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars in defamation cases. But they continue to face skepticism and demands from activists seeking to know more about how the systems work.

The VotingWorks setup is one of three systems that have been accepted so far to undergo testing against an updated set of voting system guidelines that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission approved in 2021. The testing takes a long time, and the first certified systems aren’t expected to hit the market until this spring.

There’s an important difference between the VotingWorks system and the others: All of its computer code is available online for public review. Other voting machine manufacturers disclose their code for testing, but don’t post it publicly, because they’re concerned about disclosing vulnerabilities.

VotingWorks’ founder and executive director, Ben Adida, says he believes disclosing the code is more secure than hiding it, because others can point out any potential security flaws, and the flaws can be fixed.

He also believes such disclosure builds voter trust in a time of increased scrutiny of how voting machines work.“ Vendors have to meet the moment of this public scrutiny,” he said.

Adida said one goal of VotingWorks’ approach is to push all election technology manufacturers to innovate in ways that shore up that public trust. He hopes VotingWorks will have an impact similar to Firefox, the open source web browser that was made by a nonprofit.

“Firefox market share has peaked and gone down over time,” Adida said. “But they changed the market, they changed how web browsers work, and the world will never go back.”

Adida said anyone can review the VotingWorks code and suggest changes or fixes, but only someone from VotingWorks could modify the code. And any changes would have to go back to the EAC for review or approval before they could be implemented by VotingWorks customers. That said, VotingWorks makes its code freely available for others to use as a basis for their own designs, too.

VotingWorks launched the first pilot of its system in Mississippi in 2019. Amy Burdine, the circuit clerk in Choctaw County, said the machines are user-friendly, and VotingWorks has made modifications based on suggestions from voters and election officials there.

The group now has contracts with five Mississippi counties and at least 40 towns and two cities in New Hampshire, where, Adida says, about a quarter of the state’s voters will cast ballots on the latest version of the system this year.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, said he sees the publicly disclosed code as a good thing. “Election integrity and being transparent and having an observable process is important,” he said. What’s more, he said, election officials “just like the way the device operates.”

Election technology tends to change slowly. Since 2016, Congress has approved millions of dollars in federal grants to help jurisdictions upgrade voting machines. But a Brennan Center for Justice analysis found that tens of millions of voters live in jurisdictions using systems put in place more than a decade ago.

Many states require jurisdictions to use voting systems that have received federal certification, been tested to federal standards, or been tested in a federally accredited laboratory. When federal standards are updated, communities can typically continue to use the systems certified to meet previous versions of EAC guidelines, but local election officials interested in upgrading will soon want machines certified to the most recent standards. In New Hampshire, VotingWorks’ certification is contingent on receiving federal certification by the end of 2026.

Rodney Phillips, the town moderator in Loudon, New Hampshire, and a retired software engineer, said that when he looked at the options to replace his town’s aging AccuVote machines, he wanted something as forward-looking as possible. He liked that VotingWorks posts its code on GitHub, which he’d used in the past.

Phillips, who describes himself as a “die-hard conservative,” said it pains him to hear fellow conservatives repeat theories about the reliability of voting machines that he knows to be untrue. At one town meeting, he said, during a debate over whether to stop using tabulators in elections, he stepped down as the meeting’s moderator “so I could speak passionately.” The initiative to eliminate tabulators was voted down.

The fact that VotingWorks discloses the code publicly, he said, “won over some detractors.”

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s interim editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Trump’s cuts to federal cybersecurity agency CISA leave election officials worried

2025-02-27T11:00:00+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.

On Election Day last November, counties across the country received a flood of bomb threats targeting polling locations. It was a moment ripe for chaos — a potential national security nightmare that could have disrupted the day’s operations, sowing fear and confusion at polling stations.

But that didn’t happen.

The response was unexpectedly calm. Voters went about their business, and polling places functioned largely without incident.

This smooth operation was the result of years of behind-the-scenes work led by the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA. The agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, had run hundreds of training programs on elections, overseen the development of a threat alert system, and established partnerships between state and federal agencies. It also produced detailed security assessments of election offices nationwide.

A few days after the election, another federal group responsible for circulating communications — the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC — sent out yet another alert, an email obtained by Votebeat via a public records request shows.

“We wanted to alert you of another round of bomb threats being sent via email to election offices in multiple states across the country,” the alert read.

It listed the source of the emails, and offered instructions for offices that received them.

In the last few weeks, the Trump administration has begun to overhaul CISA in a way that has election officials across the country worried that U.S. elections will not be as robustly monitored and secured as they were in 2024.

The process started with divisions concerned with election security and misinformation. Around 130 CISA employees have been fired.

In a memo sent earlier this month and initially obtained by Wired magazine, CISA’s acting director, Bridget Bean, announced a review of all positions and activities related to election security and combating misinformation. CISA, she said, would pause all election security efforts until the review is complete and halt funding for the EI-ISAC.

The review is set to be finalized on March 6, and will decide the fate of yet more employees.

Last week, the National Association of Secretaries of State sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asking her to retain the services state and local election officials have come to rely on, including security assessments and communication from the EI-ISAC.

“Information technology systems related to election administration have long been targeted by sophisticated cyber threat actors including nation-state and cybercriminal groups,” reads the letter, signed by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat and current NASS president, and Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican and NASS president-elect. “CISA’s prioritized services help election entities defend against these national security threats.”

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the effectiveness of CISA’s work was evident on Election Day, when two-thirds of Arizona’s counties received bomb threats but were able to navigate the situation smoothly. Every county had partnered with CISA to enhance its physical security, including camera placements, safety protocols, and emergency contingency plans.

“I don’t care what part of the alphabet soup these folks end up in — we still need them,” Fontes said. “Our workers can be more confident that our systems will work better with these guys around.”

CISA was established in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, to improve U.S. cybersecurity, including the growing threats to election security, after investigations showed how Russia was able to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, it has helped states strengthen their election security and adapt to the new reality of foreign threats.

“The resources they provide were one of the great successes of the Trump administration,” said Kathy Boockvar, who was secretary of state in Pennsylvania during the 2020 election. “I hope they continue to lead on that.”

Many Republicans have come to view the agency’s efforts — which previously included alerting social media companies of voting-related misinformation — as censorship.

But some GOP-led state legislatures have nonetheless passed laws requiring cybersecurity assessments and improvements, pushing local election officials to work with CISA.

For example, a law passed in Texas in 2019 required counties to go through a mandatory election security assessment to be completed by the following year and required the Texas secretary of state to establish best practices “for identifying and reducing risk to the electronic use, storage, and transmission of election data and the security of election systems.”

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office relied on election security experts for that task. It released its best practices guide in 2020, and since then, state and county officials have also used CISA’s security services and resources.

Trudy Hancock, the elections administrator in Brazos County, Texas, said CISA helped the county strengthen its election office security at no cost. Last year, an expert from the agency conducted an assessment and provided recommendations for improving physical security, giving Hancock confidence in her ability to protect voters.

Hancock said that small counties will suffer the most as a result of the cuts to CISA. “They can’t afford to have someone come out and do an assessment for them,” Hancock said. “If this goes away, they’ll have to pay for that, and the people they hire may not have the specialized knowledge needed for elections.”

Large counties say they will also feel the sting. Teneshia Hudspeth, who runs elections in Harris County — the state’s largest, and home to Houston — said the potential loss of free federal resources “would pose a significant concern for my office and others responsible for conducting elections.”

“While I understand that CISA is not the only agency that provides similar services, I believe they are the best at offering and disseminating the most accurate information in a unified manner throughout our nation,” she said.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment.

Officials in Wisconsin say they have similar concerns about diminishing CISA. In Milwaukee, CISA’s wide range of educational materials and training programs helped improve employee performance. The county also underwent a free physical security assessment, and benefited from the improved communication sharing that Hudspeth praised.

“CISA’s work has been crucial to safeguarding elections in Wisconsin and across the United States,” Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said in a statement. He said further cuts and reduction in support will “further undermine elections in our nation.”

For now, there is little clarity about how deep the cuts will go, forcing these officials to wait and see whether these programs will continue to be available in their current form.

“Neither CISA leadership nor leaders from other federal agencies have given Michigan any official information about what support will be provided in the future,” said Angela Benander, spokesperson for the Michigan Secretary of State’s office.

The Trump administration has yet to nominate a new CISA director, leaving the agency without permanent leadership. The deputy director position — which doesn’t require Senate confirmation — also remains vacant.

Correction, Feb. 27, 2025: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the Texas Secretary of State had worked with CISA to develop best practices for election security. The agency worked with the Center for Internet Security.

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

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org. Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org. Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org. Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org. Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Bexar County, home to San Antonio, hires Michele Carew as election administrator

2025-02-26T10:55:00+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.

Four years ago, right-wing activists in Hood County caused a stir when they pushed out elections administrator Michele Carew over questions about the way she conducted the 2020 election.

The furor over elections still hasn’t died down. But Carew has found a way back into the election work she cherishes. Last week, a bipartisan commission in Bexar County, one of the largest counties in the state and home to San Antonio, unanimously chose her to manage its elections. Her first day is Saturday.

“I know I made mistakes and I’ll own up to it. I took sides, and maybe I shouldn’t have,” Carew said. “But I had time to reflect on it, learn, grow, and heal from all of it. And it hasn’t been easy to be absent from elections and I want to jump back in.”

Carew, 50, has more than 14 years of experience in election administration. She worked as deputy elections administrator in Parker County in North Texas and later led the elections department in South Texas’ Aransas County. In the fall of 2020 she was hired to lead the department in Hood County, home to Granbury, a community about 35 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

Right away, the complaints from activists about how she was conducting elections began. ProPublica and the Texas Tribune chronicled the months-long back-and-forth between Carew and conservative activists.

Among other things, critics accused her of violating the law by not adhering to a century-old election law about the numbering of ballots.

Texas law says ballots used must be sequentially numbered starting with 1, and distributed to polling places in batches so that “a specific range can be linked to a specific polling place.”

The law also says that ballots at a polling place “must be distributed to voters non-sequentially in order to preserve ballot secrecy.”

How counties comply with these rules depends on the type of voting equipment they use. For instance, some counties, including Hood at the time Carew was election administrator, purchase blank ballot paper that voters insert into a touch-screen voting machine. Once the voter is done making their candidate selections, the device prints the completed ballot with a randomized number to preserve ballot secrecy.

The Texas secretary of state and the Texas attorney general have both clarified that this randomized numbering system complies with the law. But activists continue to raise alarm about the variance from state law to cast doubt on Texas elections.

Carew is aware these battles continue around the state and the country, and that job satisfaction among election administrators is low. But she knows what she’s getting into.

“I’m coming in with a different set of glasses, not some rose colored glasses. I’m coming in knowing that there are people that may have some misconceptions about elections,” Carew told Votebeat. “But I want them to get to know me, and speak to me and let us face the problems together rather than separately.”

Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials, said communities of voters benefit when experienced election officials decide to return and face the challenge again.

“That means that the fear and the threats and the attacks that people have made upon them, their families, and their staff is not winning,” Patrick said. “It is not pressuring them to stay away from a job that they love and serving their communities.”

The Bexar County Election Commission — tasked by law with the hiring and firing of the elections administrator — voted to appoint Carew following a search for a successor to Jacque Callanen. The group reviewed more than 100 applications over the course of a nationwide search that began last fall.

Callanen led the department for more than two decades before she announced her retirement last summer. Callanen, too, faced criticism for what Democrats and voting rights groups said was a refusal to expand voting access in the county.

Bexar County GOP Chair Kris Coons, the sole Republican on the five-member commission, said Carew’s vast experience in running elections made her a perfect fit. Coons added that two county judges who worked with Carew in the past also recommended her for the job.

Coons said she will support Carew in her new role, including requests for more election funding if needed, noting that the department that has conducted elections for more than 2 million people with a staff of only about 20 employees.

“I want her to succeed in every way,” Coons said. “We have to work hand in hand.”

Days before the start of her tenure in Bexar, Carew said she plans to prioritize meetings with community leaders to find how to make voting more accessible for youth and voters with disabilities. She said she’d like to hire more staff for the department, among other things.

“I feel that I am coming in with a fresh set of ideas to try to help the county overcome any obstacles that they’ve had,” Carew said. “That is going to be the part that I play.”

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

The Votebeat stories that made a mark on us in 2024

2024-12-23T10:00:00+00:00

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

Good morning,

Happy holidays to all the dedicated, smart, witty readers of this newsletter, and welcome to our last edition of 2024! Thanks for supporting our work this year. Before we all go our separate ways to celebrate the holidays, we asked Votebeat’s reporters to highlight some of their most memorable stories of the year. Here are their selections:

From Jessica Huseman:

In Shasta County, Calif., fights over elections have left wounds that just won’t heal

This story is from California, a state Votebeat does not typically cover. There, longtime election administrator Cathy Darling Allen faced a more concentrated version of the problems plaguing elected officials across the country — intense scrutiny and mistrust from local residents, spurred by conspiracy theories about Donald Trump’s loss in 2020. The situation became so overwhelming that Darling Allen chose to retire before her term officially ended, and after she was diagnosed with heart failure due to stress.

I was able to spend time in Shasta County and with Darling Allen and her staff, untangling how the situation there became so toxic. I found county leaders who lied to their constituents, a concentration of political extremism, and growing anxiety among lifelong residents that Shasta County had fundamentally changed for the worse.

From Jen Fifield in Arizona:

How Arizona tackles a language barrier to provide Navajo voters a ballot they can listen to

In Arizona, the Navajo Nation is a crucial voting bloc. High turnout on the nation in 2020 helped Joe Biden win the state. Yet about 7,000 voting-age Navajo residents in the state can’t read English proficiently, making it difficult for them to vote. The state is required to translate the ballot for those voters, but courts have found that election officials haven’t done enough to meet these requirements. We wanted to take a closer look.

In a partnership with Indian Country Today, we gained access to a crucial, typically closed meeting in which Navajo speakers tried to translate culturally sensitive and highly controversial ballot propositions into Navajo. That included a measure to secure abortion access in the state. Our story found that the lack of transparency into the process made it difficult for the Navajo community to ensure the ballot was properly translated on these key issues. The story was broadcast across Navajo Nation, on TV through our partnership with Indian Country Today, and in print in community papers serving the reservation. Voting rights groups used the story to continue to call for better translation services.

Signed, sealed, rejected: How Arizona’s system for verifying mail ballots is hurting key voters

Election margins are tight in Arizona, and races can turn on just a few hundred ballots. But in 2022, I noticed that the number of ballots rejected for mismatched voter signatures had tripled, to around 1,800 in Maricopa County alone. I knew the signature review process was designed to block potential fraud, but I also knew, from my time talking to voters in the state, that many voters didn’t even know the importance of the signature. I set out to figure out if this system was working as intended.

In a monthslong project with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, we found that many signatures had been rejected not because they were fraudulent but simply because they were sloppy — meaning that ballots with legitimate signatures were not getting counted. This was often the case for younger and newer voters who only had an e-signature on file. This flaw in the system will be an important target as lawmakers look for ways to improve voting in the state.

From Hayley Harding in Michigan:

No, Michigan does not have more voters than residents eligible to vote

In Michigan, misunderstandings about how the state maintains its voter rolls quickly blew into something bigger as Elon Musk and other conservative activists spread bad information across social media. Michigan has about 8.4 million registered voters and only about 7.9 million residents older than 18. But that’s the result of Michigan’s proactive voter registration policies — everyone eligible to vote is registered when they get a driver’s license in the state, for instance. There are only about 7.2 million active voters in Michigan, with the remainder on the rolls being the dormant records of people who have left Michigan or died, but whose records haven’t yet been removed because of federal laws that restrict such removals.

Votebeat’s reporting on this issue helped to slow the spread of incorrect information and restore trust in the state’s election system during the critical last few weeks before the November election.

From Carter Walker in Pennsylvania:

This Pa. activist is the source of false and flawed election claims gaining traction across the country

Missing voting machine documents raise concern about Pa. county’s testing processes

These two stories share a common theme: They didn’t end with the 2024 presidential election.

In the first story, I took an in-depth look at how Pennsylvania resident Heather Honey had quietly become one of the most influential voices in the conservative election integrity movement. By meticulously fact-checking her report and advocacy on ERIC, an obscure multistate coalition for voter list maintenance that’s been the subject of conservative pushback, we demonstrated how the Lebanon County-based researcher often omitted facts and selectively analyzed data in a way that produced flawed conclusions.

The second story detailed how simple process missteps can lead to big election problems. Before each election, counties must test voting machines to ensure they are functioning properly. After voters in Northampton County noticed a programming error in the 2023 municipal election, it was immediately apparent that officials had not properly tested the county’s machines. They admitted as much. By reviewing thousands of documents, despite the county’s heavy restrictions on my access, I showed that the county’s testing documentation was incomplete, inconsistently filled out, and, in more than 150 instances, missing entirely.

Election administrators are going to continue to make mistakes, and outside observers are going to continue to misinterpret how our elections infrastructure works. That didn’t end on Nov. 5.

From Natalia Contreras in Texas:

How Texas’ paper-based voter registration system has led to the disenfranchisement of some voters

This investigation was sparked by the problems I experienced while registering to vote in Texas. I set out to understand exactly how the voter registration process works in this state, talking to about a dozen election officials, and multiple voters and volunteer deputy registrars. They all confirmed that I wasn’t alone in having filled out a voter registration application but still being left off the voter rolls. Nor was I the only one who had also registered at the Department of Public Safety as a failsafe, while still not being added to the rolls. This happens often to people who try to register in Texas, and means that some voters who think they’re registered aren’t able to cast a ballot. The crux of the problem, my reporting found, is the state’s refusal to adopt online voter registration.

Texas ballot-numbering lawsuit leaves election officials puzzled

Together with colleagues at the Texas Tribune, I reported on how since 2021, in an effort to increase transparency, Texas lawmakers have put some voters’ ballot secrecy at risk.

By the time we reported this, one longtime Texas poll watcher, Laura Pressley, had already sued the state and local election officials, alleging that they violated her and other voters’ right to a secret ballot. In her lawsuit, she said she used publicly available records to come up with an “algorithmic pattern” that helped her find the ballot choices of more than 60,000 voters in Williamson County. Pressley alleges that the state isn’t complying with a century-old Texas law that says ballots have to be numbered sequentially starting with 1. In the course of my reporting, I found that Texas is one of only a few states that still number their ballots at all. Most don’t, to prevent ballot secrecy breaches. Bills that lawmakers say would further expand election transparency have already been filed, but I have yet to see one that would address the ballot secrecy issues. I am on the lookout for it as the legislative session gets underway in January.

From Alexander Shur in Wisconsin:

Under Wisconsin’s ‘drawdown’ election law, one person’s error can cost another person their vote

I’ve reported on all sorts of issues in my career, but none provoked such a visceral reaction from my sources as this one. My national contacts in the election community were appalled to hear that when Wisconsin polling place records show more ballots cast than the number of voters who correctly checked in, election workers, under state law, can resolve the discrepancy through a “drawdown” — that is, by randomly pulling a number of voters’ (likely) legitimate ballots to toss out. Every Wisconsin clerk I spoke with for this story found the idea of conducting a drawdown a distressing, last-resort option. Some said they would never do it again.

I set out to understand why Wisconsin continued to use this practice — first implemented a year after the state’s founding — while almost every other state that once had it has since disavowed it. The answer, I learned, has nothing to do with election workers finding the practice fair or useful. Much the opposite. But the Legislature hasn’t stepped in to change the state’s drawdown law, and the practice continues to jeopardize properly cast ballots — a risk that can change election outcomes. It’s just one example of Wisconsin having some election laws on the books that are widely disliked by election workers.

As Votebeat prepares for 2025, we want to know what journalism would best serve your needs and interests. What should we report on in the upcoming year? Please give us your thoughts in this short survey.

The 2024 election increased public trust in elections, but is it only temporary?

2024-12-16T10:00:00+00:00

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

The presidential election this year had a quick and decisive result. In its wake, survey after survey is finding that a majority of the public believes the election was fair and the results are accurate. The polling is finding a significant uptick in Republicans’ belief in the results, which is driving the increase.

A majority of the public asserting they have faith in elections is, by any measure, good news. But after the past few years, it’s also fair to ask whether the results would be different if Donald Trump had lost the presidential election — and whether that faith will hold when elections turn out differently.

It’s too early to answer the second question with any degree of certainty. But at a summit on elections held by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C. earlier this month, election officials said they continue to worry — about whether the public will continue to believe in elections, about what comes next, about their own personal safety.

And disputes in a North Carolina judicial race suggest prominent political figures aren’t done making allegations of cheating, though it’s less clear how many people still believe it.

In the Tar Heel state on election night, the unofficial results in a hotly contested race for a seat on the state Supreme Court showed the Republican candidate, Jefferson Griffin, in the lead by around 10,000 votes. But then, as election officials in the state’s 100 counties continued to tally qualifying provisional and absentee ballots, as required by law, Democratic candidate Allison Riggs overtook Griffin.

The contest is excruciatingly close. Out of more than 5.5 million votes cast, Riggs ultimately led by 734 votes. An initial machine recount confirmed the margin. A partial so-called “hand-to-eye recount,” designed to discover any potentially meaningful discrepancies with the machine recount, resulted in no substantial change. Separately, Griffin, backed by the state Republican party, has challenged tens of thousands of ballots, and Democrats have now sued to ensure they are counted.

In other words, the results in this closely contested race are receiving every possible level of review from election officials who have been working overtime for months. But last month, Phil Berger, a Republican and the leader of the state Senate, told reporters that “we’re seeing played out at this point another episode of ‘Count Until Somebody You Want to Win Wins,’” in an apparent reference to the tight Supreme Court race.

No one thinks Berger was referring to the presidential race in North Carolina, where Trump was the victor, or, for that matter, his own election, which he won decisively.

And according to the media outlets who reported his comments, he didn’t offer any evidence to support the idea that election officials are doing anything other than exactly what they’re supposed to do — counting legally cast votes.

The executive director of the state elections board, Karen Brinson Bell, decided she had to respond to Berger.

“You are a top leader of our state government. What you say matters,” she wrote to him late last month, asking him to retract his comments. “When you tell your fellow citizens that an election is being conducted fraudulently, they listen. I fear for the people running elections in this state, including in your own community, that some misguided people will conclude from your statements that actions must be taken, perhaps through the use of threats or violence.”

At the Bipartisan Policy Center event this month, Bell said she had little choice but to respond, on behalf of all the election officials in the state, many of whom have been subject to harassment and threats since the 2020 presidential election.

“He has a bigger microphone than I will ever have,” she said. But “just because the other contests turned out the way that he wanted and not this one doesn’t mean that he can attack the very foundations of elections and election officials who are conducting elections according to law.”

For his part, Berger later said his comments were “a reflection of what the general public sees and has concerns about,” NC Newsline reported, and said he has concerns about “the perception that has been created in the public with the situation that somebody’s way ahead on election day, then two weeks later, there’s a different result. I think that creates concerns.”

But suggesting election results were manipulated can turn those kinds of public concerns into public suspicions, or worse. Once that happens, it can take a long time to set the record straight.

Remember “2000 Mules,” the film that alleged that hundreds of people the filmmakers described as “mules” had illegally cast ballots in the 2020 election, resulting in Joe Biden’s victory? The assertions have been unraveling. Way back in June, the distributor pulled the film from distribution and apologized to an Atlanta man who had sued over the film’s false claims that he’d illegally cast the ballots of others.

Now, six months later, Dinesh D’Souza, one of the film’s creators, is also apologizing to the same man, who sued him as well, and acknowledging the film was faulty. True the Vote, the nonprofit group D’Souza credits for the analysis used to support the film’s assertions, said it had no editorial control over the film.

Despite the apologies and the acknowledgement of flaws, both continue to say the premise of the film is true. It isn’t clear why the public should believe that.

More importantly, it’s even less clear whether they do. And whether the public continues to believe poorly supported allegations about the integrity of elections is the most important question to answer.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

How Meagan Wolfe navigates intense scrutiny to make elections and her peers stronger

2024-12-10T10:00:00+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.

Shortly after former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman commenced his error-ridden and fruitless investigation into the state’s 2020 election, he raised eyebrows when he derided chief election official Meagan Wolfe’s clothing choices.

“Black dress, white pearls — I’ve seen the act, I’ve seen the show,” he said on a conservative radio program in spring 2022.

Not long after that comment, Wolfe was scheduled to appear at a county clerk conference, and a county clerk bought fake pearl necklaces for everyone in the room, according to Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican.

“Every one of us, men, women … were wearing those pearl necklaces to show support for her,” he said. “There’s nothing but support from the county clerks for Meagan and the job that she does.”

In contrast with that virtually unanimous support from clerks, he said, most of the criticism she’s received is based on false conspiracy theories or from people who don’t know her or understand her role on the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Since becoming the commission’s nonpartisan administrator six years ago, Wolfe has faced death threats, repeated efforts to oust her, opposition from President-elect Donald Trump, and more lawsuits than you can count on two hands.

It’s the kind of intense pressure that has caused many election officials to leave their roles in recent years. But in the eyes of other election officials, Wolfe has thrived. Many of her peers say she is a nonpartisan and clear-headed model for navigating the world of election administration at a time when election officials are under ever-increasing scrutiny.

For Wolfe, that pressure was just a din of mostly political noise seeping into the already-complicated work of election administration. Even before the 2020 election, she learned how to cope with a level of stress that has now become the norm.

“I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in a position or an environment where we’re not constantly putting out fires,” Wolfe told Votebeat. “I’ve come to really like and appreciate those challenges. Where a challenge comes up, we have to figure out how to overcome it, how to accomplish this thing that’s never been done before.”

Politics inherent to the job for Wolfe

Wolfe, who has degrees in strategic communications and English writing, came into her administrative job with a long election background. That stands out from the many election chiefs across the country who start their roles with little or no election experience.

When Wolfe was hired at the commission’s predecessor, the Government Accountability Board in 2011, her role was to help implement and train clerks and voters about the state’s new voter ID law. The law, which was the target of litigation, was “very divisive,” Wolfe said.

In her training sessions, she said, “I’d start everything by saying, ‘I’m not here to talk about if this is a good law or this is a bad law. I’m just here to tell you what the law is and what we all need to know to be able to navigate it.’”

Those experiences, along with the continuing political and legal battles she faces, she said, have given her an ability “to separate the noise that’s intended to distract us, intended to sway us from what the important things are that actually deserve our resources and our attention.”

“If you don’t have that experience and perspective,” she said, “then it’s really easy to fall into the trap of, here’s this really loud voice or this really loud claim that’s being made, let’s shift all of our resources and our time and everything over to dealing with that, and then it allows other things to fall by the wayside.”

Wolfe moved into IT and leadership roles before becoming administrator in 2018. Some of her work has been groundbreaking across the country.

For example, Wolfe oversaw the in-house development of the statewide registration system and made Wisconsin among the first states to deploy multi-factor authentication for election officials to access that type of system — a crucial cybersecurity tool.

Wisconsin seems like an “unlikely candidate” to develop those complex systems, Wolfe said, but the state has the most decentralized election system in the nation, which means there are few ready-made programs that it could easily implement.

“We’re used to having to just sort of trailblaze,” she said.

Both of those systems became models for other states, including Rhode Island, whose former election director Rob Rock called Wolfe when the state was trying to develop its own custom-built system.

“I really had no idea how to do this, and so to have someone who kind of helped me out through this process was really instrumental,” said Rock, who is now Rhode Island’s deputy secretary of state. “We certainly wouldn’t have the system we have today if it wasn’t for folks like Meagan and her insight into how they did it in Wisconsin.”

Added Rock, “Meagan is one of the best election administrators in this country. I say that without hesitation at all.”

Wolfe’s accomplishments led to her taking leadership roles in national organizations, such as the Electronic Registration Information Center and National Association of State Election Directors.

Last year, the latter organization gave Wisconsin an award for developing a set of videos outlining how elections work.

Clerks recall Wolfe being there in times of need

A significant portion of Wolfe’s job is to be a conduit between state and local election officials.

She appears at clerk conferences to update local election officials on changing laws and oversees programs to train an ever-evolving cast of full- and part-time county and municipal clerks.

Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, said she has come to lean on Wolfe, sometimes for emotional support and other times for advice.

This past election cycle, Trueblood faced a contentious primary from an opponent who, she said, accused her of corruption and targeted her over an outstanding speeding ticket, calling her a fugitive from justice and saying she was unfit to serve.

As the attacks wore on, Trueblood said, Wolfe gave her a call to see how she was doing.

“She was not taking any sides,” Trueblood said. “She wasn’t involving herself politically at all. She was just checking in on a fellow human.”

“That says a lot about a person’s character,” Trueblood added.

Another local election official, Douglas County Clerk Kaci Jo Lundgren, a Democrat, recalled Wolfe being there for her when she was in a pinch.

Ahead of the August election this year, Lundgren mistakenly assigned the wrong Assembly district on every ballot in a small town. After catching the error on election day, Lundgren said, one of her first moves was to call Wolfe for advice.

There wasn’t much the commission could do, Lundgren recalled, but Wolfe offered her templates to communicate the error to the town’s voters. Additionally, Lundgren said Wolfe provided emotional support.

“I felt like one mistake ruined everything for me. And she affirmed that I was here because I’m doing a good job, and I’m upset because I care,” Lundgren said. “She knows what it’s like to deal with difficult situations in elections, and because it was my first time having to deal with something so difficult, it was just nice to have her as a resource.”

One figure in national elections, Carolina Lopez, the executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, recalled a particularly volatile time in Wisconsin elections around 2022, when courts were flip-flopping on the legality of drop boxes.

During that time, she said, the elections commission sent rapid updates to make local election officials aware of the recent changes.

“That’s probably the biggest thing you could do for … your counties and the people that you partner with – it’s prompt communication, clear communication.”

For all the credit that clerks give Wolfe, the state’s top election official said she has it easy compared to them.

“If we don’t have them and we don’t have people that are resilient and resourceful and compassionate and tough in each of our communities, then this doesn’t work, right?” Wolfe said. “And so my job is really just to support them.”

Wolfe becomes GOP target after 2020 election

After the 2020 election, a multitude of prominent Republicans, including Trump, blamed Wolfe for Trump’s loss in that year’s election. They baselessly alleged fraud and called for investigations and her ouster, blaming her for a slew of decisions by election commissioners that she had no vote on, like bypassing a state law that ordinarily requires sending election officials to conduct elections in nursing homes.

Calls for a new administrator haven’t entirely ceased. But now, over four years after Wolfe became a target, scores of people in the election community — and even many Republican leaders — are ready to move on.

The Legislature’s top Republican, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, was recently asked on WISN 12 if the Assembly would move to impeach Wolfe. Vos, who had authorized Gableman’s investigation, called it unlikely, adding, “I really want 2020 to be in the rearview mirror.”

Trueblood, the Marathon County clerk, said there’s a sense of camaraderie between local election officials and Wolfe, especially after she became targeted in the wake of the 2020 election.

“For a while, she wasn’t going anywhere by herself for fear of her own safety,” Trueblood said. “I don’t care what your political feelings about somebody are, things like that just aren’t okay. And I think we all developed a really close bond with her.”

If that vitriol gets under Wolfe’s skin, she’s not expressing it.

“I’ve always felt really strongly that we cannot allow people threatening us, harassing us, bullying us, whatever you want to call it – we cannot allow that to sway how we behave or, in my position, to stop me from going out and talking to the public about how elections work,” Wolfe said. “Because in some ways I view that as almost giving in to partisan pressure … and I’m just not going to do that.”

Smooth 2024 election sign that Wolfe should continue, former chief says

Despite efforts to move forward, the fight to target and oust Wolfe has continued into 2024, past the November election, which for the most part went off without a hitch.

After 2020, the commission received thousands of calls and emails replete with election conspiracy theories and false claims, she said. Since the 2024 election, she said, conspiracy theory-laden calls and emails number in the single digits.

At least one significant hurdle awaits, though.

As Wolfe’s term expired in the summer 2023, the election commission deadlocked on her reappointment. She remained in her role as a holdover appointee and, along with the commission, filed a lawsuit against GOP legislative leaders who sought to oust her.

That case is pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In November’s oral arguments, a majority of justices appeared skeptical of the argument against her.

Both of Wolfe’s predecessors expressed support for her to stay in her job.

Mike Haas, who was administrator at the accountability board and later became the commission’s first administrator, said the smooth administration of the 2024 election “is evidence that the right person is in the job and should continue in it.”

Added Haas, “It would be nice in Wisconsin if we could get to a position of people supporting election officials, rather than being focused on creating imaginary conspiracy theories.”

Kevin Kennedy, who was Wisconsin’s chief election official for over 30 years, said both he and Haas were replaceable — and Wolfe is too.

But Kennedy wondered why people would want to replace “someone who’s really good.”

“I think it’s best for Wisconsin if she stays,” he said.

For her part, Wolfe said she has “no immediate plans to leave” if she wins that case and continues to receive the election commissioners’ approval. She has many ongoing projects, but also wants to gauge what next year looks like, she said.

Wolfe also questioned whether she may get in the way of her agency’s functions, like budget negotiations. If there’s ever a time “where me being in this role seems like it’s not productive to the needs of our agency or the state,” she said, then she may reevaluate staying at the commission, “because this isn’t about me. It’s much bigger and more important than me.”

Correction, Dec. 10: This article originally misstated who hired Meagan Wolfe at the office overseeing elections.

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

As Cochise County certifies election, Peggy Judd looks back at the vote that upended her life

2024-11-21T10:00:00+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.

WILLCOX, Ariz. — Peggy Judd knew exactly what she needed to do.

Judd, a Republican on the board of supervisors in Cochise County, Arizona, had to vote yes Wednesday on whether to certify the county’s presidential election results. If she didn’t, she would be not only breaking the law, but also violating the terms of her plea agreement.

That’s because, two years ago, after the 2022 midterms, she made a different choice. She and another Republican supervisor voted to delay the certification of that election past the legal deadline.

That decision made her one of a handful of local Republican officials around the country who unsuccessfully tried to halt or delay certification of an election. It also upended Judd’s life.

As she prepares to leave public office at the end of the year, she’s still reckoning with the consequences. And the county, a rural region in the southeastern corner of the state along the Mexican border, is still working through the distrust, turmoil, and national attention that came with Judd’s vote.

After the vote to delay, State Attorney General Kris Mayes launched an investigation into Judd and fellow Supervisor Tom Crosby. A grand jury later charged them with two felonies — conspiracy and interference with an election officer.

Judd initially fought the charges, and amassed $70,000 in legal bills, she told Votebeat in an interview Tuesday. She collected contributions to help pay the tab, including, she acknowledged for the first time, $5,000 wired from the Legal Offense Fund of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has promoted false theories about elections.

But despite promises from GOP activists and leaders to help anyone who bucked the system, most of the burden fell on her.

Judd, 62, signed a plea agreement last month admitting that she failed to certify the election as required by law. She was sentenced to 90 days of unsupervised probation.

That means that if she didn’t certify this election on time, she could be jailed.

Crosby, for his part, has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled for January.

Feeling betrayed: ‘I don’t want to be a Republican anymore’

Judd, a former state representative, is preparing to sell her house to her daughter, mostly because she needs money to pay her legal bills. Judd moved in with her mother this summer.

She said the local Republican Party she had helped nurture since the Tea Party movement began in 2008 has turned against her. She doesn’t feel welcome at the local GOP meetings now, she said, and has faced criticism for not going all the way on the effort to hand-count ballots and block certification. She said she plans to unregister as a Republican “soon.”

“When I was behaving, they were very kind to me,” she said. “But the minute I was saying ‘No, wait, whoa,’ then they hated me, like immediately. And that’s why I don’t want to be a Republican anymore.”

Even so, sitting at her sister’s pizza restaurant in Willcox the afternoon before the vote, she said she felt tortured by the thought of voting yes on certification the following morning, because Cochise did experience problems counting ballots.

“So much is going wrong,” she said.

A local reporter had just called her to tell her that the elections director had made a mistake when preparing the hand-count audit of results. And the county had mechanical problems with its tabulator while tallying votes during the initial count.

Judd knew the mistakes did not affect the final vote count. And because Donald Trump won the presidency, Judd said, the community wasn’t claiming fraud this time, or pushing her not to certify.

Still, she said she wanted to be deliberate about her vote. Certifying an election is a ministerial duty in Arizona, not a discretionary one, but she said she didn’t want to vote to certify just because she was obligated to. She wanted to be able to tell her community affirmatively that, despite the mistakes, the election should be certified.

She had been all day waiting for the elections director to send her a post-election report that might help her understand exactly what challenges election officials dealt with during the election, and how they resolved them.

She checked her email inbox one more time. But there was nothing there.

The day before the vote in 2022

Even before her vote not to certify the 2022 midterm election results, Judd was tangled up in lawsuits and drama over how Cochise County would handle them. For months, she and some other elected officials pushed for a full hand count of ballots. A judge blocked the plan, finding it would be illegal under state law.

Around the same time, Crosby and Judd conferred with a private lawyer — separately, they say — outside of a public meeting. They asked him to sue the county’s elections director personally for refusing to hand over the ballots for an expanded audit.

Mayes determined later that the two supervisors’ meetings with the outside lawyer had violated the state’s Open Meetings Act.

Activists also asserted that the voting lab that certified the county’s ballot tabulators had not been properly accredited, a claim that the Arizona Supreme Court had already rejected.

Crosby and Judd said they wanted more information on those claims and voted on Nov. 18 to delay the certification vote until the last day allowed in state law, Nov. 28.

Shortly afterward, the state elections director sent supervisors a letter from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission confirming that the machines were properly certified.

Nonetheless, Judd said that on the day before the Nov. 28 vote, she met with two activists making the claim. She said she was helping them prepare to present at the supervisors’ meeting the next morning.

When those activists weren’t allowed to speak at that meeting, Crosby and Judd again voted to delay certification — this time, until past the county’s deadline to certify under state law.

Then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sued, and a court forced Cochise supervisors to certify later that week, allowing the secretary of state to still meet the deadline for statewide certification.

Judd this week said that no one on her staff had advised her of the county’s statutory deadline to certify, or that her vote to delay meant the county would miss it. But fellow Supervisor Ann English, the board’s only Democrat, says the supervisors were warned of the deadline.

Judd also said she had always intended to certify the election. While she had doubts about the fairness of elections elsewhere, she said she always knew Cochise County’s elections were fair.

What were Judd’s intentions?

A grand jury connected Crosby and Judd’s votes to delay certification with their earlier push for hand-counting all of the county’s ballots, and accused them of an illegal conspiracy to delay the election results.

Judd was putting out Christmas decorations with her family when she got a phone call telling her she had been indicted. She said she was surprised and especially wanted to push back on the idea that she conspired with Crosby. Judd said she never spoke to Crosby outside of public meetings, even about the lawsuit against the county’s elections director.

Judd’s sister, Cindy Chaffey, drove her to Phoenix for her arraignment in December 2023 and described Judd as “really struggling” with the charges against her at that point.

She said Judd is best known in the community not for the election drama, but as a longstanding public servant — one who goes out of her way to help others. Judd, she said, wanted to prove to the community that the county’s election was fair and believed her actions would allow that to happen.

“Because everything she does is with a good heart and with good intentions,” she said.

Not everyone saw Judd’s actions that way.

Sitting at R&R Pizza, Judd puts her phone on the table and replays a voicemail that arrived the day after her Nov. 28 vote to delay the results. The man’s voice on the recording tells her she is “election-denying, crazy, psychopathic anti-American to your very core, for denying people their rightful need to vote.”

“Hopefully you both get hit by semi-trucks,” the voice says, referring to Judd and Crosby. “Get cancer, suffer immensely, and die before the end of the year.”

Judd said she cried when she got that message, and regrets that her staff received messages like that, too. Criticism came from other members of the community as well, especially after Crosby and Judd’s actions prompted the resignation of the county’s well-regarded elections director, Lisa Marra.

English, the Democratic supervisor, said she is disappointed that Judd could get off with “a slap on the wrist.” English said she believes Judd and Crosby should also be held accountable for violating public meeting law.

Judd denies that she did so.

Surprise turned to doubt in 2020

This summer, prosecutors with Mayes’ office questioned Judd about her choices in what Judd called a “free talk” that preceded the plea agreement. She said she was honest when they asked her who had influenced her actions: It wasn’t Lindell, or anyone like that, she said. Mostly, it was her husband, Kit Judd.

Judd grew up in Willcox, and she and her husband raised their family there. She helped organize the Tea Party movement in Cochise, and later served as a state representative.

She and her husband were always Republican, but she said she thought of herself as independent-minded and at one point, voted for Democrat Barack Obama. That’s not something she told her husband about, she said.

But she remembers waking up the day after the 2020 election, surprised that Trump had lost. That surprise quickly turned into doubt about the fairness of the election.

And on Jan. 6, 2021, she was at the rally in Washington, D.C., when rioters broke into the U.S. Capitol, though she said she was with her kids and grandkids and nowhere near the building. She has not been charged in relation to what happened that day. She said she condemns the violence.

During the period after the 2022 election, she was caring full-time for her husband, who had become ill. She attended meetings online and voted from home, with him there, and said his opinions influenced her votes.

Kit Judd died in early 2024.

When trying to decide whether to take a plea agreement, she said she consulted privately with a regional leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which she is a lifelong member. He asked her if what she would be admitting to — delaying the results — was the truth. She said it was.

Upon signing her plea agreement, Judd said she felt Mayes launched her investigation for political reasons.

But a week after Judd signed the plea agreement, she said, Mayes came to Cochise County for the opening of the Oletski Border Operations Center. Judd said she approached her for a conversation and found her to be kind. Judd said the talk prompted her to think of Mayes as “more of an ally than an enemy.” Mayes’ spokesperson confirmed the two women spoke, but couldn’t confirm what was said.

Judd said her lawyer will ask the judge who heard her case to end her probation early. She wants a break from holding office for four years, she said, but isn’t ruling out running for supervisor again after that.

She wants to go on a Mexican cruise in January. She plans to try to get approved for a church mission trip later in the year.

First, though, she needed to vote on certifying the 2024 election.

On Wednesday morning, Judd showed up to a nearly empty meeting room. No one from the public spoke before the vote, despite the mistakes that occurred while counting ballots. The elections director had, by then, posted a full report of what occurred, and recommendations for improvements in future elections.

The team was new this year, since Marra’s departure has made it hard for the county to attract and keep elections directors. Joe Casey, associate county administrator overseeing elections, said in an interview that they were learning as they went.

When it came time for her vote, Judd thanked the elections team for “hanging in there” and “putting up with all my questions.”

“You allayed my fears,” she told them.

English and Crosby also thanked the staff. And then, they voted unanimously to certify the results.

“Yay,” Judd said immediately after. “Does it feel like we should have confetti or something?”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

How Milwaukee’s Election Day mistake left the door open to more misinformation

2024-11-20T10:00:00+00:00

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

In the early morning following Election Day in 2020, Claire Woodall, then Milwaukee’s elections chief, mistakenly left behind a USB stick carrying vote totals at the city’s central absentee ballot counting facility. Election conspiracy theorists quickly seized on the mistake, accusing Woodall of rigging the election.

Their claims were baseless, but the mistake increased scrutiny on the city’s election staff and led Woodall to create a checklist to make sure workers at central count didn’t overlook any critical steps in the future.

This year, despite the checklist, Milwaukee election staff at central count made another procedural mistake — and once again left the door open to conspiracy theorists.

Somebody — city officials haven’t said who — overlooked the second step outlined on the checklist and failed to lock and seal the hatch covers on the facility’s 13 tabulators before workers began tabulating ballots. For hours, while counting proceeded, the machines’ on-off switches and USB ports were left exposed.

After election officials discovered the lapse, city officials decided to count 31,000 absentee ballots all over again, a choice that led to delays in reporting results.

Results from the large and heavily Democratic city ultimately came in at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, only a few hours later than expected, but a time that conspiracy theorists implied was a suspicious hour for vote totals to change. Their posts echoed claims from 2020 that used sensationalized language like “late-night ballot dumps” to describe the reality that in big cities, absentee ballots take time — yes, sometimes late into the night — to collect, deliver, verify, and count accurately.

In fact, the results in Milwaukee couldn’t have arrived much sooner. Under state law, election officials can’t start processing the hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots until the morning of Election Day. This year, they got a late start, because of delays in getting workers settled, but were still expecting to be done around 2 or 3 a.m. Then it became clear the midday decision to redo the count would add more time to the process.

But those explanations have done little to curb the false conspiracy theories that have been proliferating on the right, including from losing U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde.

Election officials have for years known that the slightest mistakes, or even perceived errors, can trigger false claims. In this instance, the failure to follow a critical security step occurred in the state’s most scrutinized election facility, despite new procedures meant to reduce such errors.

For people with a conspiratorial mindset, such an oversight can’t be explained away as just a mistake, said Mert Bayar, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. The errors can provide conspiracy theorists a feeling of validation because those errors make a “conspiracy theory more realistic … more believable.”

For those people, he said, election errors are instead perceived as “part of a plot to steal an election.”

Instead of considering the 2024 Milwaukee mistake a simple oversight, Bayar said, conspiracy theorists may think that the tabulator doors “cannot be left unlocked unless they’re trying something tricky, something stealth.”

Genya Coulter, senior director of stakeholder relations at the Open Source Election Technology Institute, said Milwaukee can still fine-tune its processes and checklists.

“I don’t think anybody needs to be demonized,” she said, “but I do think that there needs to be some retraining. That would be helpful.”

Milwaukee error initially drew complaints, but not suspicion

It was an election observer who first noticed the open tabulator doors and alerted election officials. Around 2 p.m., Milwaukee’s current election chief, Paulina Gutiérrez, went from tabulator to tabulator, monitored by Democratic and Republican representatives, to lock all of the doors. Two hours later, she made the call to rerun all ballots through the tabulators.

The tabulators had been in full view of partisan observers and the media, but behind a barrier that only election officials and some designated observers, like representatives for both political parties who accompany election officials during some election processes, can enter. Any tampering would have been evident, Gutiérrez said, and there was no sign of that.

For that reason, some Republicans at central count opposed recounting all the ballots and risking a delay. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who went to central count on Election Day to learn more about the error, said he didn’t think anything nefarious happened, though he said the election operation there was “grossly incompetent.”

Coulter said the decision to start the counting over again was “the right call for transparency’s sake.”

Hovde, who lost his Senate race in a state that Donald Trump carried, invoked conspiratorial language to describe what happened.

“The results from election night were disappointing, particularly in light of the last minute absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m. flipping the outcome,” he said Monday in his concession speech. “There are many troubling issues around these absentee ballots.”

In an earlier video, Hovde criticized Milwaukee’s election operation and spread false claims about the proportion of votes that opponent, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, received from absentee ballots. That led to a skyrocketing number of posts baselessly alleging election fraud in Wisconsin.

One prominent conservative social media account questioned whether the tabulator doors being left open was a case of sabotage.

In a statement, the Milwaukee Election Commission said it “unequivocally refutes Eric Hovde’s baseless claims regarding the integrity of our election process.”

Why Milwaukee’s results were late

There’s no proof of fraud or malfeasance in Milwaukee or anywhere else in Wisconsin on Election Day. But a few key factors combined to delay Milwaukee’s results until 4 a.m.

First, Milwaukee central count workers started processing and tabulating ballots around 9 a.m., long after the 7 a.m. start time allowed under state law. The delay was a matter of getting dozens of central count workers organized and at the right station in the large facility.

The more high-profile one was the failure to close the tabulators, which prompted the decision to count 31,000 absentee ballots all over again.

But both of those slowdowns could have been less consequential had Wisconsin election officials been able to process absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day, as some other states allow. Such a change could have allowed election officials to review absentee ballot envelopes, verify and check in absentee voters, but not count votes. An effort to allow election officials to do so stalled in the state Senate this year.

Checklist change could ‘improve transparency’

Milwaukee election officials may have avoided the situation entirely — and could avoid similar situations in the future — by modifying their central count checklist, said Coulter, from the Open Source Election Technology Institute.

Currently, the checklist states that at the start of Election Day, the tabulator doors should be locked and sealed. It’s not clear why that step was skipped. Gutiérrez didn’t respond to questions for comment about who was in charge of the process or whether that person faced disciplinary action.

But the step likely wouldn’t have been overlooked, Coulter said, if the checklist required the official in charge of locking the tabulators to be accompanied by a representative from each major political party.

“That’s a relatively painless change that … I think it would improve transparency,” Coulter said.

“There needs to be an emphasis on having two people from different political affiliations performing all duties that involve the tabulator,” she said.

Another pre-processing step on the checklist calls for people working at the tabulators to make sure the numbered seals pasted over the tabulator doors are intact. It doesn’t call for checking that the tabulator doors are locked.

To avoid a repeat situation, Coulter said, “They should also check to make sure that the door to the power button is properly locked, and what to do if it isn’t.”

Election officials recognize the scrutiny they face over errors, Coulter said, and they sometimes focus more on avoiding mistakes than running election operations.

“It’s like a racecar driver … If you focus on the wall, you’re going to wind up hitting that wall,” she said. “You have to train your mind to think about the curve and not the wall, but unfortunately, it’s really hard for election officials to do that, especially in high-pressure jurisdictions.”

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

Post-election lesson: The era of conspiracy theories and misinformation won’t end quickly

2024-11-18T09:30:00+00:00

The past few elections have shown that American voters can be sore losers when the election doesn’t go their way, and sometimes the winners turn out to be disingenuous when it does.

On one hand, after years of making spurious allegations, those promoting election conspiracy theories on the right have been notably silent about Donald Trump’s clear win in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. On the other hand, certain people on the left — who have been raging about their faith in democracy for the past eight years — are grumbling about the possibility that something went wrong on Election Day.

Here’s a smattering of the unsupported theories we’re seeing on social media, in news reports, and in the emails to our journalists from people on the left:

Did Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite-based internet service mess with election results in Trump’s favor? (no)
Something “doesn’t feel right” with the results. (Results may not feel right, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.)
Maybe the machines really are problematic, and Votebeat should investigate. (We have been through this one, folks.)

At Votebeat, we’ll stay tuned to see if this grousing persists. But it’s important to note that the leaders of the Democratic Party do not appear to be encouraging such conjecture, unlike Trump and many elected Republicans in 2020. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, promptly conceded, as is normal for the losing candidate, and Democratic leaders haven’t objected to the results. That suggests these complaints aren’t likely to escalate to any kind of official response.

Still, the cycle we’re seeing is a problem. For one thing, conspiracy theories don’t go away. They just change form to serve the purposes of different factions. Consider that many of the right-wing theories about Dominion voting machines that took off after the 2020 election were rooted in allegations made by left-leaning activists in Georgia in 2018, for example. Republicans are mostly quiet now, but if they lose the presidency in 2028, they could well pick these arguments back up.

It’s also too early to say how the right-wing misinformation about voting will evolve following Trump’s victory. Perhaps the widespread false claims about noncitizen voting will become a key part of the immigration policy debate. Perhaps Trump will put together another presidential commission on voting, this one to investigate his claims about 2020. Perhaps neither of these things will happen.

Given the millions of dollars spent promoting doubts about elections and voting, and the hundreds of die-hards determined to prove 2020 was stolen, it’s unlikely that these theories will vanish simply because of Trump’s victory. For example, many of the loudest proponents were quick to falsely claim that millions of Democratic votes were “missing” this year. Some progressives used the same faulty data to support claims that Starlink scooped votes out of thin air. There are already a lot of explainers out there on why this is flatly incorrect.

It’s also too soon to say how the new Trump administration will respond, if at all, to foreign intervention in the election. The bomb threats against polling places in several swing states appear to have come from a Russian email address. U.S. intelligence officials said China and Iran also tried to influence the outcome of the election, and the Justice Department has said Iran was attempting to assassinate Trump. Unwinding all that — and developing a response — will take some time.

This period immediately after the election is when attention turns from voting to the flurry of activity surrounding the transition to a new administration. But there are still some pretty important things happening with our elections: Certification is underway. So are audits, recounts, and quality checks. Next year — when counties have a break from federal election madness — they’ll be picking new voting equipment and making other crucial decisions that will affect how we vote going forward. As state legislatures head back into session, they’ll take up voting-related bills that deserve our attention.

Votebeat will be here to help you make sense of all of this, and we’re eager to hear from you about what (real) concerns you might have going into this administration. If you are a county election administrator, what strategic decisions are you making to set your county up for success next year and in 2026? If you are a voter, what issues are you following as your state legislatures come back into session? Let us know.

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

How Maricopa County, Arizona, prepared for the Election Day spotlight

2024-11-18T09:00:00+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 Sunday morning before the big event, and Jennifer Liewer is standing outside the elections center in downtown Phoenix, inspecting a metal tent frame that contractors are erecting in the parking lot.

“I told him to make it bigger,” she tells a colleague. “I’m not sure if this is the ‘bigger.’”

Liewer, Maricopa County’s deputy elections director for communications, knows hundreds of journalists from around the world will be here on Election Day, working in this tent. To be able to do her job then, she needs to be a logistics manager now, directing trucks and workers, while ensuring that voters can still drive up to the ballot drop box in the parking lot.

Jennifer Liewer walks through the site of a media tent that will be erected in the parking lot of the elections center in Phoenix two days before the 2024 presidential election.

The last two federal elections, county officials were caught by surprise when worldwide media attention turned toward Maricopa. After 2020, journalists arrived to watch allies of Donald Trump recount all 2.1 million ballots cast in the county after Trump claimed, without evidence, that the election was rigged against him. Then, on the day of the midterm election, widespread technical failures at the polls spurred similar claims of fraud, this time from failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

This year, Trump and Lake were both back on the ballot. Arizona — and especially Maricopa, the country’s largest swing county — was predicted to help decide the presidential election. Nearly 700 journalists applied for credentials. Liewer and her colleagues knew this was an opportunity to help restore public trust in elections in the most scrutinized county in one of the most closely watched states.

The county brought on more staff to handle media requests, sent a packet to reporters in advance detailing how the county runs its elections, prepared a live fact-check page on its website, required journalists working from the elections center tent to obtain credentials, and spent $35,000 to set up the media tent and bathrooms in the parking lot.

Liewer allowed Votebeat to shadow her in the days leading up to her Election Day gantlet.

Jennifer Liewer (right), sits with colleague Ali Flahive in the communications command center in the county's elections center in Phoenix.

On Sunday, her phone buzzed repeatedly as she met with colleague Ali Flahive in a room serving as a communications command center. Soon, anyone responsible for election messaging would be sitting at the rows of tables, fitted with computer monitors. Two projector screens at the front of the room would soon show wait times at the polls, and a running list of pending media inquiries. On the wall were framed black-and-white signs with quotes from Scott Jarrett, one of the county’s two elections directors.

“THIS IS The Super Bowl of Elections,” one said.

“WE ARE The Belle of the Ball,” another declared.

County officials didn’t ask for this attention, but they’re getting used to it.

‘Cut through the noise’: Maricopa County officials fight back

In 2020 and 2022, Liewer watched from behind the scenes as a spokesperson for the county attorney’s office. When she stepped into her role last year, she knew what she was getting into.

It’s not her first high-pressure role, and she’s often found herself responding to crises. Just out of college, she began working for the American Red Cross in Phoenix and was called to New York after the 9/11 attacks. She was spokesperson for the city of Glendale when it hosted the 2008 Super Bowl and responded to high media interest about financial problems, and later for the Arizona Supreme Court as the elected county attorney faced disciplinary proceedings. She started in the county attorney’s office under Allister Adel in 2019, and represented the office as Adel publicly battled alcoholism.

And she was there in 2022, when the office commissioned an outside investigation of the Election Day problems. The next year, when the communications role opened, she knew she could handle it.

“Here, we are all doing it together, and the chaos is on the outside,” she said, sitting in her office on the Sunday before the election. It’s not lost on her that she is now coordinating media arrangements and messaging for what Jarrett calls the “Super Bowl of elections,” when she once did the same for the actual Super Bowl. Of course, the stakes for the presidential election are a little different.

She’s watched county election officials manage all the twists and turns of the past four years, and she uses that information to anticipate what’s coming her way.

Jennifer Liewer, Maricopa County’s deputy elections director for communications, poses in the hallway of the county's election center on election night.

For a while, the county took a “backseat approach” to communications, said Supervisor Bill Gates. That was true even as state Senate Republicans subpoenaed every ballot cast in the county’s 2020 election for what they called an audit.

But the strategy shifted quickly.

In May 2021, the Senate’s contractors, Cyber Ninjas, falsely accused the county’s workers of deleting election files. County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, had been reserved until then, but when Trump echoed that false claim on social media, Richer responded on Twitter, calling it “unhinged.” That’s around when the typically mild-mannered Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, began to call the audit a “grift.”

From then on, the county’s tone changed.

“We thought, ‘That’s enough. We can’t remain silent,’” Gates recalled. “And that’s been the motivation ever since. It’s about defending the team, defending our workers.”

County Communications Director Fields Moseley began to transform the county’s sleepy social media account with live fact-checking, plus some snark, aimed at the auditors.

“#RealAuditorsDont: Assume guilt and post false information like it’s a Season 1 cliffhanger,” the account tweeted on May 14, 2021.

It was their way to “cut through the noise,” said Zach Schira, Gates’ chief of staff at the time and now an assistant county manager overseeing elections. “There was no other answer.”

The 2022 midterms: A setback on Election Day

As the 2022 midterm election approached, the county adopted a strategy from its COVID-19 response and set up a command center for the first time.

“Immediacy is top concern,” a draft county communications plan from the time said. “Rumors/misinformation should be addressed ASAP.”

Leading up to the election, county officials were holding weekly press conferences. Then, when polls opened on Election Day, they found themselves contending with a significant problem: Tabulators across the county weren’t accepting ballots, and county officials had to tell reporters they didn’t know why.

That night, reporters filled the lobby of the elections center to question officials. The officials explained that the problem was with the ballot printers, not the tabulators, but didn’t provide details that night — or for months. The lack of immediate answers allowed conspiracy theories to flourish.

Voter confidence took another hit.

Afterwards, to shore it up, the county started to more aggressively push public tours of the elections center. Officials hosted about 100 tours this year alone so far, in between running elections. The county also spent $1.8 million on paid TV, radio, digital, and social media ads and billboards this year, trying to get information about voter registration, mail ballots, and other issues straight to voters before the election.

Jennifer Liewer answers a question from staff at the elections center in Phoenix just before polls close on the night of the 2024 presidential election.

Deciding what to say, and what not to say

Behind Liewer’s desk is a sign: “Do what is right not what is easy.”

When pressure hits, she said it’s important for her to be honest about what’s happening, while still respecting her team’s opinions on what information they aren’t prepared to share. If she can’t talk about something, she said, she is up front about that.

“I think it’s about being true to the people you work for directly, but also being true to the community,” she said.

Of course, not everyone agrees on “what is right” — or that the county has gotten its communications efforts right in the past.

At times, the county has withheld information. Officials chose not to respond to the Cyber Ninjas’ questions about the 2020 election, and, after 2022, chose to wait five months, until an independent investigation was complete, to provide detailed answers about what went wrong with the ballot printers. In both instances, misinformation spread without a quick official response.

Critics have also taken aim at the county’s past requests to social media platforms to remove posts officials believe are false or harassing. And, after the county started restricting events only to credentialed media, a court ruled that it had to provide access to outlets it had banned, such as The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website that frequently publishes misinformation. Liewer has to now take all of that into account.

‘We will not be playing whack-a-mole’: Officials lay out plan

On the Monday morning before the election, Liewer swivels in her chair at her desk as she talks to a local radio reporter from KTAR. She’s been getting media requests all morning, and she seems antsy to get off the phone. She still has to finish preparing for a press conference in a few hours, the final of three leading up to the election. Dozens of journalists are expected. She tells the reporter she has to go.

“I hope I was nice,” she says as she hangs up.

She reads through a script she’s printed out, highlighting certain comments, crossing out others.

Some reporters have gotten word that the county is experiencing delays while processing early ballots, and they’re asking her about it. A local reporter for Axios Phoenix texts her to ask exactly what results would come out at 8 p.m. election night. Would they be all early ballots received up to Friday, or Saturday?

“It’s actually neither,” Liewer says, dictating a text message into her phone. “The recorder is going to address it in the press conference this afternoon.”

Flahive stops by to let her know the staff started a new spreadsheet, this one to keep track of news broadcasters’ liveshot requests for Election Day. They are trying to get through the backlog in the media inbox, but requests are coming in faster than they can respond. Overall, from September through mid-November, a team of seven would field more than 1,000 media inquiries.

Jennifer Liewer addresses reporters at a press conference on Nov. 4, 2024, the day before the presidential election.

In the afternoon, more than 100 journalists sit at tables or stand behind cameras on tripods in a county conference room. The Gateway Pundit employee banned in 2022 is in the first row.

Gates, Richer, Schira, and Liewer walk to the front of the room. Moseley, the county communications director, is already there, in the back.

Schira speaks last, telling the crowd that if misinformation shows up on Election Day “we will not be playing whack-a-mole.”

“But what we will be taking very seriously is any misinformation that impacts a voter’s ability to vote a ballot,” Schira said. “That misinformation, we will be very aggressive in reporting.”

Liewer sets the stage for what the visiting reporters can expect. “Obviously, there are a lot of members of the press here,” she tells the crowd. Her staff can’t take questions from everyone, she says, but they will be there all week to help.

And with that, she opens it up to the floor.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

In Brazos County, Texas, election officials feel the strain of unrelenting scrutiny from right-wing skeptics

2024-11-15T10:00:00+00:00

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

BRYAN, Texas — At election time, Trudy Hancock spends a lot of time in her car, delivering equipment to polling sites scattered around Brazos County and visiting poll workers who need her help in the field.

She keeps the car radio on, and always tuned to Christian music.

Recovering from a tiring Election Day last week, the longtime county election administrator recalled hearing one song that resonated with her. It’s called “The Truth,” and opens with the lyrics:

How many times can you hear the same lie

Before you start to believe it?

At her desk that morning, she recited a version of those lyrics as best as she could remember them, softly, haltingly.

“But I know the truth,” she added, as she tried to hold back tears. “It gets hard.”

There are reasons why the song hit home. After decades of working in elections, and years of hearing people lie about them, Hancock and her staff members are starting to sometimes doubt themselves. Like election officials around the country, they’ve repeatedly tried to reassure a small group of right-wing skeptics that the county’s elections are safe and secure. They’ve tried to answer their questions, accommodated their demands, educated them about the law, and offered them opportunities to see firsthand how the process works.

“They won’t accept our answers, because it’s not the answers that they want,” Hancock, 60, said. “There’s just no end to it.”

People wait in line to vote at Brazos County Elections Administration Office in Bryan, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2024. Activist groups say they speak for voters who lack confidence in the process. Most voters Votebeat spoke with on Election Day didn’t express such doubts.

Election Day in Brazos — a Republican stronghold around 100 miles northwest of Houston, and home to Texas A&M University — went pretty smoothly this time. Minor technical issues were resolved early on. Few locations had long wait times.

Hancock knows the truth. But she also knows that it won’t be enough to quiet the skeptics, who were questioning election processes right up to the start of early voting this year, and haven’t stopped.

Now that the 2024 election is over, Hancock is about to decide whether she can keep doing the job.

The requests keep coming

Since January, Hancock and her staff have hosted at least three public meetings where they’ve gone over, in detail, how the voting equipment works, and every single step of the election process. They’ve explained to the group of concerned residents that voter roll maintenance is done daily by staff members whose sole job is to make sure such lists are accurate.

Following the March primary election, Hancock invited some residents who have been coming to Commissioners Court to take part in the state-mandated partial hand count, which is done by every county after each election to check the accuracy of the voting equipment. The Secretary of State’s office selects the races to be hand-counted.

In an effort to increase transparency, Hancock got state permission to hand-count additional races. One of the critics of her office, resident Catherine Viens, participated in the count, which took a few days to complete and showed no discrepancies.

This is the new normal, and that scares me. The distrust in our process and our people. The distrust in everything.”
Trudy Hancock, Brazos County elections administrator

But the requests kept coming. They asked Hancock to guard against double voting — though there’s no evidence of that happening at large scale — by purchasing special ballot paper that’s preprinted with sequential serial numbers, starting with 1.

The paper cost taxpayers $14,000 and, according to Hancock, doesn’t really improve security. It creates waste, because leftover ballots can’t be reused in the next election. On top of that, the county workers have to spend more time and resources redacting the printed numbers to protect voters’ ballot secrecy.

Trudy Hancock, Brazos County elections administrator, at the Brazos Center on Election Day. Her first experience in elections was as a poll worker in her community back in the late 1980s.

Hancock agreed to it anyway for the presidential election. But it didn’t seem to bring anyone peace of mind.

During a state-mandated logic and accuracy test of the electronic equipment, which is open to the public, the group repeatedly asked, “Are the machines connected to the internet?” And each time the answer was the same, “no,” said Thomas Cavaness, the Brazos County Democratic Party chair, who participated in the test.

The testing should have taken 45 minutes to an hour, Cavaness said, “but instead it took us three hours to finish, because they kept asking questions.”

False claims fly at an October meeting

The questions have been pouring in for at least a year now, from several Republicans in Brazos who speak out regularly at Commissioners Court meetings. They’ve urged elected officials to take steps that include eliminating the use of electronic voting equipment like ballot-marking machines and electronic poll books. They have falsely claimed the equipment is connected to the internet and vulnerable to hacking.

At an October meeting, days before the start of early voting, four people spoke, asking commissioners again to endorse their efforts. Brazos resident Cynthia Wiley expressed her frustration with what she said was a lack of action.

“You’re our only recourse to express our concerns,” Wiley told the commissioners, citing voter registrations she’s unsuccessfully challenged. “And you guys have direct authority over the election administrator.”

Hancock has said her office is following the legally mandated procedures. Federal law prevents election officials from systematically removing people from the voter rolls 90 days ahead of a federal election. In addition, state law requires election officials to notify voters and give them a chance to respond and correct any errors before they can be removed from the rolls, but Wiley said she wanted the elected officials to instruct Hancock to investigate the registrations of the voters she had challenged right away.

At the same meeting, Viens asserted that the county had no emergency plan in case the power went out. Hancock said that’s false: The county has for years been prepared to handle power outages, violence, or natural disasters on Election Day, and Hancock had generators and other materials ready to go in case something went wrong. Viens has requested a copy of the plan.

Another resident who frequently speaks at the meetings is Walter Daugherity, a retired computer science professor at Texas A&M. Daugherity often appears on the video platform of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, well-known as a promoter of election conspiracy theories, and at other venues pushing for hand counting of ballots. Daugherity has asserted that Brazos’ voting machines are connected to the internet and not certified by federal officials. County and state officials have said those assertions are not true.

Texas A&M University's water tower in College Station. On Election Day, county election workers had to swing into action when a line of college students began to form outside the polling location at the elections office in Bryan. Many of them hadn’t updated their voter registration and would have to cast a provisional ballot.

At the October meeting, he listed six urgent priorities for the Commissioners Court. He did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment.

Mark Holtzapple, a chemical engineering professor at Texas A&M, has echoed Daugherity’s claims. At that meeting, he claimed that “ballot boxes are insecure,” because “the hinge on the locked box is on the outside, and all you have to do is unscrew one bolt” to get around the lock and security seal on it.

In an email to Votebeat, Holtzapple said he and the other residents are “not accusing anyone of anything. Rather, we are simply concerned citizens who want to improve election security, an essential condition for a properly functioning republic.”

The professors’ advocacy has spurred pushback from some of their colleagues at the university. Hank Walker, a computer science and engineering professor, wrote an email to Hancock in August to thank her and the staff for “performing so professionally with people who question your integrity.”

“I have known Walter and Mark for 30 years,” he said in an email to Votebeat. “They have good intentions, but they are wrong.”

Days after the public meeting where the activists spoke, Brazos County Judge Duane Peters asked Hancock to publicly respond. But when Hancock presented at the following Commissioners Court meeting, none of the residents who had complained were there.

The four residents later requested a separate in-person meeting with Peters and Hancock. She repeated what she had explained earlier. Holtzapple told Votebeat that the hourlong meeting “was not sufficient time to fully resolve the issues and generate an action plan.”

The residents compiled a 50-page document that lays out the issues they brought up at the meeting and how the county responded. They expect another meeting.

Viens said in a text message to Votebeat that her confidence in the process “will not be restored until the county complies with the Texas Election Code.” She specifically wants to see the county eliminate countywide voting, and use only hand-marked paper ballots.

Wiley, who along with Viens worked as a polling place supervisor during elections this year, including during the presidential election last week, said she does not trust the electronic voting equipment. “Once you click or insert your choices on paper into the machinery, who or what is really casting our votes?” she wrote in an email to Votebeat. She also echoed Viens’ request to help restore her confidence in the election process.

Holtzapple acknowledged that Hancock and her staff have made efforts to address the concerns he and others have raised, but said he still wants a more extensive dialogue, more substantive responses to the questions he’s raising about election security, and more responsiveness directly to the people who raise concerns.

For example, when a resident challenges a voter registration, “there should be a closing of the loop, that there should be respect shown from the government to the citizens for taking that time to identify people who possibly should be removed from the voter rolls.”

Peters, the county judge, described some of the residents’ actions and comments as a “constant barrage … I catch it, too,” he said. “And they expect me to change the system and go to something that I think is way less secure than the system we’ve got.”

“So I can understand why Trudy and her staff would be stressed to the limit,” Peters added. “It hasn’t impacted their work ethic, but I know it gets discouraging.”

A demanding Election Day: ‘They don’t understand’

Hancock was born and raised in neighboring Robertson County, and still lives there with her husband. Her first experience in elections was as a poll worker in her community back in the late 1980s, she said.

She spends her free time scrapbooking and screenprinting T-shirts. She often makes those for her staff, featuring messages such as “election squad,” and also makes them for friends and family at their request.

“It’s a fun outlet for me,” Hancock said.

She’s most proud of her two teenage grandchildren. On the night before Election Day, she was exhausted, but agreed to have them over for dinner. She made them pumpkin bread and brought some to the office the next day.

In the early morning hours of Election Day, Hancock had already answered dozens of phone calls from election workers at polling places who needed her help. If they were short on election supplies, she hopped in her small red SUV to deliver them herself, toting extra yellow traffic cones and curbside voting signs. Technical issues with the equipment? She knew whom to call. There was no problem Hancock and her staff did not resolve quickly.

Graciela Garza wears an “I voted” sticker outside the Brazos County elections office after voting on Election Day.

Krystal Ocon and others in Hancock’s office fanned out across the county, and fielded questions from election workers in a text thread that kept her phone dinging throughout the day.

Ocon, 39, is the Brazos County elections coordinator, and unofficially Hancock’s second in command. She was born and raised in Brazos. For the past 20 years, she’s worked on every aspect of elections in the county. She knows the process thoroughly.

Throughout the day, Hancock relied on Ocon to give voters and election workers direction, and to help when needed, such as when a line of college students began to form outside of the polling location at the elections department. Many of them hadn’t updated their voter registration and would have to cast a provisional ballot, which takes more time. There was only a couple of hours left before polls were set to close.

“Look at that line!” Ocon said, before swinging into action.

She quickly gave the waiting students directions: where to stand, what type of ID they needed to have ready, the forms they might need to fill out if they weren’t registered in the county. She told them what their options were and what would happen next.

Collectively, the Brazos County elections department staff has more than 60 years of experience. So Ocon is frustrated by the constant requests and skepticism from the activists. She worries that it could discourage the staff and weaken the department.

“They don’t understand how much time and care it takes to do this job,” Ocon said.

She points out that she’s had to miss Halloween events with her daughter multiple times over the years in order to manage early voting and meet state-mandated election deadlines.

“Do they honestly think that I am going to take time away from my family to hack the machines, change votes, and go to jail?” she said. “Heck no. So yeah, I take all of this very personally.”

Workers handle paperwork at the Brazos Center on Election Day. Collectively, the Brazos County elections department staff has more than 60 years of experience.

Poll watchers act ‘like detectives’

The tension between the small group of Republican activists and the county elections department penetrated decisions over how to best manage polling place staffing during this year’s elections.

Hancock said the Republican Party in Brazos, now led by Russ Ford, refused to collaborate with her staff to assign work sites for election judges, who supervise polling locations.

In the past, Hancock and her staff were able to assign workers appointed by the party to locations where they’d be a good fit. “For example, a location that gets a lot of voters needs an experienced team, and so we’d assign workers based on that,” Hancock said.

This year, the party made those placement decisions on its own, which by law, it’s entitled to do. In some cases, it assigned inexperienced workers to locations staffed only by other inexperienced workers, which led to some delays on Election Day. At one location, election judges were unsure how to process voters with out-of-state IDs or how to process provisional ballots.

And Republican poll workers said they were struggling to deal with the party’s own poll watchers.

“These poll watchers feel more like detectives than observers,” said Bill Edison, a Republican election judge in Brazos who has been a poll worker for more than a decade.

“Nearly all the poll watchers, except for one I had on Election Day, were from the Republican Party. And they’re trolling Republican judges, in a town basically where they own the county politically,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Ford, the party leader, said the party has been unhappy with Hancock’s staff’s previous placement of workers at polling sites. “I know she’s very dedicated, but we feel like we need to assert ourselves and make sure that we’re doing things right,” Ford said.

The activists say they’re working on behalf of voters who lack confidence in the process. Most voters Votebeat spoke with on Election Day didn’t express such doubts.

At the Brazos Center, one of the busiest polling locations in the county, voters cast their ballots within minutes. Voters walking out and back to their cars said they had confidence in the election process. They were unaware of any issues between conservative activists and the elections department, they said.

“Things are working the way they’re supposed to,” said Brazos voter John Borden.

“The process was smooth and fast. The workers are friendly,” said Omero Lara.

Amanda Cross, who said she hasn’t always had confidence in the outcome of past elections, said she trusts how the process is handled locally. When asked if she’d heard of any problems with the elections office or anyone questioning the reliability of the voting equipment, she said “never.”

Volunteers Maci Ramirez (left) and Brianna Garcia help transport ballots and voting equipment to the Brazos Center on Election Day.

It was Donald Trump who helped fuel a movement of election suspicion after his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Hancock doubts his 2024 victory will slow that movement down. Just the day after the election, Hancock was hearing more questions from Daugherity.

“This is the new normal, and that scares me,” Hancock told Votebeat that day. “The distrust in our process and our people. The distrust in everything.”

When asked how she planned to move forward, she said, “by retiring.”

The timeline for that will depend on the results of a stress test she had scheduled for this month, after the election.

“No matter how much I love this job, you’ve got to decide whether it’s worth risking your mental and physical health,” she said. “And that’s where I am.”

Correction, Nov. 15, 2024: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of the Brazos County Republican Party Chairman. His name is Russ Ford.

Correction, Nov. 20, 2024: This story originally misspelled the name of Walter Daugherity.

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

Wisconsin Supreme Court case could decide fate of state’s top election official

2024-11-15T09:45:00+00:00

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

A lawsuit that could determine whether Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe can keep her job is coming before the state Supreme Court on Monday. The case focuses on the legality of appointees staying on after their terms expire, rather than any matter of her performance as the state’s top election official.

Republicans began targeting Wolfe, a nonpartisan appointee, after Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in the 2020 election. Since then, she has endured criticism from Trump supporters for several decisions that the election commission made, as well as for some memos she sent to clerks who run local elections.

As Wolfe’s term expired in the summer 2023, the election commission deadlocked on her reappointment. Shortly after, the Republican-controlled state Senate voted to fire her in a move that it later said was only symbolic, but that triggered a protracted fight.

She and the Wisconsin Elections Commission sued Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, a Republican, who pushed to oust Wolfe following the expiration of her term. The lawsuit also names Senate President Chris Kapenga and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, both Republicans, as defendants.

Wolfe has now spent the last 16 months as a holdover appointment. During much of that time, it wasn’t clear who would be running the commission during the 2024 presidential election. Wolfe stayed in her role despite the pressure from the right, simultaneously becoming one of the most respected — and scrutinized — election officials nationwide.

One day after the presidential election, Wolfe said that she was “completely committed to seeing through this election,” which has yet to be certified. But she didn’t clarify whether she was seeking to stay in her role beyond the fall.

Lawsuit comes after years of scrutiny, legal battles

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is composed of three Democratic and three Republican commissioners. Wolfe, as the administrator, can issue recommendations to the commissioners on guidance they issue to local election officials, but she has no vote. The commissioners are the ones who decide whether to approve them.

Still, Wolfe has been a scapegoat for election conspiracy theorists seeking to blame somebody for Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

After the 2020 presidential election, Wolfe was blamed for a slew of decisions by the commissioners, like letting local officials cure mistakes on absentee ballot envelopes and bypassing a state law that ordinarily requires sending election officials to conduct elections in nursing homes. She was also criticized for issuing a memo about using drop boxes in 2020, two years before the high court banned them. (The court reversed that decision this year under a new liberal majority.)

Some went further, saying baselessly that Wolfe led a wide-ranging conspiracy to commit fraud to rig the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor. Late last year, some legislative Republicans tried but failed to impeach Wolfe.

In April, Trump charged that Wolfe “will try to steal another election” if she’s not removed from office. Trump won Wisconsin in the 2024 presidential election.

Commission inaction can ‘undermine trust’

Wolfe’s term expired in July 2023, and the Senate appeared poised to reject her confirmation had she been reappointed. All three Republicans on the commission voted to reappoint Wolfe at the time, which would set her up for a Senate confirmation vote.

But Democratic election commissioners abstained from the vote. They cited a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling stating that appointees can stay in their roles past the expiration of their terms, a decision that Democrats had previously opposed.

That meant Wolfe wasn’t formally reappointed, and therefore not subject to another Senate confirmation proceeding. Senate leaders acknowledged that later, but still took a vote to fire her, leading to the current lawsuit.

A Dane County judge in January sided with the elections commission argument that Wolfe is a lawful holdover. GOP leaders appealed that decision to an appeals court, and the election commission appealed it to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

“This case is fascinating because the shoes are all on the wrong feet,” said Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal legal group Law Forward. “And maybe what that shows is that there’s less — maybe on all sides — there’s less of a matter of principle and Constitution than of political convenience.”

Mandell has long pushed back against the false accusations against Wolfe and other election officials in Wisconsin that arose from the 2020 election. Still, he said, “it’s not ideal” for democracy for Wolfe to be in her role past her term.

The debate further demonstrates how both Democrats and Republicans have been relying more on hardball tactics to accomplish their policy goals recently, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison.

Those tactics escalated as Senate Republicans slow-walked or outright rejected appointments, many of them made by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, to critical roles in state government.

The various twists in the fight are examples of dysfunction in the appointment processes that can “undermine trust in those processes and in those institutions,” said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.

“Whether or not you think that [Wolfe] should continue in her role, I think it is important for appointment processes and confirmation processes to happen in the way that they’re supposed to happen,” Godar said.

Under state law, the election commission administrator serves a four-year term. Election commissioners are supposed to appoint a new administrator if the current position is vacant.

Until the Senate confirms an appointment, the law says, the commission would be overseen by an interim supervisor selected by a majority of commissioners. If the commission doesn’t appoint somebody within 45 days of the vacancy, a legislative committee can appoint an interim administrator.

Republicans legislators are pointing to that law now in their attempt to force commissioners to appoint an administrator, saying the current state of play “would allow a partisan minority of WEC to keep in place a holdover Administrator indefinitely,” without a process for Senate confirmation.

But some of the Democrats supporting Wolfe say they’re just following the 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling.

“When the law has things you can do, you use the law the way it allows you to use it,” said Ann Jacobs, a Democrat on the election commission.

The high court’s 2022 ruling about holdovers makes clear that Wolfe can be a holdover, Jacobs said, adding, “if the Legislature wants to change the law, they have every ability to do that.”

“The Legislature has hijacked the appointment process for all appointees, not just WEC, where they don’t act on them, so they try to maintain control over appointees by refusing to either confirm or reject them, and I don’t think that’s good government either,” Jacobs said.

Wisconsin Watch reporter Jack Kelly contributed to this report.

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

No, Milwaukee’s Oak Creek suburb didn’t have more ballots than voters

2024-11-07T22:07:53+00:00

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

After Democrat Tammy Baldwin won reelection to her U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, conspiracy theorists skeptical of the outcome pointed to a misleading results table to claim that there were more ballots cast than registered voters in some wards of Oak Creek, a Milwaukee suburb.

The table on Milwaukee County’s results website appeared to show four Oak Creek wards where more than 100% of registered voters cast ballots, including one with 1,256 registered voters and 1,271 ballots, and another with 1,006 registered voters and 1,019 ballots.

Turnout in Oak Creek “was impressive late at night for Senator Baldwin,” said a social media post from Seth Keshel, a prominent conspiracy theorist who has hundreds of thousands of followers across social media. The post, which was accompanied by an image with data from the county’s table, has already received hundreds of reactions and shares.

But the claim that the numbers show a questionable pattern isn’t true, election officials said, and is easily disprovable.

The turnout percentages in the table, which were based on numbers on the page showing the county’s unofficial results, were based on the number of registered voters these wards had the day before Election Day. They didn’t take into account the number of people who registered to vote on Election Day, City Clerk Catherine Roeske said.

Oak Creek hasn’t yet officially tallied the number of same-day registrants, but Roeske estimated that it was about 2,700.

After Votebeat told Michelle Hawley, Milwaukee County’s election director, about the increasingly viral claim, the county added a note to its results page to clarify that “the number of registered voters displayed are as of the day before the election. In Wisconsin, state law allows voters to register on election day, and as a result, it is possible for a ward to have over 100% participation.”

Turnout in many Milwaukee County municipalities was “super impressive,” Hawley said, surpassing most elections before it.

There’s another flaw in the premise of the social media posts that some kind of malfeasance in Oak Creek helped put Baldwin over the top: Her Republican opponent, Eric Hovde, is the one who carried the city. He got roughly 550 more votes than Baldwin — about 10,700 to 10,150 — according to unofficial results, and topped her total in one of the four wards that were listed with more than 100% turnout.

Oak Creek was among the last few municipalities in Wisconsin to report election results, along with neighboring Milwaukee, Green Bay, Oshkosh, and Racine. Conspiracy theorists often use late-arriving results that cause a swing as a pretext to circulate false claims about election fraud.

Before those cities’ numbers came in, early and unofficial results showed Hovde leading Baldwin by about 63,000 votes. Still, at that point, conservatives already recognized that Hovde was unlikely to win, given that the outstanding votes were from cities that mostly lean Democratic.

The largest chunk of still-unreported votes that would deliver Baldwin a win would come from Milwaukee, which she won by about 143,000 votes. Milwaukee County posted the city’s results at around 4:30 a.m., after a delay caused by a recount of absentee ballots.

At that time, Oak Creek’s results were still outstanding, even though it had far fewer ballots to count.

Oak Creek’s central counting site processed over 12,700 absentee ballots and was adequately staffed, Roeske said, but as work went late into the night, the city lost many of its poll workers to fatigue. She also cited rules that prevent election officials from pre-processing absentee ballots.

Some “amazing” staff lasted late into the night though, Roeske said.

Once Oak Creek and the other cities’ results were in, unofficial results showed Baldwin in front by just under 30,000 votes. The Associated Press called the race for Baldwin just before 1 p.m. on Wednesday. Hovde had not conceded as of early afternoon Thursday. Unofficial results showed him within the 1% margin to request a recount.

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

Counting continues, but Election Day voting largely uneventful across Pennsylvania

2024-11-06T06:04:54+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.

Despite a few long lines and a smattering of non-credible bomb threats, Election Day in Pennsylvania went relatively smoothly. The state avoided the high profile mishaps in recent election cycles that would have drawn scrutiny to the integral swing state.

“I’m pleased to report that Pennsylvania has once again held a free, fair, safe, and secure Election Day,” said Al Schmidt, Secretary of the Commonwealth. “Today’s success is a testament to the dedication and preparation of our county election officials who I’ve met during my 67 county visits in the past year.”

Bomb threats were reported in several parts of the state — including Chester, York, Philadelphia, and Clearfield counties — as they were in other swing states. Gov. Josh Shapiro said the threats did not represent a “credible” threat to public safety, although some locations did have to be briefly evacuated, and voting hours were extended for some affected locations.

The most common issue voters faced was long lines at several polling places across the state, particularly on college campuses. Some voters at a polling place near Lehigh University in Bethlehem said they waited as long as seven hours to vote, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

A judge in Northampton County, where the university is located, denied a request to extend voting hours. Becky Bartlett, a spokesperson for the county, said the county believes turnout may have been two to three times higher than normal for that location.

“Having long lines at precincts with significant numbers of students is not an infrequent occurrence,” Schmidt said. “It’s also not a sign that the county did not appropriately plan for Election Day.”

In Cambria County, a judge extended voting until 10 p.m. after officials there said a problem with how the county’s ballots were printed prevented them from being properly scanned by vote tabulators. The county made new ballots available to resolve the issue, and state officials said the ballots that couldn’t be machine-scanned were being counted by hand.

False information about the state’s elections circulated online throughout the day as expected, though local officials were quick to offer correct information.

Former President Donald Trump claimed fraud was happening in Philadelphia, without providing any evidence or specifying what kind of fraud he meant. Trump has frequently targeted the city with false accusations of fraud. Republican City Commissioner Seth Bluestein quickly pushed back, as did District Attorney Larry Krasner.

A judge of elections in Fayette County told the county election office that he planned to open the ballot box in his precinct after polls closed and conduct a hand-count audit of the results, but a judge issued an order preventing him from doing so.

Schmidt cautioned that the results still may not be known for some time. Late Tuesday, counties were still counting mail ballots that arrived by the 8 p.m. deadline, the exact number of which was unclear as of the time of publication.

Officials in Philadelphia were still counting roughly 202,000 mail ballots. By approximately midnight, the city had counted roughly 165,000 ballots.

Officials in other counties, including Chester and Montgomery, were still counting as well. Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, finished counting the majority of its ballots just before 8 p.m.

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

The end of the 2024 election is finally here. The results? They could take a while.

2024-11-04T10:00:00+00:00

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

Tuesday — the last day of voting — is nearly here. That faint rustling you hear is the sound of thousands of election workers processing ballots, setting up voting machines, checking in voters, and doing the dozens of other things they do to make sure we have reliable results.

When will we have them? Your guess is as good as mine.

In 2016, we knew that Donald Trump had been elected in the early hours of the following morning. In 2020, things stretched out: The race wasn’t officially called by the Associated Press until Saturday, nearly four days after polls closed. Even then, several crucial states — Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina — hadn’t been called, but enough votes had been tabulated nationally that the result was clear.

We may be looking at a similar timeframe this year if the race is as tight as the polls say it is.

While North Carolina and Michigan have successfully changed their tabulation procedures to help speed up the process, other states — Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have added rules that might slow things down (GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsburg explains for The New York Times).

In 2020, significantly more Democrats voted by mail than Republicans, leading to what some people called the “red mirage” or the “blue shift,” as mailed ballots were processed and added to vote totals. This time, the Republican Party and even Trump have taken a remarkably different position on mail and early voting, but it’s not clear what that will mean for the results.

In Slate, Rick Hasen of the UCLA School of Law points out that Democrats are still more likely to vote by mail, and even if a candidate appears to be leading in early results, that could easily change.

News organizations have written dozens of stories about when we might expect results. And, really, it varies by state. Here’s what we know about the timeline for the states Votebeat covers:

In Arizona, new rules for counting mailed ballots will delay the results. We may not know who won the state for several days. The ballot is also longer this year, which makes it difficult for election administrators to accurately predict when results might be ready to announce. Counties will certify local results by Nov. 25, and statewide results are certified by Dec. 2.
Michigan clerks are now allowed to pre-process absentee ballots starting several days before Election Day, but they don’t have to. A lot of them are doing so, so this will probably speed things up compared with 2020, but who knows? Results are also likely to be late coming in from two large counties, Wayne and Macomb. Local results are certified by Nov. 19, and statewide results are certified by Nov. 25.
In Pennsylvania — as you can read about on Votebeat — differing procedures and staffing levels across the state mean that counties will be processing ballots and announcing results at different times. Local and state results must be certified by Nov. 25.
In Texas, polls close at 7 p.m., and the results must be submitted to the state within 24 hours. Counties certify their results by Nov. 19, and the state certifies statewide results by Dec. 8.
As with most states where narrow margins are expected, Wisconsin’s results likely won’t be clear on Tuesday, and certainly not in the largest counties. The deadline for local certification is Nov. 19, and state certification must happen by Dec. 1.

Regardless of deadlines, keep in mind that the results reported on Tuesday — no matter what form they take — are not official. Results don’t become official and final until they are certified, and no disputes arising from the vote counting process can be adjudicated until after certification happens. This isn’t new: The projections and unofficial results announced on election night have never been the final say.

Our final, parting word to you before this whole shebang is to remember to be kind to the people doing the hard work of figuring out the results. Election workers do an incredible amount of work across the country, holding lots of small elections at the same time and adding those results together to produce an answer. This year, some of them had to endure natural disasters tearing through their communities, while ensuring that ballots went out. They’re also worried about violence and threats at the polls.

This is a process that is managed by human beings, and human beings make mistakes. We will see mistakes this year. But remember that our system has built-in checks that allow us to remedy almost any problem, and built-in audit procedures to make sure that the results are correct.

Have a little faith, and thank your poll worker.

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

Late results, voting machines, and more: Debunking Michigan’s election misinformation

2024-11-01T22:02:14+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 Election Day, people around the country will be looking closely at the tight contest in Michigan to see who’s showing up to vote, how the vote counting proceeds, and what the results will show.

That includes bad actors, who will be seeking to profit in some way — maybe politically — by spreading inaccurate information as if it’s fact.

It can be easy to fall prey to mis- and disinformation, so we’re sharing information that can help debunk claims about Michigan before they can even be made.

Here’s what you need to know about Michigan’s elections to make sure you don’t get caught up in lies:

How do we know Michigan voters aren’t casting multiple ballots?

There are a lot of checks in place to ensure that each voter casts only one ballot.

Michigan uses something called the Qualified Voter File, which notes which voters have requested absentee ballots, who returned them, who voted early and so on. It’s the record of who’s allowed to vote, who has voted, and who hasn’t.

When someone who has already voted — either early in person or with an absentee ballot — checks in at their polling place to try to vote again, the QVF will inform poll workers that the person has already cast their ballot and cannot get a new one.

Double voting is extremely rare, but there are four voters who allegedly cast two ballots in the August primary election — one by mail and one in person. The double votes were quickly detected and they are now facing felony charges that could put them in prison for years if they’re found guilty.

Can poll challengers cause chaos at counting centers again?

Poll challengers in Michigan have a lot of power. They’re separate from poll workers or watchers, and they can challenge a voter’s eligibility or how officials are doing their jobs. They gained notoriety in 2020 when some challengers were denied entry at Detroit’s vote counting center (because there were already enough of them inside to reach the limit), and people gathered outside began to demand that the count be stopped.

They’re an important part of ensuring the transparency of Michigan’s elections, though. Any registered Michigan voter can be a challenger, but they must be credentialed by specific approved organizations. Clerks try to split challengers evenly between parties when possible.

Specific training is not required, but those offering credentials are encouraged to make sure challengers understand the rules so that they can “make informed challenges without disrupting or delaying election-related activities,” the 2024 guide says.

There are new rules in place to prevent such disruptions from happening again, with the end goal of getting counting done faster and more efficiently. Challengers have to make specific challenges, and they cannot make repeated failed challenges or blanket challenges without risking being removed from the facility.

Challengers cannot talk to or otherwise interact with voters — in fact, they can talk only to a dedicated challenger liaison. They can’t make audio or video recordings. And clerks have the right to limit the number of challengers.

Can homeless people vote in Michigan?

Yes! And it’s why you might see a lot of people whose voting records show them registered to a park, a street corner, or a church.

Homeless voters need to establish residency in some way, but like any Michigan voter, they can sign an affidavit in lieu of showing a photo ID.

A letters from a shelter or a group that works with the voter are acceptable, as long as it has their name and confirms that they live in Michigan.

Like any other voter in Michigan, voters without permanent addresses can register and vote on Election Day.

Is there a problem with Dominion voting machines in Michigan?

Only some of the machines have an issue, and it’s a problem with ease of use — not their security.

The glitch is occurring nationwide with Dominion’s voter assist terminals, which are the accessible machines designed to help voters who have disabilities. These are not tabulators; they are touchscreen ballot-marking devices that allow blind voters or others to use various assistive technologies to cast their ballots.

All polling places are legally required to have VATs, although not all of them use Dominion machines. Dominion VATs are used in 65 of Michigan’s 83 counties.

According to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the VATs nationwide have a programming error where if a voter uses the “straight ticket” voting option and then wants to vote across parties in some individual races (which is permitted in Michigan), they get an error.

It can be fixed by simply selecting candidates one by one down the ballot.

VATs are a critical for disabled voters, but each one is used by only a few voters each election, Michigan clerks say. The problem is annoying for those voters, but it will not affect most others.

Why does it take so long for Michigan results to come in?

It’s entirely normal to not know the results of the election immediately after polls close. Clerks say accurately counting thousands of ballots — millions across the state! — takes time. And in a very tight race, it’s hard to project a winner based on statistical patterns.

The state has done a lot in recent years to try to speed up the process, but it’s not perfect. Clerks have the option to process absentee ballots — take them out of the envelope, verify the signatures, and put them into the tabulator, but NOT count them — before Election Day, which many clerks, particularly in large cities, have opted to do.

We’ll likely have results from those ballots soon after polls close on Tuesday. But ballots that arrive on Election Day can take a while longer. There are also some potential bottlenecks in getting vote totals from precincts to clerks. Counties that use Hart machines, like Oakland County, can use modems — connected to secure cellular networks, not the internet — to transmit results quickly. In other places, results must be shared through a closed computer network (again, not on the internet) and then verified with data from portable data storage devices that are driven in from the precincts. That can take a long time.

It’s possible that Macomb County in particular could have slow results this year. Warren, its largest city and the third most populous in the state, has chosen to not pre-process ballots.

Does Michigan have more voters than people eligible to vote?

No. The claim has been debunked extensively by the state as well as independent experts.

Michigan has 7.2 million active voters and 7.9 million residents over the age of 18. (We have a high registration rate in part because anyone who gets a driver’s license is automatically registered to vote.)

In total, Michigan has 8.4 million registered voters on the rolls, but that number is misleading. About 1.2 million of those are records of inactive voters that cannot be cleared because of federal rules about cleaning voting rolls. They are labeled inactive because they haven’t voted in the past two federal elections or responded to election mail.

When people move and don’t cancel their registration in Michigan, they can appear on that list as an inactive voter for years. Others on that list may be dead, although there’s no evidence that dead voters are somehow voting.

Active voters and registered voters are not the same thing.

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

Long wait for Wayne, Macomb county election results could create another opening for misinformation

2024-10-31T19:38:42+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.

In Michigan’s Wayne and Macomb counties, it’s common for several hours to pass between when polls close and when unofficial results — the ones used to call races across the country — start to come in.

With results from those two populous counties poised to determine who carries the state and wins the presidential election, what might happen during those hours has a lot of election officials and experts worried.

In 2020, as returns trickled in on election night without a declared winner in Michigan, the absence of conclusive results left a daylong information vacuum that quickly filled with mis- and disinformation driven by then-President Donald Trump and his allies. Crowds responding to their false claims created an uproar at Detroit’s vote counting center and cast doubts over the whole state’s elections.

Officials have made a number of changes since then at the local and state level to get votes counted faster, make elections more secure, and avert such commotion. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said earlier this week that Michigan is likely to have results within 24 hours of the polls closing.

Even so, there are several factors that could disrupt that timeline, and there is a significant chance that delays will happen again during next week’s election.

If they do, experts say, misinformation is again likely to creep in and poison faith in Michigan’s elections.

“That period of uncertainty while voters wait to understand what’s happening and what the results are of an election, that is a ripe period for bad actors to point the fingers and say, ‘Look, something is wrong,’” said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, a nonprofit group that advocates for media’s role in democracy. “It’s at that very moment when we need to help turn down the temperature and set expectations.”

Why results take time, and what officials are doing about it

Counting ballots and tabulating unofficial results has always been a long process. In many counties, municipal clerks have to get Election Day results to the county electronically, through secure file transfers, or physically, by transporting data storage devices with the results, which can take hours.

There are also growing numbers of absentee ballots to deal with, as Michigan now offers voters the opportunity to stay permanently on the absentee list. Those ballots can take a while to process — workers must verify signatures and ensure ballot numbers match before they can put them in a tabulator.

To try to ease some of the burden, and get results reported faster, the state now allows local clerks to begin “pre-processing” absentee ballots, or getting a head start on the verification steps, as much as eight days before Election Day. They still have to wait until after polls close on Election Day to calculate the vote totals from those ballots.

The change is especially important for large jurisdictions that would otherwise need to process thousands of mailed ballots on a busy Election Day. But not every large city is taking advantage of the option.

In Warren, the third-largest city in Michigan and the largest in Macomb County, City Clerk Sonja Buffa has opted not to pre-process ballots, going against the guidance of county and state officials.

“Pre-processing is not the law,” Buffa told Votebeat. “We do everything that is mandated.”

That decision could reflect poorly on the county and the state, Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini warned.

“All the clerks that are doing a great job? It’ll make them look bad,” Forlini said. “The rest of the country is going to be waiting on Macomb County.”

Dorian Tyus, spokesperson for the Wayne County Clerk’s Office, said that Wayne typically has results come in slower because the county’s large population of about 1.7 million people means there are more ballots to be processed by local clerks.

Besides their size, there are other reasons Wayne and Macomb counties tend to be slower than other similar counties.

Oakland County — the second most populous in the state — uses tabulators made by Hart InterCivic, which can send unofficial results directly from the precinct tabulators to local and county clerks over a secure cellular network, said Lisa Brown, Oakland County clerk.

In communities that use other machines — Wayne uses Dominion Voting Systems, and Macomb uses machines from Election Systems & Software — that’s not an option. Communities are often permitted to send unofficial results through secure file transfers — closed computer systems that allow local clerks to send results directly to the county — which are then verified further when local clerks physically transport the results to the county clerk.

That extra step can create new problems: During the August primary, for example, Detroit struggled to submit its results electronically to Wayne County due to what officials described as a problem with a firewall. County officials had to wait for the data to be transported in person, slowing the release of countywide results by hours. By 1 a.m., almost no results were reported in Wayne County; in Detroit, results were not posted until around 7:30 a.m. the following day.

Speaking Thursday, Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey and Director of Elections Daniel Baxter assured the public that the city had fixed the problem and expected to have results in no later than midnight.

Beware of misinformation — unintentional and deliberate

What concerns election officials is that any delays, expected or unexpected, can fuel misinformation. Election officials at all levels have tried to combat it by better preparing voters on what to expect on Election Day — when results may be in, what the standard processes are. Not every problem can be easily explained, though, and it can be difficult to contain false information that spreads at viral speed.

Some people spread misinformation unintentionally, Benavidez said, because they get caught up in the moment and the emotion tied to it. Elections can make people feel particularly vulnerable, she said.

But plenty of people deliberately spread things that are provably untrue, to advance a point of view or campaign.

“There are those who are seeking to warp people’s perception of reality, to weaponize the democratic process, and seek political power. We’ve seen this in other countries,” Benavidez said, adding that such distortions can be a precursor to authoritarianism.

“Those who promote false claims are often doing it for their own political gain or for money,” she said.

In 2020, misinformation led hundreds of Trump supporters to protest at the convention hall now known as Huntington Place, where Detroit poll workers were counting votes on election night. Spurred on by a candidate who falsely claimed that “ballot dumps” were costing him the election, they demanded to be let in to serve as challengers and watchers, even though many accredited Republicans were already serving in those roles. And when they were denied entry, they pounded on the windows of the room where counting was happening, menacing poll workers and demanding that the count be stopped.

Steps to speed up results depend on communities participating

Michigan has since enacted a variety of laws to prevent such messes. In addition to expanding pre-processing of absentee ballots, it has guaranteed access to early voting, giving voters across the state at least nine additional days to cast their ballots in person.

All the changes aim to make elections smoother and bring in results faster, which is partly why Buffa’s decision to not pre-process ballots in Warren has drawn so much ire.

Buffa told Votebeat that she has been a clerk for 24 years, which has covered seven presidential elections. At this point, she said, she’s not willing to do anything that’s “not comfortable.”

Warren, home to just under 140,000 people, is by far the largest community that’s not pre-processing absentee ballots. Nearly 28,000 Warren voters have requested absentee ballots, according to the state’s dashboard. As of Thursday, more than 19,500 voters had already returned them, putting Warren in the top 10 cities across the state for returned absentee ballots.

Benson confirmed that 245 jurisdictions across the state would be pre-processing in some way, adding that her office reached out to Buffa to offer support.

“I would hope every clerk take advantage of every option to ensure efficiency, security, and accuracy when processing and tabulating their votes,” Benson said.

“If there is one community that is lagging behind others, and it’s Warren,” she added later, “we’ll be open about that, so we can make sure everyone knows exactly what’s happening.”

Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, said that the problem with any sort of delay is that despite broad changes to voting practices in recent elections, many Americans still expect results the same night. That largely stems from a time when elections had wider margins, she said.

When margins are much closer — like Joe Biden’s 2.8-percentage-point win in Michigan in 2020 — national news outlets that typically project winners wait until they have a high level of confidence in the results. Most people don’t have the deeper understanding of elections that helps explain why results take so long or how ballots are processed, Cohen said, and people “sort of filled in the blanks” in 2020 when they didn’t have other information to go on.

What should people conclude if results are taking longer than they’d like?

“Any delay is a result of election officials tabulating every eligible ballot,” Cohen said. “It’s the opposite of a security concern.”

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

Why Arizona’s Election Day results will be delayed

2024-10-30T09:00:00+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.

Results from ballots cast at Maricopa County’s Election Day polling places will be delayed due to a Republican-backed change in state law, a lag that could fuel false claims as the nation awaits the outcome of the presidential race.

The expected slowdown stems from a new state law enacted in February that requires poll workers to tally the number of mail ballot envelopes dropped off at the location before they deliver results to the central counting facility. This is just an initial count of the number of ballot envelopes. The votes on these ballots get counted later, after voter signatures on the ballot envelopes are verified.

Still, the task will take time. In past elections, more than 1,500 mail ballots have been dropped off at busy sites on the day of the election.

Maricopa County — one of just a few closely watched swing counties in a later time zone — will not provide an estimate for when officials expect polling place returns.

“As soon as I give a time, I will be held accountable for it until the end of time,” said county elections spokesperson Jennifer Liewer, adding that “the new requirement to count affidavit envelopes is too big of a factor to make a prediction.”

During the primary election, most Maricopa polling places didn’t report results until 10:55 p.m. with final reporting of polling place results at 1:15 a.m. For a few reasons, the results are likely to come even later in the upcoming election.

For one thing, the lines of voters on Election Day are expected to linger after polls close at 7 p.m. local time, and people waiting in line at that time are entitled to vote; during the primary, there were few lines. For another thing, the ballot is far longer than in the past — two sheets, front and back — which means those voters in line late will take longer to make their choices. Poll workers must wait until all voters are finished and the site is closed before beginning the count of dropped-off mail ballot envelopes.

Republicans normally urge election officials to post results as quickly as possible. But Republican state lawmakers pushed for the new counting requirement as a way to ensure that the number of dropped off mail ballots at each site is documented before the ballots are taken to the central counting facility.

They inserted the measure into critical legislation that Democratic and Republican lawmakers were working on to shorten Arizona’s election timeline to meet federal deadlines, even though the counting requirement has nothing to do with that timeline. Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, signed the bipartisan legislation on Feb. 9.

Hearing that the requirement will delay results on election night, Republican state Rep. Alex Kolodin, who led his party’s advocacy for the measure, said, “this small delay will give voters more time to drink a toast to the improved security of the election system.”

But some voters didn‘t feel this way in November 2020, when counting wasn’t finished the day after Election Day. At the time, Donald Trump’s supporters crowded outside of the Maricopa County election’s center, demanding that the workers stop counting ballots. Since then, including last week, GOP leaders — and Trump backer Elon Musk — have said that the long counting timeline in the county indicates incompetence or fraud.

It’s unclear when media organizations will have enough information to make their call on who won the presidential contest in the state. A large number of the state’s voters wait until Election Day to drop off their mail ballots at a polling place. (In the 2022 election, about a third of Maricopa County voters, or about 290,000 people, did so.) Those ballots aren’t counted until after the voter signature is verified, which happens in the days following Election Day.

In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump by around 10,000 votes in Arizona. In that election, the Associated Press called the state’s presidential contest for Biden shortly before 1 a.m. But in 2022, the AP waited until six days after the election to call the governor’s race for Katie Hobbs, who ultimately won by a 17,000-vote margin.

In what order do Arizona’s election results come in?

Arizonans vote over a period of weeks, by various means — mail, by ballot drop box, early in person, or in person on Election Day. But their votes get tabulated, and the results reported, in a specific order after polls close.

The first results available from Arizona are tallies of all early ballots cast before Election Day, up to a certain point. Typically, these results include all in-person early voting and mail ballots received up to the weekend before the election.

Counties typically upload these early voting results at 8 p.m. on election night.

The next round of results comes from voters who cast ballots in person at the polls on Election Day.

In many counties, including Maricopa County, voters place their completed paper ballots directly into on-site tabulation machines. The results are stored on portable USB drives in the devices and securely transferred back to a central counting facility, where they are uploaded to a results computer.

For the counties that use on-site tabulation machines, the results are available soon after the USB drives are delivered to the central counting facility. Maricopa County releases those results in batches, as they arrive from locations around the county. And all Arizona counties aim to have all Election Day results posted before workers leave for the day.

In November 2020, the first polling place results came in at 10:15 p.m., according to ABC 15 data analyst Garrett Archer, who tracks election night results. In November 2022, Archer said, results from a small number of sites were uploaded at 9:46 p.m., followed by a larger upload at 10:45 p.m.

The county was unable to confirm results timing from prior years. For this year’s August primary, after the new counting requirement was in place, results from a small number of sites close to the central counting facility were uploaded at 9:30 p.m., with more at 10:55 p.m., according to Maricopa’s Liewer.

At some sites during the primary, it took hours for the last voters to leave, the workers to count envelopes, and the USB drives to get to the central counting facilities: The last round of in-person voting results were loaded at 1:15 a.m.

After Election Day, the next results publicly reported are from ballots sent in the mail and received by counties in the days just before the election. Typically, some of those results are posted the following night, once voter signatures are verified.

The last ballots to be counted are those mailed in and received on Election Day, or dropped off at polling places or in ballot drop boxes on Election Day. Typically, counties will update results once a day until all results are in.

More staff, but also more last-minute ballots

The legislation passed this year made other changes that could affect the timing of results.

If workers flag a voter’s mail ballot because of a non-matching signature, or if a voter casts a provisional ballot that requires additional information or documentation in order to count, Arizona law used to permit five business days for the voter to fix the problem. With the new law, lawmakers changed that to five calendar days for this election. This might help counties get all ballots processed and counted sooner.

In 2022, Maricopa County had 99.2% of ballots counted at the end of the five-business-day cure period. It was 13 days before all ballots were counted.

This year, Maricopa County has hired more workers to help verify signatures and get these last-minute ballots counted. In the primary election, that seemed to help. Final results were posted just six days after the election, which was the fastest the county finished counting in at least the last 10 statewide primaries.

But the county is also expecting more last-minute dropoffs of mail ballots — 350,000 compared with 290,000 in November 2022.

In past years, poll workers haven’t had to tally up these dropped off ballots at the polling place, so it’s unclear how many might arrive at the busiest locations this year.

In the primary election, 86,756 voters dropped off mail ballots at polling sites. Seven out of 222 vote centers had more than 1,000 ballots dropped off, according to a Votebeat review of the county’s posted numbers, and most of the rest had hundreds. The busiest site had 1,855 ballots dropped off.

The county is estimating it will take 10 to 12 days to finish counting all ballots for the November election, which is about average compared with previous elections.

But voters should expect races to be called sooner, unless the winning margin is so tight it triggers an automatic recount. The state is scheduled to certify final statewide results on Nov. 25.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Q&A: It’s almost Election Day. What should we be worried about?

2024-10-28T09:00:00+00:00

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

The last day of voting is in just over a week, and for this newsletter, we thought it best to get out of the way of the experts. We asked three of them — John Merrill, the Republican former secretary of state in Alabama; Kathy Boockvar, the Democratic former secretary of state in Pennsylvania; and Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election technology group — the same three questions.

Here’s what they told us.

What about the coming election keeps you up at night?

Boockvar is concerned about the overall vibe. Deliberate misinformation, fearmongering, and the destruction of confidence in democratic institutions have “led to a powder keg — immense tension and distrust, and encouragement to act out,” she said. “It has also directly led to an increase in threats against election officials, including doxing, swatting, intimidation, and harassment. Regardless of who wins the November election, I am concerned about the human impact of all this.”

Lindeman, as well, isn’t loving the energy. “On good nights, folks like me are up working to help election officials address possible problems that could provide fodder for fearmongers,” he said. “On my bad nights, I worry about whether Americans sufficiently value our free and fair elections and the people who make them happen. We need to cherish and defend the best elements of our political system, elections among them.”

Merrill worries about whether election administrators “are properly prepared, have been properly trained, and are readily accepting their responsibility as election workers leading up to November 5th and continuing past election day through election certification.”

He added: “If those things have not been done, it is too late for them to occur now.”

What concern do you hear a lot that you think is overblown?

“The fears that are introduced by individuals who are ill-informed or uneducated about the elections process tend to take on a life of their own,” said Merrill, who believes many of these fears could be resolved if more people were willing to learn more about how elections work and participate in the process.

“If they dedicated as much time, energy, and effort to supporting the election apparatus in their jurisdiction as they do in demonstrating keyboard courage and trying to stir up false narratives about the elections process, I believe they would be more comfortable with the work that is being done and would ultimately see that the results are safe, secure, and that the transparency in the process has been well demonstrated,” he said.

Lindeman feels much the same. “Overall, many people have been led to accept a generalized vibe that election fraud is rampant — that corruption lurks in the voting machines, or the ballots, or the election officials, or who is allowed to vote, or maybe everything,” he said. “It’s almost an inversion of social reality, like perceiving firefighters as cogs in a nationwide conspiracy to destroy our freedom … somehow.”

Boockvar declined to answer this question.

What do you wish voters understood better about elections?

Boockvar wishes that people better understood the processes and safeguards involved. It’s our “neighbors, friends, and coaches” who work so hard to make sure every vote is counted, she said. Cybersecurity protocols and strict procedures “build in security and verification in every stage and system of our elections.” And then canvassing, reconciliation, and audits come at the end to make sure that the results are accurate.

“Thanks to the people, the science, and the math, all eligible voters can exercise our fundamental right to vote and have confidence our votes are being cast and counted securely and accurately,” she said.

Merrill also wishes folks understood how elections are run. “Education and orientation only take place when an individual is more intimately involved in the administration of the election through proper education, training, and participation in the direct administration of the process,” he said.

Lindeman is excited about how much progress he sees, and about how well the U.S. does in this space — a feeling he wishes more shared. Verified Voting, for example, works to support the use of voter-verified paper ballots to check vote counts. On this and in many other ways, he said, the U.S. has made significant progress in recent years.

“It’s important to see the big picture, which for me is this: U.S. elections are one of the things we do best as a country,” he said. “Vast numbers of good people work together across party lines to keep our elections free, fair, and honest. Well-designed procedures help them prevent, detect, and correct any problems.”

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

No, Michigan does not have more voters than residents eligible to vote

2024-10-24T17:13:42+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.

A misleading claim promoted by right-wing activists has gained traction through X owner Elon Musk and other supporters of Donald Trump, feeding a false impression that there’s something wrong with Michigan’s voter rolls.

The claim — that Michigan has more voters than people eligible to vote — has been debunked extensively by the state as well as independent experts. A federal court ruling this week weighed in on a similar GOP claim, finding flaws in the comparison of data points and no proof that the discrepancy amounts to a violation of law, just as previous courts have found.

Musk and others cite the data points to argue that the discrepancy could enable fraudulent voting. The claim is based on a misunderstanding about the makeup of the state’s voter roll and what it means in relation to Census population data. It ignores the fact that the total number of registrations on the roll includes a large number of voters who are marked as inactive but who must be kept on the roll for several years under federal law. Most of those voters likely are no longer residents of the state.

The claim echoes a history of litigation from conservative organizations. Most recently, a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee in March argued that Michigan’s voter roll maintenance runs afoul of federal law, because 76 of Michigan’s 83 counties had voter registration rates higher than 90%. A federal judge’s ruling Tuesday shot that argument down, while also dismissing the suit on the basis that the RNC lacked legal grounds to bring it.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Jane M. Beckering noted that the plaintiffs “do not identify a single voter in any Michigan county who is ineligible to be registered but nonetheless appears as an active voter in the QVF,” referring to the qualified voter file.

Beckering agreed with the state’s characterization of the RNC’s complaint as an assertion that “something must be wrong with the Defendants’ program, but Plaintiffs do not know what it is.”

What is an active voter in Michigan?

The gist of the claim predates the RNC suit. For years, critics in public comments and lawsuits have alleged that Michigan cities and counties have more voters than eligible people. It’s a misunderstanding of who actually votes, and a claim typically used in an attempt to discredit the election in a critical swing state.

People may look at the number of residents 18 or older in Michigan (about 7.9 million in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) and the number of registered voters in Michigan (about 8.4 million, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office) and assume that there is a significant overcount in registered voters.

But these numbers are missing critically important context. Not every registered voter in Michigan is an active voter, which changes the math. An active voter is someone who has voted in the last six years or who has otherwise responded to a notice from the state government.

The Department of State confirms that Michigan has about 7.2 million active registered voters. That means that despite the state’s high registration rate, there aren’t more than 8 million people prepared to cast a ballot.

“There are about 1.2 million inactive records,” David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told Votebeat. “I always call them records, because they don’t represent voters. They’re people who left Michigan, who died.”

State law requires that the Secretary of State’s office maintain a list of inactive voters as a subset of registered voters. Those voters would still be eligible to vote, but if they cast an absentee ballot, it has to be treated in the same way as a challenged ballot. These ballots are counted as usual, but they are specially marked to identify them in case they need to be examined later under a court order.

If that voter showed up to vote in person, they would have to show their ID — like every voter in the state.

“It’s very small numbers who do, but they’ll still have to document that they’re in Michigan, still residing here, to activate their registration,” Becker said.

Under federal law, voters can’t be removed from the rolls before an election simply because they’re marked inactive. The National Voter Registration Act requires that a record cannot be removed unless that person has been inactive for at least two federal election cycles. That means that a voter who last voted in 2020 and has since been marked as inactive needs to be kept on the rolls until at least 2024. Also under the NVRA, officials cannot do large, systematic removals of voters during the 90 days before an election, known as the “quiet period.”

The Department of State says it has slated more than 600,000 voters on the roll for removal in 2025 or 2027.

Michigan’s voter list maintenance is “rigorous,” said Charles Stewart, professor of political science at MIT and director of the university’s Election Data and Science Lab. The efforts are bolstered by municipal clerks across the state, who, especially in smaller towns, often know the voters personally. In comparison, most states across the U.S. operate elections on a county level.

“Having this kind of list maintenance regime is kind of the price we pay for not living in a police state,” Stewart said, saying that other democratic countries have steep penalties for those who don’t inform officials of new addresses.

“We need a voter registration system that is as accurate as possible but also can be administered under this type of society in which we’re very reluctant to have big brother watching over our every move,” he said. “So we’re going to have imperfections, and we’re going to have safeguards within that imperfect system to keep to a very, very, very small minimum error.”

How does a Michigan voter get removed from the rolls?

If election officials learn that a voter has moved away from their jurisdiction, their registration will be canceled. If a voter dies or if there’s a duplicate registration, those too will be removed. Voters can also request that their registrations be canceled.

But it’s not a perfect system, which is part of what leads to a high number of inactive voters remaining on the roll. When someone dies, for example, that record is added to a list maintained by the Social Security Administration, according to the Department of State. The information is shared with the state, which then cancels registrations for any voters on the list. City and township clerks may also cancel registrations for dead voters if they have personal knowledge of the death — such as a published obituary or notification from a relative.

Sometimes, though, the Department of State isn’t able to confirm someone has died. In that case, that voter will be marked inactive and subject to the same removal timeline as other inactive voters.

If a voter moves within the state and updates their license with their new address, the state will automatically cancel that person’s previous registration and register them at their new location, the state said.

Out-of-state moves can be a bit more complex. There’s a group of states that share voter registration data with one another through the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. If another state flags that a Michigan voter is registered in that state, it triggers Michigan to send a notice of cancellation to that voter’s Michigan address. If the voter doesn’t respond and remains inactive, they are removed.

But not every state participates in ERIC — many Republican-led states have withdrawn from it in recent years — which can slow the process of finding an inactive voter who has moved.

A significant number of Michigan voters have been registered in recent years since the state enacted automatic voter registration through a 2018 constitutional amendment. As part of that, any eligible resident who applies for, updates, or renews their driver’s license or state ID is automatically registered to vote. (That’s one reason why about 81% of Michigan’s 18-year-olds were registered to vote as of Oct. 8.) That same amendment allowed Michigan voters to register on the day of an election.

A history of lawsuits

Claims that Michigan voters outpace the number of people able to vote have circulated before. In 2020, similar allegations arose in the city of Detroit, where people — including Trump — claimed that Detroit had more votes than residents in the city, resulting in a turnout above 100%.

This was never true either. In 2020, about 257,000 people voted in the city, compared with the 506,000 registered voters (and 639,000 people living there).

People made similar claims about townships throughout the state later that year — and again, those were untrue.

It’s those kinds of claims that fuel doubt about election results in Michigan, officials and experts say, despite the numerous measures designed to make the state’s elections secure and fair. Other states face such claims, too.

A 2018 study on the problem from the Brennan Center, written by Jonathan Brater — then counsel for the center’s Democracy Program and now Michigan’s director of elections — found that many efforts encouraging states to purge voter rolls in the name of list maintenance rely on claims that are “exaggerated and even flatly contradicted by the same sources of evidence on which they are based.”

One of those groups was the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative group based in Virginia best known for suing states over their voting rolls. In its efforts to get local jurisdictions to change how elections are handled, PILF often included inactive voters in its analysis of registered voters. It also didn’t consider where data from the Census Bureau might not accurately reflect the local population, such as areas with significant student or military populations. PILF reached out to nearly three dozen Michigan counties between 2015 and 2017, the Brennan Center found, and along with three other core groups, more than 450 jurisdictions across the U.S. in its demands for mass removals from the rolls.

Not many of those jurisdictions were sued, but those that were targeted were predominantly communities with large minority populations, the report found.

“Good voter list maintenance benefits us all, and jurisdictions should strive to have top-flight practices,” Brater wrote in 2018. “Election officials should be wary, however, of exaggerated or false claims used to demand more purging.”

In a statement addressing Tuesday’s dismissal of the RNC lawsuit, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said the court “dismissed a lawsuit designed to plant false seeds of doubt about the integrity of my work and our elections.”

All valid votes will be counted, she said, adding that she was grateful the court “affirmed our vigorous work to maintain the accuracy of Michigan’s voter rolls.”

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

In Arizona, GOP candidates for county recorder campaign on distrust of elections

2024-10-23T09:00:00+00:00

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

Arizona’s election system has been thrown into turmoil over the past four years by false claims of widespread fraud and some real instances of mistakes in running elections. Now, Republican candidates for county recorder across the state are playing up those false claims and errors as they try to get elected.

Their opponents acknowledge that Arizona elections can be improved, but warn voters to be wary of turning over crucial decisions about voting to candidates who seek to leverage distrust in the system.

The most closely watched race is in Maricopa County, where Republican state Rep. Justin Heap is running for recorder against Democrat Tim Stringham on a pledge to “secure our elections.” Heap defeated the current recorder, Republican Stephen Richer, in the August primary after claiming that Richer ran “the worst election in history” in 2022.

The competitiveness of these contests, and the rhetoric accompanying them, show just how much the role of the county recorder has changed since the last time the position was on the ballot, four years ago.

The recorder controls some aspects of voting, and other administrative duties, such as recording real estate transactions. In the past, recorders often served for decades without attracting much attention or controversy. But that changed in 2020, when a deluge of false election-fraud claims by Donald Trump’s allies, as well as a few real mistakes in election administration, fueled distrust among some voters.

Republicans with similar platforms to Heap’s — and using similar language — are running for recorder spots in Coconino, Navajo, Pinal, and Yuma counties. In Cochise, current Recorder David Stevens, another election skeptic, is running to defend his seat.

The county recorder races are among the most important on the Nov. 5 ballot, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in an interview, because he sees them as a showdown between the truth and lies. Fontes, a Democrat, offered a rare endorsement on Friday for Stringham in Maricopa County, writing that his race against Heap was a choice between “an honorable military veteran or an election denier.”

“This isn’t political,” Fontes said in the interview, “and I think that’s what people miss. It’s about the truth and about believing in reality.”

Recorders make decisions that directly affect voters, including how to clean the county’s voter rolls, where to put early voting locations and ballot drop boxes, and how many of each there should be. But in most counties, it’s up to county supervisors to oversee election day procedures and vote counting.

One exception is Pinal County, where the supervisors recently gave Recorder Dana Lewis, a Republican, control over the election department. There, Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh has repeatedly questioned the integrity of the county’s elections, including in his own failed run this year for sheriff. After an $150,000 independent audit found no support for his allegations, Cavanaugh says he’s challenging Lewis as a write-in candidate for recorder.

The recorder position is in a period of unusually high turnover. The harassment and stress in recent years has forced a few longtime recorders out of the position, and helped convince others to retire. Meanwhile, the high profile of the role is now attracting people who are more comfortable in the public spotlight. This year, at least three of the non-incumbent Republicans running are current or former elected officials who have established campaign spending accounts and public reputations.

In Yuma County, for example, the GOP candidate is Republican David Lara, who ousted sitting Recorder Richard Colwell in the primary. Lara is a local school board member who has long worried about ballot trafficking and helped gather video that led to the conviction of two Democrats in connection with a ballot harvesting scheme during the 2020 election.

In Maricopa County, Heap vows full review of longtime staff

In Maricopa County, Heap is blaming Richer for technical problems voters experienced on Election Day during the 2022 midterm election, and suggesting he could do better.

“The plague of Election Day problems that we have seen in recent years must end now,” Heap said at a recent rally, also calling for election results to be finalized on election night.

As recorder, though, he would not have direct control over Election Day or ballot counting.

Heap has also accused Richer of failing to clean the voter rolls of people who have moved, saying during a primary debate that hundreds of voters told him they are receiving mail ballots for people who don’t live at their address.

Heap has not said what he would do differently to clean voter rolls. He didn’t respond to a phone call or text messages requesting an interview or an answer to that specific question.

Richer, who has fiercely defended the county’s election processes against a barrage of attacks from within his own party, declined to be interviewed for this story, but has said in the past that he follows all laws and that his office has been diligent and proactive about voter roll cleanup.

Federal and state law, and the state’s Elections Procedures Manual have detailed rules for how election officials must conduct all aspects of voting, including strict limitations on when someone may be removed from the voter rolls.

Under state law, for example, a county recorder can’t remove someone from the voter rolls who has moved from their address unless that voter notifies the county, registers to vote in another county, or goes two election cycles without either voting or responding to notices from the recorder’s office about undeliverable mail.

Still, Stringham said in an interview, the recorder controls the department’s budget and staff, and that can make a big difference in how the election goes.

Heap has said in a debate before the primary that if he is elected, he will conduct a full performance review of everyone working in the office, and the policies they follow. He signaled that he’ll push for personnel changes, saying many current employees were “hired under the radical Democrat Adrian Fontes,” and describing others as career bureaucrats.

In contrast, Stringham said he believes his biggest success will be retaining talent. He said that he doesn’t believe Heap has serious proposals on how to improve the county’s elections, but worries that Heap will damage good systems already in place.

“If I give a Lego Death Star to a 3-year-old, they probably can’t read the instructions and put the Death Star together,” he said. “But if I give a perfectly constructed Lego Death Star to a 3-year-old — yeah, any 3-year-old is capable of destroying that in a hurry.”

Yuma County candidate raises concerns about ballot harvesting

In Yuma County, Republican candidate Lara said he’s convinced that the illegal ballot harvesting he caught in 2020 is widespread, and not an isolated case. He said that he secretly monitored the county’s ballot drop boxes with cameras during the midterm to try to catch other instances, but that none were prosecuted.

To combat ballot harvesting, Lara said he would use the signature verification process for mail-in ballots, rejecting any signature he did not believe was the voter’s signature. “That is a lot of power,” he said.

He said that while some media reports have described him a “conspiracy theorist” or “election denier,” he believes the 2020 case shows support for his assertions.

Xanthe Bullard, chair of the Yuma County Democratic Party, called Lara’s dropbox monitoring activities a form of voter intimidation, and said she expects more of that if he is elected. She said she believes he could use the signature verification process and voter roll purges as a way to unfairly target certain groups, such as Hispanic voters.

Lara dismissed those assertions, saying his hidden monitoring would not intimidate voters.

His Democratic opponent, Emilia Cortez, said she didn’t want to talk about her competitor’s activities or views. But she did say that she trusts the county’s election workers, after working as a poll worker in the past. She said she entered the race to protect the county’s elections and election workers and because she believes that she has the organizational background to develop better voting procedures.

“I want to be that bridge, that gateway, to reassure everyone that these elections in Yuma County are going to be valid and secured,” Cortez said in an interview.

Voter roll cleaning on the Republican platform

In other counties, too, candidates are alleging that voter rolls haven’t been properly cleaned, and in some cases, they’re echoing claims about noncitizen voting that have been circulating around the country. As they do so, they aren’t offering proof.

In Coconino County, for example, Republican candidate Bob Thorpe, a former state representative, wrote on his website that “Coconino County’s voter database has over 6,000 entries that have not been removed, some that are over 40 years inactive.”

Thorpe is running to succeed longtime Recorder Patty Hansen. Hansen said in an interview that Thorpe’s allegation is inaccurate, and she has tried to tell him that. Thorpe was looking at the incorrect inactive date, she said, and those voters are not eligible for removal.

Hansen said she is endorsing Thorpe’s opponent, Democrat Aubrey Sonderegger, to take her spot. She pointed out that Thorpe signed the joint resolution from the Legislature urging Congress to accept a slate of false electors in 2020. And she said she believes Sonderegger shares her commitment to “working toward having everyone’s voice heard.”

Thorpe didn’t return a phone call for comment. He says on his website that he will “protect voter rights for all Independents, Democrats and Republicans.”

(Update, Oct. 23: In a phone call after publication, Thorpe said he believes a full review of the county’s voter roll is important to ensure that no ineligible voters are voting, but stressed he doesn’t want to remove any eligible voters.)

In Navajo County, in northeast Arizona, Republican candidate Timothy Jordan says on his website that one of his top priorities is updating the voter rolls, which he claims, without providing evidence, include deceased voters and ineligible noncitizens. He’s running against incumbent Recorder Michael Sample, a Democrat.

Fontes said that although some recorder candidates might be advocating extreme policies, he believes their actions will be different if they win.

“I remember a certain county recorder race, when someone was going to come in and overhaul the system,” Fontes said, talking about when Richer unseated him as Maricopa County recorder in the 2020 election.

“He ended up supporting everything his predecessor did.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

The 10 most common questions teenagers asked about the election

2024-10-19T09:00:00+00:00

This is republished as part of a series in collaboration with the Headway Election Challenge. Chalkbeat and Headway at The New York Times will ask young people to share their insights and perspectives throughout the 2024 presidential election.

Throughout 2024, Headway and Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization focused on education in America, have been in conversation with teenagers about the upcoming presidential election.

We’ve asked these teenagers some big questions: How are you engaging with the election? Why are you engaged, or why not? What issues matter to you? So far, we’ve heard from a broad range of students, from self-described political junkies to those more hesitant or uninvolved. In total, we’ve exchanged messages with nearly 1,500 students nationwide.

With each questionnaire, we also invited students to ask us their own questions about the election. Here’s a synthesis of what we’ve heard from them.

What are the candidates’ policies?

The two major candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, have very different records and plans. Maggie Astor, a New York Times reporter covering the election, contacted both candidates’ campaigns and reviewed hundreds of interviews, statements, policy papers, bills, and agency actions to build a guide to each candidate’s key policies.

The guide outlines both Trump’s and Harris’ stances on major issues like abortion, climate change, crime, democracy, the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and the Israel-Gaza conflict. Check it out here, and save the link, as more topics will be added in the coming weeks.

How does the electoral process work?

While the specifics of what happens during an election cycle may vary, the overall electoral process — the steps candidates, campaigns, and voters take to prepare for and participate in Election Day — tends to follow a set order.

First, individuals interested in running for president officially declare their candidacy. Campaigning can begin years before Election Day. These candidates, who aren’t yet official nominees of any political party, campaign by holding town halls and rallies, competing at debates and doing interviews with news outlets. Eventually, the process leads to the primaries and caucuses, where voters select their preferred party’s nominee. These primaries and caucuses occur on the state level, with each state having its own schedule and rules.

Four years ago, Times journalists Sarah Almukhtar, Matt Flegenheimer, Umi Syam, and Eden Weingart created a guide to help readers navigate the intricacies of the 2020 presidential election’s primaries and caucuses. Their definitions remain relevant today:

Primaries are reasonably straightforward: Voters vote, and their votes go to candidates who hope to receive more votes than the other candidates.
Caucuses are like this in spirit, but with a dash of municipal sausage-making and D.M.V.-style chaos.
Generally, supporters for various candidates sit or stand together in groups. A head count is conducted. And if a candidate doesn’t reach a certain threshold of support — say, 15 percent of attendees at a caucus site — the group is deemed “nonviable,” and its members realign with other clusters before a final count is made.

After the votes from the primaries and caucuses are tallied, each party coalesces around the winning candidate. Next, the candidates announce their vice-presidential running mates. Finally, the candidates head to their respective party’s national convention, where they are formally nominated by the party’s state delegates.

The conventions themselves are multi-day events full of speeches and presentations, nearly all focused on telling the story of the campaign to a national audience. More than 200,000 words were spoken at this year’s Democratic National Convention and Republican National Convention combined. The Times reporter Jonathan Corum analyzed all those words, which you can check here.

As Election Day approaches, the presidential candidates continue to persuade voters through more debates, speeches, rallies, and media interviews. In many states, eligible voters can vote early.

In this year’s election, early voting has already begun in many states, and voter registration deadlines have begun to pass in some. Here’s a full guide to the key dates in each state. (We also received a lot of questions about how results are counted, which you can read about here.)

Once voting concludes, the ballots are counted in each state. This is where the Electoral College comes into play. In almost every state, the candidate who wins the most votes secures all of the state’s electoral votes. (Maine and Nebraska allocate some of their electoral votes by congressional district). There are 538 total electoral votes, and the candidate who earns at least 270 is declared president-elect. The president-elect officially takes office at noon on Inauguration Day, which is usually on Jan. 20.

Why do we still use the Electoral College?

The Electoral College was a clear point of confusion for teenagers. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but still lost the election to Donald Trump because she lost the Electoral College. Teenagers wondered why this system remains a part of our electoral process.

In 2022, The New York Times published a comprehensive guide to the Electoral College. In this guide, the Times fellow Allyson Waller explained that although a majority of the public supports the Electoral College’s abolition, it remains politically contentious “since Republicans currently benefit from the electoral clout of less populous, rural states.”

She continues:

In 2020, Gallup reported that 61 percent of Americans supported abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote. However, that support diverges widely based on political parties, with support from 89 percent of Democrats and only 23 percent of Republicans.
One route to changing the system would be a constitutional amendment, which would require two-thirds approval from both the House and Senate and ratification by the states, or a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures.
Some hope to reduce the Electoral College’s importance without an amendment. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, which together control 195 electoral votes, have signed on to an interstate compact in which they pledge to grant their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The local laws would take effect only once the compact has enough states to total 270 electoral votes.

If you want to dive deeper into what fake electors are, how many electoral votes it takes to win, or if there could ever be a tie, you can read more here.

For this year’s election, Times journalists Lily Boyce, Jon Huang, and Blacki Migliozzi created an interactive that allows you to game out how Harris or Trump could reach 270 electoral votes, depending on which swing states they win. You can play that here.

How do polls work, and can we trust them?

Many teenagers had questions about polls. Times reporter Kaleigh Rogers broke down how election polling works here. If you’re short on time, she also explains it in a video. Here’s the gist:

The golden rule: Never put too much stock in a single poll. Remember that polls are a snapshot of how people were feeling at a particular moment in time; they are subject to error and are best understood in aggregate, such as through New York Times polling averages.
But when you do want to understand more about a single poll, consider the so-called P.S.T. No, not Pacific Standard Time — take a look at the pollster that conducted the poll, the sample population surveyed, and the time frame in which it was conducted.

Now that you’ve been introduced to the importance of considering a survey’s pollster, sample, and time frame, you can read Rogers’ explanation for each of these terms in clear, easy-to-understand detail here.

How can I tell if the information I’m consuming is accurate and unbiased?

In 2022, Times technology reporter Tiffany Hsu explored how teachers are helping students navigate a media landscape littered with misinformation. The article touched on a number of strategies that teachers and students can employ to improve their ability to find verified facts and mitigate bias.

A New York Times Opinion article about misinformation by Charlie Warzel — later incorporated into a lesson plan from The New York Times Learning Network — argued that consuming accurate and unbiased information requires going beyond a single source. One teacher encourages students to remember the acronym SIFT:

1. Stop.
2. Investigate the source.
3. Find better coverage.
4. Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.

You can find more resources here in the lesson plan from The New York Times Learning Network.

How are election results counted?

There are two main types of ballots counted during an election: in-person ballots cast at polling stations on Election Day, and absentee or mail-in ballots, which voters submit either by mail or by hand before Election Day.

For in-person voting on or before Election Day, voters go to designated polling places and fill out ballots.

Absentee or mail-in ballots, which in this election are starting to go out, are becoming more popular among voters. There are state-specific rules for when they should be returned — you can see your state’s deadlines for registration and voting here.

At the close of voting on Election Day, all ballots are sent to state authorities for official counting. Each state has established procedures for processing in-person, absentee, and mail-in ballots. After all votes are tallied and certified, the state’s overall result determines which candidate receives its electoral votes. Once a candidate reaches 270 electoral votes, he or she wins the presidency. The results are then formally sent to Congress, concluding the election process.

In 2024, for the second presidential election in a row, we may not know the winner until days after Election Day. One of those reasons is the rise in popularity of mail-in voting. In an article about mail-in ballot delays, Times reporter Nick Corasaniti explains why:

Counting mail ballots takes more time because there are more steps involved. A variety of security measures, including signature verification and ensuring that voters did not also try to vote in person, are required. Election officials must open the ballots and flatten them before they can be put in a tabulator to be counted.

Corasaniti adds: “If a winner is not declared on election night, it will not necessarily point to failures in the process. More likely, it will be a result of the intense security measures required for counting mail-in ballots.”

In 2020, it took two weeks before every state was called. New York Times reporters Alicia Parlapiano and Lazaro Gamio explained how and why that happened here.

Starting on election night, you can follow along with The New York Times as we process the 2024 election results reported by each state.

How do candidates finance their campaigns?

Candidates finance their campaigns through a combination of donations from individuals, joint fundraising committees, political action committees (PACs), and super PACs. Each of these fundraising mechanisms has its own rules and contribution limits. Candidates may also lend personal funds directly to their campaigns. They can also receive large donations from wealthy individuals and organizations through super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money as long as they do not coordinate directly with the candidate.

In 2023, Times journalists Molly Cook Escobar, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, and Christine Zhang examined the sources of funding for the 2024 presidential candidates. Although the article was published before Trump secured the Republican nomination and Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee after President Biden’s withdrawal, it provides a clear explanation of how campaigns are financed.

What is the role of foreign interference in this election?

According to U.S. officials, Russia, Iran, and China have all engaged in disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, and influence operations targeting U.S. elections. These efforts are an attempt to undermine public confidence in the U.S. electoral process, create discord, and sway public opinion. In the article “Crunchtime for Election Interference: October Is the Month of Mischief,” Times reporters David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes report that U.S. officials identify Russia as the most active threat, followed by Iran and China. To counter these efforts, U.S. officials have ramped up measures to protect election systems, especially against hacking and misinformation.

The scenarios that worry American officials are legion. While the actual balloting processes being used on Nov. 5 seem safer than in previous elections — 97 percent of votes cast will involve some form of paper backup that makes recounts far more reliable — federal officials have been war-gaming the possibility that registration systems become locked up, perhaps in what may initially look like the kind of ransomware attacks that have closed down city services in Baltimore or Atlanta, or hit the Seattle airport.

But why are foreign agents interfering? Jen Easterly, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told Sanger and Barnes that these agents have common goals.

“The two main goals are to undermine American confidence in the security of our election and our democratic institutions and to sow partisan discord,” she said in an interview. “Those are the two goals of all our foreign adversaries.”

You can read more about this issue here.

What is the significance of swing states in this election?

The significance of the most competitive states in any close presidential election is monumental. Appropriately named, swing states are states with close polling and enough Electoral College votes to swing the election to one candidate or another. Swing states are again the main focus this year as Harris and Trump are essentially tied in the polls.

Polls suggest that the presidential contest this year hinges on the results in seven states in particular: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. To explore how each of these states may influence the election, check this swing state tracker from Times journalists Lily Boyce, Lazaro Gamio, Eli Murray, and Alicia Parlapiano.

Why are third-party candidates not more prominent?

Third-party candidates face significant challenges in gaining national traction in the winner-take-all system of U.S. politics, although some are competitive in state and local races. Restrictive ballot access laws, legal opposition from major parties, and concerns about vote-splitting limit their influence. In an article headlined “Democrats Prepare Aggressive Counter to Third-Party Threats,” Times reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien touched on third-party candidates. She wrote:

Gaining access to the presidential ballot is a complicated and expensive process for candidates, particularly for those not affiliated with a party, even a minor one. Laws vary from state to state, with some requiring merely a fee or a few thousand signatures, and others requiring tens of thousands of signatures gathered under tight deadline pressure, along with other administrative hurdles.
State rules limiting ballot access “ensure that the people who are on the ballot have legitimate bases of support, and it’s not simply a vanity project,” said Robert Lenhard, a Democratic Party lawyer who co-led an effort to fight against third-party candidates.
Independent candidates and third-party leadership see restrictive ballot laws, and efforts to monitor and enforce them, as anti-democratic, exemplifying the kind of two-party political machinations they say they are trying to combat.
“What are ballot access barriers? They are barriers against free speech,” said Ralph Nader, who has made four third-party runs for president. He described state ballot laws in the United States as “the worst in the Western world, by orders of magnitude.”

Efforts to reform the system, such as switching to proportional representation, face political and structural challenges. Times journalists Alyce McFadden, Taylor Robinson, Leanne Abraham, and Rebecca Davis O’Brien are tracking where third-party candidates are on the ballot here.

For a snapshot of third-party involvement in U.S. presidential elections, Darcy Eveleigh wrote a brief history in 2016 for The Upshot, detailing major third-party candidates and their eventual outcomes. And if you’re weighing a vote for a third-party candidate on your own ballot, the Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine offered some considerations here.

What other election-related questions do you have? Tell us here.

If you have any questions, email DearHeadway@nytimes.com

Noncitizen voting rarely happens. But Wisconsin voters are hearing a lot about it.

2024-10-16T12:00:00+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.

Melissa Kono had just finished a training session with a new Republican poll worker in 2014 when she asked the poll worker if she had any questions.

“Her question was, ‘What do I do when all the Mexicans come in to vote?’” recalled Kono, the town clerk in Burnside, in western Wisconsin’s Trempealeau County. “And I was speechless, because I was like, that just doesn’t happen. There’s all this other stuff you should be asking questions about because it’s new to you … I was just flabbergasted by that comment.”

Since then, as she trains poll workers and clerks across the state, Kono said she has seen the worry over noncitizen voting grow. At this point, she said, the baseless concern that noncitizens will vote en masse in the Nov. 5 presidential contest is the election conspiracy theory she hears about most from GOP poll workers and voters. The suspicion plays into growing doubts about the integrity of elections and century-old stereotypes of immigrants as criminals.

In hindsight, Kono said, “I should have seen this coming, because it’s only bubbled up even more.”

For years, Wisconsin conservatives have been hammering the talking point that noncitizens may be able to cast ballots en masse in the state and across the nation. That’s despite federal law banning noncitizens from voting in presidential elections and the fact that there’s no evidence of noncitizens voting in federal contests in any meaningful numbers.

The messaging has percolated from conservative think tanks to politicians and voters across the state. In Wisconsin, Republicans passed legislation linked to the issue, including a proposed constitutional amendment coming before voters in November. A top Republican lawmaker has also sought to find data on how many noncitizens have state-issued IDs that they could potentially use to vote.

Now, weeks away from Nov. 5, clerks are hearing the same concern from some of their voters and poll workers. And suddenly, the talking point of noncitizens voting in the 2024 election appears to be about as prominent as the repeatedly discredited 2020 election conspiracy theory that corrupt voting officials and hacked voting machines enabled Democrats to steal the election.

Lawmakers have raised concern over the fact that the Wisconsin Elections Commission and local clerks don’t have a specific system to keep noncitizens from voting. Election officials don’t have a database they’re required to use that shows a list of noncitizens with state-accepted IDs, for example, though one clerk in southeast Wisconsin says she has found a state system that has helped her catch noncitizens who registered to vote.

Noncitizens and immigrant advocates say no such system is needed. It’s already a felony under federal law for noncitizens to try to vote, and the risks of doing so — including jail time and deportation — are enough to dissuade them from casting a ballot.

Talking point emerges ahead of 2024 election

The conservative messaging about noncitizen voting, which emerged more than a century ago, serves a few purposes for contestants in the current election cycle, said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. First, it focuses attention on immigration, which is a signature issue for Republicans and their presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Second, it acts as a cover to explain why Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020.

And third, “It sets the stage for this fall’s elections,” Burden said. “That if things don’t go as the Republicans would like, there has been a premise laid out already that noncitizens are part of the problem and are committing fraud and might be responsible for an election that’s not trustworthy.”

Indeed, the Trump campaign appears to be laying the rhetorical groundwork already for legal challenges based on the premise that noncitizen voting will swing results.

“Democrats are pushing for non-citizens to vote and influence the future of our country,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, referencing proposals in some cities allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections and adding that Democrats “aren’t even trying to hide their election interference schemes.”

That line of thinking has already inspired legislation and lawsuits in Wisconsin.

Over the past couple of years, as some cities around the country allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, Wisconsin Republicans pushed for a proposed constitutional amendment that would state “only” U.S. citizens can vote in local, state and federal elections. That’s the proposal on the November ballot.

Republicans in 2023 also passed legislation requiring that state IDs issued to noncitizens be marked as not valid for voting purposes. Lawmakers considered the bill after the clerk in Mequon, in southeastern Ozaukee County, said she had four experiences in 18 months with noncitizens either voting or trying to vote. But Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed the legislation, saying the bill could cause noncitizens to be treated unfairly and perpetuate false claims about elections.

This August, a Wisconsin voter filed a lawsuit alleging the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Department of Transportation weren’t sharing data that would help election officials block noncitizens from voting.

Rep. Scott Krug, a Republican who chairs the Assembly Elections Committee, said it would be his “mission” to build a better system to prevent noncitizens from voting.

In the meantime, despite a lack of evidence, right-wing claims about noncitizens voting en masse increased.

“There is a non-negligible amount of voter participation by non-citizens in federal elections, which is not only a serious threat to the integrity of our elections and the democratic process they represent, but also has the potential to reduce Americans’ trust and confidence in election results,” stated an Oct. 7 letter that congressional Republicans, including Wisconsin’s U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In June, Trump posted on social media, “Non citizen Illegal Migrants are getting the right to vote, being pushed by crooked Democrat Politicians who are not being stopped by an equally dishonest Justice Department.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson told Politico recently, “If you have enough non-citizens participating in some of these swing areas, you can change the outcome of the election in the majority.”

No required verification system, but one clerk said she checks every voter

Kono, the former Burnside clerk, said some of the election workers she has trained recently have asked her how to verify voters’ citizenship. She tells them that when voters register, they must certify under the penalty of perjury that they’re U.S. citizens.

“Some of them are not satisfied with that,” Kono said, “because it’s like, ‘Well, how do you verify it?’”

As it stands, Wisconsin has no required process to verify whether every person who seeks to vote is a citizen. And the Department of Transportation doesn’t currently have a system providing voters’ current citizenship status to election clerks.

Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs said that for several years she’s been using a different system to verify citizenship, and has used it to discover noncitizens who registered to vote or cast ballots — leading in a few instances to prosecution.

When people register in Mequon to vote, Fochs said, she checks their information against a Wisconsin Department of Transportation system providing access to driver records. The Public Abstract Request System doesn’t connect to the voter rolls, but Fochs said it does indicate whether people with licenses were U.S. citizens when they applied.

She had used that system for about 15 years to check the information voters provided when they registered. In 2021, after somebody didn’t mark that they’re a citizen on a voter form, she also began using the system to check for citizenship status.

When somebody is marked as something besides a U.S. citizen, Fochs said, she sends their information to an agent at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to check whether that person has since become a citizen. Fochs estimates that about 20% of people not marked as U.S. citizens in the system are confirmed by DHS to be noncitizens. She refers those cases to local law enforcement, she said.

Fochs takes the extra confirmation step, she said, because the state’s current system, where people swear under penalty of perjury that they’re citizens, doesn’t require any verification after the fact.

“If nobody’s looking, nobody’s ever going to be prosecuted, right?” she said on Friday. “They could check the box and sign their name, but if nobody has the ability to then take the next step and check it, you could do it all day long. The penalties don’t matter. So we need to check it to make sure that people are being honest.”

Several other clerks told Votebeat they had never heard of the lookup tool, or if they had, that they weren’t using it to check for voters’ citizenship status.

One clerk who discussed the system with Fochs, Oconomowoc City Clerk Diane Coenen, expressed concern over the potential for noncitizens to vote and face penalties, but said she won’t be using the lookup tool because the city lacks staffing to look up every voter in the growing community, and she doesn’t want to use it only in certain cases.

Transportation Department says records aren’t current

Department of Transportation spokesperson John DesRivieres declined to comment.

But the agency acknowledged in a recent legal filing that its citizenship data isn’t a reliable tool to check for people’s current citizenship status.

Responding to the lawsuit claiming that the department should share citizenship data with the election commission, the agency said it doesn’t have current citizenship information, but rather just “outdated information about the status of applicants for driver licenses and state ID cards at the time of application.”

“Every year, thousands of lawful permanent residents in Wisconsin become naturalized citizens, and these individuals generally have no reason to update their citizenship status with DOT,” the filing states.

The often inaccurate data is why Fochs double-checks with someone from the federal Department of Homeland Security, she said.

Fochs said she was confident she wasn’t crossing any legal red lines because she checks the records of everybody registering to vote — not just in specific instances.

But Kono said she wasn’t so sure. “I would be worried about doing something that we haven’t been told or advised to do,” she said.

An ID form asks for proof of citizenship

In Wisconsin, noncitizens with legal status, such as green card holders and lawful temporary visitors, can get Wisconsin driver’s licenses and state-issued IDs just as U.S. citizens do.

There are currently about 135,000 non-expired IDs and driver’s licenses issued to people who were noncitizens at the time of their application, the Department of Transportation’s legal filing says. But sharing their records with the Wisconsin Elections Commission would be illegal under federal privacy laws, the filing says.

There is a separate, free ID for voting that state residents can apply for. Typically, those applying for that card need to provide proof of citizenship. However, people without proof can still request one of those IDs by filling out a separate form that asks them for their identifying information. Lying on that form is punishable by a six-month jail sentence and $1,000 fine.

And as Kono said, people registering to vote are asked whether they’re citizens, and the form instructs them not to fill it out unless they are. Lying on that form constitutes a felony offense, with penalties of up to 3½ years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Few noncitizens appear willing to risk that penalty.

A Brennan Center for Justice analysis found that election officials overseeing 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election referred about 30 incidents of potential noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. A Heritage Foundation analysis of election fraud cases nationwide found two dozen prosecuted cases of noncitizens voting in the last 20 years.

Why immigrants are a more vulnerable target

After his loss in 2020, Trump and his allies helped promote claims that corrupt election officials and voting machine companies rigged the election in Democrats’ favor. They were sued over that messaging, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in legal settlements.

Meanwhile, of the dozens of lawsuits Trump filed after his 2020 loss, none succeeded in overturning election results in the swing states he lost.

This election, Trump and his allies have turned their attention from voting machine companies to noncitizens, a group that’s less organized and perhaps less likely to sue for false claims.

Burden, from UW-Madison, said suspicion of noncitizen voting could be what drives post-election lawsuits if Trump loses.

“There are millions of noncitizens living in the U.S.,” Burden said. “There’s some living in every swing state, more than 100,000 in Wisconsin. And that might be the focus of at least litigation or outrage after the election.”

But Burden said noncitizens are unlikely to vote in any significant numbers given the penalties they would face.

“It’s a lot of risk involved for a very little benefit, to be casting one vote in an election where there might be 3 million votes cast for president in the state,” he said.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera Action, said that whether they are in the country illegally or legally, with visas or lawful permanent resident status, immigrants typically know they can’t vote, and she organizes voter education sessions to make sure noncitizens know they can’t cast a ballot.

“The stakes are so high, they don’t want to vote,” she said. “They don’t want to end up with felony charges or jail time. It would affect their ability in the future to adjust their status, and obviously people don’t want that.”

The few instances of noncitizens getting charged after voting are generally a result of confusion about who’s eligible to vote, she said.

Neumann-Ortiz said the voters likely to bear the brunt of the accusations or suspicion are lawful voters.

“My concern is that all of this anti-immigrant rhetoric is really a way to gin up the MAGA base so that they show up at different polling sites and racially profile voters and try to intimidate or harass people from voting,” she said. “This is absolutely intended to disenfranchise eligible voters through the challenge process.”

In Wisconsin, election officials and voters can challenge somebody’s eligibility to vote based on assumptions about their age, residency, felony status, and citizenship, among other things. But a challenge “based on an individual’s ethnicity, accent, or inability to speak English is unacceptable,” an election commission manual states.

It’s highly unlikely that enough noncitizens would vote to swing the outcome, Burden said, but it could lead Republicans to say — as Trump baselessly did in 2019 about alleged noncitizens on the voter roll in Texas — that the few people they caught are just the “tip of the iceberg.”

While conservatives’ messaging could lead to increased ballot challenges, Neumann-Ortiz said it could have an unintended consequence.

“It’s offensive. It’s racist,” she said. “It’s not true, and it certainly does motivate people who are eligible to vote, whether naturalized U.S. citizens or U.S. citizens who are children of immigrants. It certainly does motivate them to turn out to vote and challenge that kind of hate mongering and disinformation.”

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

Wisconsin legalized ballot drop boxes, but some local officials are fighting them

2024-10-03T10:00:00+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.

Months after the Wisconsin Supreme Court legalized them, ballot drop boxes remain a source of deep division among public officials in communities across the battleground state.

While city officials in Madison and Milwaukee embraced them early for the August primary, several communities in Waukesha and Milwaukee counties have opted out of using drop boxes for November’s election, to some voters’ dismay. Some clerks in Dodge County decided not to use drop boxes after the county sheriff warned against them, saying he struggled with “the appearance of the potential for fraud even if no fraud occurs.”

Then, this past week, the issue boiled over in Wausau, after Mayor Doug Diny unilaterally decided to remove the city’s drop box, reportedly ignoring warnings from the city attorney. The city clerk has referred the matter to law enforcement.

The disputes point to lingering distrust of drop boxes as a ballot return option, after the liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court legalized them this year. The court’s decision overturned a ban issued by the court in 2022 when it had a conservative majority. But it left some unresolved questions over who at the local level can make the decision to authorize — or ban — drop box use.

Now, across the state, some local officials are fighting to ban drop boxes in their communities in the name of guarding against fraud, while others are lobbying to keep them as a way to make voting more convenient.

With a few weeks left before the election, at least 70 Wisconsin municipalities are using drop boxes, said Sam Liebert, Wisconsin director of the group All Voting Is Local. Meanwhile, at least 63 municipalities have banned or explicitly opted out of them.

One of them is Brookfield, the western suburb of Milwaukee. Residents there requested access to drop boxes, saying it would eliminate a barrier for voters with disabilities and older adults who can’t always go to the city hall to drop off their absentee ballot, TMJ4 reported. But officials voted to opt out after the city clerk and city attorney said drop boxes would require extra work to set up and monitor and that they were unnecessary in a post-pandemic election.

In many conservative areas, the opposition that led officials to forgo or ban drop boxes came as a result of unsubstantiated claims that they could be used to perpetrate large-scale ballot fraud.

Liebert said the bans would make it harder to vote. “I understand maybe it’s politically expedient or politically savvy to buy into the big lie and the mis- and disinformation that’s around drop boxes,” he said, “but also, at the same time, you’re going to have more voter participation if you have this option.”

In the 2020 election, liberal communities were likelier than conservative communities to have drop boxes as a ballot return option, according to a study by the conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. On average, the study found, municipalities with drop boxes had 48 more voters participating than municipalities without them.

Drop box use gets pushback from city officials

When the high court legalized drop boxes in July, the majority said clerks had discretion under the law to use them. But across the state, mayors and municipal boards have asserted their power to restrict access to drop boxes, sometimes without clerks’ approval.

In Wausau, for example, Diny, the newly elected mayor, moved the city’s drop box on Sept. 22 from outside City Hall to inside his office, telling City Council President Lisa Rasmussen that it would remain there “until certain issues that the clerk is aware of are addressed.”

Rasmussen objected. “It is inappropriate for you to attempt to influence the clerk’s decision about the box and equally wrong for you to take it from its posted site following her decision,” she told Diny in an email obtained by Votebeat. “The action you took may have serious legal ramifications. I would imagine that if a citizen did the same thing, they’d already be answering to the police.”

Diny, who was backed by Republicans in the nonpartisan mayoral race, later said he moved the drop box because he feared somebody would steal it, since it hadn’t at that point been secured to the ground, WSAU reported.

On Sept. 25, City Clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde said she was referring the matter to the local district attorney, citing a law requiring clerks to submit reports of suspected election fraud and irregularities. In response, Diny said that Bernarde was “out of her lane,” and that the City Council should have the final say on drop boxes.

Days later, after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and voting rights groups condemned Diny’s actions, the drop box was back — this time, secured to the ground — and the Portage County Sheriff’s Department was investigating the incident, the Wausau Pilot & Review reported.

On Wednesday, four Wausau residents asked a federal prosecutor for an investigation, alleging in a letter that Diny “may have broken federal law by using his official position to interfere with citizens’ right to vote.”

One of those residents, Jay Coldwell, told Votebeat that “it was just shocking to see that our elected mayor would interfere with the election process.”

“If it’s that today, what is it tomorrow, and how many other cities will this happen in?” he said.

Bernarde and Diny didn’t respond to requests for comment.

One reason for such power struggles is that clerks’ roles can vary across the state, with different ordinances in different municipalities, said Rick Esenberg, founder of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative law firm that filed the lawsuit leading to the first drop box ban.

“In general, I’d think a municipal board, as the legislative body, could ban drop boxes or specify the conditions under which they are used,” he said. “It seems anomalous to think that a clerk would have unrestrainable authority and I don’t read [the Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion that legalized drop boxes] to say that they do.”

“A harder question,” Esenberg added, “is whether a clerk can unilaterally decide to use drop boxes. There is an argument for that, although perhaps not.”

Clerks have a lot of authority to run elections, but they, like most civic actors, have checks and balances, said Scott Thompson, staff counsel for Law Forward, a group seeking more inclusive voting policies.

But after the state Supreme Court’s ruling this year, the boundaries of power between mayors, municipal boards, and clerks is a “pretty complicated legal question,” Thompson said.

“Big picture, I think municipalities are clearly working through this, as local governments always work through various issues,” he said.

Baseless claims from 2020 echo into 2024

Opponents of drop boxes, including Diny, argue that there are plenty of other ways to return a ballot.

Many of them have also relied on the talking point that drop boxes enable the harvesting of fake ballots — like filling out and returning multiple ballots under fake names. Those claims were popularized by the film “2,000 Mules,” a film about purported drop box misuse in the 2020 election that has been roundly debunked.

Such claims have led to litigation and laws targeting banning drop boxes across the country. And they’ve been repeated in Wisconsin by Republicans including U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, who called for 24/7 drop box monitoring in Madison to ensure nobody is “jamming fake ballots.”

But those claims about the dangers of drop boxes are baseless. Election officials have safeguards in place to protect against the possibility of widespread fraud through drop boxes.

Wisconsin clerks process absentee ballots from drop boxes just as they do any other absentee vote, including those sent through the mail or dropped off in person. With narrow exceptions for military voters, election officials send absentee ballots only to Wisconsin residents who have requested one and are confirmed to have registered to vote with a valid ID.

Before opening the ballot envelopes deposited in a drop box, election officials verify that they have witness and voter signatures and a witness address. Then they open the envelope, verify that the person casting the ballot was qualified to vote and that they hadn’t already voted in the election, and record them on the poll books as having returned their absentee ballot. Only then would they tabulate the vote.

Proponents say the benefits of drop boxes are clear.

In rural Wisconsin, Thompson from Law Forward said, they can be especially helpful to residents who aren’t frequently in town. And they provide an extra option for people worried about mail delays, Liebert noted.

They’re also helpful to voters with disabilities, who are likelier than other people to vote absentee and who Thompson said are “always caught in the middle” of anti-democratic attempts to restrict ballot access.

“You put drop boxes in the community, it makes it that much more likely that you can exercise the franchise,” Thompson said.

Access to drop boxes varies across municipalities that use them

Among municipalities using drop boxes, their visibility and availability vary, which can create confusion for voters.

In Madison, voters have access to 14 drop box sites, open day and night until the Monday before the election. That’s about one drop box for every 20,000 people. Milwaukee also has over a dozen drop boxes. In Eau Claire, with about 70,000 people, there’s just one drop box, also open 24 hours a day.

There’s also a single drop box in Marshfield, a city of about 20,000 people in central Wisconsin, but it’s only available after the City Hall closes.

That policy ensures that night-shift workers who live in the city can return their ballot after hours, and that people returning their ballots during the day can have a clerk or staff member double-check that their ballot envelope is correctly filled out, Marshfield City Clerk Jessica Schiferl said.

Schiferl said she came up with that policy after the city attorney and administrator said the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling gave clerks the final say over drop box use. She then alerted the mayor about the drop box plans.

Officials in Madison and Milwaukee have heavily promoted their drop boxes, but other municipalities don’t promote their use anywhere, Liebert said, “because they don’t want to stir up the bees nest of election deniers or bad faith actors who would be upset if they knew that their clerk or city hall was actively promoting a drop box.”

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

Vance dodges questions — and reality — about the 2020 election and Jan. 6

2024-10-02T05:31:02+00:00

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

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At nearly the end of Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate came a simple but important question, directed at GOP candidate JD Vance, about certifying the presidential race. By dodging the question and attempting to portray January 2021 as a peaceful transfer of power, Vance opened up a chasm between him and his Democratic opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, about how differently the two see threats to democracy.

After describing the mountain of evidence debunking Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen 2020 election, CBS News moderator Norah O’Donnell reminded Vance of his past remarks about how he would have rejected certifying the 2020 election and pointed out that legal experts say that move would be “unconstitutional and illegal.”

Then she asked him, “Would you again seek to challenge this year’s election results even if every governor certifies the results?”

“I think we’re focused on the future,” Vance said. “We need to figure out how to solve the inflation crisis caused by Kamala Harris’s policies, make housing affordable, make groceries affordable, and that’s what we’re focused on.”

“But I want to answer your question,” he continued, “Because you did ask it.”

She did.

He emphasized that “there were problems in 2020” and that Americans should debate those issues, “and that’s all I’ve said and all Donald Trump has said.” Then he pivoted to talk about censorship as the real threat to democracy.

Walz called Vance’s answer “troubling” — which is a fair assessment given that Trump has said and done much more than claim there were problems with the 2020 election. He used his time to press Vance on the original question and said that Jan. 6 was “a threat to our democracy in a way we had not seen,” resulting from Trump’s refusal to admit his loss.

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz directly asked Vance.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance responded.

“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz concluded.

Vance’s response aligns his credibility on election issues with Trump’s rigged election narrative — codifying on a national debate stage what he has previously said, unequivocally and repeatedly: that he would have declined to certify states’ original election results if he had been vice president in 2020.

Here Vance leans into a stance — “there were problems with the 2020 election” — popular in some conservative circles that enables politicians to distance themselves from Trump’s explicit, and non-credible, claims of fraud by insisting instead that the conditions of the 2020 election were unfair to Trump.

In the past, Vance has purported “facts that cannot be fact checked” as a convenient sidestep. (All of these things can, actually, be fact checked.) He alleged that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative-backed election grants increased Democratic turnout, that a court decision in Pennsylvania represented an indictment of the state’s elections, and that social media suppressed news coverage about Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020.

It echoed a remark Vance made in February when asked how he would have handled the job of certifying the 2020 election in Congress: “If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.”

At Tuesday’s debate, Vance selectively portrayed January 2021 as what he sees as a peaceful transfer of power.

“Remember [Trump] said that on January 6 the protesters ought to protest peacefully. And on January the 20th, what happened? Joe Biden became the president, Donald Trump left the White House,” Vance said, implying that the only duty of the president to enable a peaceful transfer of power is to physically leave the White House on Inauguration Day. Whether that person has conceded their loss, or filed more than five dozen lawsuits in opposition to that loss, or riled up his or her supporters to the point of deadly violence before that inevitable departure is, apparently, immaterial to his definition.

Walz rejected Vance’s evasions, saying he was “pretty shocked.”

“When Mike Pence made that decision to certify that election — that’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage,” said Walz. “What I’m concerned about is, where is the firewall with Donald Trump? Where is the firewall if he knows he can do anything, including taking an election, and his vice president’s not going to stand [up] to it?”

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

Why Georgia election board’s latest change to voting procedures is so perilous

2024-09-30T09:00:00+00:00

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

For the last several weeks, election watchdogs and many other people have been abuzz over the rather strange actions of the Georgia State Elections Board.

The most recent one: The board decided last week that every precinct must now complete a hand count of ballot totals, to make sure that they match the tallies from the machine counts before the county can certify the election results. While some initially interpreted the rule to mean hand-counting all votes, the rule requires only that the number of ballots be tallied. That will take less time than a full hand count of votes, but it doesn’t mean it won’t cause problems or delays, especially since local election officials will have to add a step to their processes, with just weeks to go before the election.

State officials didn’t want this.

“Misguided efforts to impose new procedures like hand counting ballots at polling locations make it likely that Georgians will not know the results on Election Night,” Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, warned in August, before the board voted to approve the change. “Georgia law already has secure chain of custody protocols for handling ballots, and efforts to change these laws by unelected bureaucrats on the eve of the election introduces the opportunity for error, lost or stolen ballots, and fraud.”

The state attorney general, Christopher Carr, had advised the board that the hand-counting proposal was likely unlawful, because the legislature had not empowered the board to create such a requirement. Like a majority of the state elections board, including every member who supported this change, Raffensperger and Carr are both Republicans.

All of this is likely to spark more litigation. The Georgia Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee already sued the state elections board late last month over new rules governing how local officials finalize vote totals, contending they would cause “chaos” in the upcoming election. A hearing is scheduled in Fulton County in early October.

So that you can understand the implications of the new rule requiring the hand-tally of ballots, let’s start by explaining how voting works in Georgia: People voting in person select their candidates on a touchscreen voting machine, which prints out a paper ballot, like a receipt from a cash register. That paper ballot includes a list of the voter’s choices and a QR code that can be read by a separate tabulator machine. The voter takes their ballot printout and places it in the tabulator, which scans the code and tallies the votes.

Under the new rules, there are more steps. At the end of voting on election night, after removing the ballots from the scanner, three poll workers have to count them, by hand. When all three agree on the total number of ballots they have, the rules require them to document that number and sign off on it. Then they have to check that number against the ballot totals recorded on the voting machines. Any inconsistencies must be documented, and the person in charge of the precinct is responsible for determining how the error occurred.

In isolation, the requirements in Georgia seem harmless: Why should it be a big deal to require three people to count some paper, and agree on the number they’ve counted, to make sure that no ballots were counted or excluded improperly?

Actually, there are a lot of reasons.

First, changing the rules this close to Go Time is inherently harmful: Poll workers have been recruited, many have been trained, and the handbooks that dictate how they do their jobs have been printed. Late changes mean that poll workers are deviating from the process they understand, and officials are scrambling to revise these procedures at the last minute. Given the number of ballots that will be cast in Georgia —around 5 million were cast in the 2020 general election — this is unlikely to go perfectly in the hundreds of precincts across the state.

And Raffensperger is right: This is a huge change to Georgia’s “chain of custody” requirements for ballots. It introduces a lot more fingers to the process. It also means more opportunity for error, and more time before results can be reported.

“In smaller precincts, these delays should be minimal — there being not that many ballots cast. For larger precincts, the delays may be more substantial,” writes Anna Bower at Lawfare. “If larger precincts opt to hand count ballots on election night, then reporting of results could be delayed by several hours. A few hours could stretch into a day or two if a precinct puts off hand counting until the next day, as the rule allows.”

It’s during such delays, as we saw in 2020, that purveyors of election misinformation go to work, planting false notions about ballot dumping, poll worker misconduct, or fraud to explain pauses or anomalies in reported results and subsequent swings in vote totals.

Arizona introduced its own hand-count requirement — though it did so months ago, giving election officials more time to adapt procedures. The Arizona rule requires counties to hand-count the number of ballot envelopes dropped off at polling centers on Election Day before any ballots are tabulated. It applies only to ballots dropped off, not ballots cast at the centers themselves.

Still, it’s likely to cause delays. After the July primary, Maricopa elections spokesperson Jennifer Liewer said the process added about 30 minutes to the reporting time for the county’s results. She said the delay is likely to be longer in the general election, when hundreds of thousands of ballots are likely to be dropped off.

Georgia is one of several states considering last-minute changes in the way elections are administered. In North Carolina, litigation around whether students could use digital IDs to vote went down to the last minute. In Pennsylvania, long-running court disputes have left in limbo the rules over whether mail ballots with dating errors should be counted and how voters can overcome their mistakes. And in Nebraska, Republicans mounted an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to change the way the state’s Electoral College votes are apportioned in an attempt to help Donald Trump — a change that could have tipped the election outcome.

The vast majority of counties will pull off their elections with no issue. But last-minute changes in procedures increase the likelihood of mistakes that — even if they don’t prevent certification — will add confusion and delays in the reporting of results.

And, as we have all seen, confusion and delays in the results have led candidates (and voters) to make harmful false claims that shape people’s perceptions of the election for years. We will certainly see that this year.

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

Republicans, Democrats work to restore voter trust

2024-09-16T23:34:53+00:00

This report is part of “Fractured,” an examination of the state of American democracy produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit fractured.news21.com.

WOODRUFF, Wis. – For two and a half hours on a rainy Thursday evening, Kathy Bernier did what she’s spent the past year doing: trying to restore faith in America’s electoral systems – and, along with it, faith in democracy.

On this night, she stood before about 30 local officials, poll workers and residents of this northern Wisconsin community, a place that has consistently voted Republican, and talked about election procedures and how to distinguish fact from fiction.

“Our mission is to bring understanding to the electoral process,” she told the audience. “The crisis in trust is bigger than just one party.”

Since July 2023, this die-hard Republican has traveled some 2,000 miles across the state. She’s been shouted at, labeled a RINO – a derisive acronym that stands for “Republican in Name Only” – and forced to rebuff conspiracy theories about Serbians hacking American voting machines.

It was all part of her work as Wisconsin state director of Keep Our Republic, one of several initiatives nationwide working to rebuild public trust in elections. Bernier led the group for over a year, before resigning in July for personal reasons.

Many such efforts sprang up after lies about the 2020 election culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol. The initiatives range from cross-partisan groups working in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin to off-the-record meetings of conservatives in Republican strongholds such as Utah, Indiana and Texas.

Kathy Bernier leads a civic education event hosted by Keep Our Republic at the town hall in Woodruff, Wis., on Thursday, June 6, 2024. Bernier, a Republican fighting to restore trust in elections, served as the group's state director until July. (Photo by Donovan Johnson/News21)

“The United States is going down a slippery slope,” says Bernier, who chaired Wisconsin’s Senate elections committee when the state took center stage in then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election with fake electors, lawsuits and a partisan probe.

“I just am stunned there’s people that will go around and just spew this disinformation and misinformation,” she says. “Whether they realize how much they’re harming our democratic republic, I don’t know. But it is harming it.”

‘Cracks in the foundation’

With this year’s presidential election mere months away, many are calling it one of the most important in American history. But what value does an election have if only 63% of Americans are confident in its results?

A lack of faith in government itself is not new. Since 2009, public trust in the federal government has not exceeded 29%, according to the Pew Research Center. However, some observers warn that a newly heightened distrust in the electoral system is compromising a core pillar of American democracy.

“Building trust in our election system means ensuring that one of the bedrock institutions of our democracy is protected and safe for future generations to come,” says Matt Germer, co-lead of a trust-building initiative focused on uniting conservative public officials.

Leading up to the 2020 election, only 59% of Americans expressed confidence in the accuracy of election results, according to a Gallup poll. That percentage tied 2008′s record low.

While 2022 saw that number rise to 63%, a deep partisan divide emerged. When surveyed that year, Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats to report distrusting the electoral system, with just 40% expressing confidence in the accuracy of results.

Leaders of these new trust-building initiatives fear a repeat of the violence seen in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, but they worry, too, about the larger impact of mistrust on the nation’s overall health and stability.

“Globally, the U.S. has become identified as a democracy that is slipping,” says Scott McCallum, the former Republican governor of Wisconsin who joined forces with David Haynes, a Democrat, to co-lead the Wisconsin Alliance for Civic Trust.

“I’ve got kids and grandkids that I want growing up having a democracy,” McCallum says. “So I’m going to try to do whatever it is, even if it’s a long shot, to try to save it.”

His group’s work is part of an initiative run by The Carter Center, the nonprofit founded by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

In an effort to bridge political divides and, in turn, increase trust, the center in 2021 began establishing cross-partisan networks – each co-led by at least one Democrat and one Republican – in key battleground states.

In Wisconsin, McCallum and Haynes ask their network members, including former state Supreme Court justices and faith leaders, to sign on to a pledge of principles that include nonviolent collaboration and promoting informed participation in democracy. They also hold monthly meetings to help spread word about the group and its mission.

“There are signs of cracks in the foundations of democracy – here in Wisconsin and in other parts of the country – that are worrisome,” Haynes says.

Concerned with those cracks, Nathan Stock, an associate director at The Carter Center, shifted his focus from conflict resolution in the Middle East to mitigating political violence in the U.S.

“My experience abroad has made me not underestimate how ugly these things can sometimes get when left unchecked,” Stock says. “It’s also given me examples of other places, other societies, that have come out of profound internal division and violence.”

The partisan media echo chambers found on social media and cable news have increased polarization, according to Stock. He warns that the lack of trust across party lines and a breakdown of confidence in government have led to “systemic-level threats.”

In a paper published before the 2020 election, the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research found that over four decades, the United States had experienced the largest increase in polarization among 12 countries surveyed.

Don Henninger, the Republican co-lead of another Carter Center network, the Arizona Democracy Resilience Network, puts it this way: “It’s not an aisle anymore. It’s a canyon.”

Henninger is responsible for recruiting people on the right to join the group, a process that has proved challenging.

“I would love to get some folks in from the MAGA crowd,” he says. “But they’re not going to come anywhere near us, because we believe the elections are fair, secure and safe. They’re at complete odds with the values that we have.”

Henninger works with former Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Barber to provide the group’s members with rapid-response training to mitigate the spread of disinformation.

“We’re going to have messages that our network members can use when something really false is brought to our attention,” Barber says. “And we’re asking people … to line up their (own) networks so that we can, through them, put out factual information that dismisses the falsehoods.”

In the process, Henninger and Barber have found that while they disagree on many political issues, they have many similarities.

“In terms of values that we hold near and dear to our hearts,” Henninger says, “they’re aligned perfectly in unison.”

‘A lucrative business’

Amid all of this work, concerns are growing that politicians and their associates are fueling division not because of their political beliefs but for personal reasons.

States United Action, a group that tracks election denialism among officeholders, found that election deniers have successfully raised millions of dollars for their campaigns.

And a 2022 investigation by the news outlet ProPublica found that more than $26 million, including funding from at least 276 Fortune 500 companies, has gone to election deniers since Jan. 6, 2021. That stands in contrast to immediately after the insurrection, when over 100 major companies vowed to stop funding members of Congress who had attempted to invalidate the 2020 election.

“There’s now an industry about election fraud,” says Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican who is part of a trust-building initiative focused on conservatives.

Haynes, a longtime journalist before joining the Wisconsin Alliance for Civic Trust, places part of the blame on the media, noting sensationalism sells and is fueled by chaos and conflict.

In politics, he says, “Division sometimes works better than bringing people together. Conflict sometimes works better than solving problems. That’s harmful to our democracy. … But for individuals, it sometimes is in their interest to do that.”

Given that so many have something to gain from this division, and how quickly information can spread, Haynes worries “that no matter who wins in November, there might be people in the streets – and some of them might be armed.”

‘A healthy debate’

Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 but lost the state in 2020 by about 20,000 votes.

Two weeks after the election, Trump requested a recount of two Democratic counties in the state. One month after the election, he filed a lawsuit challenging results, and his campaign began recruiting alternate electors.

Bernier spoke out against efforts to overturn the results and affirmed Biden’s win in the state and nation, despite condemnation from members of her own party.

“My philosophy when I ran for office is do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do,” she says. “I had a colleague who sent out a nasty press release about me. It hurt. ... I felt like somewhat of the lone ranger.”

Signs in support of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a home in Woodruff, Wis., on Thursday, June 6, 2024. (Photo by Donovan Johnson/News21)

In 2022, unrelated to the backlash, Bernier decided not to seek re-election. Two years later, she continues to face criticism, now for her work with Keep Our Republic.

The organization, established in 2020, enlists election officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to provide civics education about election integrity and threats.

“There’s been questions around election administration in this country, and the validity of outcomes, more or less since the dawn of the republic,” says Ari Mittleman, Keep Our Republic’s executive director. “What happened, though, in 2020 was unique and was particularly acute.”

Before her 12 years in the state Legislature, Bernier spent 13 years serving as Chippewa County clerk and administering elections in the county that today is home to 67,000 people. She saw firsthand the effects of polarization and joined Keep Our Republic to help voters find common ground.

“Truth is important to me – that is the biggest motivator,” she says. “We just want to bring calm and truth to the electoral process. That’s all we can do.”

In this part of Wisconsin, the country’s political divisions are on full display.

Pro-Trump signs protrude from front yards in town, but just miles away, a self-described “progressive” brewery sells beers with names such as “MAGA Tears IPA: Their Frustration Brewed for Your Inebriation.” An employee calls the place a “blue dot in the middle of the red sea.”

Sue Brisk holds up a “MAGA Tears IPA: Their Frustration Brewed for Your Inebriation” beer at the Minocqua Brewing Company on Friday, June 7, 2024. (Photo by Donovan Johnson/News21)

During the Keep Our Republic gathering in June at the town hall, Bernier, joined by the Oneida and Oconto county clerks, explained Wisconsin’s pre-election, Election Day and post-election procedures.

Attendees then wrote their questions on cards that Bernier read aloud. One asked about emails “proving” that software programmers in Belgrade, Serbia, were accessing U.S. voting systems. “Are you aware of that?”

Oneida County Clerk Tracy Hartman fielded that one. “I can tell you that the machines in Oneida County are not being accessed by anybody anywhere aside from the municipal clerks and poll workers,” she said.

In an effort to explain how voting machines work, Bernier chimed in.

“Has anybody played Nintendo?” she asked the audience. “That little box doesn’t know anything until you put the game in. That’s essentially how electronic voting equipment works.”

Oconto County Clerk Kim Pytleski said later that she felt there was a healthy, but respectful, debate. “Those are the things that we really want from these events.”

That hasn’t always been the case with these meetings. At one gathering in West Bend, Wisconsin, some attendees jeered, “Oh, come on!” when Bernier told them there was no fraud. Another shouted at Bernier from across the room.

“Most of the people there weren’t there to learn,” Bernier says.

Pytleski believes doubt in elections can be attributed to a misunderstanding of the process.

“That’s one of the reasons I think the events that Keep Our Republic has been bringing around are so important, because it takes people through the entire process so they can understand,” she says.

Community members exit the town hall in Woodruff, Wis., after a Keep Our Republic civic education event on Thursday, June 6, 2024. (Photo by Donovan Johnson/News21)

At the Woodruff meeting, people from across the political spectrum expressed concerns about absentee voting, mail-in ballots and certification of results.

“If the vote isn’t certified or there are fake electors, what good does all this do?” asked Michael Fried, a Democrat who recently moved here from California. He said he attended to reassure himself of the integrity of the vote.

“I wanted to learn more about why people, even when presented with overwhelming evidence that the election was fair and just, still wanted to push forward this idea that it was not,” he said.

Terry Capsay is at the opposite end of the political divide. She sat in the third row, wearing a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. Beside her lay a folder packed with flyers calling for help getting Trump re-elected.

Capsay founded Concerned Americans for America, an organization that claims the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen.” Of the gathering, she said she respected the transparency and willingness to answer questions but added: “Do I think it’s really going to help increase trust? I’m not sure. … I don’t know that this is going to be a free and fair election.”

‘They need solidarity’

For some, working in cross-partisan or public efforts doesn’t feel like a possibility. Conservatives who believe in the integrity of elections sometimes feel ousted by those on both the left and the right.

The SNF Agora Institute, an academic forum based at Johns Hopkins University and focused on strengthening global democracy, and the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank, aim to address that problem.

The organizations create a safe space for conservative public officials and other professionals to voice concerns and come up with possible solutions. Gatherings follow the “Chatham House rule,” meaning identities are protected to avoid potential public ridicule.

“Conservatives that believe in these democratic principles, they want and need space, they need solidarity, they need community,” says Scott Warren, who helps lead the initiative. “They’ve felt a little bit like they’re in the wilderness.”

In June, 20 conservative public officials came together in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to discuss challenges, opportunities and long-term threats to elections, as well as approaches for moving forward.

One participant, the president of a religious nonprofit, expressed dismay that recent Gallup polling found the issue of “democracy” to be over three times more important to Michigan Democrats than to Republicans.

“Why do they have the democracy argument?” she asked. “That makes me really upset.”

A county clerk from western Michigan responded: “Because we interrupted the peaceful transfer of power, and people died in the process.”

Another county clerk added: “Because we failed,” referring to the way Trump and the Republican Party have fueled mistrust.

Others expressed concern over a lack of like-minded people in the Republican Party. Said one state legislator: “I feel recently homeless as far as parties are concerned.”

Attendees tried to come up with creative solutions, such as a televised campaign promoting election integrity during the state’s rival colleges’ football game one week before Election Day. However, they noted that Republicans who stand for election integrity often don’t make it past the primaries.

“This is what we need, but we won’t get: We need our nominee and surrogates and the party leadership not to undermine the process,” a county clerk said.

More than 10 such gatherings have been held in places such as Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and Kentucky, with more planned ahead of November. Most officials who participate remain anonymous, though some have gone public.

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state who pushed back after Trump pressured him to overturn 2020’s election results, was among five officials who published an op-ed in the National Review calling for both parties to help restore lost trust.

The group outlined three “conservative principles” for doing so: publicly affirming the security and integrity of elections, reassuring voters through transparency and public outreach, and supporting policy changes that further restore trust in the process.

Phil McGrane, who helped author the op-ed, won his seat as Idaho’s secretary of state in 2022 after being the only GOP candidate in the state to publicly affirm Biden’s 2020 victory.

“Hopefully we can all find a path that can bolster confidence in the process,” he said in an interview with News21, “because it’s an important reminder to everyone that America is still an experiment.

“This isn’t the first, and probably not the last, time that democracy has been tested.”

This report is part of “Fractured,” an examination of the state of American democracy produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit https://fractured.news21.com/.

No, early voting does not start in Pennsylvania on Sept. 16.

2024-09-13T18:30:00+00:00

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

Early in-person voting will not start in Pennsylvania next week, despite what several national media outlets have reported this month.

On Thursday, The New York Times wrote that on Sept. 16 “Pennsylvania starts in-person early voting and begins sending mail-in ballots” to voters. USA Today reported on Tuesday that “early voting for some counties” in Pennsylvania would begin Monday. And Fox News reported on Sept. 3 that “early voting begins on Sept. 16 in Pennsylvania.”

Those reports may create misunderstandings about how Pennsylvania’s voting works, election officials say, and they ignore the fact that ballots are being delayed by ongoing court cases.

“We have been hearing from voters and other entities that ballots will be going out on Monday, September 16. That is not accurate,” Cumberland County Elections Director Bethany Salzarulo said in a statement. “Historically mail-in and absentee ballots are sent out three to four weeks prior to any election, and we are on track to do the same for the upcoming presidential election.”

Pennsylvania has a voting option that’s similar to what other states call early in-person voting — typically offered at convenient early-voting polling sites — but it’s not exactly the same, and it won’t be available next week.

Pennsylvania refers to this option as voting in person by mail ballot, and it’s meant to be available before Election Day. With this option, voters can visit their county elections office, apply for a mail ballot, fill it out, and return it on the spot.

Sept. 16 is the day by which counties must start processing mail ballot applications — the forms for requesting a mail ballot. If the ballots themselves were ready that day, then theoretically voters could request one and return it in one visit to the county office.

But the ballots won’t be available by Sept. 16.

That’s because the finalization of ballots for November’s election is currently being delayed by cases before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dealing with third-party candidates’ access to the ballot. There are currently four cases involving three slates of presidential and vice presidential candidates. (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not one of them.) All cases are currently awaiting rulings from the court.

Those challenges need to be resolved before the list of candidates can be certified by the Secretary of the Commonwealth and counties can print ballots.

[Update, Sept. 16, 3:55 p.m.: As of Monday morning, all third-party ballot access cases pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court were resolved. The secretary of the commonwealth certified the November list of candidates Monday afternoon. It will still take counties some time to print ballots. Check the status of your county here.]

Counties also typically use outside companies to print their ballots, which means that even after the candidates are finalized and the ballot is proofread for accuracy, it will still take time for ballots to be printed and mailed to counties and voters.

“This process may still take several weeks after a certified list of candidates is available before ballots appear in voters’ mailboxes, and thus counties urge the courts to resolve the remaining objections as quickly as possible to help counties meet their goal of administering a smooth, fair and accurate election,” John Buffone, spokesperson for the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the courts did not respond to a request for comment when asked when voters could expect a decision on the challenges.

The Pennsylvania Department of State has set up a webpage where voters can keep track of the third-party ballot access cases that are delaying the ballots.

Voters should check with their individual county elections office for updated information on when ballots will be available in their county.

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

How unfounded GOP claims about noncitizen voting could cost some eligible voters their rights

2024-09-11T18:17:08+00:00

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

At Tuesday’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump once again asserted that “elections are bad” and that Democrats are trying to get immigrants who’ve entered the country illegally to vote. As fact checks pointed out and Votebeat has previously reported, there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, and experts say it is extraordinarily rare.

Republicans, though, continue to allege that voting by noncitizens is a pressing problem that demands a legislative solution. And the assertions aren’t just political theater: They are already affecting actual voters, and the impact could grow. Trump wants Republicans to shut down the federal government until they get their way on legislation requiring everyone registering to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship.

House Republicans first passed the legislation, known as the SAVE Act, in July. The Democratic-controlled Senate has taken no action on it. House Republicans are now attaching it to a bill that would keep the government funded until March. That legislation passed an initial procedural hurdle, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, called off a scheduled floor vote Wednesday saying he was still working to “build consensus” for it as members of his caucus wavered over diverging priorities.

The legislation is certainly a nonstarter in the U.S. Senate; Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats have made it clear they view the proof-of-citizenship legislation as a “poison pill.”

People who try to register must already attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens. Any noncitizen who attempts to vote — including legal permanent residents — would be taking extraordinary risks, including a felony charge, loss of their residency status, and deportation.

So why are Republicans so focused on noncitizen voting?

Watchdogs say it’s because Republicans are laying the groundwork for Trump and others to cast doubt on the outcome of November’s election if he doesn’t win. Trump has used similar claims that way in the past, asserting that illegal voting is why he lost the popular vote in 2016, though he won that election.

“This is not intended to actually clean up the rolls,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “This is intended to set the stage for claims the election was stolen.”

Two House Republican-led committees had separate hearings on elections this week. Some Republican secretaries of state, including Cord Byrd of Florida and Frank LaRose of Ohio, urged Congress to pass the bill. Democrats pointed out repeatedly that noncitizen voting in federal elections is rare.

“Noncitizen voting does not happen in any systemic way in New Mexico or in the nation more broadly,” said New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, during one of the hearings, adding, “However, voters believe noncitizen voting does occur, and this impacts their overall confidence in elections.”

Feeding that belief, Republicans and allied groups have continued to file lawsuits over the voter rolls and treat noncitizen voting as an urgent issue, an approach that experts say is having consequences around the country.

In Texas and Alabama, voting watchdog groups are questioning whether state officials have removed voters within 90 days of a federal election in violation of federal law. In those states as well as Virginia and Ohio, advocates say voter removals shortly before the deadline likely included naturalized citizens who were flagged as noncitizens based on outdated records.

In Alabama, Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, acknowledged in a statement that some of the individuals he flagged may have been naturalized citizens, who are eligible voters, but said such people would have to update their voter registration records with their new citizenship status in order to vote.

But this close to an election, the risk of disenfranchising or discouraging eligible voters is high. Efforts to “clean” the voter rolls have indeed wrongly or improperly ensnared eligible voters in the past. In 2019, for example, Texas officials flagged 95,000 voters whom they identified as “noncitizens” and accused broadly of voter fraud. After review, it turned out that many of the people identified on the rolls were naturalized citizens. The scandal resulted in the secretary of state resigning. The state abandoned the effort after numerous lawsuits, which resulted in the state setting new guidelines for future voter roll cleanups.

That relatively recent episode has prompted concerns about the press release put out last month by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, asserting that Texas has removed 6,500 “potential noncitizens” from its rolls since 2021.

Advocacy groups want to know how the state identified those voters as potential noncitizens, and whether those steps complied with the procedures put in place after the 2019 incident. Many of those voters, they point out, may in fact be citizens.

Nonetheless, the number in Abbott’s release is making its way into the comments made by other Republicans on the issue. For example, at the opening of a House Judiciary Committee meeting on the proof of citizenship legislation Tuesday, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, cited it, and he described the removed voters only as noncitizens — not “potential noncitizens.”

In response to the concerns about noncitizen voting, election officials have repeatedly stressed, in court and to the public, that there are multiple measures in place to prevent noncitizens from registering and casting ballots, and no evidence that these things are happening, outside of rare and isolated instances.

Former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican who left office in 2023, said in an interview that election officials perform many checks before adding a voter. In that state, “at least two people have to sign off to say that this person should be added to the voter rolls,” he said. Texas election officials, too, have emphasized the checks they use to keep voter rolls accurate and ensure only eligible voters are on them.

In Georgia in 2022, a review by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, found 1,634 potential noncitizens had attempted to register to vote between 1997 and 2022, though he said 80% were since 2016; none were permitted to register or cast a ballot.

The SAVE Act pushed by Republicans this week would require anyone registering to vote to present documentary proof of citizenship — a way, they argue, to ensure people are following the law. But not everyone has such documentation, or can easily access it. Research published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than 20 million people don’t have proof of citizenship readily available, and the percentage was higher among Americans of color.

Arizona already limits registrants without such documentation — like a birth certificate or U.S. passport — to a separate list of voters who are permitted to vote only in federal elections. A December 2023 Votebeat analysis found that these “federal only” voters are more likely to be young and living on or near college campuses; other research has found voting-age students are more likely to lack a driver’s license.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

How Philadelphia’s history of election fraud fuels Trump’s false claims about the city

2024-09-09T16:30:00+00:00

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

Even before the polls opened, Bruce Marks knew something wasn’t right.

Two weeks before a 1993 special election for a Pennsylvania state Senate district in Philadelphia, Marks was walking down the street in Center City when he was stopped by a Democratic member of the City Council, who warned Marks that there would be fraud in the race using absentee mail ballots.

Marks, the Republican candidate, dispatched one of his advisers to the City Commissioners office to pull the absentee ballot applications, and the aide reported an unusually high number of them, many filled out with information that raised questions about their legitimacy.

“We’re getting all this information that there’s something wrong with these absentee ballot applications and there’s just gotta be somebody behind it,” Marks recalled during a recent interview.

He was right. There was somebody behind it.

It was the campaign of his Democratic opponent, William Stinson, which had arranged to have hundreds of voters cast illegitimate absentee ballots. As the scheme unraveled in the ensuing months, the discovery resulted in a judge vacating Stinson’s win and appointing Marks to the seat, flipping control of the state Senate.

Now infamous, the incident serves as a glaring example of wrongdoing in a city that has had several high-profile election scandals and is perpetually targeted by accusations of fraud. Long before Donald Trump zeroed in on Philadelphia as a place where “bad things happen,” campaigns and conservative activists maligned the city as so rife with corruption and cheating, that its elections can’t be trusted.

That reputation is hardly fair, public officials in the city and outside observers say. In many cases, they say, it misrepresents the facts of past incidents, obscures the reality of how modern elections work, and draws from racist attitudes toward a city with a predominantly Black population.

Democrats have held majority control of the Philadelphia City Commissioners office, which oversees elections, since the 1950s.

Even so, they expect the cycle of vilifying the city’s elections to continue.

As Trump takes the stage Tuesday at National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for his first debate with Democrat Kamala Harris, Pennsylvanians will be reminded of Trump’s tendency to disparage Philadelphia elections, as he famously did at a debate in 2020.

“What’s dangerous about the history in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania is that there are enough truths to give rise to the big lie,” said Brett Mandel, an author and past candidate for city controller who wrote “Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting,” a book about the city’s history of corruption.

And the danger of lingering distrust is real. City election officials faced death threats in 2020, and last year two Virginia men were sentenced for bringing weapons to the Philadelphia Convention Center where mail ballots for the November 2020 election were being counted.

Despite reforms aimed at tightening voting security, Mandel said, Philadelphia’s history of election misdeeds “allows actors who are trying to sway the public to say, ‘Look, bad things happen in Philadelphia.’”

Trump has already started again this year. “Philadelphia was one of the most egregious places anywhere in the world,” he told a crowd at Temple University in June, referring to the 2020 election. “They used COVID to cheat.” He continued making false claims about ballot box stuffing in the city during an August rally in North Carolina and this past weekend baselessly predicted more cheating could cost him the state again this year.

Trump did not cite any specific incidents, and there has been no evidence that fraud or cheating cost him any meaningful number of votes in the city or the state, in 2016 or 2020.

For Marks, on the other hand, election fraud in Philadelphia is something real — something that he encountered personally and that ended up shaping part of his career.

He recounted that experience from his 17th-floor office in Center City, where a framed Philadelphia Inquirer front page hung on the wall across from his desk, vindicating his anti-fraud campaign.

“Legal battle won, Marks is sworn in,” the headline read.

Not far off from it, on a side table sat a red “Make America Great Again” hat, and a champagne bottle emblazoned with “Trump” in large gold lettering, tributes to the former president he represented in court during election challenges in 2020.

Democrats’ dominance feeds GOP suspicions

Attacks on elections in Philadelphia have been a running theme of Trump’s presidential campaigns.

During a presidential debate in September 2020, he accused the city of blocking poll watchers from observing early in-person voting in the city. He was wrong — since the location was not a polling place and campaigns did not have a legal right to be there — but the claim quickly spread online because of the snappy way he said it: “Bad things happen in Philadelphia.”

The statement tapped into the frustrations of Republicans who have long felt they can’t get a fair shake in the city.

Philadelphia is a Democratic stronghold — currently more than 70% of voters are registered with the party.

It hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Bernard Samuel left office in 1952. A Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won the city since Herbert Hoover carried Pennsylvania two decades earlier. Democrats have held majority control of the City Commissioners office, which oversees elections, since the 1950s.

With that dominance have come accusations of fraud from the other side.

“Are you going to sit here and tell me the unions don‘t vote the graveyard in Illinois, in Philadelphia?” Jack Burkman, a Republican strategist who later pleaded guilty to voter intimidation, said on NBC in 2004.

A local GOP operative that year said Republicans would “combat the vote fraud in Philadelphia” by keeping an eye on instances where ward leaders cast ballots in place of voters who don’t show up.

The operative didn’t offer any evidence at the time, but there have been such instances more recently.

In 2022, former U.S. Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers pleaded guilty to a scheme of bribing two polling place supervisors to add fraudulent votes on behalf of clients of his political consulting firm, from 2014 to 2018.

Prosecutors did not say whether those actions changed the outcome of any election. In an indictment against Myers, they wrote that the most votes one of the polling place officials ever added was 46.

Marks also said there was some of this in his 1993 race. But the problem that led to a judge overturning his race was mostly with absentee ballots.

On the wall of Bruce Marks' office hangs a framed Philadelphia Inquirer article about the 1993 voting fraud case that led to his being appointed to a state Senate seat.

According to court documents and coverage from the Inquirer, Stinson’s campaign workers went door-to-door encouraging hundreds of ineligible voters to sign up for absentee ballots. Workers told prospective voters they could use the absentee ballots “as a matter of convenience,” even though this form of voting is reserved for voters who will be out of their voting district on Election Day or have an illness preventing them from going to their polling place. The campaign specifically targeted Black and Latino communities, Stinson campaign workers testified in court.

Campaign workers also misled some voters, and then filled out the ballots for them.

Lydia Colon, a voter in the city’s 19th Ward, told the Inquirer she was promised by a Democratic committeeman that he would come clean her yard if she voted absentee.

In his office, Marks also displays a “Make America Great Again” hat and a bottle of champagne with Trump's name on the label.

But Colon was not ill or out of town on Election Day, making her ineligible to vote absentee.

The committeeman filled out the ballot for her, Colon told the Inquirer. “I feel that I was taken for a ride. I just signed the papers and that’s it.”

The judge in the case eventually determined that there had been enough of this type of fraud in the race that, based on the in-person vote totals, Marks was the rightful winner. More than 20 people would eventually be charged with crimes in relation to the scheme, and many pleaded guilty or were convicted, according to the Inquirer.

Stinson was also charged — although with improperly counting ballots rather than fraud — but was eventually acquitted.

Republicans had their era in Philadelphia politics, too. They dominated 72 years’ worth of presidential contests in the city from 1860 to 1932, controlled nearly all city offices for the better part of five decades, and were the alleged perpetrators of several frauds themselves.

In a 1925 Republican primary for municipal judge, a “glaring debauchery” was committed against Benjamin H. Renshaw, who’d received zero votes out of more than 20,000 that were cast across 25 divisions in the race, according to Inquirer reporting.

The incident was seen as part of the corruption brought on by the political machine of Republican William Vare, a South Philadelphia party boss and U.S. congressman accused of rigging city elections through his control over ward leadership. Vare was backing Renshaw’s opponent.

At one polling place during the 1925 primary, a ward leader offered to credit Renshaw with 50 votes, rather than the actual number he received, telling one of his poll watchers: “You’ll take that or nothing.”

The poll watcher turned down the offer, and the ward leader didn’t budge. Renshaw was credited with zero votes for that polling place.

The political machine “controls the whole process of voting, and practices fraud at every stage,” journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote in his 1903 McClure’s Magazine article “Philadelphia: Corrupt and Contented.”

Steffens highlights an instance where 252 votes were returned in a division that had fewer than a hundred legal voters. At the time, individual election assessors in each voting district kept their own lists of registered voters and, as Steffens wrote, they would pad those lists with the names of nonexistent people, children, and even dead dogs.

How today’s system limits fraud

Much has changed since the era of party bosses and blatant ballot box stuffing.

Following corruption in the 1925 and 1926 elections, political leaders in Harrisburg began more forcefully advocating for change. Gov. Gifford Pinchot and his successor, Gov. John Fisher, pushed for reforms such as allowing citizens to petition to open ballot boxes and have the ballots be recounted if fraud was suspected.

In 1927, a commission was created to study the state’s election law and recommend reforms, and though its work stalled for many years, slowly things began to change.

One of the most significant changes came in 1937, when the state passed the first codified election law in 98 years. The bill did away with the practice of “election assessors” maintaining their own voter lists and centralized the voter registration process. That reform was expanded upon in 2002 with the federal Help America Vote Act, which combined county lists into statewide voter rolls.

Voter lists are now publicly accessible for a nominal fee. Political parties and other organizations can, and do, scrutinize the lists for the kind of fraudulent registrations that Steffens detailed in 1903.

The 1980s brought changes to check the accuracy of vote counts: a statistical audit of 2% of a county’s ballots — or 2,000 if that is less — after each election. The state now does an additional risk-limiting audit on top of that, which is designed to check that there is no fraud on a scale that would alter the outcome of a race.

Modern technology like electronic voter lists and large historical datasets of precinct-level election results allow observers to identify abnormal trends that may indicate fraud.

An official ballot return box sits outside the Philadelphia City Commissioners office. Over the past century, the city has continually enacted reforms to make elections more fair and secure.

It was those kinds of changes that allowed Al Schmidt, then a Republican city commissioner, to uncover the Myers scheme. Schmidt, now secretary of the commonwealth, was able to use data on how many ballots were being cast in each precinct to identify discrepancies with the number of voters signing poll books at those locations.

Electronic poll books recently implemented by the city will make this kind of check even easier.

Lauren Cristella, president of the Philadelphia-based Committee of Seventy, said the fact that instances like the Myers case are being prosecuted is proof “that the system is working.”

The committee — a nonprofit, nonpartisan civil society group focused on improving government — has long been at the forefront of combating election fraud in the city. Its work investigating the 1925 judicial election was instrumental in proving the fraud that led to Renshaw’s loss.

The committee still advocates for reform when it sees mismanagement in Philadelphia government, as recent criticism of the sheriff’s office shows, and Cristella said the group would never shy away from calling out issues at the City Commissioners office when they come up. But nowadays, much of the committee’s work is pushing back against misinformation about the city’s elections.

Defending Philadelphia’s election systems isn’t easy in light of the city’s history, she said. She said she recently had a hard time swaying some family members who were distrustful of the city.

Philadelphia City Hall. The city hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Bernard Samuel left office in 1952.

“They were truly asking me, could I, with a straight face, say that elections in Philadelphia were free and fair, safe and secure,” she recounted. “I said ‘To my bones, yes. I believe they are.’ … (But) they’re coming with preconceived notions about corruption in Philadelphia and there was almost nothing I could say to convince them otherwise.”

In situations like these, Cristella tries to explain that she knows the people who make the election happen, and has personally seen all of the steps. She also points to the sheer scale of elections in the city as a bulwark against widespread fraud. There are over 1,700 precincts that, when fully staffed, have five workers each, including at least one from each party, and they are open to observers from both parties and all campaigns.

“How many people would have to be in on a conspiracy?” she asked. “I don’t believe that more than three people can keep a secret.”

Indeed, after the Stinson-Marks race of 1993, a Democratic committeeman working on Stinson’s campaign, Bill Jones, became a whistleblower for Marks and testified in court about the details of the scheme.

“His testimony was absolutely tremendous,” Marks said.

Cristella argues that fraud is also simply not a productive strategy. Beyond the risk of jail time, she said, there would be little return on investment for a campaign to try to, for instance, identify dead voters still on the voter list and then transport imposters to polling places to cast ballots.

“You can put misinformation on Facebook and probably influence more people,” she said.

Blaming the city serves political ends

On the other hand, making claims about fraud — even without proof or in the face of contradictory evidence — can be politically fruitful.

Seth Bluestein, the lone Republican commissioner on the city’s three-member Board of Elections, said claims “not based on reality” are constantly regurgitated as evidence of purported fraud.

One oft-repeated example is from 2012.

As Trump made his first run for president in 2016, conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity bolstered his fraud claims by pointing to data showing that 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney received zero votes in 59 of the city’s voting divisions, which numbered slightly less than 1,700 at the time.

The explanation was simple, as the Inquirer, political scientists, and Republican city officials pointed out: None of the people in those heavily Black, Democratic divisions had chosen Romney over Barack Obama.

Then-commissioner Schmidt personally went to the districts to try to find Republican voters to make sure none had voted for Romney and been defrauded.

“We didn’t find a single one,” he told PBS News in 2016.

That fact didn’t stop Trump allies from recycling the debunked talking point four years later.

“Philadelphia in particular has a history of very peculiar results,” Trump 2020 campaign adviser and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News the day after the 2020 election. “You had … 59 different precincts where Mitt Romney got precisely zero votes, which is very unlikely and curious indeed.”

Jeffrey Carroll, an associate professor of political science at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, said the fact that the city — the birthplace of the Constitution — occupies a politically important space in a politically important state, and that campaigns can draw from these real examples, make accusing the city of cheating “low-hanging fruit.”

“It’s a very effective tool, unfortunately,” he said. “The average voter believes that there is more instances than they actually are, so to beat back that narrative is incredibly difficult.”

A memorial outside Philadelphia City Hall to 19th-century civil rights leader Octavius V. Catto, who was killed on Election Day in Philadelphia in 1871. Omar Sabir, chair of the Philadelphia Board of Elections, said some of the scrutiny of Philadelphia elections is racially motivated.

Race is also a factor.

Omar Sabir, Democratic chair of the Philadelphia Board of Elections, has long advocated for voters of color in the city, including creating the Octavius Catto Task Force, named after a 19th century Black civil rights activist who was killed on Election Day in Philadelphia in 1871.

Sabir said the city draws such scrutiny not just because of its outsized influence in statewide elections, but also because it is a majority-minority city. Roughly 60% of Philadelphia’s eligible voters are non-white, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

“When you have a city that’s majority African-American, Latino, Asian voters, you’re going to see people want to try to cast doubt, and try to confuse people, and to get them to not have trust in the system,” Sabir said, pointing to similar attacks on Atlanta and Detroit.

A Votebeat analysis of Trump’s 2020 election lawsuits found they disproportionately targeted areas with large Black and Latino populations, including Philadelphia. In his rhetoric, Trump repeatedly blamed cities with predominantly Black communities for his loss, saying two days after Election Day, “Detroit and Philadelphia are known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country — easily,” and his campaign singled out specific Black election workers in its false accusations of cheating.

At a September 2020 debate, then-President Donald Trump warned that "Bad things happen in Philadelphia" and made incorrect claims about election practices in the city. On the campaign trail this year, he's again disparaging city elections.

As Trump disputed his 2020 loss in court, Marks represented him, including in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court where he argued that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had usurped the state legislature’s authority to set rules on mail ballot voting. Marks— along with California attorney John Eastman, who has been indicted for his role in Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election — wrote that the legislature’s concerns about election fraud were “well founded, based on a history of misconduct in Philadelphia.”

As evidence, Marks cited his own 1993 race.

Reflecting on the parallels between his 1993 experience and the language of fraud and cheating Trump has used, Marks said perhaps Trump shouldn’t have used the word “fraud,” and should have spoken instead about how the rules were “unfair,” since he worried Trump wouldn’t have the same concrete evidence to back up a “fraud” allegation as he did.

Marks is still distrustful of the city and its elections, not just because of his case, but also because of other incidents of malfeasance, such as union leader John Dougherty’s conviction for bribery of a City Council member, and dysfunction in the sheriff’s office.

“I think the concern of voter fraud in Philadelphia and the concern of municipal corruption is very real,” he said. “It’s evidenced by every two years, a state representative or a state senator or a City Council person being convicted of something.”

Both the Committee of Seventy and the City Commissioners office are now preparing for fraud accusations to emerge again. They’re engaging in community outreach and advertising campaigns to try to explain how the city’s elections operate. Cristella said the committee will be hosting an event in Bucks County with the commissioners in mid-September demonstrating how their voting machines work, and Sabir said the commissioners’ office is hiring a strategic communications firm to help with messaging and responding to misinformation.

Bluestein said the narrative that elections can’t be trusted is not limited to Philadelphia and has grown since 2020. Combating that isn’t easy.

“Even though we have [pre-election machine] testing and we’re as transparent as we can be about the counting process, our bully pulpit is never going to be as large as the people who are saying elections can’t be trusted,” he said.

And as Trump showed at his Temple University rally in June, he’s not giving up that talking point about Philadelphia.

“They used a lot of things to cheat,” he told his supporters. “But we’re not going to let it happen again. You’re not going to let it happen again.”

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

The U.S. took down a Russian scheme to influence the election. There are bound to be more.

2024-09-09T09:00:00+00:00

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

The Russians are at it again.

The U.S. Justice Department announced this week that it has indicted two Russian employees of state-owned broadcaster RT and seized control of web domains in a wide-ranging effort to push back on Russian disinformation related to the U.S. presidential election.

It is a grim reminder, with fewer than 60 days to Election Day, that foreign interests are still trying to influence the outcome. In Russia’s case, that means amplifying America’s divisions in service of its own interests, especially around the war in Ukraine — tactics that echo its strategy in 2016.

The Russian operation is an example of “more diverse and more aggressive foreign malign influence efforts that we were seeing in this election cycle,” said U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, speaking at an event on covering the 2024 election sponsored by the Aspen Institute in Washington, the day the Justice Department action became public.

The efforts, she said, “involve more actors from more countries than we have ever seen before, operating in a more polarized world than we have ever seen before, all fueled by more technology and accelerated by technology, like AI.”

Federal officials have been warning of foreign interference — from Russia, from China, from Iran — for some time.

“The American public should know that content that they read online — especially on social media — could be foreign propaganda, even if it appears to be coming from fellow Americans or originating in the United States,” an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters back in July, according to the Associated Press.

Sure enough, according to the indictment announced this week, multiple popular American right-wing social media personalities were duped into spreading misinformation generated by a Russian propaganda operation. They were paid to produce pro-Russian video content for social media that racked up millions of views.

Propaganda, obviously, is more effective when it’s filtered through American sources trusted by a particular audience.

Among the well-known commentators involved in the propaganda campaign were Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson. The Justice Department is not alleging that any of these influencers knowingly participated. Rather, it says, they were given false information about the source of the funding that paid for their work. It accuses the two Russian state media company employees of sending nearly $10 million to a company based in Tennessee.

Though the Justice Department does not name the company in the indictment, it has been widely reported to be Tenet Media, a company run by conservative commentator Lauren Chen. Tenet’s six main influencers have more than 7 million followers combined on both YouTube and X.

The indictment indicates that one unidentified influencer was paid a $400,000 monthly fee, along with a $100,000 signing bonus and additional performance bonuses. This is likely Rubin.

Pool, who has more than 2 million followers on X and was apparently being paid $100,000 per podcast episode by Tenet, posted after the release of the indictment: “Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims.”

He also posted: “Putin is a scumbag, Russia sucks donkey balls.”

YouTube has already “terminated” four YouTube accounts associated with Chen. Blaze Media, a conservative media company, has fired Chen as a result of the allegations and appears to have scrubbed the site of her commentary on even innocuous topics.

The two Russian media employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

At the Aspen Institute gathering, experts pointed out what should be clear to all Americans by now: that foreign interests aren’t done trying to sow chaos and erode Americans’ faith in their own democracy.

Americans must figure out how to deal with this. While the indictment is stunning in its timing and its breadth, it is also a reminder that voters need to be on guard and skeptical — because more attempts are coming.

Votebeat Managing Editor Carrie Levine contributed.

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

Feds target two Wisconsin towns over lack of accessible voting machines

2024-08-23T14:04:16+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 U.S. Department of Justice threatened legal action in July against two northern Wisconsin towns that allegedly didn’t have accessible voting equipment in the April election.

At least one of the towns, which is represented by some officials who have voiced distrust of electronic voting equipment, appears to be on a collision course with the agency after a local voter said it didn’t use the federally required voting equipment in the Aug. 13 election, either.

A U.S. assistant attorney general authorized the filing of lawsuits against Thornapple and Lawrence, two towns in Rusk County, along with their clerks and board supervisors for allegedly violating a section of federal law requiring them to have voting systems equipped for people with disabilities in each polling place, according to a letter obtained by Votebeat.

Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who wrote the letter, offered both towns the option to settle the matter through a consent decree. It’s unclear whether that happened.

“We hope to resolve this matter amicably and to avoid protracted litigation,” Clarke said.

Suzanne Pinnow, the top election official in Thornapple, declined to answer multiple questions but questioned whether the Justice Department would go after the town.

“Do you think perhaps they’re going to use Thornapple, because we are a tiny little place, as precedent to reflect back on and say, ‘Look, we forced them’?” she asked.

Thornapple, a town of over 700 people in rural northern Wisconsin, is one of the municipalities that election conspiracy theorists ahead of the November election have been trying to persuade not to use voting machines. It’s a push that has gained little traction in Wisconsin but has quickly fallen under legal scrutiny.

Wisconsin municipalities with a population of under 7,500 people don’t have to follow the state law requiring use of electronic voting equipment. But federal law requires them to have “at least one direct recording electronic voting system or other voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities at each polling place.”

Direct-recording electronic voting systems are voting machines with touchscreens, buttons, or dials allowing voters to select candidates directly on the machine. They have headphones that allow voters to hear as well as see the ballot options.

Pinnow said Thornapple decided in the middle of 2023 not to use voting machines and opted out of using them in the Aug. 13 election for the “same reasons we did before.” She didn’t elaborate.

In April, Pinnow told Votebeat that nobody in the town had been unable to vote because of the decision not to have accessible voting machines.

“I wish I could talk. I wish I could,” Pinnow said on Thursday. “I wish I could because I think more people need to hear and understand and know why. But at this time, I can’t … because if it for some reason would go to litigation, I don’t want anything out there that I’m spewing this or that or saying something that I didn’t say.”

Erin Webster, a Thornapple voter who’s chair of the Rusk County Democratic Party, said the town polling place didn’t have a voting machine for the April 2 or Aug. 13 elections. Webster said she heard the town picked up a voting machine from the county in the most recent election, but she didn’t see it in use when she voted.

Rusk County Clerk Connie Meyer, a Republican, declined to answer questions in a brief call.

Town residents raised the Justice Department letter to Thornapple in an August meeting, about a month after town officials received it, Webster said. But at that time, Webster said, town officials claimed they still had not met to discuss the letter.

Thornapple Supervisor Jack Zupan didn’t respond to a request for comment, while Supervisor Tom Zelm declined to comment. Thornapple Town Chair Ralph Kenyon couldn’t be reached.

Lawrence Town Chair Bob Nawrocki declined to comment, and town supervisors Stacy Zimmer and Duane Biller didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Spokespeople for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which the Justice Department also authorized the lawsuit against, didn’t provide answers to written questions.

In a call with Webster in April, Zupan said he believed there was a stolen election and that “computers have to go because they’re full of error.”

He said hand-counted ballots are more accurate than using voting machines because, he claimed baselessly that a communist could stick a pen into a machine to manipulate the results.

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

Five of Pennsylvania’s ‘fake electors’ from 2020 are back on Trump’s 2024 slate

2024-08-16T23:40:27+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.

Five Pennsylvania Republicans who joined an alternate slate of electors for Donald Trump in 2020 will again serve as presidential electors in this year’s contest.

William “Bill” Bachenberg, Bernadette Comfort, Ash Khare, Patricia Poprik, and Andrew Reilly are included on a list of electors submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of State by the GOP.

Those electors, along with 15 others, drew criticism after submitting their names as electors for Pennsylvania in December 2020 and casting votes for then-President Trump, even though Joe Biden won the state’s popular vote. But unlike similar groups of alternate or “fake” electors in other swing states in 2020, the Pennsylvania slate avoided legal repercussions because of a caveat they included in the certificate documenting their vote.

Of the five electors appearing again on this year’s slate, three who spoke to Votebeat and Spotlight PA indicated they would be open to doing the same this year if they felt there was a similar legal dispute over the results.

“I honestly believe any electors for either party would do that,” Poprik said.

Pennsylvania, like most states, allocates its presidential electors according to who wins the popular vote. This year, the winning candidate’s electors will meet Dec. 17 to cast their votes.

One elections expert said people who participated in a 2020 elector scheme shouldn’t be allowed to do so again this year.

“It is the voters who determine elections — not ‘fake electors’ who attempt to upend the results of a fair election,” said Lindsey Miller, director of strategic research at Informing Democracy, a nonprofit made up of lawyers, election experts, and researchers that focuses on vote-counting and certification.

“Those who participate in election fraud should be held accountable, not given another bite at the apple,” Miller said.

Who are the electors who choose the president?

In the United States presidential election system, each state is represented by a certain number of electors based on its population. Electors are citizens of the state whose vote determines who wins the presidency. In 2020, Pennsylvania had 20 electoral votes. This year it has 19.

Each political party selects a slate of electors before the general election. Once the winner of the state’s popular vote is determined, the governor authorizes that candidate’s slate to cast their votes in the Electoral College (except in two states, Nebraska and Maine, which award some of their electoral votes proportionally and can split them between candidates). Each state’s electors then submit a certificate of their votes to Congress, which accepts and counts those electoral votes on Jan. 6 of the year following the presidential election. A presidential candidate needs 270 or more electoral votes to win.

Because Joe Biden won the popular vote in Pennsylvania in 2020, his slate of electors were chosen to be part of the Electoral College, and Congress counted the state’s electoral votes for him. But a slate supporting Trump also convened and cast purported electoral votes.

How did Pennsylvania’s alternate electors come together?

According to reporting from The New York Times and other news organizations, as well as Votebeat and Spotlight PA interviews with participants, the plan to convene alternate electors was organized by the Trump campaign.

Lawyers for the campaign, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, appointed a “point person” in each state to help organize the alternate electors, according to the Times. In Pennsylvania, that person was state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who reportedly needed assurances that the plan was legal.

However, two of the electors — Sam DeMarco and Charlie Gerow — said they mainly interacted with Trump attorney James Fitzpatrick.

On Dec. 14, the alternate GOP electors met in the offices of Quantum Communications, Gerow’s Harrisburg-based public affairs firm, to cast votes for Trump. Pennsylvania law requires that the electors meet in the state capital. Biden’s electors also met in Harrisburg to cast their votes on this day.

Unlike the Republicans in some other states, Pennsylvania’s GOP electors added an important caveat to the certificate they signed, saying that the votes they were casting should be counted only if a court found that they were the “duly elected and qualified electors.”

That likely shielded them from the legal consequences faced by participants of similar plots in Michigan and Arizona. But it was unlikely anyway that the alternative GOP slate could emerge as qualified electors.

Many of Trump’s lawsuits challenging Pennsylvania’s results had concluded by Dec. 14. Some of the original Trump electors, such as Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Lawrence Tabas, also declined to sign the certificate either due to concerns over its legality or because they recognized Biden as the legitimate winner, according to the final report of Congress’s January 6 committee, which investigated the 2021 attack on the Capitol on the day the electoral votes were tallied.

What they’re saying this time

Votebeat and Spotlight PA sought comment from the five 2020 GOP alternate electors who are electors again this year to ask them what they would do if they felt there was again a dispute over the results.

Khare and Reilly both disputed that the 2020 document they signed was an “alternate” slate, citing the caveat the electors added about the courts. Poprick also said the caveat was a “big” sticking point for the group.

“We were unanimous in saying we don’t have authority, so we made it contingent,” Reilly said. “If I am a 2024 elector and I am asked to cast a contingent vote, and if it’s legally proper, I will do so again.”

Reilly added that under “no circumstances” would he cast a vote for a candidate who was not certified and had “no path to victory.”

Khare said that in 2020, the alternate electors were not trying to evade the law and that the election was still “in dispute.”

When asked if he would sign a similar alternate slate this year, Khare said, “This is a hypothetical, and in politics, we do not answer hypothetical questions. It depends on what happens.”

Khare added that in 2020 things were “a mess” and that he didn’t expect that scenario this time because “people are aware of election integrity.”

Poprick also said she would be open to again putting her name on an alternate slate of electors.

“If the circumstances were the same and there were pending legal matters that had to be adjudicated, and you had to meet by that date, I would,” she said.

Comfort and Bachenberg did not immediately return phone messages or emails requesting comment.

Miller, of Informing Democracy, said the public should remain vigilant about efforts to weaponize misinformation, undermine the vote-counting process, and attack certification.

“These efforts will fail,” she said. “We remain committed to identifying any officials who may pose a threat to fair elections this November so that they may be monitored and held accountable for every step of the post-election process.”

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

Candidates who advanced false election claims win Republican primaries in Michigan

2024-08-09T15:49:35+00:00

A self-proclaimed “constitutional sheriff,” a township clerk facing felony charges, and a county clerk candidate who wants to “hand count every ballot cast at the end of each voting day” sailed through their Republican primaries Tuesday, earning themselves spots on November’s ballot and likely victory.

The results are a sign that many local voters in more conservative areas of Michigan don’t consider it disqualifying for local elected officials to spread conspiracy theories or interfere with elections to advance the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump.

In Barry County, north of Kalamazoo, incumbent Sheriff Dar Leaf handily beat three GOP challengers. In Macomb County, Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot did the same. Victoria Bishop, a clerk candidate in Antrim County, claimed victory in a five-way GOP race with about 37% of the vote.

In all three races, there is no Democratic opponent appearing on the fall ballot, so the three are all but sure to win their elections in November.

Leaf considers himself a “constitutional sheriff,” the term for law-enforcement officials who believe they hold the highest level of authority in their county, above even the governor. Leaf has gotten national attention for his efforts to investigate the 2020 election.

Others running as constitutional sheriff candidates across the state lost their primaries, Michigan Public found.

As Bridge Michigan reported in 2021, Leaf tried to seize voting machines in Barry County. He also had deputies question election clerks to try to prove the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

He was also named in an investigation by Attorney General Dana Nessel over his involvement in an alleged scheme led by lawyer Matthew DePerno to get access to local election offices’ ballot tabulators and to break into them to conduct tests. The investigation led to charges against DePerno and attorney Stefanie Lambert Junttila.

Leaf was not charged with any associated crimes for his alleged actions.

Shelby Township’s Grot, however, faces charges for his role in the 2020 fake-elector scheme to replace Michigan’s electoral votes for Joe Biden with those for Trump. He was one of 16 people who were each charged with eight felony counts after they signed a false certificate claiming Trump had won Michigan.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Grot told The Detroit News after his win. “I’m just waiting for the court date to have my day in court, and the truth’s going to come out.”

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s Office has stripped Grot of his powers as clerk. And last year, the state Bureau of Elections sent Grot a letter that said his alleged involvement with the fake certificate “undermines voter confidence in the integrity of elections.”

Running elections is one of the primary duties of a clerk, but Grot told The News on Wednesday that he wasn’t concerned about what that meant for future elections.

In Antrim County, Bishop could be the next clerk — but current Clerk Sheryl Guy told Bridge Michigan last week that she might launch a write-in campaign. “I wouldn’t put Antrim County in that position of being stuck with somebody that might be crazy,” she said.

Antrim County, in northern Michigan, was caught in a swirl of conspiracy theories after the 2020 election because of an error in tabulator configuration that briefly caused initial election night results to show that Biden won the heavily Republican county. Guy oversaw that election, and the results were quickly corrected, but the county has remained a target of groups suspicious of the way elections are run.

Bishop’s main promise to voters, as stated on her yellow lawn signs, is to “restore election integrity in Antrim County.” For her, that includes hand-counting every ballot — a lengthy and often inaccurate process — and cleaning up the county’s voter rolls by removing voters who have died or moved away.

Bishop and her husband, a radio host often referred to as “Trucker Randy,” have helped to spread election conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen.

Those false claims have now been repeatedly debunked, but when reached Thursday, Randy Bishop — who identified himself as the candidate’s campaign manager — said they weren’t theories at all. He insisted he had evidence that proved deeper wrongdoing in the 2020 election. He declined to share it, instead saying he would offer it to anyone in Antrim County who wanted it.

In the races monitored by Votebeat, only one candidate lost their election after spreading election conspiracy theories: Stephanie Scott, the former Adams Township clerk who was ousted in a recall election, lost her Republican primary for Hillsdale County clerk. Scott is facing several felony charges related to unauthorized computer access, misconduct in office, and concealing or withholding a voting machine. She’s also facing a misdemeanor charge for allegedly disobeying instructions from election officials. Her attorney, Lambert Junttila, faces similar charges in the Adams Township case.

Scott did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Votebeat. In June, Scott’s new attorney, Dan Hartman, moved to drop the felony charges against Scott and Lambert Junttila. The judge ultimately denied the motion to dismiss. Scott’s next hearing is scheduled for September.

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

How 9 mistakenly discarded ballots in Luzerne County, Pa., fueled Trump’s 2020 lies about elections

2024-07-29T09:20:00+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.

New details about a 2020 case of accidentally discarded ballots in Luzerne County show how the Justice Department’s handling of an FBI investigation helped fuel then-President Donald Trump’s false narrative of a stolen election — despite department policies aimed at preventing such a situation.

A report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, its internal watchdog, examined how top officials handled and publicly released information from the FBI’s investigation, including then-Attorney General William Barr’s decision to share details of the investigation with Trump while it was ongoing.

Trump’s reelection campaign seized on the investigation into the discarded ballots as evidence that mail voting was being manipulated to steal the election from Trump.

However, the FBI found the real reason was much more mundane, the inspector general pointed out: A “mentally impaired” seasonal worker had simply made a mistake.

The Justice Department has policies to prevent investigations from being politicized, especially during an election year. The inspector general’s report highlights how breaches of these policies can snowball into false and exaggerated claims of election fraud.

“These types of minor clerical errors in election administration can be misused by bad-faith actors to undermine confidence in our electoral process,” said Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt in a statement Friday. “Election administration is highly scrutinized, and any error — no matter how inadvertent, no matter how minor — will be used by those seeking to undermine confidence in election results and our representative democracy.”

Seven ballots cast for Trump appear in the trash

The case goes back to Sept. 16, 2020, when then-Luzerne County Election Director Shelby Watchilla discovered that one of her temporary election workers had mistakenly put nine military absentee mail ballots in the trash, according to Politico reporting at the time.

Watchilla reported the incident to supervisors, and two days later the Luzerne County district attorney notified the FBI that a county elections employee had discarded seven military absentee ballots — which had been taken out of their envelopes, revealing votes cast for Trump — in a dumpster. Two still sealed envelopes that the employee had “mishandled” were also provided to the FBI, according to the report.

The FBI took over the investigation on Sept. 21. The next day, the district attorney issued a press release about the incident and the FBI’s role in investigating it.

According to the inspector general’s report, then-Attorney General William Barr briefed Trump on the incident on Sept. 23, and informed him that the ballots had been voted for him, which was not public at the time. Trump went on to repeat that claim on a Fox Radio show the next morning

An initial statement from David Freed, who was overseeing the investigation as U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, incorrectly said all nine ballots had been cast for Trump; a corrected version said only seven had been cast for Trump, while the votes of the two unopened ballots were unknown.

The Trump campaign and its allies quickly began weaving the incident into a narrative about election fraud, which ultimately escalated to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by Trump followers at the U.S. Capitol. Some examples:

Matt Wolking, a Trump campaign official, tweeted on Sept. 24 that “Democrats are trying to steal the election,” and repeated Freed’s erroneous statement that all nine mishandled ballots had been cast for Trump.
Trump mentioned the incident twice at the first presidential debate to back his claim that the election was “going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen.”
On the stump, Trump inflated his claim at one point to say "thousands of ballots” with votes for him were “dumped in dumpsters.”
Conservative activist Dan Carr said on Facebook the incident was “true election interference,” USA Today reported.
Campaign surrogate Eric Trump, the president’s son, alluded to the Luzerne case the day after the election as an indicator of Democratic cheating, saying “we’ve seen it from Day 1.”

Justice Department knew more than it let on

Even as Barr was informing Trump of the incident on Sept. 23, and Freed was drafting his statement, the Justice Department knew crucial information about the incident that it kept from the public, allowing misinformation about the case to go unchallenged.

The FBI had interviewed the temporary election worker on Sept. 22, and determined that he had “memory problems” and was “100% disabled” due to a “vehicle accident in 20s w[ith] brain injury,” the inspector general’s report said. The FBI also noted in an internal Sept. 23 email that the worker was “not capable of following simple instructions” and was assigned “menial tasks.”

Part of the problem, according to the report, was that return envelopes for military ballots were being mistaken for envelopes containing mail ballot request forms, so Luzerne election workers were opening both, even though ballot envelopes are not to be opened until Election Day. The envelopes containing ballots were not clearly marked, the Pennsylvania Department of State said at the time. Training for workers was increased after the incident, and in a statement this week, Schmidt highlighted a new training program for election directors launched last year.

Prior to issuing his Sept. 24 statement, Freed also told Barr he was “not sure” that the investigation was “going to result in a criminal charge.”

“Indeed, the Department determined before Election Day that no charges would be brought in the matter, although it failed to inform the public of that fact until well after the election,” the report said. It wasn’t until Jan. 15, 2021, that Freed’s successor announced publicly that no charges would be filed.

Report says Freed’s conduct violated some policies

The Justice Department has internal rules and policies on how federal investigators should handle and release details from an investigation, including “a longstanding policy prohibiting Department employees from commenting publicly about ongoing, uncharged investigations,” the report states.

The report focused on determining whether Freed’s public statements and Barr’s involvement in them, as well as Barr’s conversation with Trump, ran afoul of those policies.

The report said Freed’s statements “raised questions” about whether departmental policy had been violated, and about the motivations for releasing those statements during an election cycle, in particular because the statements specified the “name of a candidate for whom the votes were cast on the discarded ballots.”

The policy, the Election Year Sensitivities Memorandum, tells department employees they can “never select the timing of public statements (attributed or not) … in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” The policy is meant to safeguard “the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality, and non-partisanship,” the report states.

Ultimately, the inspector general’s report concluded that Freed’s actions violated some DOJ policies, but that Freed and Barr hadn’t committed misconduct, because of ambiguities in the attorney general’s authority to approve the release of statements. The report also said while the inspector general was “troubled” by Barr’s relaying of details about the investigation to Trump, it was not a policy violation.

The inspector general said it was referring the matter to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for investigation into possible violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the results of an election.”

Freed, whom Trump nominated as a U.S. attorney in 2017, denied to investigators that he acted with any political motivation.

Incident highlights dangers of misinformation

Claire Wardle, associate professor at Cornell University who studies misinformation and disinformation, said incidents like the one in Luzerne are not uncommon, since elections are often run by volunteers or those working for little pay. But in today’s partisan environment, the “messiness” of this process has been reframed through people’s biases about elections.

“Whereas before some of those human mistakes didn’t make the news, now we see what is a very natural part of democracy getting twisted,” she said. “In almost every single case it gets sorted, but the problem we have now is that people take photos and weaponize it to say ‘look, the system can’t be trusted.’”

Wardle said that this year, news organizations should put out stories about how the system works and issues that may occur before they happen, not after. Individuals should also think carefully about what they share on social media before they have all the facts, she said, since it can take months for a proper investigation to determine what actually happened.

“America is in a really dangerous place right now because people don’t trust the system… and the country will collapse if there’s not trust in the system,” she said.

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

Wisconsin’s new rules on ballot drop boxes create opportunity for election challenges and ‘vigilantes’

2024-07-15T17:37:19+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.

Voters using Wisconsin’s newly legalized drop boxes may return only their own ballots, except in special cases, according to new guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. That means even a voter dropping off a spouse’s ballot along with their own could be considered as having cast a ballot improperly.

The rule could be difficult for municipal clerks to enforce. But it leaves an opening for potential challenges from conservative election activists, who are already preparing to act on suspicions that Democratic voters will abuse the boxes to commit fraud. Allegations of drop box misuse could also spur legal challenges to election results, experts say.

In the run-up to this year’s elections, local officials are dealing with heavy scrutiny from election observers seeking to challenge absentee ballots, and Republicans have sought to increase the number of people monitoring drop boxes. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde last week called for 24-hour drop box monitoring in Madison, The Washington Post reported.

Those calls came quickly after a Wisconsin Supreme Court majority on July 5 overturned a 2022 decision that banned drop boxes. Since the decision, clerks in cities like Madison, Milwaukee and other municipalities around the state have stated their intent to use drop boxes in the August primary.

Drop boxes became one of the most politicized election issues in Wisconsin after the 2020 presidential contest, leading to extensive misinformation, false allegations of widespread fraud, and “2,000 Mules,” a purported documentary about drop box misuse that has been roundly debunked. Their return in Wisconsin promises to revive the suspicions that fed those claims.

“People who don’t believe that the system has integrity are looking for places to prove that, and the drop box just becomes an easy place to go, because it’s in public, and there are lots of voters interacting with those boxes as they deposit ballots,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, the founding director of the university’s Elections Research Center. “And so it’s a place where their suspicions can be tested.”

Already, on social media channels prominently featuring election conspiracy theorists, people are making plans to monitor drop boxes.

One person in a Telegram group called for people to “Sit by those boxes like flies on shit.”

Another suggested what could be more menacing behavior, calling for drop box observers to follow voters home, “Make a note of their address then post it on Telegram.”

Even a perceived misuse of a drop box could be used to fuel concerns about election integrity, UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said.

“It may mean that you have more observers that are going to camp out at drop boxes looking for something that they think is wrong, whether or not it is, and having a viral moment,” he said. “There often may well be innocent explanations, but nevertheless, the appearance will be something questionable enough for them to run with.”

The last time drop boxes were in use, there wasn’t a rule or guidance explicitly addressing whether voters had to return only their own ballots to drop boxes. When the Wisconsin Supreme Court banned them in 2022 following a challenge from conservatives, it said voters with absentee ballots had to mail them or deliver them in person to the clerk, but didn’t rule on whether a voter could mail other people’s ballots.

When the state Supreme Court, now with a liberal majority, overturned the drop box ban on July 5, it didn’t address whether people could return ballots besides their own to a drop box. But the commission stepped in with its guidance, saying voters can return only their own ballots unless they’re helping somebody who’s disabled or hospitalized.

Additionally, the guidance clarifies the court decision doesn’t require drop boxes to be staffed or require clerks to “ask any questions” of a voter returning a ballot to a drop box.

People can watch drop boxes, as long as they don’t interfere with voting, the guidance says, and clerks should contact law enforcement if people impede the use of a drop box.

‘Vigilantes’ could get involved in monitoring drop boxes

Besides Wisconsin, 27 states explicitly allow drop boxes, while another six states have jurisdictions that use them.

States differ in their rules on who can return voters’ absentee ballots to a drop box or a clerk. In Georgia, which has drop boxes, voters’ absentee ballots can be returned by their family members, household members, or caregivers. In Alabama, though, voters can return only their own ballots.

In Wisconsin, Burden said, the new WEC guidance draws “a brighter line” than the courts did on the issue of who can return a ballot. “So it might give some justification for these kinds of vigilantes who want to watch the drop boxes and look for wrongdoing.”

Burden cautioned, though, that there could be ambiguous situations where these people might incorrectly “jump to conclusions.”

For example, a voter could be putting three ballots into a drop box, two of them completed by their disabled parents, which would be allowed, he said. But if an election observer captured that on video, such a moment could be misinterpreted, or deliberately misused, to spread suspicions of improper voting.

“It gets very easy for a misunderstanding to spin out of control,” Burden said, “and so it would be much better for election officials or courts — people who actually know what they’re doing — to be on top of this, rather than allow rogue individuals to inject themselves into the process.”

Burden warned that such vigilante behavior could escalate to a form of voter intimidation, as in Arizona in 2022, where a group of people wearing masks and carrying guns stood close to drop boxes until a judge ordered them to stand farther away.

Challenges to drop boxes could take many forms

In Shorewood Hills, a 2,100-person village surrounded by Madison, village Clerk Julie Fitzgerald unlocked the village drop box the day the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that they were legal.

Fitzgerald said having drop boxes available again for ballots is especially convenient because the village box is also used by residents to drop off their utility payments. When drop boxes were banned for voting purposes, Fitzgerald had to close them off during elections, requiring residents to return utility payments elsewhere.

Neither the court’s ruling nor the election commission’s guidance requires drop boxes to be staffed. Before the commission issued its guidance, Fitzgerald said she hoped it wouldn’t put the onus on clerks to monitor drop boxes.

But clerks can still come under scrutiny if a voter returns multiple ballots. And they would face pressure to do something about it to preserve the integrity of the vote count.

“As a statutory matter, the rules concerning return of absentee ballots are mandatory. Improperly cast absentee votes are not to be counted,” said Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which filed the lawsuit that led to the 2022 drop box ban.

There are a few different ways to handle a situation like that, Esenberg said.

One option is a drawdown: That’s when election officials withdraw randomly selected ballots because of a numerical discrepancy and exclude them from the count. State law outlines a drawdown as a possible remedy when, during canvassing, the number of tabulated ballots is greater than the number of recorded voters. The idea is that if they can’t determine exactly which ballots should be invalidated, they might at least be able to determine the quantity of those ballots, and randomly select that quantity to exclude from the count.

State law and the election commission’s manual don’t stipulate doing a drawdown for improperly returned absentee ballots, but plaintiffs could request such a remedy in a lawsuit.

Other remedies can be considered, Esenberg added, pointing to a North Carolina case where the state ordered a new election after the Republican candidate’s campaign was accused of ballot tampering.

Post-election challenges have limitations, however, Esenberg said.

After the 2020 election, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a challenge by then-President Donald Trump that called for drawing down 220,000 votes from Dane and Milwaukee counties. The ruling said it was “unreasonable” for Trump to challenge the ballots after the election on the basis of laws and procedures that were in place well before the election.

Referring in part to that case, Yablon said, “Courts in Wisconsin and elsewhere do tend to hesitate before throwing out the votes of eligible voters.”

If the returned ballots are otherwise proper, he said, “the courts are going to be very reluctant to disenfranchise someone based on a deficiency in just how it was returned.”

Challenges to current drop box rules could also come from the other direction, in favor of expanding return options, Yablon said.

Groups that want to loosen the current guidance could ask the commission or a court permission for them to collect and return multiple ballots, arguing that the Supreme Court’s latest ruling represents a broader preference for expanding return options, he said.

Safeguards against fraud are in place for ballots left in drop boxes

It’s possible under the current rules that an otherwise legitimate ballot can be returned improperly, leaving clerks or challengers to find a way to resolve that issue.

But election officials have safeguards in place to protect against the possibility of widespread fraud through drop boxes, like somebody filling out and returning multiple ballots to a drop box under fake names or in the name of somebody who has already voted.

Wisconsin clerks process absentee ballots from drop boxes just as they do any other absentee vote, including those sent through the mail or dropped off in person. With narrow exceptions for military voters, election officials send absentee ballots only to Wisconsinites who have requested one and are confirmed to have registered to vote with a valid ID.

Before opening the ballot envelopes deposited in a drop box, election officials verify they have witness and voter signatures and a witness address. Then they open the envelope, verify that the person casting the ballot was qualified to vote and that they hadn’t already voted in the election, and record them on the poll books as having returned their absentee ballot. Only then would they tabulate the vote.

In its guidance, the commission also issued best security practices for drop boxes, including making sure drop boxes are in a well-lit area, that they have locks or seals to secure ballots, and that they can’t be moved or tampered with.

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

Fight against misinformation faces headwinds as 2024 election nears

2024-06-24T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post 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.

We are 135 days out from the 2024 presidential election. The fight against misinformation and disinformation is hopelessly politicized, and the infrastructure set up to push back against bad or misleading information online is far less robust than it was.

High-profile efforts to combat bad information about elections, such as the Stanford Internet Observatory, have scaled back or shut down. Some are facing threats, as well as lawsuits and investigations from conservatives who say the groups are allied with the left and targeting speech liberals disagree with.

The result of the Republican pushback, some experts say, is a climate that’s friendlier to disinformation baselessly undermining faith in elections, and feeding political extremism.

“We may be less prepared 155 days out in 2024 than we were under President Trump” in 2020, Sen. Mark Warner told The Associated Press earlier this month. Warner, a Virginia Democrat, chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.

There’s plenty of bad or misleading information about elections out there, but not many clear answers on what can be done about it — practically or legally. Some direction could come soon from a potentially pivotal decision: The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule any minute in a closely watched case over whether the White House and government agencies may urge social media companies to take down what the government characterizes as misinformation.

Experts say the case and allegations of partisan-driven censorship have already had a chilling effect, and the federal government has pulled back its efforts to fight misinformation. During oral arguments, though, many of the justices seemed disinclined to rule that such efforts violated the First Amendment.

Other courts are wrestling with the limits of free speech.

The Michigan Supreme Court last week ruled in a case involving felony charges against two conservative political operatives, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who targeted Black voters in multiple states in 2020 with robocalls. The robocalls falsely warned voters that the information they supplied when voting by mail could be used to target people with unpaid debts and other potential issues.

In the ruling, a majority of the justices found that a provision of a Michigan law that bars using threats or other improper means to deter a person from voting was too broad. They held that false speech related to voting requirements could be punished without violating free speech rights, but “only if it is intentionally false speech that is related to voting requirements or procedures and is made in an attempt to deter or influence an elector’s vote.”

The court returned the case to the lower court, instructing it to determine whether Wohl and Burkman’s conduct violated the narrowly constructed wording.

The Michigan case is still pending, but other jurisdictions have already found that Wohl and Burkman’s robocalls crossed the line. The pair agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle a suit in New York, and pleaded guilty to related charges in Ohio. And the Federal Communications Commission issued a $5 million penalty against them for illegal robocalls, brushing away the argument that political robocalls were exempt from a consumer protection law.

There aren’t many officials or groups standing up to defend the Burkman/Wohl robocall effort, and for good reason. But on other matters of disinformation, there’s less consensus.

Claire Wardle, an expert on misinformation who co-founded and co-directs the Information Futures Lab at Brown University, said the conservative attacks on experts and institutions researching and speaking out against misinformation have “made funders more tentative about supporting these types of projects.”

Individual researchers have either stopped doing this work or become less vocal, she said, and the relationships between researchers, social media platforms, and the government have “shut down almost completely. There is almost no communications between these groups, which means there is no knowledge sharing, learning or flagging issues.”

Nina Jankowicz, who earlier this year formed a new nonprofit, the American Sunlight Project, aimed at fighting disinformation, made a similar point, citing the biggest change as “the landscape of cooperation” on election disinformation, inside and outside government.

Russia is just one of several foreign actors trying to influence U.S. elections with bad information at this point, Jankowicz pointed out, and other nations are “laundering” their efforts to conceal the true sources of it and make it appear more trustworthy.

“It’s a much easier way to ensure that your message gets out there than trying to buy ads in rubles,” she said.

So given the threats from many directions, what can members of the public do?

The good news is, Americans are now more aware that social media algorithms are tailoring the information aimed at them, and they are more information literate, Jankowicz said. Armed with that knowledge, she said, people need to take a few beats and check that something is from a reputable source before they share it.

“Everybody has a responsibility to be vetting their information,” she said.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Some creators of debunked ‘2000 Mules’ haven’t stopped selling the movie, or its false premise

2024-06-10T10:38:29+00:00

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

Hi, y’all,

The right-wing media company that published the purported documentary and book “2000 Mules” announced late last week that it was pulling them from distribution. Salem Media Group also apologized to an Atlanta man for false claims in the film that he’d illegally cast the ballots of others.

It is the latest in a long series of hits to the film’s credibility, though the movie and its makers — Dinesh D’Souza and conservative nonprofit True the Vote — appear to still have a few lives left.

The film was released in May 2022, and held its premiere at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. It alleges that hundreds of so-called mules illegally cast ballots in the 2020 election, swinging it for Joe Biden.

Mark Andrews, the man featured in the film, sued Salem Media, True the Vote, and D’Souza for defamation in October 2022 over footage that showed him dropping off ballots while a voiceover falsely accused him of committing a crime. Investigators later found that the ballots were those of Andrews’ family, dropped off legally. Salem Media’s apology and the retraction stem from that lawsuit.

By the time Andrews filed his suit, the film had already been roundly debunked. The creators responded to questions about its credibility by challenging journalists to debates and filing complaints against states that refused to act on their assertions. Meanwhile, they refused to come forward with much evidence to support their allegations.

None of the fact-checking mattered much to fans of the movie, though, and the film sparked a wave of people taking it upon themselves to guard ballot drop boxes. The Texas Republican Party organized three screenings of the film at its 2022 convention. Trump called it the “greatest [and] most impactful documentary of our time.” The movie also made plenty of money .

Similarly, Salem’s choice to apologize and stop distributing the film may not dent the faith of the people who already believe the film’s claims. As The Bulwark’s Andrew Eggar wrote of the retraction, “Mopping up the water doesn’t un-carve the gorge.”

Notably, the apology came only from Salem; True the Vote didn’t sign on. In a statement about Salem’s apology and retraction, True the Vote said, “It is true that Salem is no longer in the case, but their departure does not change our position.” The group said it stood by the methodologies and claims in the film, despite having admitted earlier this year in a Georgia court filing that it had no evidence to support many of those claims.

True the Vote’s statement said that Salem’s apology is “gleefully being spread by the legacy media.” That gets at a central problem here: The people who believe what “2000 Mules” claimed are a completely different group from the people who will take notice of Salem’s retraction.

Despite Salem’s decision to stop distributing it, “2000 Mules” is still widely available. It is, for example, being shown in Wisconsin in a few weeks as part of a Monday movie series put on by conservative nonprofit Turning Point Action. The DVD is available for purchase on Amazon from D’Souza Media: $24.50 will get you a “2 DVD combo set” featuring both “2000 Mules” and D’Souza’s 2020 film “Trump Card.”

D’Souza has also created other themed content for purchase.

For example, there’s a children’s book for $21.06 called “The Plot Against the King 2000 Mules” (that’s the actual title), which is described as “a fantastical retelling of the horrible plot against Donald Trump to the whole family. It teaches fairness, integrity, and most of all: the importance of being truthful.”

As a reminder, D’Souza pleaded guilty to facilitating illegal campaign contributions — a felony — in 2014, only to be pardoned by Trump four years later.

If there’s any doubt that support for “2000 Mules” will outlive Salem’s decision, consider that D’Souza’s son-in-law, Brandon Gill, is likely to be elected to Congress this year in Texas’s 26th congressional district. Gill, a former investment banker with no political background, set up a website in 2022 called The DC Enquirer to promote “2000 Mules” and moved to a ruby-red district in Texas where a longtime congressman happened to be retiring.

This year, Gill won his primary with more than 60% of the vote.

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

Kari Lake lawyer suspended for 2 months for lying in court during election challenge

2024-06-07T19:57:34+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.

Update, June 7: The Arizona Supreme Court’s presiding disciplinary judge hearing panel ruled June 7 to suspend Bryan Blehm’s Arizona law license for 60 days, with one year of probation and a requirement to complete ethical training. Blehm also must pay the State Bar of Arizona’s legal costs for the disciplinary proceedings.

The panel stated that a long-term suspension was not warranted, in part because it was Blehm’s first disciplinary offense and “the misrepresentations at issue were so blatantly obvious there was little chance the Arizona Supreme Court would be misled by them.”

Lawyer Bryan Blehm, who challenged the results of Arizona’s 2022 election in court on behalf of GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, faces a suspension of his law license that would likely block him from challenging the results of the state’s upcoming election.

Blehm’s law license should be suspended for six months and one day, counsel for the State Bar of Arizona recommended to Arizona Supreme Court’s presiding disciplinary judge, Margaret Downie, during a hearing Tuesday.

The bar’s lawyers said they came to the recommendation after concluding that Blehm lied to the court when he claimed that it was an “undisputed fact” that fraudulent ballots were illegally “inserted” into the 2022 election results.

“Lying is a big deal for a lawyer,” Hunter Perlmeter*, bar counsel, told Downie. Perlmeter said that Blehm has not admitted wrongdoing or shown remorse.

Downie and a disciplinary panel consisting of a volunteer lawyer and a volunteer member of the public will issue a decision regarding Blehm’s punishment within 30 days.

Blehm was not at the hearing Tuesday. He did not immediately respond to a phone call requesting comment.

Downie’s decision will be a milestone for attorney discipline, as the state considers when long-shot challenges in elections cross the line to frivolous cases. It’s against rules of professional conduct to mislead the court, file frivolous cases, or bring cases in bad faith.

The recommendation to suspend Blehm’s license for one day past six months is significant: Under state bar rules, any suspension longer than six months would require Blehm to go through a full reinstatement hearing and show he has “been rehabilitated … and possesses the moral qualifications and knowledge of the law” required before his license is reinstated.

“The lawyer must prove that the reasons for which he/she engaged in misconduct have been overcome,” said Joe Hengemuehler, spokesperson for the state bar association. The idea is that “if a lawyer has identified why they engaged in misconduct and subsequently addressed those issues, they are not likely to re-offend.”

After the hearing, Blehm posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the recommended punishment “means I have to go and kiss their golden ring.”

So far, Blehm has denied breaking any rules of professional conduct. Indeed, Perlmeter told Downie, Blehm filed a “counterclaim” to the judge, without any legal authority to do so. The filing accuses the state bar and the bar lawyers in his case of breaking rules of professional conduct to tarnish his character and reputation.

Also, on an online talk show and in social media posts, he has accused the bar of filing the complaint against him for political reasons and of disbarring him without a trial, though he hasn’t been disbarred.

Perlmeter told the judge that Blehm’s comments about the court system and uncooperative response to the state bar during the investigation merit a substantial punishment.

“Mr. Blehm has made it abundantly clear he has no remorse for his conduct,” Perlmeter said.

If Downie follows the board’s recommendation, it’s unlikely Blehm could file a lawsuit challenging the results of this year’s election — for Lake, who is now running for U.S. Senate, or any other candidate. That’s because suspensions don’t take effect for 30 days unless otherwise specified.

Even if Downie resolves the case quickly, the 30 days plus six months and a day from Tuesday would push Blehm’s suspension into December, past this year’s Nov. 30 deadline for filing election contests for the Nov. 5 election. It’s also unclear how long reinstatement proceedings could take.

Blehm has practiced law for 20 years, according to testimony during the hearing on Tuesday, and worked at a family law firm until recently. His election law work began in 2021, when he agreed to represent government contractor Cyber Ninjas as they recounted all votes cast in Maricopa County’s 2020 presidential election on behalf of the Republican state Senate.

He has since represented Lake and an organization allied with her in multiple election lawsuits. He also represented two Republican Cochise County supervisors during the midterm election as they pushed for an illegal hand count of all ballots and sued the county’s elections director for attempting to block them.

The bar complaint stemmed from Blehm’s representation of Lake in her initial election challenge. The state Supreme Court issued $2,000 in sanctions against Blehm and Lake’s other attorney, Washington-based Kurt Olsen, for making the “undisputed fact” claim. This was a false representation, the court ruled, because the county and state had disputed the claim. Downie will hear a related bar complaint against Olsen in June.

During the hearing Tuesday, Downie asked why Blehm’s punishment should be greater than that of two other Republican lawyers who have acknowledged violating ethics rules while litigating recent election challenges. Perlmeter explained that, in those cases, the attorneys were not accused of violating the bar’s rules for misleading the court.

Downie also highlighted a recent Supreme Court opinion reversing sanctions in a separate case that made clear that the court is to treat election lawyers the same as lawyers practicing in other areas.

Perlmeter assured her that the case “is not being treated differently because of the political nature.”

Correction, May 21: This story originally misspelled Hunter Perlmeter’s name.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Arizona weighs when lawyers’ long-shot election challenges cross the line

2024-05-20T20:23:42+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.

At a state bar association event on election law last month, a jovial mood turned to silence after Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told the assembled lawyers that they need to do a better job of upholding their professional standards.

Election lawyers are filing too many frivolous cases “just because the plaintiffs are mad at their political opponents,” Fontes said at the podium, and they’re endangering public faith in democracy.

To back up his admonition — which has not been reported previously — he cited the unprecedented number of election lawyers who are being sanctioned by the courts over frivolous claims. Judges in Arizona have issued penalties in at least five cases against lawyers who have filed election lawsuits since 2020 — as much as $122,000 in one case — and the bar association has received ethics complaints against more than two dozen lawyers.

But the rise in sanctions and disciplinary scrutiny is prompting debate about exactly when lawyers who bring election challenges are crossing the line, and whether professional standards of conduct have shifted.

Professional standards prohibit attorneys from bringing frivolous cases and require that cases be brought in good faith. As the presidential election approaches, the Arizona Supreme Court and the state bar association are grappling with how to apply those standards in practice.

Lawyers should know, for example, that they can’t mislead the court. But it’s not always clear how much investigating a lawyer is obligated to do before deciding whether a case has enough merit to pursue, especially given the tight timeline under the law for challenging election results. While officials such as Fontes argue that sanctions are necessary to deter frivolous litigation, others worry that the threat of punishing lawyers could chill claims that deserve to be heard by a court, even if they’re long shots.

This month, the state Supreme Court reversed $27,000 in sanctions issued by lower courts in connection with a 2020 case filed by the Arizona Republican Party. The lower courts found that the party had filed the lawsuit in bad faith, against the wrong plaintiffs at the wrong time, and that the lawyers should be sanctioned for that. But the Supreme Court felt differently, issuing a broader message about when sanctions are appropriate, and when they are not.

“Our courts should be cautious that, in their zeal to ensure that election challenges are properly grounded in fact and law under the guise of defending an ‘election’s legitimacy,’ they do not inadvertently inflict real damage to our republic by slamming the courthouse door on citizens and their counsel legitimately seeking to vindicate rights, which is also important to maintaining public confidence in elections,” the opinion said.

Of the lawyers facing ethical complaints related to the 2020 and 2022 elections, so far, two of them, elections lawyer and state Rep. Alex Kolodin and business lawyer Daniel McCauley, have admitted to breaking ethics rules and accepted punishment. But the bar dismissed at least 11 of the complaints, and at least 10 are still pending, a sign of how difficult it is to determine whether a lawyer has acted improperly.

Over the next month, the Arizona Supreme Court’s presiding disciplinary judge, Margaret Downie, will hear cases against three lawyers who represented 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday to help Downie determine the punishment for one of them, Bryan Blehm. It will be the first public disciplinary hearing related to election law ethics complaints from the 2020 and 2022 cycle.

Downie ruled on April 30 that Blehm violated several ethics rules. But for Tuesday’s hearing, she wants to hear Blehm’s arguments about how the Supreme Court’s ruling on the GOP sanctions should affect his case.

Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer, who serves on the bar committee that reviews ethics complaints for probable cause before they go to the judge, said it’s a defining moment for both the state bar and the state as a whole.

Volkmer said decisions on sanctions or ethics violations can have dire consequences for a lawyer, financially and reputationally. At the same time, he said, the line between a meritorious claim and a frivolous one is “not bright. It’s not clear.”

2020 set the stage for new litigation landscape

Arizona law requires that lawsuits challenging election results, called election contests, be brought soon after an election is certified. The law also requires challengers to prove that problems, fraud, or malfeasance affected the outcome of the election. Historically, that has meant such lawsuits were narrowly targeted, usually involving tight races or specific issues that clearly could have affected the results. Election law was a niche field, providing cyclical, fast-paced, and predictable work for a small group of attorneys with experience.

But the field has changed dramatically since 2020, and the rash of ethics complaints against election lawyers is a recent development, according to a spokesperson for the state bar association.

Shortly after states certified the 2020 election, Sidney Powell, a lawyer who at one point represented former President Donald Trump, filed expansive lawsuits claiming widespread election fraud across multiple swing states, including Arizona, but provided few to no specifics.

Kolodin, a Republican election attorney in the state, served as local counsel for Powell’s Arizona lawsuit, which alleged that voting machine manufacturer Dominion was founded “to ensure computerized ballot stuffing and vote manipulation,” and that “hundreds of thousands of illegal, ineligible, duplicate or purely fictitious ballots” were cast in the 2020 election. A judge ruled Powell’s claims were “sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence.”

Other cases filed after the 2020 election were more typical, taking aim at specific problems or suspected problems during the election. But even in those cases, lawyers who brought the suits faced ethics complaints from lawyers associated with Democrats and some outside watchdog groups.

In addition to Kolodin, complaints took aim at some experienced Arizona election lawyers who represent Republicans, such as Kory Langhofer, Thomas Basile, Brett Johnson and Eric Spencer. The bar dismissed the complaints against all of those but Kolodin.

In November, Kolodin, who had received complaints after filing the Powell lawsuit and two others, agreed that he had violated two rules of professional conduct, one barring lawyers from bringing frivolous cases, and another that broadly targets various types of misconduct. He agreed to complete five ethics courses, including one focused on “meritorious claims and contentions.”

Kolodin now says he would have acted differently on the Powell lawsuit today, focusing on different claims and providing different supporting material.

But he also says he was caught up in shifting standards. Before 2020, he said, the sense was “as long as you don’t lie, cheat, or steal, you aren’t going to get sanctioned about it, so don’t worry about it.”

Conjecture not welcome in the courts

The case that produced the stiffest sanctions — $122,000 split between three lawyers — provides hints about what type of conduct goes too far.

As the 2022 election approached, Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, both Republicans, recruited out-of-state lawyers to challenge the way Arizona counts ballots, based on claims that voting machines weren’t secure.

They included prominent Trump-supporting attorney Alan Dershowitz; Andrew Parker, a lawyer in Minnesota, working on behalf of an organization run by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an election conspiracy theorist; and Washington-based lawyer Kurt Olsen.

When issuing the sanctions, U.S. District Judge John Tuchi wrote that the lawyers inferred inaccurate facts about elections, such as claiming that Arizona does not use paper ballots, and “other tangential allegations that provided little if any support for their claims.”

While “conjecture and speculation” may be advanced on TV or social media, Tuchi wrote, “such expressions are neither permitted nor welcomed in a court of law.”

This case gave rise to ethics complaints against Olsen and Parker, tied directly to their statements in this case. Downie will consider these cases in June.

2022 election contests help define bad faith

The way courts addressed claims during the midterm election provide more clues about when judges believe attorneys are bringing meritless cases in bad faith.

After the election, Lake, Finchem, and GOP attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh all filed election contests challenging their losses, and many of their attorneys ultimately faced bar complaints or sanctions.

Hamadeh’s initial contest, related to whether election problems led to his narrow 280-vote loss, prompted no sanctions.

But when Hamadeh filed a separate legal action on related matters, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Susanna Pineda found his repeated attempts to litigate the same issues worthy of sanctions. The penalties for him and his lawyer, Ryan Heath, have yet to be determined.

In Finchem’s case, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian found that his contest was “groundless and not brought in good faith” in part because none of Finchem’s allegations of misconduct, even if proven true, would have been enough to change the outcome in his race, which he lost by 120,000 votes to Fontes.

She said it was apparent McCauley “had some awareness that this case lacked merit” because he said during oral arguments that he was less at risk of being disbarred than other lawyers, given his impending retirement.

Julian issued $40,656 in penalties for Finchem and $7,434 for McCauley, who is also the subject of an ethics complaint to the state bar.

McCauley recently agreed to accept a 30-day suspension of his law license, and to set his status as retired for one year upon reinstatement. He declined to comment.

This case and others speak to the need for lawyers to be confident their cases have merit before they bring them.

Julian wrote that McCauley had an obligation to investigate whether Finchem had viable grounds to challenge the result.

At the election law training, too, one lawyer who spoke stressed that claims brought on vague statements of “information and belief,” like many of the 2022 election contests, still have to have evidence behind them.

But Kolodin, who shepherded Powell’s 2020 case in Arizona, said it’s hard to speak generally about how much research must be done before filing an election contest. That’s part of why he thinks the Supreme Court, in its most recent opinion, said to “back off.”

“Lawyers need some breathing room,” he said.

Lake’s attorneys face discipline

The Supreme Court opinion may shape whether and how Lake’s attorneys are punished over claims they made when challenging the result of 2022′s gubernatorial election.

Lake was represented again by Olsen, as well as Blehm, a former family law attorney who oversaw the state Senate-commissioned audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election.

In pushing the trial court for sanctions against the lawyers, Maricopa County attorneys wrote that they repeatedly brought “demonstrably false statements” and “frivolous arguments” in court, including that the election was “rigged.”

“Wrongfully and publicly asserting that the election was ‘rigged’ is heinous and profoundly harmful,” the county wrote.

The trial court did not issue sanctions. But the Arizona Supreme Court sanctioned the lawyers over one of their claims: that it was “undisputed fact” that about 35,000 illegal ballots had been inserted into the election results. This was a false representation, the court ruled, because the county and state had disputed the claim. The penalty was $2,000.

Undisclosed parties filed complaints through the bar association against Olsen and Blehm directly related to these sanctions. In their response, the lawyers asserted that they had never misrepresented anything to the court or violated any ethical rules. Neither of them responded to requests to comment.

The bar association’s probable cause committee decided in December to authorize the bar to proceed with formal complaints against Blehm, Olsen and Parker.

Downie has only issued a ruling in only one of those cases so far. In her April 30 ruling, she ruled in favor of the state bar on one of two counts against Blehm, finding that he violated four ethics rules, including one prohibiting lawyers from knowingly making a false statement of fact or law to the court, and another prohibiting engaging “in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”

But for Tuesday’s hearing on the punishment, Downie told Blehm to bring an analysis of how the recent Supreme Court opinion reversing the Republican Party’s sanctions should affect his case.

She particularly wanted to weigh the relevance of a sentence in the opinion about political motives.

That line says, in part, that “any suggestion that a party or attorney faces enhanced risk of sanction merely because they couple political motives with a long-shot effort to vindicate a legal right in the election law context intolerably chills citizens and their attorneys precisely in an arena where we can least afford to silence them.”

Volkmer, who joined the bar association’s probable-cause committee this year after it had already considered the complaints against Lake’s attorneys, said that while there is good reason to deter bad faith cases, there’s a balance to strike.

“I think even marginal cases need their day in court,” he said.

But Andy Gaona, who has represented the Secretary of State’s Office in defending the state’s election said that sanctions and disciplinary proceedings through the state bar are the “only thing that can stem this tide of endless litigation over election results from becoming our new reality.” He called the Supreme Court’s reversal of the GOP sanctions an “unfortunate result for the system.”

Fontes agrees. He said in an interview after his bar speech that those who engage in unethical conduct in election contests should be considered for disbarment.

“If they are breaking the rules in an egregious enough manner that is actually harming our democracy, it’s hurting society, and it’s weakening the republic, then yeah,” Fontes said. “Why should they have keys to the courthouse?”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Gillespie County’s election worker costs more than double after switch to hand count

2024-05-16T09:50:00+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.

The hand count of thousands of Republican primary election ballots in Gillespie County is on track to cost taxpayers more than double the wage costs of the 2020 Republican primary, according to records obtained by Votebeat.

Public records show Republicans employed 350 people to hand count, who collectively reported working more than 2,300 hours the day of the election at a rate of $12 per hour. That means more than $27,000 in wages.

Those numbers aren’t final, and they’re likely to grow. The tally does not include hourly wages for election clerks who worked at each of the county’s 13 precincts on election day checking in voters and performing duties other than counting. In addition, Gillespie Republicans will also hand-count ballots in a runoff election at the end of the month, which will add to the costs.

Gillespie’s experience illustrates how election costs could rise if the method is more widely adopted across the state.

Four years ago, for the Republican primary election, the party spent less than $13,000 total on election worker wages, including wages for those who worked during a runoff election.

The initial costs also show the hand count of this year’s primary is set to cost taxpayers more than what the county spends annually on electronic tabulating equipment that can be used across multiple elections.

Gillespie County paid $160,968 to purchase voting equipment from Hart Intercivic in 2021, according to a source familiar with the county’s contract. The equipment has a 15-year life expectancy. In addition, the county spends $9,120 annually on licensing fees and technical support for the machines, plus around $6,000 per election for programming the equipment. Gillespie County elections administrator Jim Riley did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

State will reimburse costs — up to a point

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office will reimburse Gillespie Republicans and other local parties across the state for primary and runoff election expenses. Last year, at an election law seminar hosted by the office, election division officials told political party chairs that the state has a fixed amount allocated to pay for primary elections.

Officials warned that if primary election costs were to increase beyond that amount because of multiple counties hand-counting primary ballots, the state might not have enough money to reimburse all expenses. By law, the funds must be distributed equally across the state’s local parties.

Experts said the additional costs associated with full hand counts are unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible.

“It’s absurd to spend this money on this when elections in Texas especially are just so chronically underfunded,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nonpartisan voter advocacy and government watchdog organization. “They could have used this funding for the election staff who are overworked and underpaid everywhere in Texas. It could be spent on election infrastructure so that voters have a more efficient voting experience, or on public outreach.”

Luis Figueroa, chief of legislative affairs at Every Texan, a nonprofit group that advocates for fair taxation and voting rights, said that over the past two years, Republican lawmakers have approved election policies based on administrative errors and discrepancies in Harris County — a Democratic stronghold — but are doing nothing about the issues that surfaced during the Gillespie hand count.

“A machine breaks down in Harris County, and lawmakers have multiple hearings and pass bills that not only would sanction them, but also to remove county officials, or want a redo of the entire election,” Figueroa said.

In contrast, in Gillespie, “they’re having inaccuracies doing hand counting, and there’s no accountability and no calls from anyone to stop this practice,” he said.

Bruce Campbell, Gillespie County’s Republican Party chairman, told Votebeat that increasing people’s confidence in the election is worth the additional cost. When asked if he thought county residents felt more confident about the process following the hand count, he could not say.

“I don’t have a sense of the county as a whole,” he said. “I know the 350 people who participated in it are mostly enthusiastic about it.”

Despite costs and errors, proponents stand by hand counting

Under Texas law, during a primary election, county governments are in charge of conducting early voting, but the political parties may choose their ballot counting method. On the day of the election, parties run the voting and choose the counting method.

In Gillespie, Republicans decided last fall to hand-count this year’s primary vote, more than 8,000 ballots in total. Experts agree and studies show the method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines.

Nonetheless, citing unsupported concerns about the accuracy of voting machines, some people in Gillespie, including members of the Fredericksburg Tea Party, were determined to try and show otherwise.

The 350 workers recruited and trained by the party counted until the early hours of the next morning and touted the results as an unqualified success. But the county party subsequently had to fix a series of errors in the initial results in all but one of the county’s 13 precincts.

The night of the primary election, nearly 100 people gathered to hand count early-voting ballots at a local winery. On the compensation forms they filled out, some reported working for more than 12 hours that day, though others said they worked as little as five or even three hours.

The operational costs of a primary election vary based on the choices the political party makes. For example, parties can contract with the county’s election department for administrative services and voting equipment, or they can choose to have total control of the election and run it themselves.

Gillespie Republicans chose to handle almost every part of the election themselves. They printed their ballots and hand-count tally sheets at a locally owned printer in Fredericksburg. These costs, along with what the party spent on supplies, polling location rentals, postage, and administrative costs, such as office supplies and office personnel’s payroll, will be paid through funds allocated by the Legislature and distributed by the Secretary of State’s Office. The final total is still unclear. The Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment for this story.

Local parties submit a primary and runoff election cost estimate to the state, months ahead of Election Day. Upon approval, the state sends a portion of those costs to the parties, so they can prepare for the election and pay election workers. The final costs are reimbursed later this year.

In January, the Gillespie GOP estimated it would spend $34,210 on ballot printing and workers.

The state has allocated about $22 million to reimburse political parties and counties statewide for their primary and runoff election expenses. About $5 million of that comes from candidate filing fees.

Most counties decided against hand counts

Last summer, Republicans in counties large and small across the state considered hand counting ballots. Nearly all concluded that it would not be feasible, in part because of the cost. Nonetheless, proponents of hand counting continue to tout the method as a more secure way to run elections than electronic tabulators, and many are pointing to the Gillespie effort as an example of one that worked well, despite the costs and the initial errors in the results.

The push for hand counts is creating disruption in some communities.

In Kerr County, 30 minutes south of Gillespie, for example, Republicans have yet to win approval for a hand count, but the push to do it has already cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for additional staff and resources following the resignation of county officials who managed elections.

Mo Saiidi, a former Republican county chair for Gillespie who resigned after publicly opposing the hand count, said voters deserve more details about how that primary election was conducted and the public should weigh whether hand counting actually improved anything. He doesn’t think so.

“You have not proven that we have done any better job of election integrity or transparency, and at the same time, we have incurred an horrendous amount of costs,” he said.

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

With lawsuits and recount petitions rising, some Texas elections seem to go on forever

2024-05-02T09:55:00+00:00

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

It has been 15 months since Democrat DaSean Jones was sworn in as a Harris County criminal district court judge. He’s presided over hundreds of cases since then. And he’ll be on the ballot again in November, this time for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court.

But there’s an asterisk on his 2022 election win: His opponent, Republican Tami Pierce, is still challenging the outcome in court, arguing that there were “improper or illegal votes that shouldn’t have been counted” and that the election was “plagued with mistakes.” Her case is awaiting a ruling from a Bexar County visiting judge.

It’s another example of a pattern officials and experts say they’re seeing around Texas in recent years: elections that just won’t end.

The November 2020 general election was easily the most litigious in recent history. But post-election legal challenges and recount petitions have been mounting ever since, experts say. And while there are no hard numbers, they say these challenges are becoming more common in lower-ballot elections around the state.

Some level of scrutiny is expected after elections. Texas law requires automatic recounts in some circumstances, including a tie, and it allows for challenges in very close elections.

But the challenges election officials are noticing lately are different. Many are coming from right-wing activists challenging specific aspects of how the election was conducted, and “throwing the kitchen sink” into their complaints, said Mimi Marziani, a political science and election law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

“They’re not actually trying to have a different person elected,” Marziani said. “They’re trying to set some sort of precedent to destabilize free and fair elections.”

What if the result changes after a candidate takes office?

With the 2024 election just months away, Texas courts are still working through election challenges brought as far back as 2021. Winning candidates like Jones, meanwhile, have taken office but must contend with the uncertainty surrounding their authority, which experts say could diminish voters’ confidence.

Nearly all of these challenges have been dismissed, but as long as some are pending, they leave open the prospect that a court could replace the winning candidate, even well into the term of office.

Lawyers say such instances are rare, but that if that were to happen, the official actions taken by the original incumbent, such as rulings by an elected judge, should stand.

Candidates contesting the results of an election must meet a high evidentiary bar to succeed. A court will take a close look at the vote margin, and challengers must prove that there are illegal votes included in the vote tally, said Chad Dunn, a Texas attorney and election law expert — and enough of them to have shifted the outcome.

“You can’t say that ‘that kind of ballot is not lawful, this kind of ballot is not lawful,’” Dunn said. “The test is whether or not the person who voted was eligible to vote, and they were the person who voted.”

Challenges from past Texas elections linger

Pierce, who lost the 180th District Court judicial race in Harris County by fewer than 500 votes, declined to comment through her attorney, and Jones did not respond to a request for comment.

Pierce is among 21 losing Republican candidates in Harris County who challenged the results of the 2022 general election there. A judge overseeing those cases found that Harris County made errors, but there wasn’t enough evidence to order a new election, and he upheld the election results. Three of the candidates who challenged their results dropped their lawsuits before his ruling.

In Pierce’s case, which has the closest margin of votes according to published results, there was a two-day trial in Harris County last month, and a decision is pending.

Meanwhile, in separate proceedings, the outcome of a November 2021 election is still being disputed in court over the description of a proposed constitutional amendment that was on the ballot. Proposition 2, which voters approved, would allow counties to issue bonds to raise funds for transportation and infrastructure in underdeveloped areas.

Conservative groups, including Grassroots of America, claimed that the description of the proposal on the ballot was misleading to voters. A Travis County District Court ruled in favor of the groups, and after an appeal by the Texas Attorney General’s Office, the 7th Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling. The state has yet to respond to that decision. The measure is on hold pending a resolution of the case.

In another category of challenges, far-right voting fraud activists have filed a slew of lawsuits against counties, falsely claiming that the voting equipment they use is not properly certified. The Texas Supreme Court and lower Texas courts have dismissed some of the claims, but activists continue to bring them.

One lawsuit challenging the results of the November 2023 constitutional amendment election threatened to halt property tax cuts and increased pensions for retired teachers that Republicans championed during last year’s legislative session. Gov. Greg Abbott certified the results of the election on Dec. 4, allowing the constitutional amendments approved by voters to go into effect. In court filings, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said the governor was not prevented from certifying the results because the election challenges were procedurally flawed. A Travis County district judge hearing the challenge has yet to rule.

Recounts add more work

A rise in recount petitions is also creating new strains for election officials.

This year, after the March 5 primary election, losing Republican candidates in Dallas and Tarrant counties requested recounts. One of them, Barry Wernick, lost his bid to represent Texas House District 108 in Dallas County to incumbent state Rep. Morgan Meyer by more than 500 votes out of around 26,000 votes cast in the race. The recount found a difference of 15 votes in the race, not enough to change the outcome.

In Tarrant County, a recount in the Republican primary for constable in Precinct 1 found the results were accurate.

More recounts make it harder for election officials racing to meet state-mandated deadlines for certification. Depending on the race and jurisdiction size, a recount can take weeks to complete.

In many situations, the candidate who requests the recount must pay for it, unless the results of the recount change the outcome, which rarely happens. But election officials must provide space, time, and personnel to aid the recount, even if they’re in the midst of planning for the next election. In the first half of 2024, some election officials in the state are running five elections, one after another.

And if the results stand after the recount, “the individuals who called for the recount or paid for the recount or brought the court challenge are still not satisfied,” said Tammy Patrick, CEO for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. “And so it doesn’t really resolve the issue.”

Marziani says this year’s flood of election-related litigation and calls for recounts this year is only a fraction of what’s to come after the November presidential election.

“I do think that there are actors out there who are thinking about how to lay the foundation for election sabotage, and for overturning election results,” she said.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Why we think spotlighting flaws in elections actually helps increase voter confidence

2024-04-29T09:00:00+00:00

Today, I want to explain something about Votebeat’s journalism, especially in light of a great story we published.

At Votebeat, we’re reporting the nuanced truth about elections and voting at a time of crisis in America. We aim to help people understand how our democracy works so they can participate in strengthening it.

Why am I telling you this? Because our mission includes telling the public about election mistakes and problems when they do crop up. Transparency and openness about mistakes should shore up voters’ faith in the system, not undercut it.

We all know that democracy is under pressure. Election officials have repeatedly assured the public that our elections are safe and secure, and a parade of court cases, recounts, and audits have affirmed that. But polls have repeatedly found that lies and conspiracy theories are eroding the trust many Americans have in elections.

Of course, elections are also complicated events involving complex logistics, thousands of workers, and millions of voters spread over a patchwork of jurisdictions, and mistakes happen. In such cases, our job is to figure out and explain what went wrong. We hope that our journalism can prevent the next election meltdown.

At Votebeat, we are sometimes asked if spotlighting such mistakes through our coverage — such as the deeply reported investigation into flawed practices in Northampton County that Votebeat Pennsylvania reporter Carter Walker published this month — undermines faith in elections.

We actually believe the opposite — that being upfront about mistakes, and reporting on how and why they happened, will increase voter confidence.

When problems with voting machines first surfaced in Northampton County, in eastern Pennsylvania, last November, local election officials said the issue was a simple programming error. What they didn’t say: Their process for testing voting machines before use, known as logic and accuracy testing, was flawed in ways that went far beyond a simple programming error, and much of their documentation was incomplete or missing.

The only reason the public knows this is that Walker spent nearly 14 hours over six days going through Northampton County’s logic and accuracy testing documentation from October 2023. He wanted to understand what happened, and whether the mistakes that affected voters were preventable. What he found was that the paperwork was a mess, with inspection checklists filled out incorrectly and several dozen test ballots nowhere to be found. The problems with the machines’ programming might have been caught before the election if the county had better processes in place.

In response to Walker’s findings, Northampton election officials are changing the way they do things. “We definitely have to get better on a lot of the things we did,” Northampton Elections Director Christopher Commini told Walker. “These are major changes that need to be done.” And state lawmakers are looking into legislation to make sure other counties have good processes in place.

Votebeat’s journalism has prompted official action to improve elections elsewhere, too. For example, in Pinal County, Arizona, a rapidly growing area outside Phoenix, reporter Jen Fifield found that even though election staff had documented clear errors during and after tabulating ballots, they didn’t fix them or inform the public before certifying the 2022 election. Her work sparked calls for change and outraged editorials; the county has new personnel in place and has made other changes.

Of course, readers choose what to take from our work. One reader from California, Colin Clements, emailed Fifield after a co-worker sent him an article of hers about problems in Maricopa County last year. According to the co-worker, Clements said, that article and others about issues with voting around the country suggested a coordinated effort to rig the election — a contention the article doesn’t support at all.

Conspiracy theorists, in other words, won’t necessarily draw the right conclusions from our work. But people like Clements don’t want us to quit. If nobody explained what went wrong, Clements told me in a separate conversation, “someone like me would say, ‘Why isn’t anyone explaining what happened?’ Explaining what happened and researching what happened satisfies people like me, but it doesn’t matter what you do for conspiracy theorists.”

“Your critical role,” he added, “is to provide information for those in the middle of the spectrum that seek to understand.”

We’re going to keep doing that.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Brazos elections officials shoulder new costs and burdens to appease skeptics

2024-04-23T09:55:00+00:00

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

In Brazos County, suspicions about elections burst into the open last fall, just weeks after a visit from an out-of-state group calling for ballots to be hand-counted.

“Everything seems great. But if you study this, you’ll find that it’s possible to pre-program electronic voting machines and make it do whatever you want,” one resident said at a commissioners court meeting last November, without evidence to support the claims.

“Ever since these machines came along, I’ve heard nothing but accusations of fraud,” said another resident. “I am asking you to investigate. Something was wrong in the 2020 election. Voting machines do only what they’re programmed to do.”

Similar comments continued to pour in for months — at meetings, in emails to county officials, and through public record requests to the county elections department — from people who insisted that the best answer is for counties to ditch voting equipment altogether and to hand count ballots.

County leaders and election officials have since repeatedly tried to assure residents that elections in Brazos are safe and accurate. They’ve invited skeptics to help recount ballots themselves. They’re spending more money and investing more time to accommodate the residents’ demands for changes, even if they think the changes won’t make elections any more secure.

Still, in Brazos, as in other counties, election officials foresee no end to the demands from far-right activists who allege that Texas elections are tainted by fraud, even as the Republican candidates they favor win a lot of them.

So officials continue to work with the concerned citizens, and shoulder new costs, to head off what they see as the even bigger burden of a mandatory hand count.

In Brazos, the latest attempt to appease proponents of hand counts will cost the county an additional $14,000 for the November election, a recurring expense that will grow over time, said county Elections Administrator Trudy Hancock.

The cost is for a special kind of ballot paper that comes preprinted with sequential serial numbers, starting with 1. Voting fraud activists have demanded this kind of paper for years, arguing that it would help officials detect and prevent double voting.

Such instances of fraud are rare, though, and Texas already has systems in place to prevent it.

Experts say the preprinted numbering could threaten voters’ ballot secrecy, so Brazos election officials will have to take even more steps to secure the vote.

And with the preprinted paper, surplus stock cannot be used in later elections, Hancock said. So in the long run, it’ll likely end up costing the county more.

“Say that we have 20,000 pieces of paper that we don’t use, you have to add the total cost of that 20,000 pieces of paper,” Hancock said. “We cannot reuse it. We’d have to store that paper for 22 months and then shred it. It’s useless.”

How misinformation affects the push for hand counts in Brazos

Brazos County, home to College Station and Texas A&M University, has about 128,000 registered voters. Election officials here are among several across the state who have heard demands from far-right activists to switch from electronic voting equipment to hand-counting, a method that has been proven to be less accurate, more costly, and far less secure than electronic tabulating machines.

In some cases, the activists have prevailed over objections from county leaders. In the Texas Hill Country, Gillespie County Republicans hand counted ballots during the March 5 primary and kept finding errors in vote aggregations.

In Brazos, the movement grew after a group of election conspiracy theorists came to town questioning the validity of electronic voting equipment and promoting hand counts. At a public event, which made the rounds across Texas counties last year, speakers promoted their ideas based on election misinformation.

Some Republicans began to echo those concerns at commissioner court meetings. In October, the county commissioners sat through a presentation by Brazos resident Walter Daughterity. Daughterity, a retired computer science professor at Texas A&M and ally of election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, falsely claimed Brazos’ voting machines are connected to the internet and that the equipment is not certified by federal officials. Daughterity proposed shuttering the electronic voting equipment and hand-counting ballots instead.

Brazos County residents gathered at a Q&A hosted by the county elections department on Jan. 24, 2024. At the two-hour meeting, elections staff went over the local election process and answered questions about the county's voting equipment and voter registration management process.

Daughterity did not respond to Votebeat’s questions about whether he has any experience working on or administering elections in Brazos or anywhere else. Instead he linked to his “expert witness declarations” in the lawsuit filed by failed Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake. Trial and appellate courts in Arizona have dismissed her claims of election malfeasance.

At Daughterity’s presentation, Brazos County Judge Duane Peters defended the county’s voting system and assured those who attended that it is certified, citing approval to use it from the Texas Secretary of State. Peters, a Republican, has been a leader in Brazos County for over a decade.

Brazos County commissioners never considered a formal measure to ditch the county’s voting equipment and adopt hand counting. After the November election, however, the county expanded its state-mandated partial manual counts in response to the concerns of some residents, including Daughterity.

Done after each election, the partial manual count is a hand count of races from either 1% of a county’s precincts or three precincts — whichever is greater — to verify the accuracy of the results tabulated by the voting equipment. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office designates which races and precincts must be hand counted and then notifies county election officials.

Hancock said some residents didn’t like that state officials choose which races and precincts get hand counted. “Their theory is that at the state level, they know in which precincts we have altered the numbers,” Hancock said. “So they think that since the state knows that, that they wouldn’t send us those locations to count.”

So Hancock asked secretary of state officials for approval to have county election officials randomly select additional precincts to be hand counted. The secretary of state’s office agreed, and the county hand counted three additional precincts. The process, which found no discrepancies and showed the vote was accurate, was livestreamed on the county’s elections website.

After the March primary election, Hancock went a step further. She invited representatives from each party to conduct the post-election audit themselves. Among the Republicans who participated were some of the most vocal election skeptics.

It took the groups of Republican and Democrats an entire day to count more than 1,400 ballots. No discrepancies were found, and the count showed the machines’ results were accurate.

Brazos County Republican Party officials did not respond to a request for comment and did not answer questions about their participation in the count.

The dispute over how ballot paper is numbered in Texas

The other concession by Brazos officials, to spend resources on preprinted sequentially numbered ballots, is the latest episode in a yearslong dispute between Texas election officials and voter fraud activists.

By law, ballots used in Texas must be sequentially numbered starting with 1, and distributed to polling places in batches so that “a specific range can be linked to a specific polling place.”

The law also says that ballots at a polling place “must be distributed to voters non-sequentially in order to preserve ballot secrecy.”

How counties across the state comply with these rules depends on the type of voting equipment they use. For instance, some counties, including Brazos, purchase blank ballot paper that voters insert into a touch-screen voting machine called a ballot marking device at the polling place. Once the voter is done making their candidate selections, the device prints the voter’s ballot with a randomized number to preserve ballot secrecy.

The Texas Secretary of State and the Texas Attorney General have both clarified that this randomized numbering complies with the law. But voting fraud activists dispute this and continue to falsely claim that the randomly numbered ballots produced by the ballot marking devices cannot be audited.

Election administrators in Texas have the authority to decide the ballot-numbering method. In Hood County, tensions with voter fraud activists in 2021 over ballot numbering drove the elections administrator to resign. The county eventually purchased sequentially numbered ballot paper under a new elections administrator. The administrator did not respond to Votebeat’s questions about whether the new ballots helped restore trust in the process.

Activists have also made these calls for sequentially numbered ballots in Tarrant County. County Judge Tim O’Hare, whose administration created an election integrity task force despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud, said sequentially numbered ballots would “make the election more secure, create more trust in the outcome, and serve as a deterrent against fraud.” The county recently approved spending more than $30,000 on the sequentially numbered ballots for the November election.

The type of paper required is more costly because it isn’t easily found off the shelf. It is custom printed by voting machine vendors. Additionally, counties have to order more paper than they typically would, to prevent a shortage or account for paper jams at polling locations. Election workers in Brazos will go through additional training to ensure they randomize and shuffle the ballots at the polling place to protect ballot secrecy as directed by state law.

In nations with high levels of fraud, sequentially numbered ballots can be helpful because officials can match the number to a voter and check whether that person voted already or not.

In the United States, election departments have voter registration databases, voter histories, and other practices in place that help ensure that each voter is casting only one ballot, said Mitchell Brown, a political science professor at Auburn University and an expert on election administration.

“What we track is who votes, not how they vote,” Brown said. “In some places, it’s a good government measure, and other places it is not. So the context of how [numbered ballots] are used, and why they’re being used really matters.”

In Brazos, Peters, the county judge, is certain this latest move to try to appease the election skeptics in the county “won’t prove anything.”

“It’s a compromise,” Peters told Votebeat. “I know they say they’re concerned about the elections… . My concern was that if we totally changed the way we do elections [by adopting hand counting] that it was going to fail and that we were going to have people who wouldn’t know what they’re doing.”

Hancock, who has been the county’s elections director since 2015 and has worked elections in Texas for more than two decades, said it’s quite possible that her efforts may never satisfy the activists. She only hopes she can prevent the spread of misinformation in Brazos. She wants voters to see that her office is “doing everything that we can to ensure that a person’s ballot is cast in a secure manner and counted the way that they intend for it to be counted.”

“So if I can add a few more hours to my day or whatever to help those people have confidence in what we do for voters,” she said, “then I’m happy to do that.”

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 fear of noncitizen voting is as baseless as it has been for 200 years

2024-04-22T08:45:00+00:00

After President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson last week advocated for a bill banning noncitizen voting, the news coverage made clear that it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote and, crucially, that it isn’t a real problem.

Trump is still very eager to relitigate 2020, and Johnson’s trip to Florida to promote the scheme was widely received as the kind of reciprocal gesture we’ve seen before. The speaker, who’s struggling to maintain conservative support for his leadership job, got a photo with Trump, and Trump gets to use Johnson’s credibility to bolster the same debunked arguments he’s been making since his loss. USA Today reported that a person close to the planning said it was intended as an encouragement for other Republican officials to “get on the team” on the issue of noncitizen voting.

To understand the false election claims that are the basis for the legislation Johnson and Trump announced, check out the thorough fact-checking articles like CNN’s. Beyond that, there’s not much to say about the substance of a bill that doesn’t exist and is not meant to achieve a real purpose. But there is much more to understand about the historical context behind Trump’s push, which helps you see it for what it is.

Fear-mongering over noncitizen voting is among the oldest tactics in American electoral politics. The Republican Party is not trying to assemble a squad of noncitizen-voting hardliners; it is fomenting this fear to anger its base into turning out. Parties have done it dozens of times in our history, even before noncitizen voting was illegal in this country.

A sampling:

Antagonism toward those born on foreign soil for their perceived transience and poverty has been influencing American public policy since our earliest days as a nation.
In the 1800s, states began to enact residency and citizenship requirements where there were none before. For example, In 1854, fearing waves of immigration to southern Louisiana, the state enacted a two-year residency requirement. In 1850, Maryland enacted a six-month residency requirement aimed almost exclusively at excluding the immigrant population in Baltimore.
World War I, and the xenophobia it inspired, led to states banning anyone without citizenship from voting in the 1910s and ‘20s. Arkansas was the very last state to ban noncitizens from participating in elections in 1926. That made the 1928 presidential election the first in which no state allowed noncitizens to participate.
In the 1930s, after an economic collapse, hostility toward poor people and immigrants receiving relief aid led to wide talk of disenfranchisement. In Kansas, agricultural workers were told that if they voted, they would be removed from the “transient relief” rolls. The existence of poll taxes, though, made it unlikely that the poor would be able to vote in most places, anyway.
Immigration plummeted during World War II, not reviving until the ‘60s. By then, the Civil Rights era was in full swing. This led to a lasting crackdown on non-white voters across the country that frequently involved accusations of fraudulent voting by noncitizens. This didn’t happen just in the Deep South. Places like Kentucky, California, and Indiana also tightened registration requirements and residency periods during this time.
Governors of large red states have, in recent decades, made headlines for claiming to have long lists of noncitizens registered to vote. In every circumstance, the lists contained thousands of incorrectly flagged eligible voters, and the claims were largely retracted. See: Texas and Florida.
It’s, of course, not even new for Trump to raise the specter of noncitizen voting. He has been going on about this since he first ran for president in 2016. His own presidential commission aimed at rooting out voter fraud, based on his false claim that he lost the popular vote in 2016 because of noncitizen voting, disbanded after two meetings.
In 2017, Trump claimed that his friend, professional golfer Bernhard Langer, was prevented from casting a ballot due to a long line of what he assumed to be noncitizen voters. Langer himself wasn’t a citizen, and this incident never happened.

So not only is it false to say that noncitizen voting is a problem, it is also completely unoriginal. It is the same rhetoric people have used to stoke fear in this country for 200 years.

It is not logical that an immigrant who’s ineligible to vote would risk jail or deportation to cast a single ballot in an election. The cost-benefit analysis for such a vulnerable person doesn’t make any sense. The reason bans on noncitizen voting have never caught on as federal legislation is that there is simply nothing to legislate.

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

How Pa. voting machines are certified, how voter citizenship is checked, and more answers to your questions

2024-04-09T17:20:00+00:00

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

Ahead of the April 23 primary, Pennsylvania’s top election official answered your questions about misinformation, voting machine security, and more.

Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt joined Spotlight PA’s Kate Huangpu and Votebeat’s Carter Walker in March for a live event about building trust in elections. If you missed it, you can watch the conversation here.

Below are Schmidt’s answers to some of the questions asked during the event, as well as answers he sent via email to five of the questions we couldn’t get to.

Read his responses below, some of which have been condensed for space and clarity:

You called the departure of experienced local voting officials one of the biggest threats to our election. Can you talk a bit about the department’s new training for election officials? —Carter Walker, Votebeat

One of the biggest challenges that we’re facing not just in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but across the country is the turnover among the people responsible for running elections at the county level.

More than 70 have left in Pennsylvania since 2020 — and that’s a lot. And when you have people running elections, who have had little experience running elections, they’re more likely to make a mistake in election administration.

But when they do make mistakes, they’re interpreted as being intentional or malicious, or seeking to alter the outcome of the election for or against a candidate or campaign.

So the Department of State has created this year a new training team to provide training to election administrators across the commonwealth. Our sessions usually have between 50 and 100 election administrators at senior levels participating: ones who have been around for decades and ones who are brand new. It’s a service the Department of State is providing to make sure that newer people know what to do and what to prepare for.

I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the Election Threats Task Force, describing its role, its members, the information that’s being shared and how that will translate on Election Day. —Kate Huangpu, Spotlight PA

The Elections Threat Task Force is mainly designed to improve communication among people responsible for running elections and people responsible for law enforcement in the event we encounter any sort of ugliness like we encountered in 2020, and off and on, since 2020.

When all that came about in 2020 — and I was running elections at the county level and was on the receiving end of death threats, targeting myself and primarily targeting my family, targeting my young kids — we had to scramble to figure out what to do and how best to respond.

So the main purpose is to really open up lines of communications, to understand what everybody’s role is when it comes to running elections and when it comes to law enforcement.

Mis- and disinformation were a major source of confusion and interference in the 2020 election. I was hoping you could talk a bit about how the department is going to address those issues this year. —Carter Walker, Votebeat

Part of it is to make sure that you’re telling the truth about elections.

For me, it’s not about going back and forth with different parties and different people. It’s not about subjective differences of opinion on elections. It’s about whenever you encounter things that are categorically untrue, empirically untrue.

I think it’s a matter of understanding what questions are out there. And then when we do encounter things that are untrue, that are are intended to mislead voters from the truth about elections, then we need to make sure that we’re telling the truth about elections — that we provide accurate information.

It’s not about going back and forth. It’s not about arguing. It’s about telling the truth about elections and doing our part to make sure that voters are informed consumers of accurate, truthful election information.

How is the state making sure all voting machines are certified and up to date? What does that process look like, and who is responsible? —Glenn H., submitted question

All voting systems used in Pennsylvania are certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and examined and approved for use by my office. The certification reports are located on the department’s website, and the department refers to those documents as best reflecting the initial certification process. To verify that the voting systems are working as expected in each election, all counties are required to conduct pre-election logic and accuracy (L&A) testing. We have directed that all counties certify their completion of L&A testing to the department, and the process for conducting that testing is provided for in the directive.

What is being done by each county voter registration department to investigate, then confirm or reject, the authenticity of claims to United States citizenship via a mere checkmark on voter applications? —Paul S., submitted question

All counties must undertake the verification processes outlined in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), including through checks in state and federal databases. A federal court recently dismissed a challenge to the department’s directive regarding these HAVA checks.

Editor’s Note: Schmidt is referring to a lawsuit brought by state Rep. Dawn Keefer (R., York) and the Pennsylvania House Freedom Caucus, which challenged — along with other issues — how the state handles identification checks for military and overseas voters under the 2002 Help America Vote Act.

How does the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decision on undated mail-in ballots in PA affect voters who choose that option, and, ultimately, how will it affect the process of counting votes and the election results? Please clarify how mail-in ballots that lack a date on the outside envelope or other information lapses will be handled. —Nell M., submitted question

Our guidance on undated and incorrectly dated ballots remains unchanged pending any further legal developments: All voters must sign and write the current date on their outer envelope in order to have their vote counted.

The Department of State believes every vote by a qualified voter should be counted, and we are continuing to work to ensure that is the case in Pennsylvania. To that end, the department has made significant proactive improvements to mail ballot materials designed to cut down on undated or misdated mail ballot envelopes. Among the changes on the redesigned mail ballot materials — which have been implemented for the 2024 primary election — are revised instructions to voters to make the process of properly filling out and returning a mail ballot clearer and more direct. These revisions are designed to decrease the number of voter errors that could cause them to be disenfranchised.

Additionally, the department is encouraging counties to employ processes to provide notice to voters of signing and dating errors so that voters have a chance to correct them and ensure their vote is counted.

What is the status of the vote curing process? Is it currently inconsistent at the county level? Is that still in court? —Jim Leous, submitted question

Counties are permitted but not required to alert voters who have made minor errors, such as neglecting to date their outer envelope, so that voters can correct these issues to allow their ballot to be counted. We encourage all counties to employ such processes so that all qualified voters can have their vote counted. The department is unaware of any active litigation regarding any county’s practice with respect to this process.

I know the machines are solid. I was wondering if reiterated (or further) instructions would be provided about chain of custody of USB drives, etc. —Susan Fudurich, submitted question

Our department’s lauded Election Directors Training Team has covered and will continue to cover important Election Day topics, including best practices for storage and management of critical election infrastructure. The department also refers you to the Conditions of Certification included in each voting system certification report, which may specify additional enumerated chain of custody procedures.

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

How will Trump’s false claims about mail ballots affect his own supporters?

2024-04-08T09:00:00+00:00

The Republican Party has tried, at least nominally, to undo some of the damage former President Donald Trump has done since 2020 to the party’s faith in voting by mail. But it appears Trump — the GOP presidential nominee three times running — doesn’t want to cooperate. In recent months he has called mailed ballots “a disaster” and “totally corrupt.” On Fox News, he said, “If you have mail-in balloting, you automatically have fraud.”

The evidence does not support his statements — something that’s been pointed out ad infinitum — and the Republican Party’s official position is that voters should use any method they can to cast their ballots. “We’ll have early voting in Michigan for the first time. We’ll take advantage of it,” a top Republican National Committee official said on a press call last week, CNN reported. “Mail ballots are not very old in Pennsylvania. We’ll have an opportunity to grow that. Ballot harvesting in Nevada is legal under certain circumstances. We’ll take advantage of it.”

Trump’s campaign appears aware that he is contradicting the party. In an emailed response to the Washington Post about the campaign’s position on vote by mail, a spokesperson sent back the party’s official line. Still, Trump himself continues to discourage GOP voters from casting ballots this way, a choice that has potential repercussions for voting in 2024.

For one thing, lots of people are writing about the challenge this presents for Republicans. In those articles, they’ll remind you of the 2020 U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia, after which Republicans lost control of the chamber. I was there, sitting next to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the Georgia Emergency Management Agency office. Others on his staff had been warning for weeks that Trump’s comments had the potential to suppress the vote.

When the Senate results were called — TVs were mounted on every wall and people were running in and out with updates — Raffensperger didn’t really seem surprised.

“Trump did this,” Raffensperger said to me, dejectedly looking at the television on the far wall.

Nearly four years later, Trump’s claims about mail voting, and elections in general, continue to undermine confidence in elections among his supporters, and the leadership of the Republican Party is clearly worried about a similar outcome (even if many of their candidates haven’t made the same realization). A recent poll from the Secure Elections Project found that roughly two-thirds of Republicans in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin say they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, which is consistent with the national average for Republicans and conservatives.

“I worry as both someone who is concerned about our country but also as a Republican” about Trump’s false claims, Trey Greyson, the co-chair of the advisory board for Secure Elections Project, told me. “After all, why take the time to vote if it’s rigged?”

Greyson points out more practical concerns about setting up voters to be disenfranchised. “What if too many GOP voters were to listen to Trump and ignore voting by mail, if that were an option, and something unexpected — weather, illness, traffic delays, work — were to pop up on Election Day?” he said. “I’m reminded of the potential big snowstorm in the GOP areas of Nevada that was forecast for Election Day in 2022.”

The only real whiff of good news the Secure Elections poll found was that most of the swing state Republicans who responded trust their own elections: They’re happy with the election processes in their states and have confidence in their own election administrators. Most believed their own vote counted.

But, of course, most also still believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump because they believe the votes of others were stolen, and Trump is continuing to promote that claim.

In a radio interview this month, Trump again falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020. “And after the wrongdoing was found, people said, ‘Well, he actually did win,’” Trump said during a radio interview. Actually, President Joe Biden narrowly won Wisconsin in 2020, and there has been no evidence the results were fraudulent. Nevertheless, it is a sign that Trump plans to continue falsely asserting he won the 2020 election — claims that supercharged his fundraising pitches four years ago.

It remains to be seen how his claims affect voter behavior this time around — or whether it makes a difference that his own party has reasons not to support his assertions this time.

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

How a right-wing website’s false report figured in Louisiana’s departure from ERIC

2024-04-01T09:00:00+00:00

Hi, y’all,

If you’ve been a longtime newsletter reader, you might remember a four-part series in early 2022, after Republican-led states — starting with Louisiana — began agitating against a multistate coalition dedicated to cleaning and updating voter rolls.

It all started when right-wing website Gateway Pundit falsely reported that the coalition — the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC — was inflating voter rolls to benefit Democrats.

Louisiana suspended its participation in ERIC in January 2022, and later became the first of several Republican-led states to withdraw altogether. At the time, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin’s spokesperson told me that the decision to quit the program was in no way related to the Gateway Pundit allegations. This seemed implausible at the time, but documents recently shared with us by the nonprofit, nonpartisan government watchdog American Oversight now show more clearly that what the spokesperson said wasn’t true.

First, let’s rewind the tape. Here is what I wrote about my February 2022 conversation with that spokesperson for this newsletter:

In late January, Louisiana suspended its participation in a multi-state voter-roll-matching program known as ERIC, one week after rightwing conspiracy site Gateway Pundit baselessly accused ERIC of being “a left-wing voter registration drive disguised as voter roll clean up.” But if you ask Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin’s office, staff will tell you the decision had “nothing to do with” Gateway Pundit. What did the secretary base his decision on? The staff won’t say.
“We’re not having that dialogue,” said spokesman John Tobler, who said “numerous” experts had expressed concerns over “election stuff.” Who? “I am not at liberty to disclose that,” he said. What concerns? “We’re trying to get to the bottom of a major source of questions within the service provider” about “how the data moves and how it functions within their space,” said Tobler. What does that mean? Tobler won’t say, but he wants everyone to know “it’s not based on a conspiracy theory.

The Gateway Pundit published its first article — which falsely asserted that ERIC was funded by liberal financier George Soros — on Jan. 21, 2022. That same day, the American Oversight Records show, Ardoin texted Tobler just before 9 p.m.: “I think we suspend our membership in ERIC until we can investigate what they are doing with our data,” he wrote. “I’m fine with that,” Tobler responded.

A 2022 text message exchange between Louisiana's then-Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin and spokesman John Tobler.

Tobler then texted John McGehe, a public information officer in the secretary of state’s office: “Will you post this across all platforms? Also, call me when you get moving around in the AM about a press release.” He included a link to the Gateway Pundit article before adding that the state would be going a step further: “Apparently, we will be withdrawing from ERIC.”

A text message exchange between Tobler and John McGehe, a public information officer in the secretary of state’s office.

A few days later, after Louisiana announced its separation from ERIC in a press release, Ardoin texted Tolber and another staffer to ask which media outlets had reported the announcement. Tobler responded with a short list that included Gateway Pundit.

“What did the Gateway Pundit say?” Ardoin asked. “I am sure they went all drama on it.”

Ardoin was right. In its article announcing Louisiana’s withdrawal, which Tobler pasted into the exchange, Gateway Pundit turned up the drama as high as possible. “Today the state of Louisiana said no more — they will stop using this scandalous system,” it read.

Another exchange between Ardoin and Tobler.

Other media outlets were also unable to get straightforward, honest responses about what prompted Louisiana’s exit from ERIC.

A request from Stateline in March 2023 shows a reporter was interested in speaking to Ardoin or another staff member in the office about “why some Republican secretaries of state have decided to withdraw their states from the cooperative, and what this means for voter registration list maintenance moving forward.”

Tobler declined to comment. “Due to confidentiality provisions in the ERIC agreement that ERIC insists survive Louisiana’s membership in the compact,” he responded, “we will not be providing further comment.”

Tobler's email response to a reporter's question about states withdrawing from ERIC.

I don’t know what Tobler was talking about, and can find no record of any such insistence on confidentiality ever being communicated by ERIC to Louisiana or any of the other eight states that have left. No such requirements exist in the compact. After each of the nine states withdrew from ERIC, secretaries were provided with a list of what should remain confidential under federal law — including sensitive voter data from other states provided through ERIC. Louisiana was provided with such a document in early October of 2022. But none of these reminders prevented officials from publicly articulating a rationale for any state’s departure, or prevented any of the departing secretaries from speaking to the media.

Tobler has left the secretary of state’s office, so I contacted the current director of communications — Joel Watson — for a response. Watson said that since Ardoin and Tobler are no longer with the department, “we cannot clarify or speak to their motivations.” Tobler has not responded to an email sent to a personal email address requesting comment.

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

Kari Lake asks court to decide damages in Maricopa County official’s defamation case

2024-03-26T21:19:31+00:00

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

Kari Lake is asking the court to quickly issue a judgment and to decide how much she will pay Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in the defamation case he brought against her, according to a filing in Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday.

Richer sued Lake — who ran for governor in 2022 and is now running for U.S. Senate — for defamation last year, alleging that Lake made defamatory allegations that he had assisted in rigging the gubernatorial election against Lake. They are both Republicans.

Richer’s legal team is treating Lake’s filing, a motion for default judgment, as an admission of liability.

“She has decided she cannot defend herself in this case despite continuously saying she has evidence,” said Ben Berwick, counsel at Protect Democracy, among the firms representing Richer in the lawsuit.

Lake’s attorneys do not defend Lake’s claims about Richer in the filing, nor do they challenge any of Richer’s arguments about the facts. Instead, they ask the court for a quick hearing to decide damages.

After filing the document, Lake said in a video posted on X that Richer’s lawsuit against her was “lawfare,” and she wouldn’t be taking part in the lawsuit. It was unclear what she meant, and one of her attorneys, Jennifer Wright, told Votebeat to contact her communications team for additional comment.

But Lake also said she would continue to fight for the state, saying “even if they leave me, my husband, and children penniless, that won’t stop us.”

Richer, who sued in his personal capacity, had asked the court to award him compensatory and punitive damages, along with a statement admitting her claims were false. He also asked her to remove all of the false statements from the internet. While he did not state a dollar amount in his complaint, the case has been categorized as “tier 3,” which is for cases involving $300,000 in damages.

After Lake’s filing, Richer said in a statement on X that the motion represented “complete and total surrender by @KariLake.”

“Kari: You lied,” he wrote. “You just accepted liability. You will now have a judgment entered, in court, against you, for lying about our elections and me. It was all B.S. Now on to damages.”

Lake made many claims about Richer after she lost the election, but Richer’s legal team zeroed in on specific statements she made that they said could be easily proven false and they were confident were not hyperbole, according to Berwick, with Protect Democracy.

One of those claims was that Richer “intentionally printed 19-inch images on 20-inch ballots to sabotage the 2022 Arizona general election,” according to the complaint. Another was that Richer “inserted 300,000 ‘illegal,’ ‘invalid,’ ‘phony’, and/or ‘bogus’ early-vote ballots into the Maricopa County vote count.”

Lake made the claims in January 2023, in front of a large crowd at her Save Arizona Rally. She told the crowd she lost her bid for governor because of Supervisor Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer’s “rigged elections,” she said. As two TV screens behind her began to display a photo of Richer and Gates, the crowd began to chant.

“Lock them up! Lock them up!” they shouted.

Richer does not run Election Day voting. While Maricopa County saw widespread problems with its ballot printers on Election Day, Richer did not test or deploy that equipment in his role. Lake’s claims that these problems were intentional on behalf of county officials were rejected by the courts following her election, from the local courts to the Arizona Court of Appeals. An independent investigation into the problems also found that the problems were technical in nature.

The courts also rejected Lake’s claim that fake early ballots were inserted into the election results. This claim stemmed from a whistleblower report that alleged the county was missing chain-of-custody documentation on those ballots. The court found that Lake did not have any evidence for her related claim. Lake’s attorneys were later sanctioned for saying the ballot insertion was an “undisputed” fact.

Richer said in his complaint that these statements had caused harm to him and his family, including harassment that took a toll on his physical and mental health.

Lake is asking for medical records to support his damages claim, and specifics to support his allegation that her claims cost him Republican support from donors and others.

The defamation case was just about to enter the discovery phase ahead of trial, in which Lake would have been required to provide Richer’s attorneys with private statements she had made about her claims about Richer.

“Just the idea that Stephen, who is a committed public servant who has shown a real commitment to the integrity of elections in Arizona, would intentionally sabotage her election is absurd on its face,” Berwick said on Monday, before Lake’s filing. “Among other things, they are both Republicans.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Watch a Q&A with Pennsylvania’s top elections official

2024-03-26T15:33:43+00:00

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

This year, Pennsylvania voters will cast their ballots for president, members of Congress, top state offices such as attorney general and treasurer, and more.

In 2020, the state was subjected to false claims of election fraud fueled by former President Donald Trump. The claims led to a flood of lawsuits, some of which went to the state’s Supreme Court and sowed distrust in Pennsylvania’s election system.

On April 2, Al Schmidt, head of the Pennsylvania Department of State, joined Votebeat and Spotlight PA to discuss how his agency is working to create trust in our election system and combat misinformation. The event also included a Q&A with a University of Pittsburgh researcher on how to spot election misinformation.

Watch the event in full below:

Ongoing conspiracies pushed out the elections staff in this Texas county. The new director won’t budge.

2024-02-22T10:55:00+00:00

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

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas — Jim Riley and his team spent weeks preparing for a forum he hoped would remind the public that elections in Gillespie County are “safe, accurate and dependable.”

The new county elections administrator expected more than 50 people. He asked a more experienced election official from a neighboring county to be there, in case he needed help clarifying election laws he’s less familiar with. He planned for a mock election, setting up voting equipment that the audience could use.

But fewer than two dozen people came. And some — county Republicans and local tea party members — walked out before his presentation ended. They’re the same people who Riley believes no longer want him in the job and who have disrupted the way elections are run in the county.

“Yeah, I’m disappointed. But the word will get out. They’ll go out and say that ‘he’s still there. He’s still standing’,” Riley said.

Riley, 76, intends to stay standing, even if it means standing up to the pressure of local right-wing activists who want him to radically change the way Gillespie elections are run. It’s more pushback than he expected when he took the job in August.

“I was just surprised. But I am dealing with it,” Riley said. “I’m not quitting.”

That’s no small commitment, considering Gillespie’s recent history. A little more than a year ago — following years of harassment by local right-wing activists fueled by unsupported claims of election malfeasance and conspiracy theories — the entire elections department in this Hill Country county quit.

Six months into his new role, Riley has signaled that he will not easily bend to the activists’ demands to fix county election problems that don’t exist. Since before he took the job, they have been mounting a pressure campaign to convince local officials to get rid of its electronic election equipment and switch to checking in voters on paper and counting votes by hand.

“If they thought that I was one who would follow along on this, then they were badly misinformed,” Riley said. “I stand by what I said: a hand count will not make elections in Gillespie better.”

A Republican and a semi-retired Presbyterian minister, Riley said when he sees a need, he turns to it and serves.

“In my own personal walk with Jesus, I want to be doing things that would be considered worthwhile. And right now that seems to be this job,” he said.

On Feb 6, 2024 Gillespie County elections administrator, Jim Riley, tells residents how difficult it would be to steal a ballot by going over the chain of custody process and what election workers and county officials do to ensure that ballots are kept secure.

“Thrown into a hornet’s nest”

Although Riley says he’s got what it takes to endure the big election year ahead of him, some residents worry the county may be at risk of losing yet another election director.

After the entire elections staff quit in the summer of 2022, county officials spent months looking for a new elections director. Riley had been a precinct judge — tasked with supervising polling locations — for the local Republican Party for years, which meant he was familiar with how elections in the county were run. While the job was vacant, he helped manage early voting during the November 2022 midterm election and helped the county clerk in the months that followed. County officials encouraged him to apply for the job; he did so in June.

Meanwhile, some Republicans and activists had been organizing an effort aimed at convincing county executives to ditch electronic voting equipment and instead use volunteers to hand-count ballots.

“We can do this in Gillespie and in the surrounding Hill Country because we’re small enough and we have enough people who want to know the truth,” Angela Smith, a poll watcher and a founder of the Fredericksburg Tea Party, said in July at an event featuring out-of-state election conspiracy theorists promoting hand counting – a method experts say is inaccurate and far more costly.

More than 20,000 registered voters live in Gillespie and about 80% are Republican.

Although county executives dismissed the push to hand count, by the time Riley was appointed to his new position, Republicans had decided they’d hand count in the March primary election – a move state officials had warned would require double the amount of workers and volunteers, of resources and a risk of legal challenges from candidates, but a decision the party was legally allowed to make.

Mo Saiidi, then the chairman of the county’s Republican Party, resigned last fall following his opposition to the party’s decision to hand-count ballots in the primary election.

“Anybody who would have come into that job would have been thrown into a hornet’s nest, to be honest with you,” Saiidi said.

Saiidi was a member of the election commission that appointed Riley. He said the county was left scrambling when former elections administrator Anissa Herrera — who’d run elections there since 2019 — and her staff quit. He’s concerned that it could happen again.

“It’s the same now with Jim there,” Saiidi said. “The same barrages of baseless complaints. This is not healthy, we’ve gotta do something. We need to let them do their jobs.”

“The will of the people”

Texas law allows the political parties to choose the ballot counting method for the primary elections. For the March 5 primary, Republicans in Gillespie have decided they’ll hand count all ballots cast during early voting and on election day.

The party is also taking an additional step to make its election more analog. On election day, the party will ditch electronic poll books, used to check voters in at the polls. Instead, they’ll use printed voter rolls prepared by Riley’s staff.

But during early voting, under Texas law, it’s Riley who gets to decide how to check in voters at the polls during that two-week period. And he has insisted on using the county’s electronic poll book – a system he says is reliable and more efficient in what is typically a high-turnout election.

That’s upset the local activists, who falsely believe election officials can use the electronic poll books to manipulate election results.

For weeks, Republicans and Tea Party members who opposed using the electronic poll books have sent out a ‘call to action’ for residents, asking them to write letters to county Judge Daniel Jones and other county commissioners in hopes they will tell Riley to change his mind.

Over a week ago, Republican precinct chairs Tom Marschall and David Treibs created a 20-minute video about Riley’s decision to “do something other than what the people want,” posting it on social media. In the video, they also suggested that residents ask the county to get rid of the elections administrator position entirely and give those duties to an elected official, such as the county clerk or the tax assessor-collector. Marschall told Votebeat that if Riley were to “abide by the will of the people” he wouldn’t have raised these issues.

“We just want to do it the old fashioned way and do it on paper, and nobody’s going to be able to add 1,000 names to that list when I’m sitting there, guarding it,” Treibs — who could not be reached for comment — said in the video. “Nobody’s gonna mess with that stuff when I’m there. I can guarantee you that.”

In the video, he went on to say that because Riley isn’t elected, “Jim Riley doesn’t answer to anyone and I don’t think that’s a good thing. But we want to try to pressure him and… be nice of course.”

Election administrators are nonpartisan positions appointed by an election commission made up of the county clerk, the tax assessor-collector, the chairs of the local political parties and the county judge.

A poll pad with an ID check-in is active prior to Gillespie County residents checking in for the mock election hosted on Feb. 6, 2024. The poll pad is used for voter check-in and verification for county and precinct.

“Right now, I’m experiencing a mess”

So far, Riley hasn’t budged on the demands from the activists. Instead, he’s been focused on rebuilding trust and learning as much about elections as possible. In January, he attended a conference and training for Texas election administrators, networking with other election directors across the state and with staff at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

He says he often calls election directors from neighboring counties for advice and doesn’t shy away from admitting that he still has a lot to learn. He takes tips and examples on what he can do to rebuild trust in local elections. The lightly attended public forum was one such attempt.

With the pressure of learning the ins and outs of elections, in a state where laws are often changing, and in a county where election officials have in the past found the job to be too much, some election administrators say support from county commissioners — who control the county’s budget and resources allocated for the elections department — goes a long way.

In Llano County, about 30 miles north of Gillespie, Andrea Wilson has been the elections administrator for over a year. She quickly learned that the job required her to become an election law expert, a record-keeping expert, a logistical manager, a trainer for election workers, a budget strategist and an office administrator to keep track of supplies, among other duties.

And the hours of work are extensive. Wilson’s kept track: The two weeks of early voting now covers 115 hours that election administration staff must be present in the office and an additional 17-plus hours on election day, she said.

“With all of that resting on your shoulders, could you then imagine having to fight with your county commissioners for the staff necessary to support that mission or a budget to pay for all the necessary supplies?” Wilson said. “Or even worse is adding to your already overflowing plate the spread of misinformation.”

Without support, Wilson said she wouldn’t have lasted a year on the job in Llano. She said it should be “the standard” for all counties to provide that kind of support to their elections departments.

When Herrera, the previous elections administrator in Gillespie quit, in her resignation letter she told county officials that “the threats against election officials and my election staff, dangerous misinformation, lack of full-time personnel for the elections office, unpaid compensation,” had in part made the job “unsustainable.”

Her staff was made up of one more full-time employee and a part-time employee. She’d asked county officials for two more full-time employees but the county only approved one and it’s unclear whether it was filled or whether the county plans to allocate funding to pay for additional workers in the future. Gillespie County Judge Daniel Jones did not respond to Votebeat’s multiple requests for comment about how the county plans to support its elections department and to help retain election staff in Gillespie.

The number of people working in the Gillespie elections department remains the same: two full-time employees, including Riley, and one part-time employee.

Although at times he admits the pressures of the job can be overwhelming and frustrating, Riley told Votebeat he is confident he has the support of Jones and other county commissioners. And he relies on his faith often to keep at it, any time he’s discouraged, he said. But he’s committed to running elections in the county as long as he can.

“In the midst of everything that is just kicking you in the butt. If you spend a little time in the word, spend time in prayer and you seek it through Jesus. You’ll be amazed at what he allows you to experience,” Riley said. “So, right now, I’m experiencing a mess, but I haven’t felt alone in it at all.”

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

How to safeguard elections against everything from AI to natural disasters

2024-02-19T11:00:00+00:00

There’s a good case to be made that in the event of an emergency, the best person to have around would be an election official.

Floods! Hurricanes! Pandemics! Skeptics! Bomb threats! Mail containing mysterious and terrifying substances! Election officials deal with all of it. They have contingency plans for their contingency plans, though the efforts are clearly reaching new heights.

As the Washington Post pointed out earlier this month, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is sending out kits to county election offices “that include tourniquets to stem bleeding, devices to barricade doors and hammers to break glass windows.” Federal officials recommend election offices have on hand “a minimum of two doses of Naloxone per person handling mail,” to reverse potential overdoses in case they are exposed to drugs such as fentanyl.

Secretaries of state and state election directors, convening in Washington, D.C., earlier this month for co-located conferences where federal officials advised them threat levels were high, acknowledge it can be a lot. Even for a group of people that Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows described as the “world’s best contingency planners.”

It’s of course impossible to anticipate everything.

At a panel at the National Press Club, Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams said that when he attended his first secretaries of state conference, in 2019, the focus was cybersecurity.

“Basically, it was fighting the last war of 2016,” Adams said. “Of course, 2020 actually happened, and the threats in 2020 weren’t the same threats. They were totally different. And this is the nature of anything is learning from the past but also understanding it’s of limited value in anticipating the future.”

Nonetheless, election officials try. They hold tabletop exercises that demand they respond to increasingly far-fetched combinations of threats. They gather at conferences like this one to trade tips and study best practices. They attempt to stay on top of an ever-growing list of potential problems. They stay calm - more or less.

Minnesota Elections Director David Maeda, on a panel to talk about the lessons of 2020, said some counties had told him they appreciated his calm leadership style that year. “I said, ‘What the heck are you talking about,’” he said, to a big laugh from the room.

“The world was on fire and my cats heard me screaming words they never heard me scream before. It just seemed like everything was difficult during that year.”

This year, artificial intelligence is prominently on the list of things to worry about. As we and others have written, bad actors could use the technology to attempt to mislead voters, as in the case of the AI-generated robocall imitating President Joe Biden’s voice to urge Democrats not to vote in the New Hampshire primary. And as use of such technology gets more prevalent, it will become easier for people to claim that photos, videos, or audio of them isn’t real, making it hard to know what’s true and what’s not.

But AI could also be used to disrupt elections by targeting election officials themselves, a worry that has gotten less attention. Josh Lawson, the director of AI & democracy for Aspen Digital, said there have been instances in the financial sector of AI being used to trick workers into abandoning normal protocols or transferring money, believing they are doing so at the instructions of a superior. That should serve as a warning to other sectors, he said.

In a presentation at last week’s National Association of Secretaries of State conference, Lawson suggested that election officials make sure they’re using secure protocols - for example, having workers call back the main line to confirm instructions if they get a call from a superior (or in a superior’s voice) asking them to do something out of the ordinary, such as change precinct procedures in a way that could violate the chain of custody. In an interview, he stressed that such best practices are important to implement.

One such best practice is engaging with technology companies. OpenAI has a partnership with NASS, which means ChatGPT will direct users to NASS’s canivote.org site for election information, and Microsoft is working with NASED to help protect elections.

So election officials continue to try to think of everything, even as new threats and challenges emerge on a regular basis in an election year of unprecedented scrutiny. We’ve long expected them to be prepared for different scenarios. But can they be ready for the unimaginable?

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter.Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

This Pa. activist is the source of false and flawed election claims gaining traction across the country

2024-02-12T10:00:00+00:00

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

On Jan. 6, 2021, as former President Donald Trump rallied his supporters, he used a statistic that, though false, was making the rounds: “In Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters,” he screamed, throwing his arms wide open in front of thousands of angry followers. “This is a mathematical impossibility unless you want to say it’s a total fraud.”

The number appears to be the work of Heather Honey, a Pennsylvania-based “election integrity” investigator whose research has achieved a remarkable level of national salience among the far right, despite being replete with errors. The 205,000 figure, for example, is “false” according to the Department of Justice, and was based on incomplete data the state says can’t be used for this type of analysis. Honey herself has revised the discrepancy downward. While Honey’s current estimate is almost half of what it once was, it’s still inaccurate and the original number is also still routinely cited as fact.

“There were 202,377 MORE ‘votes’ cast, than actual REAL VOTERS THAT VOTED,” reads a November 2023 post on X from a popular rightwing account. It was reposted more than 13,000 times.

Honey has been among the most effective advocates for right-wing election talking points. Time after time, her research has fed into viral allegations about election integrity, fueling conservative pressure campaigns, forcing fact-checkers and public officials to attempt to piece together a more accurate picture, and undermining confidence in long-trusted election practices. Often, her conclusions are misleading or based on incomplete information.

In the past year, working with a network of election integrity groups organized by conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, Honey has had perhaps the most success with her latest research: A 29-page report on the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, sent to Republican secretaries of state and legislators. Her information appears to have influenced the decision of several member states to withdraw from ERIC, an interstate program that election officials widely regard as the nation’s best tool to keep voter rolls up-to-date and free of bloat.

An analysis by Votebeat and Spotlight PA found the report’s conclusions are false, often based on out-of-context examples, and that her sweeping generalizations are frequently not backed by the data she presents. Presented with Votebeat’s and Spotlight PA’s findings — the product of redoing her many calculations and fact-checking the analysis she has offered to public officials — Honey defended her work.

Despite how widespread her research has become, Honey described herself in emails to Votebeat and Spotlight PA as “an ordinary citizen working hard to do what I can to restore confidence in elections.”

When asked for a final comment, she accused Votebeat of “slander” and personal attacks. “Who is pressuring you to write this hit piece? What is your goal?”

The way that Honey relies on real-but-incomplete data is a hallmark of those who spread misinformation, experts say.

“The fundamental misconception people have about misinformation is that misinformation is about the facts in front of you,” said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public who studies mis- and disinformation. Instead, Caulfield said, popular misinformation often relies on leaving out crucial details.

Calling it “misrepresented evidence,” Caulfield likened Honey’s report to a prosecutor accurately telling a jury that they discovered a murder weapon in a suspect’s possession but failing to mention that the fingerprints on it belonged to someone else.

“You can’t look at that and say, ‘The knife is real, we found the knife,’ but not look at it and mention you found fingerprints that would undermine the importance of the evidence,” he said.

Activated by 2020

As Honey tells her own origin story, she was standing in line at her polling place in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 3, 2020, behind an older couple when her journey to election integrity investigator began.

“It really kind of struck me that, you know, this woman who just waited in line for an hour was told ‘oh, you have to cast a provisional ballot,’” Honey said on Mitchell’s “Who’s Counting” podcast in May 2022. She told Mitchell she wondered if the provisional would be rejected. “So it just got me a little bit worked up and I went home and I started doing, I mean, what I do.”

Honey has operated Haystack Investigations — a private investigations and supply-chain auditing consultancy — since 2017, her LinkedIn profile shows. Her website offers services ranging from supply chain audits to social media investigations.

Using what she’s described as “open-source investigation” skills, Honey began researching Pennsylvania’s election laws and requesting data from the Pennsylvania Department of State in November 2020. Soon after, she decided to reach out to her state representative, Frank Ryan, a Republican, with her findings.

“I said ‘look, here are the things that I found,’” she told Mitchell. One of those things was “that there were more ballots reported than what we found in the voter files.”

Honey told Mitchell that Ryan gathered other representatives together to show them her work — that is, a calculation purporting to show a discrepancy between the number of ballots cast in the 2020 election and the number of people the Pennsylvania roll recorded as having voted.

Ryan did not respond to an interview request, though Mitchell’s version closely mirrors his public telling of events, and emails — on which Honey is included — show Ryan passed this information onto U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a Republican who was in close contact with Trump at the time. According to the final report of the January 6 committee, Trump would repeat the claim that Pennsylvania had more votes than voters numerous times, which was part of the Department of Justice indictment against him alleging election interference.

Honey told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that Ryan was receiving information from multiple sources at the time, but she did not directly dispute that Trump’s figures originated with her work.

Honey’s latest calculation of the discrepancy, revised after straggling counties uploaded fresher records, sits at around 121,000. Trump cited that number, and Honey’s work directly, in a document he released in January claiming fraud in swing states in 2020.

Still, election administrators in Pennsylvania say this number is based on a flawed analysis.

Voter roll data is constantly updated to account for moves, deaths, and other issues of eligibility, which stops in the weeks just before an election and resumes again immediately after, the Department of State and county election directors explained. The roll also does not contain information about some voters whose identity must legally be kept confidential, such as victims of abuse. In other words, the state’s voter roll at any one point in time doesn’t reflect a complete record of who voted in the last election. But Honey’s analysis treats the roll as if it does.

For example, if a voter in Philadelphia moved to New Jersey the day after the 2020 election, the Philadelphia Board of Elections would cancel their registration. And even though they legitimately cast a ballot in Philadelphia on Election Day, their voter history would not appear in the voter roll system after that because they have been removed from the rolls.

Given these limitations, the Department of State told Votebeat and Spotlight PA, Honey’s method of analysis is “not an accurate way to reconcile votes cast to the number of voters who participated in any individual election” and that the system “was not intended” for this purpose. The state pushed back on the figure at the time, but that didn’t stop it from spreading.

As Honey’s research gained traction, other election-integrity advocates began to take notice and solicit her for work. She was paid as a subcontractor in Arizona for Cyber Ninjas, the company hired by that state’s Senate to investigate the 2020 election in Maricopa County. That investigation ultimately did not prove any fraud. Documents from it — obtained by American Oversight and the Arizona Republic — show she was a “manager” and billed tens of thousands of dollars for her work, though it is unclear how much she was eventually paid.

Cyber Ninjas subsequently went out of business, but Honey’s work continued.

Days before the 2022 midterm elections, Honey released a report — through her election integrity research organization, Verity Vote — claiming nearly a quarter of a million ballots in Pennsylvania had been sent to “unverified” voters. Rep. Ryan again picked up the information in a letter to the Department of State. It was then echoed by Trump, and conservative website the Gateway Pundit pointed to it as evidence that the election was fraudulent and should be decertified.

The report “flagrantly misrepresents” how the system works, the Department of State — which rebutted it after it gained traction online — said at the time. Voters were labeled as “NV” or “not verified” in the state’s voter management system, but as the Associated Press reported, the label is for internal workflow purposes and typically means the identification provided by the voter is still being verified by county workers so their ballots can be counted.

A more refined ERIC criticism

In 2022, as ERIC became the subject of right-wing fury, Honey began her own research.

ERIC was created in 2012 by seven original member states with assistance from the Pew Charitable Trusts. It continues to be governed by member states and uses state voter rolls, death records, motor vehicle records, and other information to cross-check state voter rolls for accuracy. It also identifies voters who may be eligible to vote but unregistered — referred to as EBUs — and requires states to reach out to those potential voters about registering.

ERIC does not add or remove any voters itself. It only provides lists of voters to states, and states and counties then verify the accuracy of ERIC information before they remove voters from the rolls. Voters who register in response to the outreach must meet all voter registration requirements.

By June 2022, ERIC had grown to include 33 states and the District of Columbia. Prior to conservative attacks — including those fueled by Honey’s research — it drew bipartisan praise from officials for its ability to help clean voter rolls, including from some of those same officials who would take up Honey’s talking points.

In January 2022, an article from the right-wing outlet the Gateway Pundit accused ERIC of being “a left-wing voter registration drive disguised as voter roll clean up.” Louisiana soon after announced it was suspending its membership. Officials told Votebeat at the time the decision was unrelated to the coverage but that “numerous” experts on “election stuff” had advised the state to leave ERIC, office spokesman John Tobler said.

Louisiana would be the only state to part with the program for several months after the Gateway Pundit’s story was published. In the interim, Honey released her report, offering apparent backing to the charges laid out by the site.

While it reached many of the same conclusions as the Gateway Pundit, Honey’s report offered a more professionalized critique of ERIC with historical research, original first-hand documentation, and data analysis. It appears to have contributed to Virginia, Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana withdrawing from the compact, as well as North Carolina’s decision to halt its process of joining.

Flaws and omissions in Honey’s ERIC report

In June 2022, Mitchell — a conservative attorney who represented Trump in Georgia in 2020 — hosted a conference in Washington, D.C. There, Honey gave a presentation on ERIC to several secretaries of state or their representatives, according to information obtained by Documented, a D.C.-based investigative news outlet, and provided to Votebeat and Spotlight PA.

Mitchell did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

At the same time, Honey released her ERIC report on her website.

The report repeatedly asserts misleading claims. For example, she writes “after 10 years of ERIC, there is no evidence that it has led to an improvement in accuracy or clean voter rolls.” She attempts to prove that by comparing the number of voter roll removals in ERIC states vs. non-ERIC states. That comparison, however, relies entirely on a single metric — the number of removals in one category released in one year.

She claims that her research — using data released bi-annually by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — shows that ERIC states removed proportionally fewer voters who had moved out of their voting districts than non-ERIC states had in the same time period.

Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at MIT who studies elections and works with EAC data, says the data shouldn’t be used in this way. It is often unreliable because it contains gaps and basic mathematical errors, and sometimes doesn’t match what states independently report. Stewart is a member of ERIC’s Research Advisory Board, which advises the organization on how it can measure its performance. He also disagreed with the premise of Honey’s analysis, since ERIC is not responsible for removing any voter from the voter rolls and ERIC member states are “at the mercy” of local jurisdictions like counties that actually act on the data ERIC provides.

But the data can provide a rough measure of ERIC’s performance. Using data available to Honey at the time of her report, Votebeat and Spotlight PA repeated her analysis and found that the conclusion of her report is misleading. She appears to have chosen the singular datapoint that supported her claim, out of a series of voter-removal metrics in the same data set. And, despite the availability of multiple years of such data, Honey used only one — 2020, an outlier year. Taken together, Honey left out 11 of 12 relevant data points in her report.

Votebeat’s and Spotlight PA’s analysis, which used all 12 data points available at the time her report was published, suggests exactly the opposite: ERIC states remove a higher percentage of voters from the rolls than non-ERIC states. Data from a more recent year — 2022 — also supports that conclusion.

(Read more about Votebeat’s analysis below the story.)

Asked to explain her selective use of data, Honey did not respond to some questions and offered answers to others that contradict the logic of her analysis. For example, asked to explain why she only used a single metric from one year, Honey said in an email that it would be inappropriate to analyze one of the other categories — removal of voters who died — in state-to-state comparisons, since some states, like Pennsylvania, do not use ERIC’s death data. But Honey’s analysis has the same flaw, as not all ERIC member states use ERIC’s moved-voter data uniformly, either.

Honey did not address why she only analyzed the EAC’s data from one year, when four were available at the time she published her report.

Elsewhere in the report, Honey claims that the outreach to eligible but unregistered residents, or EBUs, that ERIC requires member states to conduct “results in significant swelling of voter rolls,” and that “EBU additions consistently exceed suggested removals by ten times.”

But available data doesn’t support Honey’s conclusions.

“The report is obsessed with EBUs,” Stewart said. “I just take, overall, the report as part of building the case that ERIC is this left wing organization that is trying to get Democrats onto the voter rolls.”

To conclude additions exceed removals by “ten times,” Honey shows a graph of data from ERIC’s website. The wording of the title of the graph calls these “additions and removals instigated by ERIC participation,” as though all of the numbers displayed are actual voters removed from or added to rolls. But ERIC only supplies information about voters who may need to be removed or are eligible to register to vote — state and county election offices determine which are valid and make any changes themselves. In the case of eligible but unregistered voters, the state simply sends a mailer to the identified person informing them of their eligibility, and the voter must take action from there. Honey acknowledges elsewhere in the report that removal and eligible-voter data ERIC provides to states are merely “suggest[ions].”

Her graph also leaves out two other categories of ERIC’s list maintenance recommendations to states. In reality, they’ve recommended roughly 41 million records be updated and identified roughly 57 million voters who may be eligible.

Votebeat performed a more accurate analysis of ERIC’s effect on voter roll additions, using data showing net changes to voter rolls, rather than the number of people who were sent mail.

The EAC’s data — which Honey uses elsewhere in her report, though not for this analysis — shows that there is typically less than 1 percentage point of difference between ERIC and non-ERIC states when it comes to registering new voters.

This figure aligns with academic research on the topic. A study of Pennsylvania’s ERIC mailings, published in 2020, found they resulted in only a 1 percentage point increase in registration.

Elsewhere, Honey’s report relies on real data to make inaccurate conclusions or omits relevant and readily-available context.

For instance, she accurately states that Pennsylvania’s and Michigan’s secretaries of state received voter outreach grants from nonprofits dispersing money from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Honey then incorrectly claims the grants were given to those states “in order to gain access to data needed to inflate the Democrat voter rolls and drive Democrat turnout.” Honey did not respond to a request to provide evidence of that claim.

The portion of Pennsylvania voters registered as Democrats went down in 2020, as it has every year for more than a decade. Michigan voters do not register by party, so there are no “Democrat voter rolls” there. And a recent study from data scientists at the University of California Los Angeles found that the areas that received grants funded by Zuckerberg saw less than a 0.13 percentage point increase in voter turnout — ultimately significantly fewer votes than would be needed to swing the election even if they all had voted for Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

Honey also leaves out important context. For example, she quotes a 2021 Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau report which found many duplicate and erroneous voter registrations in the file ERIC sent to that state for voters who should potentially be removed.

Honey quotes this accurately but leaves out other parts of the report that reflect positively on ERIC, such as the state elections office saying ERIC does a better job “identifying individuals whose voter registration records may need to be inactivated or who may have more than one active voter registration record” than it does. Among its conclusions, the report says the state’s voter rolls would be more accurate if it used ERIC’s data more often.

Honey said the issues addressed by the Wisconsin agency were “very different things” than what she investigated in her report, but did not elaborate on why she didn’t include the positive aspects.

Honey’s claims gain traction

Despite the flaws in Honey’s report, it quickly gained traction, making its way across conservative media and into the hands of influential politicians and officials.

“Thank you for reading through this information!” a local Virginia GOP committeewoman wrote about Honey’s report in a March 2023 email to a state representative, expressing “hope” it would be shared with the Virginia state elections board. It ultimately was.

Records obtained by Documented also show that Honey’s influence grew through the help of Mitchell. In June 2022, Mitchell organized the event for secretaries of state in Washington, D.C. Officials from Texas, Wyoming, Louisiana, and West Virginia were scheduled to attend, according to records obtained by Documented, which also show that Mitchell’s group paid for a Texas secretary of state official’s travel to the event. Records obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA show Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft was out of office that day for an unspecified “meeting in DC.” Louisiana announced its official withdrawal from ERIC a month later.

As officials and activists took notice of the report, Honey’s work began to be cited by influential outlets and figures in conservative media, including The Federalist.

“Per government watchdog Verity Vote, ERIC doesn’t actually clean states’ voter rolls, but rather inflates them,” the publication wrote in March 2023, using the name of the entity through which Honey puts out her election-related research.

Her work also made appearances in a series of articles critiquing ERIC by Hayden Ludwig, director of policy research at Restoration of America — a conservative Christian non-profit focused on the challenges presented by “the elite,” “Marxist neo-liberals” and “Communist China.”

And Judicial Watch, an influential conservative legal watchdog group, cited it in a white paper in March 2023. “States that do not participate in ERIC had a higher rate of identifying and removing from voter registration rolls individuals who relocated out of a jurisdiction than ERIC member states,” Judicial Watch wrote.

Policymakers took notice of the report as well.

In 2018, Ashcroft, a Republican, said the state’s membership in ERIC “will help affirm voters are eligible and registered in the right location, identify potential duplicate registrations and identify unregistered voters so we can help them get registered.”

But last February, Honey gave Ashcroft a private presentation on her report, emails obtained by Documented and Votebeat/Spotlight PA show.

A month later, Ashcroft announced Missouri’s withdrawal, saying in part that it was because ERIC was “adding names to voter rolls” — language similar to the claims in Honey’s report. Missouri’s number of registered voters increased by less than two percent in the time it was part of ERIC. The state’s Republican state auditor recently criticized Ashcroft for the decision in a report, which cited the benefit of ERIC’s data in maintaining accurate voter rolls. Ashcroft did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Honey’s report was not the sole reason any state withdrew from ERIC. No state election official — even those who met with her or received her report and appear to have adopted some of her language — explicitly cited her research. But her report and advocacy appears to have influenced several states.

In January of last year, Devvie Duke, a member of the Texas GOP and an ERIC task force, said in a Zoom meeting that she had lined up ERIC training with Heather Honey “so we can be informed and productive when we’re writing.” She paused. “Or, going to see our legislators in support of legislation getting rid of ERIC.”

State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who wrote the bill that pulled Texas out of ERIC, participated in that meeting, where he was introduced as “a regular” at the task force’s sessions.

Duke, who did not respond to a request for comment, is currently running for a seat in the Texas state House. Her campaign material claims that it was “through Devvie’s work that Texas terminated its membership” in ERIC, which she called a “liberal voter registration scheme.”

In Virginia, Susan Beals — a former Republican state Senate aide and now the commissioner for the state Department of Elections — also received the report last March from a member of the state House, according to an email obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA. A letter obtained by Virginia Public Media shows that when Beals withdrew from ERIC, some of her reasoning was worded similarly to the contents of the email. Beals did not respond to a request for an interview.

Internal communications from an election integrity network in North Carolina — obtained by Documented and shared with Votebeat and Spotlight PA — show that Honey met with a group of legislators about a bill to prevent the state from joining ERIC, and also met with at least some of members of the state Senate who would later vote for the measure.

And language mirroring Honey’s research has also appeared in the capitol building of her home state, Pennsylvania, where state Sen. Cris Dush (R-Jefferson) said last March that non-ERIC states were doing a better job cleaning voter rolls than ERIC states, though he did not cite any evidence.

Dush did not respond to a request for comment.

Friends in high places, and a new frontier

Honey has certainly been successful in getting her information in front of influential officials in a way her peers have not, forming connections with secretaries of state, their staffs, state lawmakers, U.S. Senate candidates and congressmen. Her influence, therefore, is likely to continue.

For example, she recently gave a talk in Pennsylvania to the Lycoming County Republican Committee, attended by U.S. Rep. Dan Mueser, who called it an “important presentation” on “securing and protecting the voting system.” She also appears to have provided draft language for a bill in June 2021 to state Reps. Seth Grove and Russ Diamond, according to records obtained by American Oversight, a left-leaning watchdog group.

Honey also leads a local organization, PA Fair Elections, which hosts weekly Zoom discussions on election issues and organizes activists. Recent meetings have focused on how to advocate post-election hand counts to county commissioners, though some attract public officials, including at least two state representatives, a Commonwealth Court judge, and county commissioners.

Ahead of the 2024 election, her work is expanding beyond ERIC to include research and advocacy about ballots sent to and from voters living overseas, including military voters.

In addition to authoring a report on the subject, which she published in September 2022, she filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Department of State, with the support of an attorney from the Thomas More Society. It alleged the department was violating federal law by not requiring identification for some overseas voters.

An attorney for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office, who handled the complaint, dismissed it in November, offering that the complaint was more of an objection to federal law rather than an accusation that existing law was being violated. Honey is now appealing that decision to Commonwealth Court.

She’s also exporting this advocacy to states outside the commonwealth. In August, she gave a presentation on overseas voters to the Virginia coalition affiliated with Mitchell’s election integrity network, according to records reviewed by Documented.

A now-deleted post from the North Carolina–based Asheville Tea Party, whom Honey worked with to contact legislators in that state, shows that she also gave a presentation in April on military and overseas voters at the request of Mitchell.

Meeting notes posted to the Asheville Tea Party’s website indicate Honey explained that her concern was that while people assume the ballots are from military voters, most of them come from overseas citizens, many of whom were likely unverified.

“These newer election officials just rubber-stamp them and don’t do anything to verify,” she said, according to meeting notes. “It’s the non-military that we need to really worry about.”

Honey’s work focused on influencing local election policy also continues.

At the first PA Fair Elections meeting of the year, Honey kicked off the meeting by talking about what changes members needed to push for in their counties, including pressuring election offices to conduct their required post-election audit — a recount of 2% of all ballots — by hand count. It is currently done with a mix of hand counting and machine tabulation.

“There are 104 days till the primary, so these things we are talking about, we are very much hoping to have them in place for the primary so we can work out any kinks,” she told the group of roughly four dozen. “If we can roll them out in the primary, we can hopefully make improvements to them by the general.”

Clarification, Feb. 12, 2024: The story has been updated to clarify Pew Chartable Trusts’ role in the launch of ERIC.

Graphics and data analysis for this story were done using data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Election Administration and Voting Survey. Specifically, state-level data on the number of reported registrations, voting age population, overall removals, removals due to voter death, removals due to voter moving out of jurisdiction, and new valid registrations were extracted from the 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 datasets. EAVS data should be used and viewed with caution, as it is a voluntary survey and often incomplete or inaccurate.

Data on overall removals, removals due to voter death, removals due to voter moving out of jurisdiction, and new valid registrations was then grouped by each state’s ERIC membership status for a given report period. Those figures were then divided by the aggregate reported registrations for the group of states. Reported registrations are the actual number of registered voters a given jurisdiction reports in response to the survey. The voting age population is an estimate of the number of persons eligible to vote, based on census data.

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

Jason Armesto — a reporter for The Daily Progress, a newspaper in Virginia — contributed to this report.

AI technology sparks new worries, but poses familiar challenges to elections

2024-02-05T11:00:00+00:00

Recently the internet has been Freaking Out about artificial intelligence. I’m sure you’ve noticed.

The worries are not unfounded. Last month, what appears to be an AI-generated robocall in a voice made to sound like President Joe Biden went out to New Hampshire voters, telling Democrats not to vote in the upcoming presidential primary because it “only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump.” The caller ID made the call appear as if it had come from someone associated with the Biden campaign in the state. No one seems to know who is responsible.

That will not be the last time this happens. The horse, as they say, has left the barn.

So, I was excited to participate in a convening of scholars, election officials, and journalists in New York last week meant to at least begin to assess the potential impact of AI on the 2024 election. While I am well-acquainted with what one might describe as the beep-boop side of the journalism world, AI seemed overwhelming and scary to me prior to this. It’s still scary, but I’m — surprisingly — walking away less worried about it.

The program was the brainchild of Julia Angwin, an investigative journalist and author, and Alondra Nelson, a social scientist who served as acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under Biden. It was the first program of their new initiative, AI Democracy Projects.

Participants were broken into groups and asked to test four AI language models, or chatbots, on a set of prompts about the election — how to register to vote by mail in a given county, where a voter could find the nearest polling location, etc. — and assess the quality and the differences of the responses. It’s certainly not a complete answer on the goodness or badness of any of the language models, but measuring the impact of new technology has to start somewhere.

Ultimately, what the day proved to me was that the problems AI may cause aren’t really that new, and that with appropriate collaboration between interested parties — in this case, election officials and AI leaders — the public can build up defenses appropriately, even if we might need to do so in a different way than we have before.

Quinn Raymond, who participated in the day, co-founded Voteshield, a program that monitors changes in voter registration databases to spot malicious activity, and analyze anomalies. He says he and his colleagues at Protect Democracy have been thinking about these problems a lot. “The consensus is that the threat of AI in elections is ultimately one of scale. Someone trying to disrupt an election is basically using the old same dirty tricks (imitation, intimidation, etc), but now the barrier to entry is a bit lower, and the verisimilitude higher,” he said in an email after the event. “So a comparatively small number of motivated individuals can do a lot of damage even if they start out with minimal knowledge and resources.”

The Brookings Institute has recently released a helpful explainer on AI’s possible impact on elections, with a realistic take on its potential for harm. It comes to a similar conclusion.

All of that sounds terrifying, I realize, but here’s why I’ve downgraded my own terror to “twingy discomfort.”

For much of the day, I was testing election prompts in a room with two local election officials from large counties, two academics, and a former federal official. I’d played with ChatGPT before, but certainly not in this way. And, honestly, it was surprising how dumb the responses were, sometimes flatly unhelpful to the point of uselessness. Language models are — at least for now — not quite there yet.

For example, when asked to locate the nearest polling location to a Koreatown zip code in Los Angeles, one language model popped out the address of a veterans center several miles away that is not a polling location. I realize that seems harmful: maybe a voter would rely on that information and show up. But ultimately, the answers make such little sense that it’s likely that person would ignore it or seek information elsewhere.

“For voters seeking information on how to vote, a basic Google search performs much better than asking any of the chatbots,” said David Becker, a participant in the conference and the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

And, really, that makes sense given what AI is, says Raymond. “AI is fundamentally a technology about ‘guessing,’ and providing voters with accurate election information is fundamentally about ‘knowing,’” he said.

At least for now, it’s likely that a person sophisticated enough to seek out and use these language models for answers would pretty quickly realize they aren’t very good yet at election information and go elsewhere. Many of the public-facing models also explicitly label election information as potentially unreliable, referring users to local election offices or Vote.gov.

What was useful, though, was watching the election officials and the AI experts talk to each other. It’s a model for real collaboration in this area, and makes me optimistic about our ability to proactively address both the models’ shortcomings and the growing threat of disinformation as the technology becomes more sophisticated.

A robocall like the one in New Hampshire was inevitable. And this will keep happening. Like any evolving technology, experts and government officials need to rise to the occasion and update technology policies to address real-world conditions. For example, a handful of states are requiring images created using AI to be explicitly labeled. State-level attention to the issue has grown even since the start of the year, energized by the robocall.

This event was a great first step, and suggests that there really is common ground to be found on this important issue. Legislators working on bills should take note of the collaborative, interdisciplinary way Angwin and Nelson chose to approach possible solutions.

As I spoke to the election officials and journalists who’d attended the event, I realized that a common refrain was this: You just have to start playing with AI in order to understand it, and you shouldn’t be afraid to do it. Open ChatGPT and ask it questions. See what kind of images you can create with Microsoft’s Image Creator, and look closely for the tell-tale signs such generated images carry, such as not showing faces or distorting text. Try and clone your voice, and see what it sounds like.

Given how inaccessible the whole premise of AI seems, there is a real impulse to avoid engaging with it — as if it might shock us through our keyboards or take over our homes like that Disney movie from 1999. While an understandable response, it’s not a viable one if we — consumers of real information who attempt to assess that information in context — want to understand the pros and cons of this very real thing that is already having very real impacts.

If you want to dip your toe in gently, here are some good places to start (none of which require any previous knowledge to understand):

AI Campus (an initiative funded by the education ministry in Germany) has a great video called “Artificial intelligence explained in 2 minutes: What exactly is AI?” AI Campus also contains free lessons on AI, all aimed at creating “an AI-competent society.” Cheers.
“Artificial Intelligence, Explained” from Carnegie Mellon University is a great introduction to the various vocabulary words you might come across while exploring, and links out to helpful information on the history of AI’s development.
Harvard University has an extensive site dedicated to AI. While it’s aimed at students, it’s open to all and contains really fascinating tools and suggestions for how to explore the seemingly endless options offered by language learning models. I specifically recommend their guides on text-based prompts and their comparison of currently available AI tools.
We played a terrifying game in which a graduate student showed the room — full of experts! — a series of AI-generated images blended with actual photos and asked us to vote on which were real. There wasn’t consensus on a single image, and most people got most of them wrong. I certainly did. You can test your own skills in a similar quiz from the New York Times.

If you are an elections official who has concerns about this stuff, tell me what they are. I plan to remain engaged in this conversation, and Votebeat will certainly cover AI-related issues this year and beyond. Let us know what’s important to you.

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

Arizona GOP chairman contender asked county supervisors not to certify 2022 election

2024-01-29T19:04:47+00:00

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

Update, Jan 29: The Arizona Republican Party voted on Saturday, Jan. 27 to elect Gina Swoboda as chairman of the party.

A candidate to chair the Arizona Republican Party called on Maricopa County supervisors in 2022 to delay certifying the state’s midterm election, which would have violated state law, according to an email obtained by Votebeat.

Jim O’Connor, chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission, sent an email to Maricopa County supervisors on Nov. 27, 2022, asking them to delay certifying the election. Maricopa County provided the email to Votebeat in response to a public records request.

“Please look over the attached and allow reason and prudence to lead you all to delay certification of your County canvass until all the facts come to light,” O’Connor wrote, asserting that he had attached evidence that the county’s voting equipment wasn’t properly certified. The Secretary of State’s Office has since provided evidence showing that the equipment was properly certified.

The supervisors rejected his request and voted to certify the election the following day, as planned, meeting the deadline in state law.

O’Connor is being floated as a potential replacement for Jeff DeWit, who resigned as chairman this week after Kari Lake, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, released a recording of him asking her to name her price to “take a pause” from running for election in the state. The GOP’s voting members could elect a new chairman at a mandatory statewide party meeting Saturday that was scheduled long before DeWit’s resignation.

It’s unclear if O’Connor’s letter was just sent to Maricopa County supervisors, or to other supervisors across the state as well. He sent the email from his personal account, but signed it “Arizona Corporation Commissioner.”

O’Connor did not immediately respond to a call requesting comment Friday.

Republican supervisors across the state were pressured by Republican politicians and residents in November 2022 not to certify the election, but Cochise County’s two Republican supervisors were the only ones in the state to actually delay the certification. That decision now has them facing felony charges after an indictment from a state grand jury.

O’Connor has been an underlying force in Arizona for the push to get rid of ballot tabulation machines and, instead, to hand-count ballots. He’s a supporter of the “one day one vote” movement which would eliminate mail-in voting and early voting. And he’s long called into question the fairness of the state’s elections, including in multiple emails to county supervisors across the state since 2022.

Electing O’Connor could potentially lead to a change in tone for the state GOP. While prior Chairman Kelli Ward was focused on false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, DeWit often said he wanted to move the party forward.

O’Connor pressures county supervisors

In O’Connor’s Nov. 27 letter to the supervisors, he said the primary and general elections were “Null & Void,” because of the machine-certification issue. O’Connor attached documents that he believed supported his contention that the certifications were invalid.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission and Arizona Secretary of State’s Office has provided information showing that the certifications of the machines were valid for the state’s 2020 and 2022 elections.

It’s not the first time county supervisors had heard from O’Connor.

In May 2022, O’Connor encouraged people and organizations across Arizona to sign a declaration asking lawmakers to return to in-person Election Day voting, and stating that the “move to mail-in and drop-box voting in Arizona has undermined the integrity of our electoral process.”

On Aug. 30, 2022, O’Connor sent a letter to county supervisors saying that he had attended MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “The Moment of Truth Summit” and was “convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, no one can make a legitimate claim that our election machines and equipment are exempt from a cyber-attack creating an election outcome that cannot be trusted.”

In September 2022, O’Connor used his role as corporation commissioner, which regulates utilities in the state, to try to discuss blocking counties from using voting machines.

O’Connor had requested a meeting for the corporation commissioners to discuss recommending that county officials abandon their use, according to a story from The Arizona Republic at the time. The request was blocked by the chairwoman.

In October 2022, when voting had already begun for the midterm election, he wrote to Maricopa County supervisors and other elected officials twice again raising the certification issue and other issues with voting machines. He told them that they were not required to use the machines to count ballots, under state law. He urged them to acquire proof that the machines didn’t violate state and federal law.

“We must remedy and prevent what is certain to otherwise be a catastrophic failure and injury to the people of Arizona,” he wrote.

A year after the midterm, in October 2023, he wrote to supervisors again asking them not to use machines to count votes in the 2024 election.

“Each of you shall be in my prayers and the prayers of all who join me, as you deliberate the merits of not using machines and tabulators in our 2024 elections,” he wrote.

He has also said that the Maricopa County supervisors cannot be trusted to run the 2024 election, and called on voters to vote them out.

GOP spokesperson Dajana Zlaticanin said that the acting chairman is preparing for a vote to take place on Saturday. The party’s bylaws say that upon vacancy, the acting chair can call for the election within 45 days. The voting members can also call for an election on the spot Saturday, she said.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Conspiratorial rumblings about the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence evoke ‘Zuckerbucks’

2024-01-29T11:00:00+00:00

It turns out that right-wing activists have learned the same lesson as Hollywood: Everyone loves a sequel.

You may remember the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life from the so-called “Zuckerbucks” controversy during the 2020 election. That was when a couple of nonprofits including the Center for Tech and Civic Life distributed hundreds of millions of dollars that had been donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, as no-strings-attached grants to local election officials. Despite no evidence of partisanship (and lots of people checked), right-wing activists and critics labeled the funding a political act aimed at boosting turnout of Democratic voters.

CTCL now has a new program, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence. It’s a group of 15 counties, all of whom submitted applications, who work together to share best practices and create things such as a voluntary set of standards for recruitment, training, management, and retention of poll workers, a major concern for election officials around the country.

Since the program’s launch in the spring of 2022, it and CTCL have been subject to waves of critical stories by rightwing news sites fueled by talking points from right-wing activists. So have the counties participating in the program.

In March of last year, those stories focused on Boone County, Missouri. Conservative media outlets such as The Federalist and The Heartlander accused the county of joining “a liberal dark money-linked election organization,” and doing so “using taxpayer money,” an apparent reference to the membership fee, which is less than $2,000 a year.

Fourteen other counties joined Boone County in the Alliance’s inaugural cohort “to support each other, share best practices, and shape a new set of performance standards for the field.” The Federalist wrote about Boone County and then a very similar story about DeKalb County, Georgia, only a few weeks later. Most recently, yet another story highlighted Coconino County, Arizona. All the stories are written by the same reporter, who cites the same report from the Honest Elections Project falsely claiming CTCL seeks to “systematically influence every aspect of election administration” — though investigations by such places as the Federal Election Commission have found that to be false — in the first two paragraphs of each of the stories about all three counties. You’d be forgiven for initially thinking it was a copy-and-paste job. The articles paint a murky picture of what in reality seems to be a low-cost way for counties to share best practices in election administration.

The new article attempts to support its conclusion by quoting emails between a Coconino official and CTCL. Patty Hansen, that official in Coconino County, said she doesn’t know where the Federalist reporter got the emails. The reporter never contacted her for comment, she said, and neither he nor anyone else identifying themselves as an employee of The Federalist has submitted public records requests to her office. Other organizations certainly have, though, and any one of them could have handed them over. (Remember our public records investigations?)

“It doesn’t matter to me where he got them,” she told me. “It’s just so strange to take bits and pieces out of different emails and try and come up with a conspiracy.”

Neither Boone County nor Coconino County has been dissuaded from continued participation in the program, those in charge there told me. Other counties participating in the alliance — a near-even mix of red and blue counties — should probably be on the lookout for similar coverage, though it appears to be having little overall impact.

Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon, who personally came under fire over the county’s membership in the Alliance last year, said the public attention has mostly died down. But, she said, the public records requests from rightwing groups asking for all communications about and with the program continue. One group submitted such a request as recently as last Thursday.

“It’s always the same thing, emails between the clerk’s office and all the entities that are part of the alliance,” she told me. Lennon said the office will continue its membership, calling the alliance “the most efficient and economic way to provide professional development on election administration to my staff.”

Hansen had similar things to say. She’s been running elections for 36 years across three states, and saw her county’s participation in the program as a “way for me to learn from other experienced election officials to improve how we do things in Coconino County, but also to help others learn from my experience.”

She doesn’t seem bothered by the attention it’s brought to her office, nor was she particularly surprised by it. It’s a different version of negative attention her office and others like it have received in growing numbers since 2016.

“There are some people who are just really concerned, and believe there are conspiracies going on because their candidates aren’t winning,” she said. “It’s sad.”

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

Election distrust in Cochise County runs deep, and change is slow to come

2024-01-25T20:46:51+00:00

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

Sierra Vista — At the base of the Huachuca Mountains near the Mexican border, in a city built next to an Army base, crowds gathered to look at the machines that some of them believe have been stealing their votes.

Chris Wlaschin, the security lead for the machine manufacturer Election Systems & Software, brought the equipment to this city to try and convince them otherwise. Attempting to connect with the veteran-heavy audience, he told them he, too, was a veteran, and described himself as a patriot.

“I have too much to risk,” Wlaschin told them, “by coming up here and not telling you the truth.”

But the rumblings in the room suggested not everyone believed him.

As he laid out how his company tries to ensure accurate and secure voting, some attendees were shaking their heads or whispering to neighbors. “We have to be able to trust that our votes are being counted,” said one attendee, Danny Bergene, who wore a black shirt reading “HELL NO, JOE” with a rifle pictured on it. “And,” he continued, “no one trusts the machines.”

More than a year after the midterm election and a commotion that drew national attention, distrust continues unabated in conservative Cochise County. It was here that GOP claims of a stolen gubernatorial election prompted Republican supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd to try to hand-count all ballots and block the certification of the county’s votes. Now, Crosby and Judd face pending felony charges after a state grand jury found they conspired and interfered with an election.

County officials are trying to educate the public on how elections are run, hoping to rebuild trust. The Democratic Party is running candidates for all three supervisor spots in what they say is an effort to regain “responsible county government.” And Judd said in an interview she’s changed her mind about how much influence she, as a supervisor, can have on election matters.

“It’s a state matter,” she said. “I’ve settled on that.”

Bringing about change is difficult in a county so influenced by outside voices. Many seem to have made up their mind about the fairness of elections, or are more worried about other problems: Their roads need work. Their water resources are diminishing. And border crossings by undocumented immigrants are more than double this year than last, overwhelming local resources in the communities nearest the border.

Theresa Walsh, a Democrat challenging Crosby in the upcoming election, said these are the issues people want to talk about when she’s campaigning.

“I was going around and talking to people, and they were like, Who is Tom Crosby?’” Walsh said. “What is a supervisor?”

How election misinformation came to Cochise

Cochise County, in the southeast corner of Arizona hours away from Phoenix, is larger in square miles than the state of Connecticut but has just 125,000 residents. More than half live away from the population center of Sierra Vista, in small cities and towns that pepper the rugged desert and mountainous landscape. Getting to those towns means heading off the main highway, sometimes for an hour or more.

Long before Wlaschin came to town, Cochise County residents began listening to other sources who were telling them elections were rigged, and it was the voting machines that made that possible.

At first, it was former President Donald Trump and his unproven claims of vote switching in the 2020 election. Then came gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, whose unproven claims of fraud and wrongdoing in Maricopa County’s midterm election resonated with many voters here, where contempt for the state’s most populous county can run high.

“All the sudden, there was this vroom,” said Sierra Vista resident Bob Karp, gesturing with his hands to suggest an explosion.

Crowds showed up to county supervisors meetings in 2022 and pressured them not to certify the election. After two delays, a court forced supervisors to vote yes.

Longtime elections director Lisa Marra, well respected by her peers across the state, soon left, citing pressure and harassment after supervisors attempted to force her to illegally hand-count all ballots during the post-election audit. The county gave election duties to County Recorder David Stevens, a Republican who has expressed doubts about election security and was entangled in the hand-count push. Stevens then hired a new elections director who had spread unfounded claims of election fraud in 2020, but he resigned months later after facing intense criticism.

The county manager then called on Tim Mattix, the city clerk who had recently retired, to come back and take the job. He did, though he’s since laid low.

At the meetings last week, he stayed in the back. These voting machine demonstrations were partly his idea, but he didn’t speak at them. When it was time to introduce notable people in the room, the county manager introduced Stevens and others, but not Mattix.

After a demonstration of the machines, attendees asked several questions about how people vote in-person in the county. While the vast majority of Arizona counties use hand-marked paper ballots at polling places, in Cochise County, voters make their choices on a touch-screen machine. Those machines print out a ballot so the voter can review their selections before casting the ballot into a separate machine.

Some in the audience of a voting equipment demonstration in Cochise County said they still didn’t trust the machines after being shown all of their security features, while others said it gave them more confidence in the system.

Attendees were suspicious of the barcodes on those ballots, which are encoded with the voter selections for the tabulation machines to read. They also asked several questions about why the voter check-in system has a secure wi-fi connection, and about how data is encrypted. Throughout the discussion, Wlaschin seemed keen on convincing the crowd that he, himself, could be trusted.

“If I thought for a minute that ES&S was doing something wrong in terms of security, I would call the attorney general myself,” he said at one point.Tricia Gerrodette of Sierra Vista said it was nice to hear about the security features on the machines. She likes that voters can review a printed ballot that shows their selections.

County spokesperson Jane Montgomery said the county received positive feedback from people who said they hadn’t fully understood the layers of security the systems include. But she also said county officials recognize “there continue to be differing opinions” about the use of machines to count votes.

Election issues amid other local concerns, politics

Part of the problem is reaching voters at all.

The next day, in Tombstone, a tourist town about a 30-minute drive from Sierra Vista down a two-lane highway, Robert Scott, manager of the Trump Store, said he hadn’t heard about the meetings in the first place. Even if he had, he may not have gone. He’s busy working two jobs — running the store and as a janitor elsewhere.

He is convinced that Trump’s claims of vote switching are true and that Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs fixed the 2020 and 2022 elections in Arizona, he said, despite the court challenges presenting these claims being dismissed.

He lives in Tombstone, he said, but he doesn’t pay much attention to local politics and didn’t know Crosby and Judd had been indicted.

“That seems ridiculous,” he said.

But his main local concern, he said, is “that road between St. David and Benson.”

“This bridge out there is down to one lane,” he said. “It’s been that way for over a year. They haven’t done any work on it for months.”

A man walks down the main tourist street in Tombstone, Arizona.

When Walsh talks to voters, she said, they bring up water conservation, border security, and taxes. If they do mention elections, they ask how much the lawsuits related to the midterm election are costing county taxpayers. Judges ordered the county to pay $89,000 in attorney fees and legal costs to the parties that filed the lawsuit to stop the full hand-count, for example, and $36,000 for the case regarding the supervisors’ refusal to certify the election.

The Democratic Party — which only makes up about 24% of the voting population here — is supporting candidates for all three county supervisor positions for the first time in more than a decade. They are hoping Walsh, a retired Army colonel, can oust Crosby in a district with 19% registered Democrats, and that they can hold onto the seat currently held by Democrat Ann English, who is not running for re-election in her district, which is about 34% Democratic. Judd is also not running again. They are also hopeful about the Democratic candidate challenging Stevens in the recorder race, Anne Carl.

Karp, who is managing Walsh’s campaign, said that if Walsh and Carl won, it would do a lot to bring the community back together.

“It would stop this distrust, chaos, and lack of respect for people with a different viewpoint,” he said.

Judd stepped down from serving as the supervisors’ chairman this week, citing family health issues, and sided with English, the Democrat, to replace her. She said she doesn’t trust Crosby to run the meetings because he goes on “rants” and has been disrespectful to county attorneys he disagreed with, such as on potential open meeting law violations.

“We need to make sure we move the county forward,” she said. “Our poor attorney doesn’t deserve to be publicly chastised just because she was doing her job.”

Crosby didn’t return requests for comment. His and Judd’s trial is set for May, two months before ballots go out for the state’s Aug. 6 primary election.

Meanwhile, Walsh isn’t the only one who wants Crosby’s spot. Clint Briseno, a Republican, is challenging him in the primary. Briseno said he had planned to run for supervisor even before the election issues began. But seeing everything unfold — especially the way Marra was treated — convinced him that the county “can do better.”

As far as the voting machines, he said the technology is a blessing for the county. Hand-counting isn’t accurate, he said.

Even if Cochise can convince residents to keep the machines, though, that’s just the start

As one of the meetings wrapped up, a woman wearing a mint-colored suit began to yell from the back of the room. The real problem with the elections, she said, was the noncitizens on the voter rolls, and coming across the border, appearing to be alluding to Trump’s latest claim that Democrats are allowing immigrants to cross the border so they can vote. That’s where the fraud is at, she said.

“Arizona alone will bring them all down.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

False beliefs about the 2020 election still have a strong hold on Republicans, as Iowa makes chillingly clear

2024-01-22T11:00:00+00:00

Good morning,

Reams of ink have been spilled on the clearest takeaway from the Iowa Caucus. Here’s one: Polls of caucusgoers found that around two-thirds didn’t believe President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, and most of those respondents supported former President Donald Trump.

Now, many people have pointed out that the group of people voting in the Iowa caucuses is hardly a representative one — nor is the process (somehow, popcorn buckets are involved). And this year’s caucuses, held in bone-chilling, life-endangering cold, had 110,000 voters, or roughly 15% of the state’s registered Republicans — the lowest turnout in more than a decade, CBS News reported.

Still, more than three years after the 2020 election, that poll had a striking result. But anyone paying attention shouldn’t be startled.

This poll’s result echoed many others since the 2020 election that have found a significant number of Republicans don’t believe Biden won fairly. Of course, most Americans do believe Biden won fairly (and have since the election), and there’s no evidence he didn’t. Nonetheless, as the Iowa poll results reinforce, this country is going into the 2024 election with the most committed supporters of one of the two major political parties still buying into a false narrative of election fraud.

That’s despite the fact that, since the 2020 election, there have been untold numbers of attempts to prove election fraud, and they’ve all come up short. Judges have weighed such claims in courts of law and found them wanting. A bonkers review of votes in Maricopa County, Arizona pushed by Trump supporters got pretty wacky, but nonetheless found Biden won Maricopa County. The fraud claims have been picked apart by experts who said they were unfounded, including experts hired by the Trump campaign, and vigorously combated by election officials from both political parties — including many who would have liked to see Trump win. Trump supporters who spread such claims have pled guilty to criminal charges in connection with their efforts, and been found liable in civil defamation cases. Fox News agreed to pay nearly $800 million to voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems after reporting demonstrably false claims about its machines.

On top of that, reporters have searched for any evidence of fraud and, in the process, debunked countless claims. It’s hard to think of claims that have been more thoroughly debunked.

Still, the belief that the 2020 election was unfair or rigged persists. It takes varied forms, almost like an evolving virus. Ask people what they mean when they say the 2020 election wasn’t legitimate, and they all say something different. Some people say pandemic-prompted changes to election laws and rules didn’t go through state legislatures, and so the election wasn’t legitimate. (The Supreme Court last year rejected an extreme version of this so-called independent state legislature theory, but that hasn’t ended this push.) Others repeat debunked apocryphal tales about dead voters and fraud. And West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, who is running for U.S. Senate, responded “yes” to a question in December about whether the election was stolen because, he said in a press release, the way federal intelligence discredited scandalous claims centered on the former laptop of Biden’s son Hunter meant “the 2020 presidential election was improperly influenced by federal officials.”

So what’s the takeaway here, especially for a newsroom dedicated to covering elections and voting access in this climate of mistrust?

In 2024, reporters need to make sure they pin down exactly what people mean when they make sweeping claims about elections and illegal voting. We must strive to use specific language to describe exactly what people are claiming when they invoke loaded terms like “ballot harvesting” and must contextualize the claim clearly, saying both what we know to be true and what we don’t know yet.

And we must continue to explore not just why so many people believe their elections are illegitimate, but the consequences of that belief as the country moves toward the presidential election. After all, state lawmakers are passing legislation rooted in conspiracy theories and disproven allegations, as well as new laws meant to convince people elections are sound. Journalists are responsible for questioning the rationales behind such laws and reporting on whether they’re working as intended or having a disparate effect on some voters.

In the meantime, I’d love to have your thoughts. What’s continuing to drive these beliefs? What do people mean when they say the 2020 election wasn’t fair? What are the potential consequences for 2024?

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s story editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Turbulence in the 2024 elections has already started

2024-01-08T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Welcome to 2024! It is already quite spicy. I hope you are all well-rested.

Since we last delivered you an election news roundup, a lot has happened. Here are those things, in brief, and how I’m thinking about them.

First up:

Wisconsin Redistricting

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s heavily gerrymandered maps are unconstitutional and must be redrawn. It could result in earth-shaking consequences for the makeup of the Legislature in the particularly influential swing state. The decision hinged on new and controversial liberal justice Janet Protasiewicz joining the court, who’d rejected calls to recuse herself from the case after she was elected.

The Republican lawmakers who created the maps say they’ll take the case to the Supreme Court.

In related news, Wisconsin will officially be the next state in Votebeat’s coverage area. We’re currently searching for a reporter — interested journalists can apply here — and plan to have coverage of this and other key election issues in this highly contentious state.

This leads nicely to the next thing on this list: Michigan.

So much is happening there!

First, the state is also facing a pretty consequential court decision on redistricting. The day before the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued its ruling, a panel of three federal judges in Michigan ruled that 13 Detroit-area seats in the state Legislature must be redrawn because they were illegally based on race. “The record here shows overwhelmingly—indeed, inescapably—that the Commission drew the boundaries of plaintiffs’ districts predominantly on the basis of race,” the opinion reads. The lawsuit was brought by Black voters who said the map illegally diluted their ability to elect a candidate of their choice.

Also, one of the state’s fake 2020 electors regrets his actions. The New York Times got its hands on the transcript of James Renner’s interview with investigators from the Michigan attorney general’s office. He’s one of the Republicans who acted as a fake elector for Trump in the state, but charges against him were dropped last year after he agreed to cooperate with investigators. In the interview, he said he felt “betrayed” by the people who recruited him. “I felt that I had been walked into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in.”

In addition to Michigan, false electors are facing charges in Georgia and Nevada. Charges may also come this year in Arizona and New Mexico, where investigations are ongoing. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania also saw fake electoral votes submitted after Biden won in these states. The criminal fate of Wisconsin’s fake electors is as yet unclear, though a civil case against them ended in a settlement last month, with an agreement that they would acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and they would not serve as electors in 2024. And as we wrote last year, Pennsylvania’s fake electors included a small but crucial caveat in their submitted certificate that makes it unlikely they’ll face repercussions.

And finally, the Detroit News had a monster scoop. We’ll let the first paragraph of the story speak for itself: “Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time.”

Meanwhile, Trump is in the news for a bunch of other reasons, too — some election related, some not.

One that definitively is:

Trump could be off the ballot in Maine and Colorado. The Colorado thing happened shortly before our newsletter went dark. While we were out, though, the Maine Secretary of State said goodbye to 2023 in a pretty dramatic fashion: ruling that Donald Trump was constitutionally ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot. Uniquely, any Maine voter can challenge the eligibility of any candidate. Three voters had filed such challenges against Trump. By law, the secretary of state — currently Shenna Bellows — then holds a public hearing and renders a judgment.

“I did not choose to hold this hearing or issue a decision. I was duty-bound under Maine election laws and the Constitution,” Bellows said in an interview with NBC News. Trump’s campaign has already appealed the decision to the state’s top court, and state law gives the body less than a month to make a decision.

Ultimately, though, the final call in both Maine and Colorado will rest with the U.S. Supreme Court, which just announced it will hear the Colorado case on Feb. 8.

And finally:

Lol the Iowa Caucus is so soon.

Drink water! Don’t forget to eat lunch! Everything will be fine!

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

Texas Republicans want to hand count 2024 primary ballots. Experts say it’s “a recipe for disaster.”

2023-12-21T11:00:00+00:00

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

When Gillespie County Republicans conduct their primary in March, they will count votes in an ill-advised way: by hand, using scores of volunteers, without any machines.

Even if they can pull off their expensive, labor-intensive plan, they risk being sued by losing candidates or reprimanded by the state. And they may run up a huge bill of unnecessary costs.

“Hand-counting is a recipe for disaster,” said Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University and election administration expert. He and most other experts agree on this, and studies back them up: The method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines to tally votes.

The factors that led Gillespie Republicans to this plan are not unique to this rural county of nearly 30,000 people, west of Austin in Texas’ Hill Country. This summer, leaders of the GOP in counties as large as Dallas and as small as Uvalde in South Texas seriously considered hand-counting ballots for their primary elections, according to public records and interviews with election officials.

The phenomenon has been a shock to Stein, who said the effort could undermine confidence in the outcome of the election.

“It will not be reliable nor valid. It’ll cost an enormous amount of money and everyone, every candidate, will be challenging the count,” he said.

Party leadership in larger counties have, so far, resisted a full hand count. In Dallas County, leadership determined it would be impossible with present resources. In Travis County, the local GOP decided on a significantly watered-down hand-counting plan, focusing on a small percentage of primary ballots cast.

Gillespie County Republicans, though, must now recruit and train 100 additional election workers to do the election day tasks that normally fall to county election workers.

Then there’s the enormous job of manually tallying the votes in the roughly dozens of races on the more than 3,000 ballots expected to be cast in the primary, racing against the clock to finish before the state’s 24-hour deadline for reporting results.

But party official David Treibs, a precinct chair who’s been leading the hand-count planning, doesn’t think it will be much of a hassle.

“It’s not anything that’s really complicated. If you go ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5′ then you can do it,” Treibs, who has no experience hand-counting ballots, told Votebeat. “So it’s not like calculus, you know? If you have a good attention span, then I think most people can do it.”

Ben Adida, executive director for VotingWorks, a nonprofit voting system vendor, which helped the state of Georgia perform a hand-counted audit of the state’s 2020 presidential results, agreed that hand-counting was nothing like calculus. But, he said, it was also nothing like counting to five.

“Imagine being asked to count the number of sheets in a large ream of paper, the kind you get from Staples,” he said. Mistakes aren’t allowed, nor are programs like Excel. Plus, “You have to do it 80 times, because there are 40 contests with 2 candidates each.”

Adida said he understands why hand-counting sounds easy, but once you’ve done it, you quickly realize it’s a daunting process with dozens of steps.

Citing his opposition to hand-counting ballots, Gillespie County GOP Chair Mo Saiidi resigned in September. Days after his departure, the remaining members of county Republican leadership finalized their decision to move forward.

“I could not in good conscience continue presiding over an election using a method that I did not feel was the right process to go through,” Saiidi said. “And I felt it was flawed. I felt it was not well thought out. I didn’t think it was the right thing for the community.”

Things have been spiraling out of control in Gillespie elections for nearly two years. In 2022, the county’s entire elections department quit following harassment and threats from far-right voter fraud activists. This year, voter fraud activists in the county were hosting events featuring well-known conspiracy theorists, pushing for hand counts.

Jim Riley, who was hired earlier this year to lead the decimated elections department, did not respond to Votebeat’s multiple requests for comment.

Bruce Campbell, the Gillespie County Republican Party chair who replaced Saiidi, told Votebeat last week there’s “no effort or willingness” from the party to back out of hand-counting. Texas election administrators see the end of the year as the drop-dead deadline for making such decisions, so it’s likely too late to back out.

“We’re pretty much on that path now,” Campbell said. Volunteers have been practicing hand-counting and he’s certain they’ll be ready on election day. “Everybody that’s going to do it will have done it enough that it won’t be new to them,” he said.

Under Texas law, during a primary election — which lasts for two weeks and through the Friday before election day, March 5 — county governments operate early voting, though parties can choose their counting method. On Election Day, the political parties are free to run voting and the counting method in any way they choose so long as it’s legal.

Across the state, county parties select from a variety of options, ranging from contracting the entirety of the process out to the county elections department — to use county-owned voting and tabulation equipment — to retaining complete party control. The operational costs of the primary election varies based on the method of counting the parties decide to use.

In 2020, Dallas County’s Republican Primary — contracting for county services on election day only — cost more than $300,000, records show. This included hourly payments to more than 750 election workers. In Travis, Republicans paid more than $70,000 for 450 hourly workers on election day. In Gillespie, the same day cost more than $8,000, including 45 workers. Experts say these costs would more than double under hand-counting regimes because the method requires more people, in some cases additional polling locations, more space, and far more time.

Records show that Republican county party leaders, including Gillespie County GOP leaders, had only a fleeting notion of what the financial or legal requirements for operating election day voting and tabulation entailed when they began their advocacy for hand-counting.

“Now we need help! We have to run two elections all by ourselves,” Treibs, the Gillespie precinct official, wrote in an August email to the secretary of state’s election division in reference to the primary and the runoff election. The secretary of state’s office received similar emails, calls, and text messages from other county Republican leaders throughout the summer from across the state, records show.

State law requires a minimum of three poll workers at each polling location. To hand-count, at least three additional workers are required. By law, these workers are paid by the hour, and though parties can recruit unpaid volunteers, state officials advise against it to prevent legal disputes. Hand-counting often takes days rather than hours, stretching the limitations of unpaid work. Records show county officials didn’t recognize how quickly costs and responsibilities would mount until they’d already told constituents hand-counting was a real possibility.

“We are choosing to not use any electronic devices during the 2024 election year,” Uvalde County GOP Chair Rhonda Vigil wrote in an August email to the secretary of state’s election division. “Please send me the information needed so I can show anyone that I ask that everything that I’m doing is perfectly legal. Thank you very much for your help and your time. God bless.”

As party chairs have slowly debated their plans for running their primaries, some county election administrators were left to fret.

“Dallas County is anxious to obtain the Secretary of State’s guidance regarding conducting a hand count during a Primary Election,” Dallas County elections administrator Michael Scarpello wrote in an October email. “Not having that information is significantly hampering our efforts to plan for the Primary with both the Democratic and Republican parties.”

Dallas County Republicans would ultimately decide against hand-counting because there was almost no way for the party to recruit and train more than 1,000 election workers and to gather the additional supplies needed to pull it off. After weeks of investigating the feasibility, the party determined it was not possible under current law, Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, the Dallas County GOP chair, told Votebeat.

For instance, to count by hand in a county that size, the party would have had to purchase 2,400 ballot boxes — special boxes that meet state law requirements to keep ballots secure — that cost $150 each, she said. Stoddard Hajdu says now the party has created a task force to research what changes the Legislature could make to make it easier to pursue a hand count.

Following the various emails and calls with questions the secretary of state’s office received about hand counting, it warned officials that it may not have enough money to reimburse every county party that chooses to hand-count, due to the high costs.

The state currently has about $22 million allocated to reimburse political parties and counties for their primary and runoff election expenses. About $5 million of that comes from candidate filing fees.

At an Austin gathering of more than 500 local party chairs in September, Christina Adkins, the state’s elections division director, warned the costs might quickly spiral out of control.

“It is entirely possible that your costs may exceed our ability to pay for the primary election,” she said, standing behind a podium inside a large hotel ballroom. For over an hour, Adkins went through slide after slide of a presentation detailing rules, procedures, and logistical requirements of a hand count. “If everybody in the state goes to hand-counting, we may not have the funds to pay for everything.”

That caused discomfort and surprise in the room. It also left many of the attendees with more questions. “What if we underestimate the number of people we have to hand-count and we don’t make the 24-hour deadline?” one person asked, referencing the length of time under law each county has to return results.

A Dallas-area activist expressed concern over possible costs. “We need to know how much money you’re going to authorize because the number we have right now is high,” she told Adkins.

Adkins directed every party chair in the room considering a hand count to take a look at how much a previous similar election cost them and to consider the fact that additional workers, additional hours, and additional supplies would be required.

She also did not waver on one point: No county will get a pass on following the law because of the logistical difficulties of hand-counting.

“The law spells out exactly how a hand count has to occur. I cannot give you a dispensation. That’s the word that keeps coming up: ‘Well, can you give us a dispensation to do this a different way?’” Adkins said to the crowd in September. “I cannot. You have to follow state law.”

While other large county Republican parties — such as those in Dallas and Bexar — briefly entertained hand-counting before rejecting it as too costly, Travis County’s GOP resisted calls from both the county and Democrats in the county to make a final choice until this week. Instead of doing a full hand-count — which party leadership had publicly toyed with — they’ll count only mail-in ballots by hand.

There are still several questions left unanswered about how they’ll carry out this plan, and Travis County GOP did not respond to questions about whether they are concerned about potential delays and errors. In an email, party chair Matt Mackowiak said “we have a motivated group that will recruit the necessary workers. We are seeking to use existing state law to increase transparency and confidence in the election. That’s our goal.” .

Given Texas’s restrictive laws around who can legally cast a mailed ballot — mostly voters over the age of 65 and those casting absentee ballots — these ballots will make up only a fraction of primary ballots.

Nonetheless, experts say hand-counting even 1,000 mail-in ballots may be challenging to pull off.

“Depending on when they begin to process mail ballots, hand-counting might delay reporting final vote totals on election night,” said Stein.

The indecision and drama was largely new for Travis County. For years there, Democrats and Republicans have run a joint primary election, sharing the cost of contracting with the county to use its polling locations, equipment, and workers. The months of delays this year, Democrats say, brought their own planning to a standstill.

Katie Naranjo, Travis County Democratic Party Chair said that if Republicans move forward with their plan to hand-count ballots they’ll be tampering with their own election because of the potential delays and errors.

“Republicans have made their intent clear: to erode trust in our election process, and disenfranchise voters – not just Democratic voters, but Republican voters too,” she said in a statement. “While the joint primary contract today does not infringe upon Democrats’ right to hold our own primary election, the process and results of the Republican Primary are still very uncertain.”

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

Tax cuts, teacher pension increases at stake after misinformation-led challenge to 2023 election

2023-12-08T17:46:14+00:00

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

Update, Dec. 8: Gov. Greg Abbott certified the results of the election on Dec. 4, allowing the constitutional amendments approved by voters to go into effect. In court filings, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said the governor was not from prevented from certifying the results because the election contests were procedurally flawed.

Lawsuits based on false claims about voting equipment could delay millions of dollars in cost of living increases for retired teachers expected to arrive in January. The lawsuits also threaten to hold up state property tax cuts for homeowners — arguably Republicans’ signature policy achievement this year.

Voters widely approved both policies this fall. Now Texas lawmakers are scrambling in hopes of preventing further delays.

The election contests challenging the results of the November constitutional amendment election were filed in Travis County district courts days after the November election by right-wing activists. They are based on false claims that Texas’ voting equipment is not certified and that voting machines are connected to the internet. Abbott has not certified the results of the election and won’t be able to until the lawsuits are resolved in the courts — which experts say could take weeks or months.

Voter advocates say the election contests are yet another attempt to undermine trust in elections. This time, though, it could have immediate negative implications for millions of Texans.

“I think this is a perfect example of the real impact in peoples’ lives when we delay the certification of our vote because of misinformation,” said Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas.

At least six lawsuits — filed by residents from Bexar, Llano, Denton, Rains, Brazoria, Liberty, and Atascosa counties who have ties to local promoters of election conspiracies — are challenging the 14 constitutional amendment propositions that were on the ballot in November.

By law, challenges to constitutional amendment elections can’t go to trial earlier than a month after it’s been filed — unless requested by the contestant — and not later than six months after it was filed.

But on Friday, in the middle of Texas’ fourth special legislative session this year, a state senator introduced a bill that would eliminate that requirement and to compress the timeline under which such challenges are heard. The bill was then hastily passed through a committee and sent to the Senate floor, where it passed 23-1. It will now go to the House, which was also in session Friday. Its author, Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, said that if it isn’t passed that property tax cuts and extra money for retired teachers would be in jeopardy.

“It’s a big deal,” he said.

In order for the bill to become law, Gov. Greg Abbott would have to add the issue to the special session’s agenda. On Friday, an Abbott aide said he’d consider doing so if both chambers can agree to a bill.

Some of the issues at stake for voters

Cost of living increases for about 400,000 retired teachers and public school employees could be delayed for months, unless the lawsuit moves quickly through the courts. Advocates say that, for many, this would be the first raise they will see in nearly 20 years.

Lawmakers earlier this year passed Senate Bill 10, which provides some retired Texas teachers with cost-of-living raises of between 2% and 6% to their monthly pension checks. The Legislature then put the proposition on the ballot, seeking voters’ approval to use $3.3 billion from the general revenue fund.

Eli Melendrez, a staff researcher with the Texas American Federation of Teachers, said the average monthly pension of a retired educator is about $2,174. The pension increase would add about $80 more to their monthly checks, he said. “That sounds really small, but if you look at it in aggregate, we’re talking about $30 million per month in these retired educators’ pockets,” Melendrez said. “It’s definitely significant.”

Retired teachers’ first pension check of 2024 will be delivered at the end of January. “Time is very much of the essence when it comes to these issues,” he said and added that it isn’t clear yet whether retired teachers would receive back pay to cover any delays.

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas in a statement said it’s still working to understand the impacts the lawsuits would have on the timing of distribution of the pension increases. Officials said their website will be updated as more information becomes available.

The lawsuit also imperils, at least temporarily, what is arguably Texas Republicans’ top priority this year — cutting property taxes for homeowners and businesses. Republicans including Gov. Greg Abbott made big promises this year to use a record $33 billion surplus to deliver tax cuts to Texas property owners — who, largely because the state doesn’t have an income tax, pay some of the highest property tax bills in the nation, according to the conservative Tax Foundation.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the Republican who championed the policy in the Legislature, could not be immediately reached for comment.

After months of infighting among the state’s top GOP leaders over how exactly to make those cuts, lawmakers greenlit an $18 billion tax-cut package aimed at driving down school taxes, the biggest chunk of property taxes. Voters signed off on the measure, dubbed Proposition 4, at the November ballot box by a wide margin — 83% of voters in favor, 17% against.

The package includes $12.7 billion in new tax cuts. Of that, $7.1 billion is slated to go to school districts so they can replace local tax revenues with state dollars. The proposition also gives a significant boost to Texas’ main tax break for homeowners: the state’s homestead exemption on school district taxes, the slice of a home’s value that can’t be taxed to pay for public schools.

Those cuts will tally up to more than $2,500 in tax savings over the next two years for the typical Texas homeowner, according to figures provided by Bettencourt’s office, which nets out to a little more than $100 a month. Seniors who are homeowners are expected to get bigger savings.

The lawsuit also jeopardizes a slate of other tax changes in Proposition 4, including a new cap on how much certain businesses’ property values, which helps determine an owner’s tax bill, can grow each year. The proposition also expands the pool of businesses that don’t have to pay the state’s franchise tax — and allows voters in counties with at least 75,000 residents to choose three new members of their local appraisal districts’ board of directors, which are appointed positions.

Who is suing and what are the claims

At least two of the six nearly identical lawsuits were filed by Jarrett Woodward of Bexar County. Woodward has in the past year spoken in front of county commissioners in Kerr, Uvalde, Medina, and Bexar counties trying to persuade them to ditch electronic voting equipment and to hand count ballots instead.

In the lawsuits, Woodward argues the voting equipment used in the Nov. 7 election was not properly certified and that “the ballot marking devices similar to those that Contestants were forced to use for voting in 2023 contain multiple severe security flaws including the opportunity to install malicious software locally or remotely.”

Voting machines used in Texas by vendors ES&S and Hart InterCivic have been certified by the Texas Secretary of State and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Neither the machines used to cast ballots nor the machines used to count ballots have the capability to connect to the internet. The process to certify election equipment in Texas is robust: After vendors submit an application for certification, state officials physically examine the equipment and test its accuracy.

Last year, Woodward and others filed similar lawsuits against multiple county officials across the state for using voting equipment they say is not certified; at least seven were dismissed and the others have yet to succeed. Similar unfounded claims have been made in other states across the country.

Woodward did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment.

Woodward was part of a long lineup of speakers — including Mark Cook and Tina Peters of Colorado — who spread election conspiracy theories at an event in Kerrville in August and have ties to MyPillow CEO and well-known election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, an ally of former president Donald Trump. Cook is connected to clerks who have tried to illegally obtain access to voting systems. Peters is a former Mesa County Colorado clerk who was indicted last year on felony and misdemeanor charges related to election equipment tampering after she allowed unauthorized people break into her county’s election system in hopes of finding evidence of fraud.

Joshua Fechter at the Texas Tribune contributed reporting for this story.

Natalia Contrerars covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Election officials know real problems supercharge baseless allegations. They need to address them.

2023-12-04T12:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Hi, y’all,

It’s not even 2024 yet (though, how is it DECEMBER RIGHT NOW?), but the headlines are screaming about how everyone will be screaming this time next year:

Politico: Voting machine trouble in Pennsylvania county triggers alarm ahead of 2024
NorthJersey.com: ‘Perfect storm’: Can Bergen County fix its voting troubles in time for the 2024 election?
Facing South: Election disruptions and barriers in Southern states point to challenges for 2024

Woof, guys. Woof. And the subtext of all of this is artfully contained in this BBC headline: “Election Day 2023: Local problems fuel baseless ‘fraud’ allegations.”

Abe Hamadeh — the Republican who narrowly lost a race for attorney general in Arizona — is among those pushing the narrative. He’s tweeted about errors in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, using software programming glitches to justify his claims of mass fraud and error. His “War Room” tweeted about growing mistrust.

There has been a bright spotlight shining on county election administration since 2016, but it is arguably only growing brighter. In Pennsylvania, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure did an interview with Politico after his county experienced widespread ballot-printing errors on election day. “We’re at the peak of mistrust of one another, but until that subsides, counties like ours need to be nearly perfect,” he said.

Related news: Northampton’s Director of Administration Charles M. Dertinger — responsible for administering elections in the county — resigned last week. In a statement about his resignation, McClure specifically noted the election problems this year and in 2019, which also happened under Dertinger’s watch.

Counties affected by errors have responded with varying degrees of effectiveness. Northampton’s response to the errors — though the errors were avoidable and unfortunate — was prompt and, more or less, clarifying. The county still has a ways to go in rebuilding trust, but this is a start.

On the other end of the spectrum, consider Hinds County, Mississippi, — home to Jackson — which we wrote about last month.

There, as early as 9 a.m. in some places, polling locations ran out of ballots. That’s really a shocking thing to write, even this many days later, especially because so far Hinds County has provided pretty shoddy explanations for what happened:

WJTV in Jackson reported that the county took full responsibility for the problems, and that “the cause of the issue may be due to the Legislature redistricting Hinds County.” May! Local officials told the news outlet that smaller precincts received an excess of ballots while larger ones received too few.

Local Commissioner Shirley Varnado then offered the following, “When we did the primary, we called [the secretary of state] to ask, ‘How do you do splits when there are new splits?’ And we’ve never had the splits before. Normally when you have splits, you go by the previous elections that have been held in the past. This was all new.”

There was no additional information offered, and Varnado’s comments do not provide a lot of confidence that the commissioners fully understand the nature of the problem. Varnado said the county “hopes to receive some assistance or a step-by-step guide from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office” so the problem doesn’t repeat itself, though not a single other county in Mississippi had similar problems.

Carrie Levine, Votebeat’s story editor, sent records requests to Hinds County hoping for more clarity. None has come. We are more confused now than we were when we sent the requests.

The law requires both the elections office and the county’s circuit clerk to have copies of “the receipts signed by each Hinds County precinct’s receiving manager stating the number of ballots distributed to that manager.” So, we requested the receipts for the election held on Nov. 7.

The circuit clerk confirmed he is not in possession of any such records.

We sent a request for the same record to each of the county election commissioners responsible for carrying out elections — as well as a request for the certificate stating the number of ballots printed for each precinct and documents showing the “accounting of delivered ballots,” both of which are required to be kept by law. Those requests have yet to even be acknowledged.

Mississippi law requires that records requests be responded to within 14 days of their receipt, and — at the time that this newsletter hits your inbox — 15 business days have passed. Nothing.

It’s fair to say this is not an effective response after what local news called “a ballot fiasco.”

Without a fulsome explanation by these officials, it would be understandable for voters in Jackson to lose trust in their local officials. Officials can and should avoid that. Especially when the pressure on elections next year means there’s almost no room for error.

We’re preparing to cover the 2024 elections next year. What issues in voting should we focus on? What’s missing in election news? Help us decide what to cover by filling out our survey here.

Back Then

For this week’s history, a sampling of historical uses of the phrase “ballot fiasco,” which is surprisingly common:

First, the Herald-News out of Passaic, New Jersey, in 1967, when the Bergen County clerk had a few things to say about the design of the ballot: “Allan Suggests Legislature Act to Avoid Ballot Fiasco.”
Then in 2001, a slightly lighter note from the Modesto Bee, when “city hall engineers groaned extra loud” as errors from a recent all-mail election in Modesto came to light — they were hoping to do their own mailed-vote in the coming weeks: “Storm-drain issue has bad timing after ballot fiasco.”
Next up, the Clarion-Ledger in 2012, which ran an opinion about none other than Hinds County: “Absentee Ballot Fiasco: Clark should resign election commission post.”
Finally, from the Associated Press last May, an examination of the Clackamas, Oregon clerk’s history of errors: “Oregon ballot fiasco highlights ‘invisible’ election chiefs.”

New From Votebeat

From Votebeat Arizona: Two Cochise County supervisors indicted for refusing to certify midterm election

From Votebeat Arizona: Arizona county again rejects proposal to hand-count ballots in 2024

From Votebeat Michigan: Michigan to automatically register people to vote when exiting prison

From Votebeat Pennsylvania: Court ruling on undated ballots brings confusion as counties certify November election results

From Votebeat Pennsylvania: Pa. counties must accept undated, incorrectly dated mail ballots, federal court rules

From Votebeat Texas: Harris County election shows progress. But challenges remain ahead of 2024.

From Votebeat Texas: Tax cuts, teacher pension increases at stake after misinformation-led challenge to 2023 election

In Other Voting News

In a closely watched ruling that upends decades of precedent under the federal Voting Rights Act, a federal appeals court ruled private plaintiffs cannot bring cases under a key section of the law, the Associated Press reported. The decision is almost certain to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition, the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit will meet en banc to reconsider a decades-old precedent allowing voters of different races to challenge political maps as a coalition class.
Harris County, Texas’ largest, has dropped its legal challenge to a state law forcing the dissolution of its election office, saying it was moot since the county was forced to comply with the law in time for the 2023 election, the Houston Chronicle reported. Votebeat reported the county pulled off a smooth election in 2023, but still faces challenges before next year’s high-turnout presidential election.
Arizona Republican lawmakers must sit for depositions and provide records in a lawsuit over two voting laws after the Supreme Court rejected their motion for an emergency stay, the Arizona Republic reported. The laws would create new checks on voters’ citizenship, and plaintiffs sought lawmakers’ testimony to determine whether they had discriminatory intent when they passed the new statutes.
A Northampton County official resigned in the wake of election problems in the county this year, PennLive reported, after a programming error led the county’s voting machines to produce printouts that incorrectly reflected some voters’ choices in two judicial races, though election officials stressed the machines correctly recorded the votes.
The head of Florida’s election fraud office, former Broward County elections official Peter Antonacci, lay dying in the hallway outside the governor’s office for 24 minutes before anyone provided assistance, the Florida Bulldog reported, citing new records and reporting Antonacci abruptly exited a meeting in a nearby conference room before collapsing in the hallway.

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

Two Cochise County supervisors indicted for refusing to certify midterm election

2023-11-29T23:38:34+00:00

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

This article has been updated throughout with reactions and additional details.

Attorney General Kris Mayes on Wednesday announced that an Arizona grand jury has indicted Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd for conspiracy and interference with an election officer, both felonies.

Crosby and Judd, the two Republicans on the three-member board of the southern Arizona county, both refused to certify, or canvass, the county’s election by the Nov. 28, 2022 deadline in state law, twice voting against the canvass.

The Nov. 27 indictments in Maricopa County Superior Court came after the supervisors were ordered to appear at a state grand jury hearing on Nov. 13, under subpoenas issued by Mayes’ office in October. Judd’s subpoena was first reported by Votebeat.

The indictment alleges that on or between Oct. 11, 2022 and Dec. 1, 2022, Judd and Crosby “conspired to delay the canvass of votes cast” and “knowingly interfered with the Arizona Secretary of State’s ability to complete the statewide canvass,” according to a news release from the Attorney General’s Office.

“The repeated attempts to undermine our democracy are unacceptable,” Mayes wrote. “I took an oath to uphold the rule of law, and my office will continue to enforce Arizona’s elections laws and support our election officials as they carry out the duties and responsibilities of their offices.”

Judd and Crosby did not immediately respond to calls for comment Wednesday. But lawyer Dennis Wilenchik, who is representing Crosby, told Votebeat that the indictment has no basis to it and is “political and part of the democratic party playbook to win elections and target conservative republicans.”

“It is not based in fact, would never be brought in a fair and objective AG office, and was brought for some obvious purpose having nothing to do with any legitimate enforcement of the law by the AG that I can see,” Wilenchik wrote in an email.

As the 2024 election approaches, many Cochise residents and voting rights groups such as All Voting is Local said they are hoping this serves as a deterrent for any county supervisors across the state who would consider attempting to interfere with the election.

“This sends a message that you will not be held harmless,” said All Voting is Local’s Arizona director Alex Gulotta. “I really believe it may change people’s behavior.”

Cochise residents who were concerned about the certification fight in November celebrated that the supervisors were being held accountable.

Elisabeth Tyndall, chair of the Cochise County Democratic Party, praised Mayes, also a Democrat, for launching the investigation. She said it wasn’t clear in November if anyone in the state would protect voters, who were afraid the certification delay meant their votes wouldn’t be counted.

“When this first happened a lot of us felt very helpless because there was nowhere to go with this,” Tyndall said. “I think people just have a really huge sense of relief that there is someone else out there that is watching and paying attention.”

Conspiracy and interference with an election officer are both class 5 felonies in Arizona, punishable with up to two and a half years in jail.

Along with refusing to certify the election, Crosby and Judd also voted to fully hand-count the county’s election results through its post-election audit, which a judge blocked after finding that was illegal. The efforts put the rural county in the national media spotlight and caused the elections director to eventually resign citing harassment. Those efforts may have been one of the topics of the investigation but were not part of Wednesday’s indictments.

Mayes investigates at the request of Secretaries of State

Shortly after the supervisors refused to certify the election last November, Kori Lorick, then the state elections director working for former secretary of state and now Gov. Katie Hobbs asked Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate. When now-Secretary of State Adrian Fontes took office, he made the same request to Mayes, according to a letter obtained by Votebeat.

“My office considers their failure to do their non-discretionary statutory duty to canvass the election a matter of utmost importance for future elections,” Fontes wrote.

On Wednesday, he sent a one-word tweet about the indictments: “Good.”

In a statement to Votebeat he said that “Accountability is crucial in matters concerning our democracy.”

Former Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, and former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, a Republican, also wrote Brnovich and Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre asking them to investigate, writing that the supervisors’ actions threatened “to undo the proper administration and integrity of elections, disenfranchise thousands of voters and potentially even alter the results of some races.”

Cochise was the only county to bend to pressure from GOP leaders and activists from across the state who immediately after Election Day began claiming the results were inaccurate and asking county supervisors not to certify the election. Lawsuits from three Republican statewide candidates — gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh, and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem — challenging the election results were eventually dismissed due to lack of evidence.

The indictment says that Crosby and Judd “knowingly interfered with the efforts” of then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now governor, to complete the canvass of the election by preventing the board from canvassing within the time period required by law.

For the conspiracy charge, the indictment says that Judd and Crosby agreed with “one or more persons,” who aren’t named in the indictment, that at least one of them would delay the canvass and the transmission of the canvass to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Under Arizona law, county supervisors must vote to certify, or canvass, their county’s election within 20 days of a general election. It’s a ministerial act, which means supervisors have no discretion as to whether to approve the results. The only exception is if there are any missing returns among polling place results — and even that only warrants a temporary postponement. The secretary of state, in turn, is required to certify the statewide election on the fourth Monday after the election.

Crosby and Judd initially voted to postpone the county’s canvass until the Nov. 28 deadline, after residents spread unfounded claims that ballot tabulation machines used throughout the state were not properly certified. Kori Lorick, the state elections director, then personally provided documentation to the supervisors showing the machines were certified.

When the final deadline of Nov. 28 arrived, Crosby and Judd voted against certification. They did so against the advice of the County Attorney’s Office, which had explained to them that they had a non-discretionary duty.

The Secretary of State’s Office, at the time run by Hobbs, then sued the supervisors, who had to rely on private counsel to represent them on the matter because they had acted against the county attorney’s advice. Their attorney did not appear in court. The trial court judge then forced them to reconvene and vote to certify.

They did, but the vote was still 2-0: Crosby did not show up.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Guilty pleas stack up in Georgia, but lies continue to reverberate

2023-10-30T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Good morning,

After lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to charges in Fulton County, the headlines and opinion columnists said it was bad news for former President Donald Trump and an acknowledgement that the conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections were baseless.

And Powell’s guilty plea is one of several. Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis also took deals recently and agreed to testify against co-defendants, a long list that includes Trump. News reports noted at least some of those taking pleas submitted videotaped accounts of what they would say against the remaining defendants if put on the stand. Chesebro and Ellis, unlike Powell, both pleaded guilty to felonies, though the deals for all three call for probation rather than jail time.

Ellis tearfully said she felt “deep remorse” for the false information she pushed on the public, claiming she had relied on assurances from other, more experienced lawyers. Maybe. She had previously acknowledged making misrepresentations about the 2020 election in a sworn statement connected to bar disciplinary proceedings in Colorado, though the Washington Post correctly notes she later suggested she had cut a deal under pressure to settle the case.

A guilty plea and an admission in open court that her claims were false could be harder to explain away. Nonetheless, some social media commenters dismissively said Powell, Ellis, and others pleading guilty would be silly not to take themselves out of legal jeopardy by accepting a deal that carries no jail time, and it’s fair to say the plea deals are light. After all, Crystal Mason, the Texas woman who said she voted in 2016 because she didn’t know she was ineligible to do so, was sentenced to five years in prison for it — a much stiffer sentence for, arguably, something that did far less damage.

But it’s clear that even if people like Ellis acknowledge they made claims completely unsupported by actual facts, people will still believe the lie. It’s not clear what’s going to change that, and the lies are still shaping events.

For example, take the mess over on the House side of the U.S. Capitol, where the Republican majority ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, then spent basically three weeks of precious floor time, as wars rage overseas and the federal government nears a shutdown, attempting to select a replacement.

The fractious backbiting over there went on for so long, through so many failed candidates, it took basically as long as the baseball playoffs, which is saying something because those teams have to win the majority of a seven-game series and a House speaker (technically) doesn’t.

One candidate, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, was the speaker designate for a few hours Tuesday, the same day Ellis choked up in court, but couldn’t get the votes.

Why not? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told reporters some members wouldn’t vote for Emmer because he voted to certify the 2020 election - even though people are pleading guilty to crimes while acknowledging their allegations of election fraud were baseless.

By Wednesday morning, House Republicans had turned to their next speaker candidate, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, whom the New York Times has described as “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”

That’s apparently a key credential for the job that’s third in line for the presidency, because Johnson got the votes.

Asked whether the plea deals will change the minds of Americans who believe the results of the 2020 election were somehow tampered with, David Becker, the head of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a voting rights lawyer, acknowledged it won’t be that easy for the truth to penetrate.

“The people who have been sending $25 of their Social Security check to grifters for three years, those people are legitimate victims, and I don’t think this is going to change overnight,” he said. “It’s going to take a long, long time.”

Nonetheless, he said, the prosecutions and guilty pleas “are an important first step” that, over time, “disincentivize the leaders of these grifting movements.” Eventually, he said, that could allow us all “to agree on a common reality, especially one as important as: Elections have meaning, and the winners win.”

“And,” he added, “we know who won elections.”

Back Then

We’re offering you recent history this week: a collection of stories about newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s efforts to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election. The Associated Press, the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC News, and Politico all highlighted his efforts.

New From Votebeat

From Votebeat Arizona: Fixes may be coming for 4 of Arizona’s election controversies prior to the presidential election

From Votebeat Michigan: Michigan Appeals Court rules that secretary of state improperly set limits for poll challengers

From Votebeat Michigan: Some communities are kicking off Michigan’s historic early voting with this fall’s municipal elections

From Votebeat Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania’s voting law is filled with obsolete provisions, troublesome conflicts

From Votebeat Texas: Harris County’s voter roll errors — if left unexplained — could fuel claims of voter fraud

In Other Voting News

A federal judge struck down Georgia’s political maps, finding they violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Black voters, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The judge ordered the Republican-controlled Legislature to create an additional majority-Black congressional district, as well as two more state Senate and five state House districts with Black majorities. Separately, in North Carolina, lawmakers passed new maps that heavily favor Republicans.
A data breach may have exposed personal information, including Social Security numbers, about every voter in Washington, D.C., WTOP reported, and election officials plan to reach out to voters and are working with cybersecurity experts.
A Georgia trial will determine whether hundreds of thousands of challenges to Georgia voters’ eligibility backed by conservative nonprofit True the Vote were meant to discourage voters from casting ballots, the New York Times reported.
The percentage of provisional ballots rejected in Ohio skyrocketed during August’s special election, the first under a new law requiring voter identification, the Statehouse News Bureau reported.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s story editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter.Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Push to hand count ballots throws a Texas county’s election administration into chaos

2023-10-13T09:58:00+00:00

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

Responsibility for running elections in Kerr County has shifted among three different people in the past two months. The first two officials bailed on the job after a months-long effort by one Republican county official to rid the county of electronic voting equipment and begin hand counting all ballots. The push has divided the overwhelmingly Republican county — a verdant stretch of the Hill Country split by the Guadalupe River — and will cost taxpayers around $250,000 due to the many changeovers.

So far, the effort has failed. Still, Kerr County Republican Party Chair Paul Zohlen told Votebeat the effort — led largely by Republican County Commissioner Rich Paces — has “single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to one of the finest election departments in the state.”

“This had never happened before,” Zohlen said. “And now the county clerk will have to put together a team and impart the 10 to 15 years of experience they need by March of 2024.”

Until late August, elections in Kerr County, home to Kerrville and with a population of more than 50,000 people, were managed by the tax assessor’s office. Bob Reeves, a Republican elected to the role in 2018, told Votebeat he refused to continue the work because of the growing distrust in elections there, which made an already time-consuming, stressful, and low-paying job nearly impossible.

“I was put between a proverbial rock and a hard place,” Reeves said. The recent demands for hand counting stemming from baseless suspicions about the security of the current system, he said, made the work seem hopeless.

The duties, therefore, were transferred to Jackie Dowdy, the county clerk. She, too, refused and resigned her position entirely. Her chief deputy, Ian Collum, was appointed as interim clerk while the county conducts the search for her replacement. He and others in that department, which has not handled elections in more than a decade, will now be placed in charge of helping Kerr County’s 40,000 registered voters cast their ballots in 2024.

Fueled by misinformation and baseless claims that electronic voting equipment is manipulated to change election results, the push to hand count ballots in Kerr County is similar to other efforts happening across Texas and elsewhere. Communities that have recently embraced hand counting of ballots — a method that election administration experts have said and studies have shown is less accurate, more costly, and less secure — have become hotly divided. In some cases, such as Cochise County, Arizona, it has pushed election officials out of their jobs and fractured trust in local elections.

Experts told Votebeat it may take years to undo the chaos and to restore the erosion of trust in elections that the effort to hand count has created in Kerr and elsewhere.

“These communities are spending an incredible amount of time trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. And as a result, creating a whole series of new very real problems,” said Justin Grimmer, a professor in the department of political science and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who is currently conducting research on efforts to hand count ballots in counties across the country.

Only a small handful of counties in Texas — all with populations of fewer than 10,000 residents — hand count their election results. In West Texas’ Glasscock County, which has fewer than 800 registered voters, it made little sense to buy expensive equipment for a job that could easily be done by hand, for example. Their small numbers and short ballots allow these counties to complete and submit vote totals within 24 hours of the polls closing on Election Day.

Right now, the effort to hand count ballots in Kerr County has reached a stopping point. This fall, a vote to change the county’s counting process ahead of 2024 failed. But neither Paces nor county election officials believe this fight is over.

“This was just the first skirmish,” Paces told Votebeat.

Officials reach a breaking point

Behind a counter of clerks who help residents update their vehicle registration, their property taxes, file paperwork for various licenses and update their voter registration is Bob Reeves’ small office. It’s often hard to see the surface of his desk, covered as it is in stacks of paperwork. The bookcase behind him holds even more stacks — reflecting the amount of work Reeves has had to handle as the county’s tax assessor and election official, with multiple, back-to-back state-mandated deadlines he has to meet to fulfill both roles.

Reeves said that over the years he and his staff knew of some in the community with questions or perhaps a general distrust of the elections process. “But we always tried to the best of our ability to help people understand,” he said.

Defending the process, and his job, however, became a lot more difficult when the distrust came from someone like Paces, a man seated at the commissioners’ court dais.

In the past eight months, Reeves kept finding himself constantly having to pull away from the stacks of motor vehicle registration, property tax and elections paperwork he had to complete in order to prepare for the next commissioners court meeting where the voting equipment he uses would be questioned — often without regard for facts.

The prospect of hand counting put Reeves, he told Votebeat, in what he perceived to be legal jeopardy. If the county were sued over the results of a future election, or if a lawsuit questioned the accuracy of hand counting, he would not be able to defend the practice in a courtroom. He also had no confidence that hand counting could be done in the time set under law, which requires counties to report results 24 hours after polls close. He also would not be able to explain why commissioners disagreed on whether to trust electronic vote-counting equipment even though he says he has confidence in the machines.

“Without their unanimous support I could not do my job properly,” Reeves told Votebeat after he resigned his election duties in August. By law, unless the county creates an elections department and appoints an elections administrator, the county clerk must serve as the county elections officer. The Texas Election Code allows the county commissioners, however, to transfer the election administration duties from the clerk to the tax-assessor collector, if needed – and if both departments are in agreement — which Kerr County did in 2008.

Kerr County tax assessor-collector Bob Reeves sits in his office located inside the Kerr County Courthouse and goes over local election procedures on Sept. 11, 2023.

Jackie Dowdy, the county clerk who resigned in September, did not respond to Votebeat’s requests for comment about the reason behind her resignation. During a public meeting two weeks after Reeves announced he’d relinquish his duties, Dowdy appeared frustrated about the last-minute change to her department and said Reeves never reached out to her about his decision.

Under the transition plan for elections, Reeve’s office will continue to handle voter registration duties and only one of Reeves’ staffers would move over to Dowdy’s former department. “Having only one position move means I’ll only have one experienced person and that is not good,” Dowdy told the commissioners, requesting three additional staff members. “This is also going to affect the entire staff. I need space, I need desks, desktop computers, so, it’s an expense.”

The estimated cost the commissioners budgeted for such expenses comes to around $250,000, which will be borne by Kerr County taxpayers.

How the hand-count movement came to Kerr County

Paces ran for his seat on the Kerr County Commissioners Court last year with a campaign focused on frugal spending and election integrity. An Ohio native and retired engineer, Paces and his wife moved to the Texas Hill Country in the early 2000s.

After being on the job for less than a month, he began to receive text messages from local right-wing activist Alicia Bell, who said she was at the Capitol for an “election integrity legislative briefing.” The event featured Bob Hall, a Dallas-area senator who has for years pushed to eliminate electronic voting equipment; Texas GOP Vice Chair Dana Myers, who led efforts to remove Texas from an effective voter list maintenance tool; and Russ Ramsland, a Texas businessman who is widely known to spread false election conspiracies.

“Can you put voting on the agenda?” Bell asked Paces via text message, according to records obtained by the news outlet the Kerr County Lead and shared with Votebeat. “The whole presentation was jaw dropping.” Bell has been a thorn in the side of Kerr County government since she moved to the area from California. She’s a frequent speaker at commissioners court meetings who has denied that the COVID-19 pandemic is real and is against vaccine mandates.

“We are here to govern the local community. We’re not here to listen to what’s on the internet, or what’s on Fox News,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly — who declined Votebeat’s multiple requests for comment on this story — told Bell in 2021 after she claimed doctors were trying to scare the public by inflating positive cases of COVID-19. “I know you’re new from California, and you don’t understand how Texas local government works. We’re required to abide by and follow the law.”

Less than a month after Bell sent Paces that text message, in February, he added the topic of elections as an item on the commissioners court agenda. He proposed hosting an election integrity workshop, where the public and the other county commissioners could hear from “experts’’ first-hand.

The commissioners agreed to host the workshop, and the first took place in March at the county commissioners court. Reeves was asked to be on hand to explain the relevant laws and existing procedures, and a representative from Texas-based election machine vendor Hart Intercivic went over the company’s security features that protect voting machines from tampering. Then, Paces brought on Mark Cook, an election conspiracy theorist and self-described IT expert from Colorado who has for months without success tried to persuade Texas counties to get rid of their voting equipment while driving a branded RV from county to county. He’s been to Uvalde, Nueces, Bexar, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Denton and Gillespie Counties, among others, where county leaders and election officials have rejected his proposals.

Days after the event, Paces traveled to Waco for former president Donald Trump’s first 2024 presidential campaign rally.

Kerr County Commissioner Rich Paces, speaks to a crowd at an Election Integrity Town Hall he hosted at the Hill Country Youth Event Center on Aug. 22, 2023.

Meanwhile, Reeves tried other ways to show Paces and the other commissioners that hand-counting the ballots of the county’s more than 38,000 registered voters would not be feasible. With the help of county workers, Reeves tested how long it would take to count 100 ballots from Kerr County’s March 2020 Republican primary: “With fresh eyes, it took an hour to count 32 ballots,” Reeves said.

He also warned that the county already struggles to find enough election workers and the facilities for the 20 polling locations for each election. In order to hand count, the county would likely need to double the number of poll workers, the funds to pay them and larger spaces to conduct hand counts based on the number of ballots. “That’s more than 200 people that we’d need to work nonstop,” Reeves said.

None of the evidence Reeves or others showed to Paces changed his mind.

Right-wing celebrities draw a crowd

The records shared with Votebeat show that activists from local far-right political action committee We The People and other voter fraud activists from neighboring counties have helped drive this momentum. He also had the help of national names in the “election integrity” movement, such as Seth Keshel, that has grown out of the lies about the outcome of the 2020 election.

In August, around 300 people showed up to an Election Integrity Town Hall that Paces organized, packing the expo hall at the county’s fairgrounds in Kerrville. The event lasted nearly six hours.

Many were there to see Tina Peters, the former Mesa County Colorado clerk who was indicted last year on felony and misdemeanor charges related to election equipment tampering after she allowed unauthorized people break into her county’s election system in hopes of finding evidence of fraud. As she walked in, Peters received a standing ovation from the crowd of mostly senior citizens. The crowd fell silent when she took the stage, listening as she explained why the voting machines and government officials — including those who arrested her — could not be trusted. She also denied any wrongdoing on her part related to criminal charges against her, and provided no evidence that Kerr County’s elections were flawed.

“These are Democrats and Republicans, Marxists and globalists who want to take your country,” Peters said before promoting her website, her live streamed video show and an upcoming documentary about her. “They put the people in [office] that they want. They are selected, not elected.”

Other speakers included Keshel, Hall, and Cook, who is connected to self-proclaimed “election integrity” groups across the country, and to clerks who have tried to illegally obtain access to voting systems. He described hand counting as a type of salvation for towns seeking to boost election confidence.

Cook told the crowd that government and election officials are using electronic voting equipment to tally votes because “they think we, the citizens, the peasants are too dumb to count their own votes. Not anymore,” Cook said. The crowd cheered, with a handful of onlookers shouting “Amen!”

Records show Paces arranged travel and personally paid expenses for Peters and Cook. Both stayed as guests in his home east of the county.

In September, he formally proposed the county hand count ballots for the upcoming November general election.

Mark Cook, an election conspiracy theorist and self-described IT and cybersecurity expert from Colorado speaks to a crowd at an Election Integrity Town Hall in Kerrville on Aug. 22, 2023.

The vote failed to move forward after no other commissioners, also all Republicans, would second the motion. Its failure, though, was not indicative of a lack of enthusiasm in the county — the room was filled to capacity, and more waited outside the room in order to be heard on the measure.

Most of those who showed up to speak were Republicans — 75% of the county voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020. They were divided by the prospect of hand counting ballots.

Bill Ragsdale, a Kerr County justice of the peace, reminded those present that hand counting will slow the process tremendously, potentially impacting the entire state of Texas. In the 80s, he said, he assisted during an election where “Kerr County held up the entire state’s election for three days because we were hand-counting,” he said. “[Counters] worked all night long, through the next day and through the next day to try and count all the votes. Know how accurate that count was? I don’t know. We were all ready for it to be over.”

For those in favor of hand counting, objections about cost and time didn’t make much of a difference. “There is no trust right now in our current system and we need to fix that,” said Roger Hall, a resident of Ingram who told the crowd he was in favor of hand counting and did not trust voting machines. “That’s what a lot of people here today are here for.”

Paces has also taken this show on the road.

In Medina County, a small county two hours south of Kerr County, he and Cook took the stage days after his August event in Kerr, to advocate they, too, take up hand counting. Paces, who has never worked an election, led a group of people to demonstrate how a hand count would be done. Four people sat around a table and pulled out ballots from cardboard bankers boxes and started tallying.

Paces encouraged those who attended the demonstration to gather around the table to see how it’s done up close. “You’ll see this is very transparent,” he told the crowd and reassured them the counting would be done quickly.

“My plan is to have people come in to start counting ballots at 2 in the afternoon. Five hours worth. You’re done by the time the polls close. It’s a matter of getting enough people,” he said.

It’s not clear what Paces’ next move is, though he told Votebeat he is committed to enacting this change, regardless of the damage it does to the county. He rejects the assertion that hand counting would cost more money and take substantially more time with less confidence in the final results, despite having no supporting evidence to offer. He says he’d gotten hundreds of people signed up to volunteer to hand count in Kerr.

“And more people are calling me and telling me, ‘hey, sorry it didn’t work, but I’ll hand count, put me on the list,’ and more will come forward,” Paces said. “It’s almost like a movement of civic pride, and that’s great.”

Correction, Oct. 13, 2023: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the Kerr County deputy clerk. His name is Ian Collum.

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

Media network paid by GOP groups is behind deluge of election records requests

2023-09-26T15:00:00+00:00

This article was co-published in partnership with The Guardian.

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

In North Carolina, Local Labs wanted obscure voter records that would take weeks, or even months, to prepare. In Georgia, the company requested a copy of every envelope voters used to mail in their ballots. And in dozens of counties across the U.S., Local Labs asked for the address of every midterm voter.

Local election offices across the country are struggling to manage a sharp rise in the number of public records requests, and extensive requests coming from Local Labs in at least five states have stymied election officials, according to a Votebeat review of hundreds of records requests, as well as interviews. The requests are broad and unclear, and the purpose for obtaining the records is often not fully explained, leaving officials wondering in some cases whether they can legally release the records.

Local Labs is known for a massive network of websites that rely mainly on aggregation and automation, blasting out conservative-leaning hyper-local news under names such as the Old North News, in North Carolina, and Peach Tree Times, in Georgia.

Local Labs CEO Brian Timpone told Votebeat the company is using records requests in an attempt to expose election fraud that he is sure exists. The company is sometimes getting paid by GOP-backed clients to do so, Timpone acknowledged, characterizing the work simultaneously as both political research and journalism.

“We’re just trying to push for more free speech and more transparency,” Timpone said. “And no one else is doing it.”

Veteran journalists and those who study journalism ethics say he’s wrong. Arizona State University journalism professor Julia Wallace — previously the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution — said doing reporting and paid-for work at the same time is not ethical. “That’s not independent, so that’s not journalism,” she said.

Timpone is no stranger to journalism controversies: Among his previous companies was one that sold cheap content to local news organizations and was ultimately closed after a series of ethics scandals, including plagiarism.

To be sure, public records laws exist because the public has the right to know what the government is doing, and ensuring access to records is a critical window into that. Election offices, open records advocates say, should consider proactively and publicly sharing more election records so there’s no request needed.

But election officials have questions.

It’s unclear from the requests when the company is doing the work for a third party or for their news websites, or both, and if the election offices can legally provide the records.

One recent Local Labs project offers a clue of what might be to come.

After the midterm election, Local Labs was paid by America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a national think tank that pushes former President Donald Trump’s agenda, to send public records requests to 100 counties in the U.S. asking for a record of each voter who voted, along with their address and other information. AFPI published the first results of that work in June, in a misleading report that insinuated that thousands of fraudulent ballots were cast in Arizona’s midterm election.

Recorder Michelle Burchill, center, and Elections Director Laurin Custis, right, in the Yavapai County Recorder’s Office in Prescott, Ariz on Friday, Aug. 25, 2023. Yavapai County officials tried earlier this year to prevent Local Labs from publishing misleading information alleging voter fraud in Arizona.

“Voter Discrepancies Found in the Arizona 2022 General Election,” the AFPI headline read. But most, perhaps all, of the more than 8,000 discrepancies found were because Local Labs had compared two sets of voter lists from different time periods and including different voters.

Yavapai County officials, for example, showed Votebeat emails in which an elections official tried to convince Local Labs not to publish the broad findings because they were misleading, taking time over days to explain the source of the discrepancies. The warnings went ignored.

“They just put the information out, and we are left defending ourselves,” Yavapai County Recorder Michelle Burchill said. “Then we are being harassed,” she said, because people believe it.

Journalism, political research, or both?

Local Labs is a piece of a network, owned in part by Timpone, that has a dubious history.

Timpone’s prior company, Journatic, imploded amid accusations of plagiarism. Multiple media companies canceled their contracts following a This American Life episode in 2012 that showed the company was using low-cost labor out of the Philippines to produce local news under fake bylines. That led the company’s editorial director to resign over ethical disputes.

Ahead of the 2022 election, nonprofits and political action committees paid Metric Media, another company within the network, more than $1 million, according to Columbia Journalism Review, and ProPublica found that special interest groups gave another company in the network, Pipeline Media, nearly $1 million. The local news websites associated with the network then published stories promoting the agendas of the groups that wrote the checks.

Local Labs advertises its public records request service to outside clients on its website, which says those clients include news publishers and media companies. Timpone confirmed that his network has received payment from and partners with GOP-leaning special interest groups, and that the network has not received payment from groups affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Because some election officials know Local Labs sells its records requests services, they have been unsure whether they can legally release some records, so they’ve reached out to clarify the purpose of the requests. Some voter and election information can only legally be released for non-commercial purposes. Local Labs employees, meanwhile, sometimes ask for fee waivers meant for members of the media, according to records obtained by Votebeat.

In Local Labs’ recent requests in North Carolina, for example, a person giving their name as “Vince Espi” writes that he is a news reporter for Old North News, “a media organization committed to providing comprehensive and accurate news coverage on local governmental affairs.” In Georgia, Espi says he is a reporter for the Peach Tree Times. When requesting voter data from Johnson County, Iowa in December, another employee, Josiah Chatterton, wrote the intended use was “primarily for the benefit of the general public.” When asked to clarify, because voter lists can only be legally released for certain purposes in Iowa, he said it was for “political research,” a legally permissible purpose in that state.

Asked why the requests should be considered non-commercial requests in the instances in which Local Labs is selling the records, Timpone said he considers their service to be “project management,” or gathering and organizing records, rather than selling them. Counties have occasionally disagreed.

In at least one previous instance, regarding an education-related request in 2021, a school district in Illinois told Local Labs that it will be treated as a commercial requester, though it had requested the information as “news media” and asked for a fee waiver.

“Local Labs does not obtain records for its own publication,” the district’s public records officer wrote. “Your organization provides public records for sale.”

Classifying Local Labs as a commercial requester is one potential option for local governments in some states that could allow them to recoup more of the cost of processing the requests, since some state laws allow higher charges for commercial requests.

Local Labs’ intentions were also an issue in a recent federal court case involving the Voter Reference Foundation, which has links to Trump allies and prominent conservatives. The New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office wrote in a court filing that Local Labs should have disclosed upfront that it was selling the voter data it collected to the foundation, a transaction the office said wouldn’t have been allowed under state law. But the Albuquerque-based federal judge ultimately decided the use of the data was legal after considering Voter References’ final use of the data rather than Local Labs’ sale of the records.

Timpone emphasized that Local Labs is filing the requests as journalists, while also sometimes assisting think tanks like AFPI “do thoughtful research where it hasn’t been done.”

But ASU’s Wallace said one of the fundamental principles in journalism, included in the Society of Professional Journalists ethics code, is to act independently.

“You are there to serve the public, you aren’t there to serve private interests,” she said.

Local Labs runs afoul of another core principle of journalism, being accountable and transparent: Vince Espi isn’t giving his full name.

Timpone confirmed the employee’s name is Vince Espinoza, and said he didn’t know why Espinoza had chosen to use a partial name when submitting requests.

Wallace from ASU said that part of being transparent as a journalist is being clear about who you are and who you work for.

“The first part of transparency is giving your real name,” she said.

Local Labs slams county offices with requests

North Carolina and Georgia election officials say they are frustrated by Local Labs’ broad requests because the company often fails to answer any questions that would make them easier to understand.

“I am reaching out for the third time to clarify your records requests to our county boards of elections,” Pat Gannon, spokesperson of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, wrote to Espinoza on August 17, asking him to call him.

“Obviously we will respond to all public records requests as required by law, but this is immensely frustrating to busy elections officials trying to ensure that all eligible individuals can vote and have their vote counted,” Gannon said.

Records provided by Gannon show numerous Local Labs requests across the state in recent months, for broad information that would take weeks to gather such as all documents with information about election hardware and software, and all absentee ballot applications. These add to outstanding Local Labs requests, including for all absentee ballot envelopes cast in the midterm election, which would take weeks to scan and redact.

In Wake County, North Carolina, it took a team of election workers three or four months to respond to a similar request for the envelopes from a different requester — there were more than 40,000 absentee ballots cast in the midterm election there. Danner McCulloh, who processes records requests for Wake County, said each envelope had to be scanned and redacted individually, and then reviewed by a legal team. The result was just envelopes with the voter’s name and address, since state law required the redaction of signatures and other identifying marks.

An illustration of a simulated records request

Local Labs asked for the envelopes along with any absentee ballot application from a voter — which would also have taken weeks to scan. When Stacy Beard, the county’s communications director, reached out to ask for clarification on what the company wanted, she said she never heard back. The county decided to pour its time into the request and send the applications anyway — but not the ballot envelopes, because it wasn’t clear what exactly Local Labs wanted.

“That kind of request,” Olivia McCall, the county’s elections director, said, “shuts an office down.”

Bartow County, Georgia, has received numerous extensive Local Labs requests, according to records provided by the county. Elections Director Joseph Kirk says he also hasn’t heard back when he tries to clarify exactly what the company is requesting, which makes him think it’s more of a fishing expedition than a true interest in the data.

“When you ask for any, and all, and everything for a four-year period, that really does put a hurting on offices, especially smaller offices,” Kirk said. “It’s not just something we can click a button and send out.”

In response to a request for all absentee ballot envelopes, similar to the one received by Wake County, Kirk told Local Labs that it would take one person working 163 days straight to provide the estimated 104,572 responsive records, and it would cost Local Labs about $23,000.

“We can try to get it done before then, but I hope you understand that registering voters and conducting elections must be our priority,” he wrote. He didn’t hear back.

Timpone said he’s trying to show the public that “these bureaucrats have been hiding the truth from them,” he said, adding that he believes “they are hiding the records from them, and deleting the records and covering their own asses and trying to blame, you know, Trump or some other politician for it.”

Timpone did not offer any definitive evidence that counties were illegally withholding election records. Asked why Local Labs sometimes didn’t respond when asked for clarification, such as to Gannon, he said he wasn’t aware that was the case. The same week Timpone spoke with Votebeat, Espinoza responded to Gannon.

Misleading findings in latest report

With regards to the America First report, Timpone said that Local Labs was trying to expose what he said is a problem — that counties don’t keep a fixed record of the voters who voted on Election Day and their voter status and address at that time.

Matt Webber, Yavapai County’s registrar of voters, poses for a portrait in front of his office in Prescott, Ariz on Friday, Aug. 25, 2023.

In Yavapai County, Matt Webber, who manages voter records for the county, told Local Labs that, of the 139 “discrepancies” they found, 105 were secure voters — voters who are legally left off the list the county sent Local Labs because they are in a protected category, like law enforcement or a victim of domestic violence — and some addresses were not accurate because a small number of voters moved shortly before the election.

Still, the top-line finding from the America First report – that there was a “potential 8,241-vote discrepancy” across six Arizona counties — didn’t account for any secure voters, or the inter-county moves.

Webber and other Yavapai County officials said in an interview they were frustrated to see that. While the report broadly acknowledged that counties tried to tell them about such problems with their data analysis, the report authors still claimed it likely that “there are more votes than registered voters who voted.” This claim is false, Yavapai County officials said.

On June 29, Burchill — the Yavapai County recorder — released a public service announcement to combat the AFPI report. “There is no discrepancy [in] our numbers!” she wrote.

Burchill wants to remind voters that there are a lot of people online calling themselves election experts nowadays, but it’s best to just check with their county about specific claims.

“The only way we are going to win this is if voters come to us with questions.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Freelance journalists Thy Vo, Matt Dempsey, and Hank Stephenson contributed research to this report.

Records requests are good, but the torrent flowing into election offices is doing real harm

2023-09-25T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Hi, y’all,

Our investigation into the torrent of public records requests that elections offices across the country are fielding from activists searching for a way to boost baseless narratives of a stolen election shows they are doing real harm.

Like so much in county government (and especially elections), the work to fulfill a public records request is invisible. We journalists also love a good public records request! This project about how overwhelmed these offices are by public records requests, ironically, relied on records requests to answer our initial questions. It wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

So we understand the temptation of sending in a request— even a massive one, or one for data you aren’t even sure the county actually has. But every Votebeat reporter and editor has been trained to target requests more carefully than that.

Nonetheless, counties across the country are drowning in requests from conspiracy theorists searching endlessly for that ever-elusive proof of fraud, which can overwhelm an elections office to the point where other, vital responsibilities are given short shrift.

We have another piece of our investigation coming next week, but know there are a lot of converging problems here, and no single solution.

Counties are using deeply outdated information management systems and often have no public records tracking system. The offices are understaffed, and serially underpay workers responsible for responding to increasingly hostile requests. The flood of bad-faith and nonsensical requests have made all of this worse, resulting in what many election officials have characterized to me as an in-person denial of service attack for their offices. Then, when an office responds, the activists seeking to push theories of fraud sometimes mischaracterize the records, forcing local election officials to work even harder to respond.

Of course, reporting on records requests has the potential to be just as tedious as filling them. We also had to figure out how to manage our investigation on top of our normal commitment to covering voting news every day. It started with three part time freelancers, sending our own records requests to every county in Arizona — we knew, based on our own reporting, things were particularly acute there — and major counties beyond. Then, these freelancers, Jen Fifield, and I combed through the records, identifying particularly aggressive requesters and interviewing local administrators to better understand the impact of the requests. Jen took all of this information and shaped it into two stories we felt were representative of what we’d learned.

From start to finish, the effort took almost a year.

A project this wide-ranging takes up a lot of resources in a small newsroom and costs a lot of money. Still, we knew — because we talk to election administrators every single day — that we uniquely understood this really was shutting down whole offices. We also knew we were the only newsroom likely to comb through Freedom of Information logs and payment stubs to trace records requests back to a small group of activists operating in Arizona. Now that Jen Fifield has molded all of that work into fascinating stories, I know the effort was worth it.

And we aren’t done.

We know that these stories only scratch the surface of the problem, and we are eager to keep shedding light on this.

So, talk to us!

Is there a local activist group overwhelming your office with bad faith records requests? Has your county implemented a public records tracking program that has expedited its ability to process requests you wish others knew about? Reach out to me or Jen and let us know.

Back Then

Before there was Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, there was New Ashford, Massachusetts. For years, that town held the distinction of being the first place in the nation to report its election results. With few residents, the town could open polls before 6 a.m., count the fewer than 40 ballots, and report results to the newswire before 8 a.m. The town’s dedication to this practice led to Phoebe Jordan being the first woman in the country to have her ballot counted in a presidential election on Nov. 2, 1920. She was one of 12 women to vote in New Ashford that day. Here is a picture of her!

New From Votebeat

From Votebeat Pennsylvania: Pennsylvanians will be automatically processed for voter registration when they get a new driver’s license

From Votebeat Pennsylvania: Judge tells Delaware County to accept in-person votes from residents whose flawed mail ballots were rejected

In Other Voting News

Cochise County’s elections director, Bob Bartelsmeyer, has resigned, AZPM reported, becoming the second elections director to step down there within the last year. County officials appointed Bartelsmeyer even though he had spread false posts claiming election fraud, and the county has been a laboratory for election skeptics since the 2020 election.
Alabama is the latest Republican-led state to announce it is launching a replacement for ERIC after withdrawing from the multistate voter compact. Secretary of State Wes Allen said the new system will compare Alabama’s voter list to the National Change of Address file, and is also completing agreements to compare its voter rolls with the states of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Several Republican-led states have withdrawn from ERIC, a bipartisan interstate compact, in the wake of conspiracy theories about the organization.
Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against conservative network Newsmax will go to trial in September 2024, shortly before the 2024 election, CNN reported.
In an attempt to reassure the public about the security of voting machines, large voting machine manufacturers recruited cybersecurity experts to conduct additional stress testing of their systems, CNN reported.
In a move that seems to have worked “All Too Well,” pop superstar Taylor Swift spent National Voter Registration Day urging her followers to register to vote; a spokesman for vote.org later said on social media that her Instagram post directed a surge of traffic to their site, averaging 13,000 visitors per half hour.
Democrats on National Voter Registration Day reintroduced federal voting rights legislation named for the late lawmaker and civil rights leader John Lewis that would, among other things, restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, USA Today reported. But Republicans have opposed the bill, leaving it with a slim chance of passing a divided Congress this year.

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

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