Votebeat

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her explanation did little to slow the criticism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How officials, experts think central count operation can improve

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

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

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

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

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

For Milwaukee officials, sacrificing accuracy is an obvious nonstarter.

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you serious?” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘This is all bad’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Green Bay clerk resigns amid investigations into duplicate ballot incidents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Department of Justice, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has routinely sent observers to monitor elections in Michigan and other states to ensure voters are able to cast ballots freely. However, many people were more suspicious of their motives this year given President Donald Trump’s preoccupation with election administration and Michigan Republicans’ calls for “comprehensive oversight” of the state’s elections.

According to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the monitors’ mandate this year was to root out “problems with the integrity of elections.” If they found any, it wasn’t immediately clear Tuesday.

Instead, election officials said monitors were polite and unobtrusive as they moved from one polling place to the next, asking a few questions about assistance technology designs for voters with disabilities and provisional ballots. Importantly, officials Votebeat spoke with on Tuesday said monitors did not interfere with election proceedings.

“There were no real issues, and we were pleased,” Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s director of elections, said after polls closed.

Two monitors, seen at Detroit’s Bagley Elementary School on Tuesday afternoon, declined to take questions from Votebeat. They sat in the middle of a small gymnasium that held multiple precincts and watched the room silently before politely saying goodbye to poll workers on their way out.

Other polling places visited by federal monitors had similar experiences. Pamela Phelps, chair of a precinct in Hamtramck, told Votebeat that the monitors who visited her polling place earlier in the day were “really nice.”

“They introduced themselves and told us they were from Washington,” Phelps said. “They sat back there in their spots, and they had no problems.”

Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum said that, when the monitors were first announced, no one was quite sure what to expect.

The Department of Justice’s letters informing Detroit, Lansing, and East Lansing about the monitors also requested documents such as such as precinct lists, training materials, and maps from them and alleged that the cities did not comply with federal election law during the 2024 presidential election, leading to long lines. Officials from those communities have denied the allegations.

“The fact that the DOJ felt it was necessary in the first place, it served to cast doubt,” Byrum said of the monitors in her county, which includes parts of Lansing and East Lansing. “Now, tomorrow, they can speak with authority having been here — is that going to lend credit to future claims, even when they’re nonsense?”

Other officials, though, were reassured by how uneventful the primary was. Kim Bush, a spokesperson for the Michigan attorney general’s office, said that, as the state looks ahead to the November election, she didn’t “see any concerns” based on monitors’ behavior Tuesday.

Michigan was not the only state to be visited by federal monitors this summer. The Department of Justice also sent monitors to observe Arizona’s primary, which took place on July 21. They visited three counties in the state, including Maricopa — a key swing jurisdiction that encompasses Phoenix, the state’s most populous city.

There, like in Michigan, the visits from federal monitors were uneventful.

Perhaps most importantly, voters and poll workers said the monitors didn’t appear to scare anyone away. Bill Hunts, a voter on Detroit’s west side, said that he had heard about the monitors but still showed up to vote because he wanted his voice heard.

“I need a say,” he said. “And I like voting.”

Sasha Hupka contributed reporting.

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

Alex Kolodin wins GOP nomination for secretary of state

2026-07-22T04:30:34+00:00

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

The Associated Press has called the Republican primary for Arizona secretary of state for state Rep. Alex Kolodin, setting up a high-stakes general election between him and Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes.

As of Tuesday at 9 p.m. MST, with 65% of the expected vote reporting, Kolodin had 58% of the vote, while his primary opponent, former Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda, had 42%.

The secretary of state is the top election official in Arizona. They play a critical role in issuing guidance to county election offices and dictating how voting must be run via the state’s election rulebook. They also typically act as a spokesperson for elections in the state and are on the front lines of election-related interactions with the federal government. Most notably, the winner of this year’s election will oversee the pivotal 2028 presidential election in the key swing state.

Kolodin’s victory in the primary suggests that unproven claims of widespread election fraud continue to have a strong hold on GOP voters in the state. Kolodin, an election attorney from Scottsdale, was part of a lawsuit in the aftermath of the 2020 election that alleged that year’s presidential race was stolen from President Donald Trump. On the campaign trail this year, he repeatedly said that voters don’t trust elections. He also heavily criticized local election officials and lambasted the state’s voting systems as dysfunctional.

As a legislator, Kolodin has supported bills to ban vote centers, shorten the early voting period, and require voters to recertify their address each election cycle to vote by mail. He led the charge to put a measure on the November ballot that would require mail voters to provide ID, among other changes to state election law.

Swoboda, by contrast, has largely defended Arizona’s election systems. She argued throughout the campaign that Kolodin’s hardline conservative positions would make him unelectable in the general election. In June, she told Votebeat that Kolodin had a “negative zero” chance of beating Fontes.

But as Kolodin celebrated his win, he was quick to reach out to general election voters. In a statement, he said his campaign was about “protecting every vote, regardless of Party.”

At the same time, he took aim at Fontes, saying his victory showed Arizonans were “sick and tired of Adrian Fontes’ mismanagement of our election system.”

“Tonight, Arizona voters spoke up decisively for lawful, transparent, honest, and fair elections,” Kolodin said, adding that he aimed to run “world-class elections that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike can be proud of.”

Fontes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The secretary of state race is unfolding as the Trump administration attempts to exert unprecedented influence on elections in swing states across the nation, including Arizona. Fontes has resisted the federal government’s efforts to scrutinize Arizona’s voting process, including by refusing to hand over the state’s voter roll to the Department of Justice. Kolodin has sided with the Department of Justice in that dispute, and also said that, if elected, he would require county recorders to run their full voter lists through an unreliable federal data tool known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, to check for noncitizens.

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

Secretaries of state gathered against the backdrop of Trump’s election speech

2026-07-20T09:00:00+00:00

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

Hi everyone,

We spent this week reporting from the National Association of Secretaries of State conference in Rapid City, South Dakota — Dion’s first NASS, and Jessica’s … ninth? Tenth? These things should come with a punch card.

It was a weird one. Several attendees described it as the strangest, or worst, NASS conference they could remember — not because anything happened there, but because of the drama elsewhere, hanging over the whole event.

President Donald Trump’s election speech Thursday night was not formally part of the conference. But the president’s remarks on elections took place, attendees pointed out, during a NASS summer conference with a striking lack of federal officials present: no Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, no U.S. Election Assistance Commission, no FBI, no Justice Department.

State election officials were gathering without the federal partners who, for years, have been fixtures at these meetings, and one of the big questions they are trying to game out as they prepare for the midterm elections is what those same federal institutions might do next.

That is not normal. EAC commissioners — who the Trump administration fired earlier this month — are usually here, often sitting on panels about voting machines, certification, and election administration best practices. CISA and the FBI typically give security briefings, sometimes including closed-door briefings for election officials about the threat environment heading into the next election. Those conversations have been a fixture of these conferences for years.

Leslie Reynolds, the group’s executive director, said she didn’t invite federal officials to speak at the summer conference because it typically focuses on state-level issues, while the winter conference focuses on outside speakers, including federal officials.

But still, state officials made it clear that diminished federal cooperation throughout the second Trump administration has left state officials trying to replace pieces of the federal election-security apparatus that, in some cases, can’t be replaced.

Several secretaries of state noted that DHS typically gives regular briefings to state election officials outside of the conference throughout the year, offering threat overviews and mitigation options. But not this year.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said that while states can pay outside vendors for security assessments and other services CISA now no longer provides, they can’t replicate briefings from the federal government.

“You can’t just buy that off the shelf,” Simon said. “You can’t hire a private vendor to give you a U.S. government-grade intelligence assessment.”

The hardest gap to fill, he said, is exactly what Trump discussed in his Thursday speech: the monitoring of foreign actors that might try to harm or interfere with U.S. elections.

Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat, said the lack of federal briefings creates unevenness across the country, with some states able to rely on in-state agencies and others less equipped to do so.

“We know these foreign actors have been ramping up their desire to sow chaos and put out disinformation, so it’s hard to operate in the gap, not knowing,” Thomas said.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, was less concerned. He characterized the federal intelligence briefings as having been of “limited value,” saying much of what he learned in classified briefings had already been publicly reported.

“Nothing ever came out of those briefings that I got from CISA that was like, oh my gosh, we’ve got to stop what we’re doing and go work on this now,” LaRose said.

The briefings were useful mostly for “vulnerability detection” and planning exercises and threat assessments, he said, but Ohio has continued doing that work without them.

And yet the federal government’s role in elections loomed over nearly every serious — and unserious — conversation in the room during the NASS conference.

For example, the Justice Department recently sent letters to election officials in several states warning that they could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly leave noncitizens on their voter rolls or allow noncitizens to receive, cast, or have ballots counted in federal elections, a move that prompted a sharp response from some of them.

The rest of the conference had an almost surreal normalcy. Held in a massive conference center that will soon host a Luke Bryan concert, the panels went on. Secretaries and their staff compared notes and watched the World Cup semi-final together. They visited the booths of companies that make the voting machines that Trump on Thursday night said are vulnerable — though election officials say they have long known that all electronic systems are vulnerable and have taken steps to mitigate known weaknesses. At the coffee kiosk, baristas would add a shot of Bailey’s to your latte for $8; it isn’t clear whether anyone opted for it.

Elections officials at the event spent lots of time between sessions talking about what Trump might say in his primetime address. But when it was time for the president’s Thursday night speech, most of them weren’t watching. While Trump was speaking, many of the state officials were eating dinner near Mount Rushmore and preparing to board buses for an evening lighting ceremony at the historic monument.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan and North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe talk during a visit to Mt. Rushmore for the lighting ceremony on Thurs., July 16, 2026.

Many of those at Mount Rushmore — from Indiana, West Virginia, Connecticut, North Dakota, and Georgia — said they’d watch Trump’s speech later.

Among the few to watch the speech live was Simon, who said Trump repeated “the same old rehashed and debunked ideas” he has shared before.

Nonetheless, it was just the latest hurdle the administration chose to throw at secretaries and their staffs with the election looming. Trump’s continued efforts to sow doubt in election security have left election officials feeling as if they are stuck in a game show — waiting for the next surprise challenge, and for which rules might change next.

The word conference participants most often used to describe their state of mind was “exhausted.”

At Wednesday’s lunch, the keynote speaker — a South Dakota motivational speaker who once finished fourth on Survivor — began her speech with a photo reel of her grandchildren before asking, “So what does a crazy lady from South Dakota have to do with public officials? Probably nothing.”

Maybe more than she realizes.

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

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

Robert Howden, Abbott aide, to succeed Jane Nelson as Texas’ top election official

2026-07-17T17:45:02+00:00

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

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

Robert Howden, a senior adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott, will be Texas’ interim secretary of state, Abbott announced Friday. Howden is a longtime Texas politico who has worked for GOP governors going back to Bill Clements, serving as Abbott’s legislative director since 2024.

Howden is replacing Jane Nelson, who left her post Friday as Texas’ top election official after three and a half years. Nelson’s resignation, announced in early June, set off a flurry of speculation about why she was leaving and who would replace her ahead of the contentious midterm elections in November.

Howden will need to be confirmed by the Texas Senate when the Legislature returns in January, but can serve until then without legislative approval. Nelson’s three immediate predecessors in the role resigned before the Senate got a chance to approve them.

“Robert Howden has served Texas with distinction in four Republican governors’ administrations,” Abbott said in a statement. “His experience in the legislative process and extensive public service have prepared him to protect the integrity of Texas elections and represent our state with strength on the global stage.”

Nelson has not commented on her departure, other than to say she worked hard “to ensure that voting in Texas is secure, accessible, and fair.” Abbott praised her as an “extraordinary” secretary of state.

Nelson was the longest-serving Republican woman in the Texas Senate and the first woman to lead the Senate Finance Committee. She presided over seven statewide elections and disbursed millions in grants to county election officials, according to a press release from her office.

But she clashed with GOP leadership toward the end of her tenure over closing the primaries, which would require voters to register with a specific party to vote in the primary. Last year, the Texas GOP filed a lawsuit arguing that it had the legal right to close its primaries. Attorney General Ken Paxton joined the party’s suit rather than defending Texas law, a move Nelson called “brazen and misguided.”

Nelson said in a filing that Paxton’s office gave her less than an hour’s notice about its plans, and said it was up to the Legislature, not the courts, to change the law. Abbott, who has joined the call for closing the primaries, agreed, telling Texas Scorecard that lawmakers “can and should be more responsive to Republicans than a judge may be.”

As chief elections officer for a state whose leaders are heavily focused on election integrity and the threat of voter fraud, Howden will have more to manage than just the November elections. Nelson often faced competing demands from the Trump Justice Department, state leaders, county election officials, and voting rights groups.

During her tenure, Texas was one of just 15 states that gave the U.S. Department of Justice access to its full voter roll, including identifying information about 18 million registered voters. The state also began using a federal database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, last year to verify voters’ citizenship, prompting at least two lawsuits by voting rights groups.

Nelson raised concerns about that system in an April letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Votebeat reported Wednesday.

Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said in a statement that Howden was assuming a position “which carries the tremendous responsibility of fostering trust in Texas’ election system.”

“It will be critical for Secretary Howden to help maintain that trust through the upcoming November general election in Texas, and we stand ready to be a resource and a partner to the new secretary from day one,” Miles said.

Maricopa County’s election dispute is finally over — at least on paper

2026-07-15T19:54:22+00:00

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

Officials in one of the nation’s biggest swing counties huddled in separate, windowless jury chambers at a courthouse Monday.

Outside, a summer monsoon storm unleashed dust, wind, rain, and lightning over Phoenix. Inside, long after business hours, a local judge hurried back and forth, carrying proposed terms from one room to the other.

Around 10 p.m., they reached a consensus. Maricopa County finally had a plan for running its elections, and its board of supervisors enacted it in a 3-1 vote at a hastily scheduled emergency meeting Tuesday.

The deal ends a long-standing legal battle over election control between Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, and the majority-GOP board. The county’s top election officials had been locked in litigation for more than a year, culminating in a state Supreme Court decision last week that found in Heap’s favor.

In a joint statement, both sides suggested the new deal was a win for county voters. But the compromise, crafted during a series of closed-door, hourslong sessions mediated by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury, effectively builds a wall between the board’s elections department and the recorder’s office — agencies that traditionally have worked hand in hand to administer elections for the county’s 2.5 million voters.

It’s unclear how the new approach will play out. The agreement doesn’t apply to the upcoming July 21 primary, which could leave the process for resolving disputes in that election unclear. While the agreement resolves officials’ legal battle, tensions remain high between their offices.

As a result, the first true test of the deal will come in the high-stakes general election on Nov. 3. In Arizona, highly competitive state and congressional races are underway. Voters in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous jurisdiction, are certain to drive the outcome of top contests and could help determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Bill Gates, executive director of Arizona State University’s Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory, said election officials can expect to be under the nation’s microscope.

“We know there’s no such thing as a perfect election,” he said. “It’s an important election. There will be a lot of eyeballs on it.”

But Gates, a former GOP county supervisor, also said the deal between election officials is “superior to the alternatives” at this point in the dispute and lays out “a rational framework” for election administration, though he would prefer “a more collaborative environment.”

Maricopa County has taken a long road to an election deal. Here’s what it says.

The fiery dispute between Maricopa County officials started well before they entered litigation.

Heap has long contended that county supervisors usurped much of his power to run elections through a deal they struck with his predecessor, Republican Stephen Richer, months before he took office. He sued over the matter last year — and after months of back-and-forth in county court, a judge ruled largely in his favor on April 16, ordering the board to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to the recorder’s office.

Supervisors moved to stay that ruling, arguing it was too close to the primary to implement the court’s directives without risking a tumultuous election. An appeals court ultimately sided with them.

Then, Heap took the matter to the Arizona Supreme Court, which reinstated the county court’s order and adopted a primary-specific plan proposed by Heap.

The new agreement is designed to draw clear lines between officials’ responsibilities, down to even the most minute details of election administration.

Heap will retain full control of voter registration under the deal. He will also oversee most aspects of early, in-person voting and mail voting, including locating ballot drop boxes across the county.

However, the board will still draw precinct boundaries and prepare all of the county’s ballots. Supervisors will also determine the maximum number of early voting sites and drop boxes operating in the county. The agreement stipulates that, in coming years, the number of early voting sites must equal at least 20% of the vote centers scheduled for Election Day.

Heap will also get his own IT team and system, as well as new staff for his office’s early voting division. To facilitate those changes, the board agreed to allocate millions of dollars to pay for the new positions and equipment. While Heap’s technology system is being built, he and the supervisors will jointly control the county’s existing system.

Supervisors will retain control over voting at the polls on Election Day. They will oversee emergency voting, which occurs the weekend before each major election, and all aspects of ballot counting. The board will also continue to vote to certify election results, as mandated by state law.

Will Maricopa County see a smooth election cycle?

While the deal ends the legal battle between the two parties, it’s unclear if lingering tensions will affect upcoming elections — especially the primary.

Heap and the board have butted heads on several occasions in recent months. In May, they argued over how to communicate a new voting option at polling sites during a local election. Then, another scuffle erupted over ballot drop box locations for the upcoming primary. Heap later asked a judge to hold the supervisors in civil contempt of court. He also sought to stop a special prosecutor’s investigation into whether his employees broke the law by removing a scanner from the county’s vote tabulation center during a local election earlier this year.

Even after this week’s agreement was struck, relations appeared to remain contentious. Heap, who did not appear at the board’s Tuesday meeting, said in a statement that the deal will “ultimately be measured by its faithful implementation.” Democratic Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the only board member to vote against the agreement, suggested Heap would try to put his “thumb on the scale” of the county’s elections. Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican, told reporters she was “not required” to trust Heap to execute the deal.

“We have a path forward,” she said, adding that her “personal opinion” was “not part of it.”

That path includes a framework for resolving future disputes, should they arise. Officials will take any further disagreements to a special master: Coury, the judge who mediated the deal. He will then make a determination on how to proceed.

If either party disagrees with his decision, they can ask the Arizona Supreme Court to hear the issue. The court is not required to do so, and no further appeals would be available.

The setup aims to avoid costly, time-consuming litigation in the future, but it could lead to some confusion during the upcoming state primary.

The agreement stipulates that prior court orders in the case will be vacated. It also states that officials will adhere to the Arizona Supreme Court’s recent ruling for the primary, which is already in motion.

That order adopted a temporary plan to divide election responsibilities and created its own framework for addressing disputes. It directs the board and recorder’s office to appoint operational and legal liaisons who would attempt to resolve issues jointly and file expedited lawsuits if they can’t reach a resolution.

However, it remains unclear whether those liaisons or the special master would resolve disputes that arise during the primary. Brophy McGee told reporters after the board’s vote that the primary was “in process” and that “the way it’s working is how it will continue to work through Election Day.” But Kory Langhoffer, an attorney representing four of the board’s five members, told Votebeat he believed the parties would resolve disputes using the special master process during the primary. A spokesperson for Heap did not respond to a request for comment on the dispute resolution structure for the upcoming election.

Vince Funari, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Superior Court, told Votebeat on Tuesday that judges would be on standby during the primary to handle urgent election matters. Even if emergency lawsuits aren’t the proper way to handle disagreements during the primary, other election matters could still arise unrelated to the officials’ infighting.

By November, county officials said the new agreement’s framework will be fully in place. But there’s still a question of how often county supervisors and the recorder’s office will need to use it.

Brophy McGee said she anticipates the deal will help make the county’s election functions “boring again.”

“It provides a lot of clarity,” she said from the dais Tuesday. “This agreement spells out, word for word, what the job is.” She added that she believes the deal will facilitate “elections that nobody will worry about, have anxiety attacks about, or have to ask about.”

But Gallardo, the lone vote against the agreement, was less confident.

“I don’t want anyone to fail, but I think we all know how this is going to play out,” he told his colleagues. He described Heap as “hyperpartisan” and predicted, “This is not the last of it.”

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

Green Bay clerk’s office faces investigations after duplicate ballot errors in a second consecutive election

2026-07-15T10:00:00+00:00

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

Green Bay and state officials over the last month have authorized separate investigations to better understand how city election officials accidentally sent voters duplicate absentee ballots in two consecutive elections this year, including for the upcoming August 11 primary.

This set of investigations marks an unprecedented level of scrutiny for Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys, who has repeatedly come under fire for election administration mistakes and was placed on leave by Mayor Eric Genrich on July 9.

Jeffreys, whose job is nonpartisan, has served as clerk since 2021, running elections in the state’s third largest city. City spokesperson Michael Bergman said in a statement that the latest errors in the clerk’s office “are unacceptable.”

On Monday, city elected officials and nearby residents weighed in at a public meeting.

“I would hope that when you go through this process, you really evaluate how things are done, because you may not have the right person in that job,” former Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno, a Republican, said at the Monday meeting.

Others raised concerns that Jeffreys’ suspension could hurt the city’s preparedness for the upcoming primary election.

“I worry that Celestine is now sitting at home when she’s not able to prepare for the August 11th election,” said Jane Benson, a Suamico resident and a longtime poll worker. “This is a really busy time for any clerk, and I feel like we’re hamstringing the city from having more reliable elections by sending her home.”

Investigations arose quickly after second error

Before the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, Jeffreys’ office issued 152 duplicate absentee ballots, an error that drew scrutiny and prompted the Wisconsin Republican Party to file an administrative complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Election officials at the time made an effort to explain to voters how the state’s system prevents double votes from being counted.

When it happened again, though, officials on all sides became more critical of the Green Bay clerk.

“I am really concerned that, first of all, it happened once,” Ann Jacobs, a Democratic appointee on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said at the commission’s July 9 meeting, before commissioners voted to investigate the clerk’s office. “But then for the exact same error to happen a second time weeks later is unconscionable.”

Jeffreys, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, sought to explain the first error in an April response to the administrative complaint filed against her, describing it as the downstream result of a printing error.

Typically, after absentee ballot certificate labels — featuring voters’ names and addresses — are placed on absentee envelopes, Green Bay election officials put a copy of regular paper with the same label information in a folder to be retained for recordkeeping purposes, Logan Wood, an attorney for Jeffreys, said in a response to the complaint.

But in the April instance, Wood said, that sheet of paper wasn’t placed in a folder after the ballots were sent out — it’s unclear why. An election worker then mistakenly thought the batch of labels hadn’t been printed at all and made a duplicate copy, Wood said. The duplicate batch of labels was then affixed to envelopes and sent out to voters.

In late June, Jeffreys announced that election officials had again printed and mailed out duplicate ballots for the midterm primary election in August due to a certificate label printing error.

“I regret the printing error occurred,” she said in the June statement, without elaborating on how such an error happened again or how many duplicate ballots were sent out. She noted that affected voters will also receive instructions by mail on submitting only one ballot.

Jacobs said the errors can likely be attributed in part to city election officials using a tool other than WisVote, the state’s voter registration database and election management system, to print labels for absentee ballots. WisVote doesn’t allow officials to generate duplicate labels, she said, but other systems can lack that failsafe.

She said it would be helpful to know which system Jeffreys used, how workers exported the labels, who printed them, and why the duplication wasn’t caught.

“We can’t fix it if we don’t know how it happened, and I don’t think we can give proper direction to the clerk of Green Bay without knowing how this happened,” she said.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission probe, unanimously authorized at the July 9 meeting, seeks a response from the clerk’s office by July 31 explaining how the office accidentally sent duplicate absentee ballots to voters in two consecutive elections and how the city will ensure that only one ballot gets cast per voter.

The commission told the clerk’s office to come up with a plan by Aug. 14 to outline how the city plans to prevent another repeat error. The commission will separately investigate whether the city clerk’s office violated any laws. Meanwhile, city officials announced on July 9 that they’re also conducting an internal review into the mistakes.

It’s unclear if or when Jeffreys will return to her post. Bergman, the city spokesperson, said the city won’t comment on the matter until the city and state finish investigating the errors. Green Bay Deputy Clerk Stacy Menke is running elections in the meantime.

Jeffreys previously came under fire for assorted complaints

The sending of duplicate ballots isn’t the first election administration issue that Jeffreys has faced in Green Bay since transitioning in 2021 from being the mayor’s chief of staff to the clerk.

In late 2023, the Wisconsin Elections Commission stated that Jeffreys’ office’s policy of letting a third party return ballots for somebody who is “sick” but not disabled likely violated state law.

In 2024, Jeffreys admitted that, for several elections in a row, she had not followed the state’s legal requirement to deactivate the voter registrations of Election Day registrants after postcards sent by clerks to their stated mailing addresses were returned as undeliverable. Lindsay Mather, an attorney representing Jeffreys at the time, said the city clerk had also not been referring those voters to the district attorney, as required.

“The failure to do so was inadvertent and due to a lack of awareness of the statutory requirements, and not the result of any willful violation of state law,” Mather said.

Juno, the former Brown County clerk, said at the commission’s July 9 meeting that when somebody makes as many errors as Jeffreys has, that person doesn’t have the skills to be a good clerk.

But Sam Liebert, a former municipal clerk who served in nonpartisan roles, said that while accountability is important, highly publicized investigations could further increase clerk turnover in Wisconsin and dissuade other people from becoming clerks. He said the commission shouldn’t create an expectation for clerks to be perfect 100% of the time.

“Frivolous lawsuits and politically charged attacks over human error do not strengthen the systems that ensure our freedoms to vote,” he said. “They undermine confidence in these very systems that successfully prevented any improper votes from being counted.”

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

Trump move to neutralize election administration agency creates chilling effect, but its impact may be muted

2026-07-13T15:04:46+00:00

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

President Donald Trump’s abrupt removal Thursday of the three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission leaves the agency unable to make key policy decisions, but is unlikely to disrupt preparations for the November elections, according to former staff members and election analysts.

Still, even though Trump’s move won’t bring the agency to a halt, it has created concerns that the president might take further steps to weaken the agency that distributes congressionally-apportioned election funding to states and certifies voting equipment.

The White House declined on Friday to give more detail on its reasons for dismissing the commissioners or explain what the president hoped to achieve by stripping the election oversight agency of its ability to enact changes to policy and voting system guidelines. But the move came at a time of rising concern over how the Trump administration could attempt to influence the outcome of November’s midterm elections.

Benjamin Hovland, one of the two Democratic commissioners fired by Trump, said it would be “challenging to operate without commissioners or a quorum.” Because the agency is small and lightly funded, commissioners play a much larger hands-on role than they do at many other federal agencies, he added. Still, he said, “There is a great team there and they’ll keep doing this work.”

Hovland was sitting at an airport waiting for a cancelled flight on Thursday when he got an unexpected two-sentence email from the White House letting him know he had been fired. Hovland said no one from the Trump administration had been in touch with him since they took control in 2025.

When the U.S. Supreme Court last month gave the president unprecedented new power to fire leaders of independent agencies, Hovland said he figured he would be dismissed “sooner rather than later.”

What the EAC can still do

Ryan Macias, an election technology expert who oversaw federal certification of voting systems at the EAC from 2016 to 2019, said the dismissals were likely to have little or no impact on the day-to-day business at the commission.

States are still expected to get federal election funding already in the pipeline for the November election, which is disbursed according to already-set formulas. While many states rely on the EAC’s federal certification of voting systems, the testing and certification of voting systems does not require action by the commissioners, meaning voting systems can continue to be tested, updated and certified to the standards commissioners had previously adopted, Macias said. Three commissioners would have to approve any updates or changes to the current guidelines.

Commissioners do play a role in some parts of the certification process, at least theoretically. If a voting system vendor disputes the outcome or process of a certification decision, commissioners would hear the appeal. But, Macias said, that’s never happened.

Trump’s actions could also renew debate in Congress over shutting down the EAC, which has been the target of repeated closure efforts, though those have quieted in recent years.

The EAC was created by Congress in response to the disputed, chaotic 2000 presidential election, whose outcome was ultimately decided by a Supreme Court ruling. The agency provides support to states by distributing federal election funds, maintaining the national mail voter registration form, testing and certifying voting systems, and offering best practices and guidance to state and local election officials.

The agency has a four-member commission split between Democrats and Republicans, and most major decisions require an affirmative vote from at least three. Commissioners are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Hovland’s nomination process took around 9 months, and was on the shorter side. Even if Trump moves quickly to nominate replacements, the agency appears unlikely to regain a quorum before the November election.

This is not the first time the EAC has operated without a quorum, though it is the first time it has been left with no commissioners at all. Between 2010 and 2015, the agency lacked enough commissioners to take official action after the Senate stopped confirming nominees — and some congressional leaders stopped recommending them — as lawmakers debated whether the agency should continue to exist. That prolonged vacancy delayed updates to the federal voting system guidelines and left the commission unable to take many policy actions.

Election officials see little immediate disruption

For election officials, the consensus is that the firings are unlikely to disrupt this year’s elections. But several said the longer-term implications are harder to forecast, particularly if the administration takes additional steps to reshape or weaken the agency.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who is a member of the EAC Board of Advisors, called the agency a valuable partner since it was created in 2002.

“I do not expect the changes at the EAC to have any immediate impact on the administration of elections in Minnesota or across the country,” he said. “Yet, the loss of the entire EAC leadership is another canary in the coal mine – and I urge Americans to take notice.”

Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, said Trump’s moves might not have a major impact on the upcoming elections, but suggested that they should be seen in the broader context of Trump’s widespread efforts to eliminate government election integrity programs and cast doubt on elections where Democrats fare well.

“In the short term, it’s another chilling effect,” Blacksberg said. “I don’t think there’s going to be an end to or a deescalation to these actions as the election gets closer.”

Hovland, who served seven years on the commission, defended the agency’s work.

“We weren’t perfect, and we weren’t a silver bullet, but we were someone in the federal government that was still trying to help,” he said. “I am so proud of the team and the agency.” He added, “I feel like people lose sight of why Congress created the EAC.”

Jessica Huseman contributed reporting.

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

Trump fires all Election Assistance Commission members, leaving agency unable to act

2026-07-10T19:40:19+00:00

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

Update, July 10: This story has been updated with a comment from the White House.

President Donald Trump fired all three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, abruptly disabling the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration at a moment when Trump has sought to reshape federal voting rules.

The two Democratic commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were notified by email. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email said. It was signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President.

The third commissioner, Republican Christy McCormick, was allowed to resign, according to three sources within the agency. McCormick declined to comment when reached by phone. The agency’s fourth commissioner, Republican Donald Palmer, voluntarily departed the agency earlier this year to join the Heritage Foundation.

The firings leave the four-member commission with no commissioners, meaning it cannot take official action until new members are installed. They also come days after the Supreme Court granted the president power to fire leaders of independent agencies, weakening a legal framework that for decades had insulated bipartisan federal commissions from direct White House control.

The EAC was created by Congress after the 2000 election to help states improve election administration without federalizing elections.Its role is mostly supportive: distributing federal election funds, maintaining the national mail voter registration form, testing and certifying voting systems, and offering best practices and guidance to state and local election officials.

Trump cannot simply install replacement EAC commissioners on his own. Commissioners must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and no more than two can come from the same party.

A White House official defended the firings, saying, “The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so."

The official added that the administration has been working “across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse” and to strengthen election infrastructure ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The EAC did not respond to a request for comment.

A possible legal test after Supreme Court rulings

The Supreme Court issued two major removal-power decisions at the end of its term in late June. In Trump v. Slaughter, the court overturned decades of precedent and said that the president may remove leaders of independent agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, which was the subject of the case.

In a separate case involving the Federal Reserve, however, the court recognized a different rule for Fed governors, pointing to the long historical independence of central banking institutions.

Whether bipartisan election agencies fall into the first category, the second, or some yet-undefined exception remains unresolved.

“It’s an open question about the EAC and the [Federal Election Commission],” said Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA. “The question has not been tested as to whether political entities created with bipartisan balance might be subject to another exception.”

Earlier this year, Trump fired Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic commissioner on the FEC who had served for years in holdover status after her term expired. Weintraub did not sue, leaving unresolved whether the president can fire members of bipartisan election commissions at will.

If any of the fired EAC commissioners challenge their removals, the case could become the first direct test of whether the Supreme Court’s new removal-power doctrine extends to federal election agencies structured around bipartisan balance.

The Help America Vote Act, which created the EAC, says the president is supposed to consider recommendations from the Senate and House majority and minority leaders when nominating new EAC commissioners.

In practice, Hasen said, that means both parties typically work with the administration to identify nominees. But “that’s more a custom than something that’s in the statute itself.”

That means Trump could try to nominate Democrats acceptable to him, though they would still need Senate confirmation. HAVA does not appear to create a separate shortcut for temporary commissioners: Vacancies are filled “in the manner in which the original appointment was made,” meaning presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. A recess appointment could raise separate legal questions.

A bipartisan agency with no commissioners left

The EAC does not run elections or tell local officials how to run them, but the agency has long been politically contested. Congress designed it as a bipartisan commission, with no more than two members from the same party, but vacancies, partisan fights, and leadership turmoil have repeatedly limited its ability to act. Election officials and watchdogs have also criticized the agency at different points for failing to assert itself on election security, even as its responsibilities became more urgent after Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Hicks, the commission’s chair, had served on the EAC since 2014 and previously worked for Democrats on the House Administration Committee, which oversees federal election law and election administration. Hovland joined the commission in 2019 after being unanimously confirmed by the Senate and had previously served as acting chief counsel to the Senate Rules Committee and as a senior counsel on election matters.

McCormick had served on the EAC since 2014 and previously worked as a senior trial attorney in the voting section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

What happens while the EAC is frozen

The immediate practical effect is clear: The EAC cannot act.

That could stall not only routine commission business, but also any attempt by the Trump administration to use the agency to alter the federal voter registration form or voting-system standards before the 2026 midterms.The EAC also oversees the federal testing and certification program for voting systems, accrediting labs and certifying whether machines meet federal standards known as the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. Many states rely on that certification before allowing voting equipment to be purchased or used.

The EAC has been without a quorum before. For years, vacancies rendered the agency unable to perform major parts of its work, contributing to long delays in updating voting-system guidance. The agency regained stability only after the Senate confirmed new commissioners in 2019.

Now, with the 2026 election cycle underway, the agency is again frozen — this time not because commissioners resigned or terms expired, but because the president removed all of them at once.

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

Meet the Republicans who want to be Arizona’s top election official

2026-07-07T10:00:00+00:00

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

One is a rule-following election administrator. The other is a bomb-throwing election attorney.

That’s the choice voters face in Arizona’s Republican primary for secretary of state. The winner could oversee the high-stakes 2028 presidential race in the state — if they beat Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes this fall.

In many ways, Gina Swoboda and Alex Kolodin have similar profiles. Both have battled over minutiae of state laws in court, written election policy, and claim to have the support of President Donald Trump.

But the two would take vastly different approaches to the job as the state’s top election official.

Swoboda, the former chair of the Arizona Republican Party, previously worked for the secretary’s office and helped craft election legislation at the state Capitol. She pledges to work with local election officials, candidates, and other stakeholders to make behind-the-scenes technology improvements and run elections reliably and transparently.

Kolodin, a current member of the Arizona House of Representatives, is a teacher-turned-attorney who says voters don’t trust elections. He has heavily criticized election officials, has described existing election systems as dysfunctional, and says he cares more about the will of voters than the concerns of election officials.

The race seems to be getting less attention than the contests for governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction. Swoboda and Kolodin spent much of a televised debate on May 14 delving into fine details of election administration and attacking each other’s backgrounds. Another planned debate was cancelled because of scheduling challenges, leaving voters with relatively scant insight into the candidates’ stances on high-profile election issues.

Kolodin, who did not agree to an interview for this story, has cast Swoboda as a liberal in disguise. He said in May that she was “carrying water” for Fontes.

But Swoboda says Kolodin can’t win a general election and took aim at his legislative connections to the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus.

“They don’t negotiate with people,” Swoboda told Votebeat of the Freedom Caucus, adding that Kolodin had a “negative zero” chance of beating Fontes. “They don’t want to get to yes, they don’t want to have a meeting of the minds. They want it their way or no way, and they will break it and just refuse to cooperate.” She said that “would happen to the entire state election process” if Kolodin is elected.

Kolodin said in a statement to Votebeat that he was confident in his ability to beat Fontes.

“In November, we will defeat him at the ballot box, restoring confidence for all voters, regardless of party, once and for all,” he wrote.

How Swoboda, Kolodin would run Arizona elections

In Arizona, local officials are in charge of most day-to-day election and voter registration operations in their counties.

But whoever wins the secretary’s post will play a critical role in issuing voluntary guidance to election offices and dictating how voting must be run via the state’s Elections Procedures Manual.

That rulebook, reissued every two years, has the force of law in Arizona — and both Swoboda and Kolodin have called for changes to it.

Swoboda said she would seek to align the manual more closely with state law, noting that Arizona law doesn’t expressly authorize drop boxes for mail ballots. She said she’d push state lawmakers to codify the drop boxes and allocate money to standardize security features for them across counties.

“They will still likely exist, but you can’t have anything in the manual that’s not in Title 16,” she said, referring to the chapter of state statute that governs elections and voting. “The secretary of state should not be taking their personal viewpoints in life and just creating laws in the manual where the Legislature hasn’t done so.”

She also said the current version of the manual allowed voters to provide either their driver’s license number or their Social Security number to meet the minimum requirements for registration. Swoboda said voters should have to provide their driver’s license number if they have one, which would make it easier for election officials to check registrants’ citizenship status.

And she took aim at the manual’s description of activities that might constitute voter intimidation, which currently include “intentionally following individuals delivering ballots to the drop box when such individuals are not within 75 feet of a drop box” and “speaking to or yelling at an individual, without provocation, who that person knows is returning ballots to the drop box and who is within 75 feet of the drop box.” Swoboda said those provisions could infringe on free speech and have “got to go.”

Kolodin said in a letter to Fontes last year that his draft manual contained “free speech restrictions,” criticizing the same voter intimidation provisions as Swoboda. Additionally, he accused Fontes of “unauthorized tinkering with voter qualifications.” If a voter turns in a registration form without proof of citizenship, the manual currently directs election officials to attempt to verify their citizenship via state and federal systems before rejecting them — provisions that Kolodin described as “an intrusion on the Legislature’s turf.”

“Our voters demand ironclad election integrity to protect the voice of legal voters, not expansive rules that blur the lines and invite more chaos,” Kolodin wrote.

He also raised issues with Fontes’ assertion that counties must use tabulation machines for the initial counting of ballots, pointing to a line in state law that states that ballots “may be cast, recorded and counted by voting or marking devices and vote tabulating devices” — not “shall.”

“Voters and their local elected officials get to make this decision for their own communities,” he wrote.

At the Capitol, Kolodin has supported legislation to ban vote centers, forcing a statewide return to precinct-style voting, in which voters are assigned to a polling place. He has also sponsored bills to prohibit the state attorney general from prosecuting county supervisors who vote against certifying elections, shorten the early voting period, and require voters to confirm their address each election cycle to vote by mail. And he was the lead author of a November ballot measure that would require mail voters to provide ID, among other changes to state election law.

Swoboda said that she, too, believes the early voting period should be shortened. Voters, she said, shouldn’t be able to drop off their mail ballots on Election Day. Ideally, she’d like to require counties to provide seven days of in-person early voting and reserve mail ballots for those over the age of 65, voters with disabilities, and people with scheduled surgeries or planned vacations during the voting period.

“But that’s up to the voters,” she said, adding that mail voting is wildly popular and that it would take a ballot initiative to significantly change it. “People love it here. People use it here. I’m not interested in taking their choices away unless they themselves wish to limit it.”

Later, she said: “There’s a difference between what I think individually and what I think is proper as a secretary of state.”

Where Swoboda and Kolodin stand on Arizona and the feds

Whoever is elected secretary of state will also decide how far to let the federal government step into the state’s elections.

The race is taking place as Trump has made unprecedented calls to nationalize voting. Under his administration, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued Arizona for access to its full, unredacted voter roll, which includes sensitive information such as voters’ full birthdates and Social Security numbers. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has encouraged states to use a revamped, unreliable federal immigration tool to identify noncitizens on the voter roll, despite overwhelming evidence that such illegal voters are rare. Meanwhile, several federal agencies appear to be probing the state’s past elections.

So far, Fontes has fought such efforts. He has repeatedly refused to give the federal government an unredacted version of the state’s voter roll. His office has long used the federal immigration tool — called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — to verify the citizenship of those registering to vote without providing documents proving their status, but it hasn’t used it to attempt to remove voters from the state’s roll en masse. And Fontes has pushed back on federal inquiries into prior elections. Earlier this year, he penned a letter with Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes to county officials, telling them to keep voter data confidential amid probes by the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Swoboda said she would decline to hand over voter information to the Justice Department, absent a court order. She said local officials should retain control over voter list maintenance.

“I don’t understand why Republicans, who are constitutional conservatives, think it’s a good idea to put the federal government in charge of who is eligible to vote,” she said.

Swoboda previously worked as the executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation, an advocacy group that has raised concerns about voter list maintenance, but stopped short of embracing Trump’s false claims of rigged elections. She praised the updates that federal officials had made to the SAVE system, but said the state should also explore joining EleXa, a new, multistate coalition in which officials compare redacted versions of their voter rolls to look for double voters.

Kolodin said in a June 27 radio interview that he would require county recorders to run their full voter lists through the SAVE system. And in an April interview on the same show, Kolodin heavily criticized a court ruling against the Trump administration’s request for Arizona’s unredacted voter rolls, calling the request “common sense.”

“I don’t know why anybody would want to be delaying making sure that we only have U.S. citizens on our voter rolls,” Kolodin said. “That makes no sense to me.”

As a lawyer, Kolodin previously served as local counsel on a lawsuit claiming “massive, coordinated inter-state election fraud” in 2020. That case was dismissed, along with similar ones filed in other states. Kolodin later faced formal admonishment from the state bar and was assigned five legal ethics classes, including one focused on “meritorious claims and contentions.”

Who can actually win?

The three polls of the race that have been released so far this year show Kolodin in the lead — sometimes within the margin of error, sometimes not — with huge numbers of undecided voters.

The most recent of the group — from NextGen Polling, which surveyed 1,683 likely primary voters last month — put Kolodin at 16% and Swoboda at 11%. Nearly 73% of the electorate said they were undecided.

That suggests the race remains wide open. Several of the polls noted that Kolodin’s support was driven by voters who identified as extremely conservative. Those voters are among the most likely to participate in primaries — and at times, Kolodin has appeared to treat his victory as a foregone conclusion, spending precious minutes in interviews and on the debate stage to repeatedly punch at Fontes.

But Swoboda is betting that she can draw in rural voters. When she was chair of the state party, she said she built strong connections across farther-flung areas of Arizona. She believes primary voters there are open to her message.

“People aren’t going to tell you they’re going to go vote for me,” she said. “They’re just going to go vote for me.”

So far, there’s no polling on how Swoboda or Kolodin might fare against Fontes. But NextGen Polling noted its results suggested moderate voters in the primary preferred Swoboda.

Swoboda called herself “electable,” adding she wasn’t “a highly polarizing person” likely to alienate independent voters and crossover Democrats.

“When there’s a fight to be had, I’m willing to fight,” she said. “But I don’t believe everything is a fight, and I don’t believe that our system is helplessly broken. I do not want to burn it to the ground.”

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

Supreme Court allows states to accept mail ballots after Election Day, rejecting Republican challenge to voting access

2026-06-29T16:38:52+00:00

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

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, as long as they are properly postmarked — a key victory for voting rights advocates and another setback to President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on absentee voting.

In an uncommon 5-4 ruling, the justices found that nothing in federal law prevents states from enacting grace periods for absentee ballots to be received, as long as they are actually cast and mailed by Election Day. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia currently have such grace periods.

The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, centered on a Mississippi law that allowed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrived up to five business days later. The national and state Republican parties challenged the law in 2024, arguing that, because Election Day is set by federal law, states should not be about to count ballots received after it.

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

A federal judge initially upheld Mississippi’s law, but an appeals court sided with the Republicans who challenged the ballot rules. Mississippi then brought its case to the Supreme Court in March.

The high court eventually sided with Mississippi. “The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose.”

The ruling crossed ideological lines, with conservatives Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joining liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor in the majority.

The status-quo ruling was good news for those who worried that eliminating the absentee-ballot grace period would disenfranchise voters. A Votebeat analysis of data from 11 of the 15 jurisdictions with grace periods found that more than 745,000 absentee ballots arrived after Election Day in 2024, representing no more than roughly 3 percent of the total vote in any state.

“The Court’s decision is a direct message to all voters who rely on mail ballots, including military and overseas voters, rural voters, seniors, and people with disabilities: Your voices matter equally to voters who can easily access a polling place,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan voting security group. “This ruling ensures that a postal delay outside of any voter’s control does not erase a lawfully cast ballot and supports election officials’ ability to capture the will of voters.”

Carolina Lopez, executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, said she was pleasantly surprised by the court ruling. She said the decision would come as a relief to election administrators who weren’t sure when the absentee ballot receipt deadlines would be in their states.

“For election offices, this clarity matters,” she said.

Republicans, however, criticized the ruling. “Democrats are inviting chaos at the ballot box by allowing elections to drag on for days and weeks after voters cast their ballots,” Joe Gruters, chairman of the RNC, said in a statement. “Republicans are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the RNC will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day as Americans want.”

In a post on social media, Trump called the ruling a “tremendous loss” and said it should be a catalyst for Congress to pass his long-stalled election overhaul, the SAVE America Act.

“There is only one reason to oppose — CHEATING!” Trump wrote. Studies show that mail voting fraud is exceedingly rare, accounting for only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast, on average, in the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections.

Trump has long criticized mail-in ballots, blaming them for delayed election results and arguing unsuccessfully in court that they cost him the 2020 presidential election.

“We should know the result of the election on Nov. 3, the evening of Nov. 3,” Trump said on the campaign trail in 2020. “That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it should be.”

As post-Election Day vote tallies in key states that year showed a swing toward Democrat Joe Biden, Trump called for a halt to counting ballots. The late swing reflected timing, not fraud: Studies show misinformation made Republicans more wary of mail voting in 2020, so later-counted mail ballots skewed Democratic.

“STOP THE COUNT!” Trump wrote on social media two days after Election Day. “ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!”

Last year, Trump issued an executive order that gave the federal government power to withhold federal funding to states that allowed ballots to be counted if they arrived after Election Day. Several states sued over the order, and federal courts have largely blocked it from taking effect.

On Monday, conservative Justice Samuel Alito embraced Trump’s arguments in his dissent. Alito argued that the ruling “creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government.”

In the wake of the ruling, Mississippi’s Republican attorney general urged the state legislature to eliminate the state’s grace period anyway.

“I am hopeful that the Mississippi Legislature will take this opportunity to amend the law and require absentee ballots be received on the same day ballots are cast at the polling place,” said Attorney General Lynn Fitch. “President Trump is right to prioritize improving public trust in our elections.”

During two hours of oral arguments in March, some conservative Supreme Court justices pressed the lawyers about whether late-arriving ballots could create the perception of voter fraud. At the time, Alito asked whether “confidence in outcomes can be seriously undermined if the apparent outcome of the election on the day after the polls close is radically flipped by the acceptance later of a big stash of ballots that flip the election.”

“We don’t have Election Day anymore,” Alito said. “We have election month, or we have election months.”

The more liberal justices questioned the impact that nullifying Mississippi’s law could have on voting by Americans and soldiers living overseas.

“You believe that absentee voting by the military and overseas voters, the… federal laws under which states have proceeded with respect to those votes are illegal?” asked Sotomayor.

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

Texas lawmakers want fixes to statewide voter registration system ahead of midterm election

2026-06-24T09:45:00+00:00

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

Texas lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for assurances that issues with the state’s voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election.

“Those fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don’t, we can’t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Harris County, during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing that addressed voter registration and voter list maintenance issues.

Bettencourt said he’s heard complaints about the system, known as TEAM, from election officials in Travis, Austin, and Jackson counties, among others.

Christina Adkins, the elections division director at the secretary of state’s office, said the agency is “dedicating every possible resource that we have within our office to resolving these issues.”

“There is nothing more important in our office than this project,” Adkins said.

TEAM was redesigned and redeveloped by the state and relaunched last summer. Election officials say they have struggled with it since then, and though some functionality issues have been resolved, others continue to come up.

For example, election officials have reported that processes such as voter registration status lookups and precinct assignments frequently don’t work properly. In addition, the system often malfunctions when attempting to produce reports of registered voters and voters who have requested a mail ballot, forcing some election officials to produce their own spreadsheets to keep track.

The problems, election officials say, have added financial and staffing strains on counties already strapped for resources.

The system was developed by Civix, a Louisiana-based vendor. The majority of the state’s 254 counties rely on TEAM to plan elections and maintain their voter rolls. Even counties that instead use software from a state-approved private vendor to manage their voter rolls are required by state law to sync their data with TEAM daily, and are required to use TEAM to verify a voter’s identity and their eligibility to cast a ballot.

Groups representing election officials across Texas have asked the agency to halt the TEAM update rollout and address issues that they said “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.” The groups first outlined their complaints in a letter to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson in October, and sent another one in February.

Earlier this month, Nelson announced she’d be stepping down as of July 17. Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to appoint her successor.

Secretary of state, vendor working together on fixes

According to public records, the state’s contract with Civix is for $17 million. The secretary of state’s office told Votebeat last year that the money for it came from a mix of state dollars and federal funds allocated under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, earmarked for improving election administration.

Bettencourt raised questions about Civix’s work during the hearing. “When I get half a dozen counties with their hair on fire, and some counties are small, and some of them are big, that means that the vendor is behind on actually delivering fixes to the system,” Bettencourt said.

He directly asked Adkins whether Civix was up for the task. “Yes, sir,” she responded, adding her office is working with the vendor on fixes. Civix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Civix, Adkins said, also manages voter registration systems for other states, including Louisiana and Iowa, but Texas is the vendor’s biggest election management and voter registration software customer.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has said it anticipated technical issues with this “once-in-a-decade upgrade,” though it pointed to some unexpected challenges that have exacerbated the issues.

The agency specified that it didn’t anticipate the updated system having to handle significant amounts of data from large counties that abruptly stopped using a vendor that had financial problems. It also noted that redrawn boundaries following last year’s unexpected midcycle redistricting created additional complications that prevented counties from mailing out voter registration certificates on time.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Arizona Court of Appeals pauses judge’s ruling on election powers in Maricopa County

2026-06-18T21:48:50+00:00

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

Update, June 18, 3:30 p.m. MST: This story has been updated to include comments from Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap.

The Arizona Court of Appeals has temporarily blocked a ruling that was favorable to Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap in his long-running legal battle with the board of supervisors over control of the swing county’s elections.

Two of its three justices ruled to stay enforcement of a lower court’s order in the case to avoid disrupting the upcoming state primary. The other — Justice Brian Furuya, who was appointed to the bench in 2021 — dissented and said he would not have ordered the stay.

The ruling puts the fiery feud within county government on ice just days before voting begins in a high-stakes primary election.

The dispute has been ongoing since Heap took office and contended that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors usurped much of his power in a deal they struck with his predecessor. Heap, a Republican, sued over the matter last year.

After months of back-and-forth in court, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled largely in Heap’s favor on April 16, issuing an injunction that ordered the majority-GOP board to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to Heap’s office.

The board appealed that ruling, arguing it was too close to the primary to implement the court’s directives without risking a tumultuous election.

In the meantime, the officials have continued to butt heads. Last month, Heap asked Blaney to hold the supervisors in civil contempt of court, accusing them of flouting his earlier ruling.

He also sought to stop a special prosecutor’s investigation into whether his employees broke the law by removing a scanner from the county’s vote tabulation center amid a local election earlier this year.

Ultimately, the appellate court sided with the board, issuing a majority opinion that leaned heavily on the so-called Purcell principle. That legal guideline, named after former Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, calls for avoiding rule changes in the immediate leadup to an election.

Justices Andrew Jacobs and James Morse wrote that Blaney’s ruling mandated changes that could result in “concrete, operational impacts on the public’s voting experience.”

“The practical impacts of these changes, and even the injunction’s claim to mitigate practical harms for the voter, all demonstrate that this is no mere backroom dispute over accounting principles or organizational charts,” their ruling read. “It is, by everyone’s assessment, a live conflict hurtling toward real-world consequences in elections about to begin.”

Heap said in a statement that he would immediately appeal the case to the Arizona Supreme Court.

What does the appellate court’s decision mean for the Arizona primary?

Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican, said in a statement that the court’s decision was “a win” for voters.

“Simply put, this court order averts potential chaos at the polls that may have resulted from the lower court decision, which sought to force the county to enact broad changes in election administration in the middle of one election and on the eve of another,” she said.

Heap said in his statement that the ruling didn’t address the underlying legal issues at play in the case and that it was “not the final word on Arizona law.”

“We remain confident that the courts will ultimately affirm the Legislature’s clear assignment of responsibilities to the county recorder’s office,” he said. “We will continue fighting to ensure Arizona’s election laws are faithfully followed.”

For now, the decision appears to halt his efforts to hold the board in civil contempt and avert investigation into the scanner removal incident at the county’s election center. Blaney said in a June 15 hearing that his authority to address those matters would evaporate if the appellate court issued a stay in the case.

After that hearing, Blaney also ordered the parties to attend a mediation session. Spokespeople on both sides did not immediately respond to a question from Votebeat about whether that meeting would proceed as scheduled on June 22.

It’s also unclear what the decision means for a separate grievance filed by Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who contends that Heap’s legal team is encroaching on her duties as the county’s top lawyer. Spokesperson Erin Pellett told Votebeat on Thursday that Mitchell and her legal team were “still evaluating the impact on their case.”

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

Michigan revokes Antrim County clerk’s access to voter roll after unauthorized cancellations

2026-06-12T22:13:55+00:00

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

The Michigan Bureau of Elections revoked Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s access to Michigan’s voter roll Friday, the latest salvo in the dispute between the state and the controversial Republican election official.

Jonathan Brater, Michigan’s director of elections, said in a letter to Bishop that she is “taking actions ... that do not comply with the Michigan Election Law and fall outside the scope of your statutory authority” after she allegedly changed or even canceled some voters’ registrations earlier this year.

Under Michigan law, maintaining the Qualified Voter File — the state’s central database of registered voters — is the job of city and township clerks, not county clerks. Brater noted in his letter that Bishop does “not have authority to alter QVF records except in certain situations,” including to flag voters who have died.

However, Brater wrote, the state’s review of Bishop’s QVF activity found that that was not what she was doing. He also reprimanded her for sending notices to voters about the cancellations that were insufficiently complete, based on unreliable information, and also supposed to be sent only by city and township clerks.

“Based upon your actions, it appears there is a lack of understanding regarding your responsibilities and authority as it relates to voter registration, list maintenance, and use of QVF,” Brater wrote. He concluded by notifying her that her QVF access has been suspended until she completes a series of trainings on QVF security, promises to comply with Michigan’s election law in the future, and responds adequately to the state’s initial inquiries on whose voter registrations were changed and why.

Bishop did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon on the suspension. However, she has previously argued she has a “mandate” from voters to “rectify long-standing vulnerabilities in the county’s registration data” after Antrim County elected her on promises she would clean up the county’s rolls.

Bishop has been in hot water with the state since April, when Votebeat first reported that she had been altering people’s voter registrations. Interlochen Public Radio later reported that she had sent notices of confirmation or cancellation to some 1,800 voters in the county of about 25,000 people, confusing voters and irritating township clerks who had to deal with the fallout.

After Bishop failed to correctly respond to the state — she initially sent her response to an incorrect email address and did not answer a number of questions — the Department of State formally demanded she stop. Bishop and her husband, a radio host best known as Trucker Randy, threatened their own legal action against the state. They raised a few hundred dollars for the effort before ultimately unpublishing their fundraiser. It does not appear a suit was filed.

Michigan State Police also investigated the Bishops after it came to light that her husband was alone in the clerk’s office using her computer in February. The Bishops told investigators that he was using the computer to watch a public county meeting as he was waiting for a phone call. The attorney general’s office confirmed Friday that investigation is ongoing.

Voters should not see services interrupted by Bishop’s lack of access to the QVF, as her deputy clerk, Annette Marcus, will still have access, and the bulk of work in the QVF is done by city and township clerks.

The county’s next elections are the primaries in August.

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

Special prosecutor investigating latest election-control disagreement in Maricopa County

2026-06-09T19:37:32+00:00

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

With mere weeks until voting begins in a high-stakes primary election, a long-standing disagreement over election control in Maricopa County is only getting more combative.

In a new twist of the feud, a special prosecutor is looking into whether employees in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office broke the law by allegedly removing a scanner and provisional ballot envelopes from the county’s vote tabulation headquarters amid a local election earlier this year.

Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, said in a recent legal filing that he wanted possession of the scanner, which he said belongs to his office — a claim that the county’s mostly-GOP board of supervisors disputed.

He also requested a court order barring any criminal prosecution of his employees related to the incident, which occurred as votes were being tallied in the March 10 election for three seats on the Tempe City Council.

Heap’s latest filing in his lawsuit with the board of supervisors raises further questions about top officials’ ability to work together to administer this year’s midterm election in the key swing county. It comes less than two months before the state primary on July 21 — and as the special prosecutor looking into the scanner incident draws close to completing his investigation.

Former Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer, a Republican, told Votebeat that he was tapped by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to investigate the matter in April. He said he’d hired an off-duty, reserve deputy with the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office to assist with the case, and that the investigation was “wrapping up.”

Erin Pellett, a spokesperson for Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, said in a statement that Mitchell had appointed special counsel after receiving an “allegation” and determining a conflict of interest was present. As the county’s top prosecutor, Mitchell, a Republican, represents both the recorder’s office and the board of supervisors.

Volkmer declined to share many details of the investigation, noting that it still remained active. But he said the investigation wasn’t initiated to target specific employees in the recorder’s office. Rather, Volkmer said he was looking into the incident to determine “whether there was, in fact, criminal behavior.”

“This wasn’t, ‘Hey, go look at this person,’” he said. “That’s not how this came about.”

Volkmer added that it is standard practice for investigators to attempt to contact individuals who could have knowledge of a potential criminal matter.

“I would say you’re not doing your job if you don’t try,” he said, adding that he believed his investigator would be “thorough” in examining the incident.

What happened with Maricopa County Recorder’s Office employees and the disputed scanner?

Heap said in his court motion that multiple employees from the recorder’s office had attempted to “retrieve” a scanner from the election center in March, with the intent of repurposing it to scan inbound provisional ballot envelopes.

He said the scanner belonged to his office. Heap noted it was purchased with funds from the recorder’s office and was never “lawfully transferred” to the county elections department, which is overseen by the board of supervisors. He added that the scanners were acquired specifically for early voting services, “a function under the sole authority of the recorder.”

But the board saw it differently. In a statement, Supervisors Kate Brophy McGee and Debbie Lesko said two workers — including Chief Information Officer Brian Colby, who is named in court filings as one of the employees who was later approached by an investigator — were caught on security cameras loading the piece of equipment into the back of an unmarked pickup truck on March 12. The supervisors said it appeared to be a personal vehicle.

The supervisors called the machine a “pre-tabulation” scanner and said it was controlled by the board. Furthermore, they said Colby had been notified on “at least one occasion, in an inter-office message on March 5,” that the scanner was the property of the board.

Brophy McGee and Lesko, both Republicans, said the workers returned the scanner about an hour later, after elections department staff contacted the recorder’s office about the matter.

But they said Colby also appeared to take envelopes that potentially contained live provisional ballots, creating “grave chain-of-custody concerns.” They added that a count the following day confirmed that all ballots were accounted for, and that a human resources investigation substantiated their accounting of the incident.

Later, Heap said his employees were approached at their homes by “Pinal County Sheriff’s deputies.” He said Colby was specifically told he was under investigation for theft.

Filing comes as Maricopa County elections dispute continues to escalate

The filing adds fuel to the flames of a long-running feud within county government.

Heap has long contended that county supervisors usurped much of his power in a deal they struck with his predecessor months before he took office. He sued over the matter last year — and after months of back-and-forth in court, a court ruled largely in his favor on April 16, ordering the board to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to Heap’s office.

The board unsuccessfully moved to stay that ruling, arguing it was too close to the primary to implement the court’s directives without risking a tumultuous election. Later, they filed for an appeal, which is still pending.

In the meantime, the officials have continued to butt heads.

During a May 19 local election, they argued over how to communicate a new voting option at polling sites. Emails show the recorder’s office and the board’s elections department disagreed over whether poll workers should verbally inform voters that they could opt to show identification at voting sites to have their mailed ballot counted faster.

Then, another scuffle erupted last month over ballot drop box locations for the upcoming primary. The board has set such sites for years under a provision of the state’s election rulebook, and it planned to approve the locations at a May 20 meeting. But just before the supervisors met to do so, Heap sent a letter to the board citing state statutes that he said granted his office authority over ballot drop boxes. He also warned that election workers who handle ballots deposited in “unauthorized” receptacles could face criminal penalties.

The suggestion that election workers could be charged with felonies drew strong condemnation from the supervisors. One, Democratic Supervisor Steve Gallardo, accused Heap of attempting to sabotage election operations. Ultimately, the board unanimously approved a slate of voting locations — including the drop box sites — for the primary.

Later, Heap asked a judge to hold the county board in civil contempt of court, accusing supervisors of flouting the April ruling. If supervisors failed to quickly adhere to the recent decision, he asked that the court levy substantial fines and give the money to his office.

Heap reiterated that request in his most recent filing, asking the court to set an expedited hearing on the issue in light of “these new factual developments.”

He also said the board was targeting his employees and doing “exactly what it had falsely accused the recorder of doing” amid the drop box saga last month.

“It has actively initiated a criminal referral against a Recorder’s Office staff member for doing something entirely lawful, in the middle of active litigation, just over two weeks before early ballots are scheduled to be mailed to voters,” Heap wrote in the filing.

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

Here’s how the Texas secretary of state’s resignation could complicate the midterm elections

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

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

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s unexpected departure only a few months before the November midterm election, which includes one of the most hotly contested U.S. Senate races the state has seen in years, has some local election officials and voting rights advocates worrying the transition will complicate their ability to administer a smooth election.

“It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that is scary,” said Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator. “Are we going to continue to receive guidance? Are we going to be ensured that we’ll be prepared for any coming changes? We just don’t know.”

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is required by law to appoint a new secretary as soon as possible. His office, in an emailed statement, said the new appointee would be announced “at a later date.”

Nelson, who has been the state’s chief election official for more than three years, last week announced that she’d be stepping down from the role effective July 17. Nelson’s departure will happen just as election officials across the state are preparing in earnest for the November general election. In the summer months, they’ll be recruiting election workers, seeking polling locations, and processing voter registration applications, among other duties.

Some voting rights advocates say a new appointee may want to direct local election officials to change election procedures, which could lead to chaos and confusion for voters. Although the secretary of state’s office has no law enforcement authority and can’t change the law, it can issue election law opinions on how to implement election and voting rules.

“If the new secretary of state has a laundry list of demands that election administrators can’t meet, that’s going to throw our elections into disarray,” said Emily Eby French, policy director at Common Cause Texas. French noted that there were three secretaries of state between 2017 and Nelson’s appointment in 2023, some of whom remained in the role only for about a year before resigning.

“I am very concerned that we are going to go back to that period of instability that we were in before Jane Nelson,” she said.

In the months leading up to the March primary election, county election officials across the state navigated challenges including a rare mid-decade residistricting cycle and issues with the statewide election management and voter registration system, known as TEAM. The majority of counties in the state rely on the system, which was overhauled last summer by the secretary of state’s office, to manage elections and to maintain voter registration lists.

The Texas Association of County Election Officials has twice publicly asked Nelson’s office in the past six months to act and resolve the problems. The secretary of state’s office has said that problems with a new version of the system were expected, especially given that the system handles the data of more than 18 million voter registration records. They’ve also said the situation was aggravated by the unexpected midcycle redistricting and problems with an outside vendor that forced some counties to suddenly add large amounts of data to the state system with little warning.

But despite these tensions, state election officials have consistently remained supportive of local election officials through politically tense periods and have maintained a nonpartisan approach when interpreting the law, said Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.

The agency has also often promoted the idea that county election officials are the election experts in each of their communities.

“There’s a fear that that could change to where the office is dictating how counties should operate with a more political approach,” he said.

Others, including some local election officials, are less concerned about top-down interference and say that a leadership transition in the office now won’t affect election officials’ ability to conduct a smooth election in November. That’s because ultimately, the election is handled by local officials in each of the state’s 254 counties.

Nelson’s sudden departure “shouldn’t have any noticeable impact on the ability of the election officials in Texas to run free and fair elections,” said Joshua Ferrer, an assistant professor of government at American University. Ferrer has done research on the recent heightened turnover of state and local election officials across the country.

“Even when officials leave, the replacements, and the staff that are still there are able to do an equally good job,” Ferrer said.

Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator, said she’d like to see the incoming secretary of state advocate for more funding and resources for county election departments.

“Funding is something we’ve talked about for years,” Smith said, recalling when a tornado touched down in the North Texas county during the 2024 primary runoff election and her office had to scramble to ensure polling locations stayed open. “We want to be able to provide secure facilities for our voters and to make sure that there are no delays when there are storms of that nature, but funds are limited.”

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

Students across Pennsylvania step up on Election Day to keep democracy working

2026-06-05T09:00:00+00:00

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

If you’ve voted in person in Pennsylvania recently, you may have noticed that one of the poll workers checking you in was a high school student. And if you ask one of them why they wanted to be a poll worker, most will give a similar answer.

“My school was offering it, and I thought it would be a good piece of money,” explained Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School in Philadelphia.

Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

But, once the allure of a paycheck and a day off school has faded away, they’ll tell you something else as well: They enjoy getting to see the voting process up close.

“I kept going back afterward because it was interesting to see everyone in my community … and how seriously they took voting,” Martinez said. “It kind of inspired me to come back, and for my last year that I worked there, I voted too.”

In Pennsylvania, 17-year-olds are eligible to be poll workers, and each year high school students staff voting sites across the state. And they’re not just stuck in corners or being sent to fetch coffee, either; they are meaningfully involved in running the polls.

Advocates of the practice say it both helps counties fill a staffing gap and gives students valuable life experience.

In Lebanon County, student poll workers have become an integral part of the county’s Election Day workforce. During the May 2026 primary, students made up 13% of all poll workers, and Jamie Shoemaker, the county’s poll worker coordinator, said she’s trying to increase that number.

Shoemaker had hands-on experience with the program before taking it over full time. Shoemaker was a pollworker in her mother’s precinct before joining the county elections office, and one year her own high school aged daughter helped out as well. Her daughter, she said, ended up enjoying the experience.

That was in 2019, when Lebanon County was mainly working with Lebanon High School to find students to work the polls. But after Shoemaker began working at the county elections department full time, she expanded the program to other high schools in the area. The county now averages about 50 to 55 student poll workers each election.

Kayla Marshall, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School, stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Jeannetta Dormil, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Andrew Abreu, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Tanicha Cadesca, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School walks throug a hallway during a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards in Harrisburg.

Rebecca Torres, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School sits for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Rubiel Gutierrez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School sits for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Shane Hannigan, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt stands alongside students from Franklin Towne Charter High School after they received the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award.

The students do all types of jobs in the polling place, from checking voters in to keeping track of turnout and helping voters feed their ballots into tabulation machines.

Many non-student poll workers in Lebanon — and nationally — skew older. And as elections become more technologically integrated with devices such as electronic pollbooks, older poll workers sometimes struggle to adapt.

“Having the student there helps bridge that tech gap,” she said. “They can just look at it and know [what the issue is].”

Keith Rolon is the cooperative education teacher at Lebanon High School and manages the school’s student poll worker program. His goal is to have two students at each of the city’s polling sites, including at least one who is bilingual to help translate for the city’s large Spanish-speaking population.

“For me as a civics teacher, it was important for me to show them voting is important and elections are safe and here’s what goes into them,” he said.

It’s also an opportunity for students to learn valuable life skills like self-advocacy that Rolon said can’t be learned in the classroom. During the primary, as he does every Election Day, he traveled around to all the polling places in the city to check on his students.

At the Lebanon County Senior Center in the city’s 10th ward, he stopped in to see senior Ella Whalen and junior Emely Liriano. Whalen was recording which voters came in on a numbered list, and Liriano was seated next to her checking them in on the polling place’s e-pollbook.

The judge of elections gave Rolon a positive review of their performance so far, and Rolon reminded them it was their responsibility to speak up for themselves when it was time for them to take a break or get lunch.

Whalen and Liriano agreed the money they got from working the polls was nice, but the act of being civically engaged was appealing too. Their parents are politically active, and Whalen said it was good to help out.

It was both Whalen’s and Liriano’s first time working an election, and although turnout was rather low (as usual for a primary), they said they still learned about the voting process.

“It surprised me how quick it was,” Liriano said. “You just go in, you check off the boxes, you put [the ballot] in the thing, and then you leave. I didn’t even know there was a machine that you just put your ballots in.”

Students from Franklin Towne Charter High School walk out before receiving the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

Diane Gordian, the civic engagement and language access engagement coordinator for the Pennsylvania Department of State, helps organize student poll worker programs across Pennsylvania. She said a benefit of the programs is that they help students, and importantly also their families, build habits of democratic engagement.

“Those students come home and say, ‘Hey Mom and Dad, I want to do this,’ and that gets those parents motivated, not only to register to vote, but they sign up to be poll workers,” she said.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt hands one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards, to a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

The state is still tallying numbers from the primary, but Gordian said she expects this year to have the highest-ever rate of students serving as poll workers.

Each year, the state honors certain students and their schools with the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award for registering eligible student voters and for working as poll workers.

Martinez, from Franklin Towne Charter High School, was one of the 633 students who received that award this year, and he and eight of his peers recently spoke about their experiences at a press conference with Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt.

Kayla Marshall, another student at Franklin Towne Charter, said the poll worker programs give students a chance to actually experience civic engagement rather than just hearing about it “in a PowerPoint at 8 in the morning while trying not to fall asleep.” Marshall worked the polls in three elections starting in November 2024.

Kayla Marshall delivers remarks on the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards, alongside fellow students from Franklin Towne Charter High School at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

“Working the polls taught me more than just how elections work,” she said. “It taught me responsibility, teamwork, patience, and the importance of giving back. It also showed me that young people don’t have to wait until ‘someday’ to make a difference.”

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

Madison former deputy clerk removed from election tasks after misplacing 23 Supreme Court race ballots

2026-06-04T19:49:06+00:00

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

The former Madison deputy clerk who claimed responsibility for the 23 late-arriving ballots in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election has been reassigned within the clerk’s office to non-election tasks.

Jim Verbick — the election office’s former second-in-command who was previously scrutinized and sued for the clerk’s office losing 200 ballots in the 2024 election — admitted to losing track of the absentee ballots that didn’t end up arriving at several polling places until after 8 p.m. on Election Day in April, according to public records obtained by Votebeat.

He told Votebeat that he’s only partially to blame, that understaffing and a lack of communication led to the mistake, and that it’s unfair that he got reassigned away from elections. Verbick is now the city clerk’s office’s lead worker for licensing.

“I do admit that I had forgotten about the ballots I secured when I left the post office,” he said, adding that he said the error was exacerbated by unexpected absences and mistakes made by others.

The issue went to court after the Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison not to count the ballots because they arrived after the 8 p.m. deadline in Wisconsin law. A court reversed the commission’s decision, and the ballots were counted in the final canvass.

Verbick’s reassignment was part of a set of personnel changes designed to improve how the clerk’s office manages “the many logistical tasks of administering elections,” Madison Clerk Lydia McComas said in a statement. The city is also hiring two new deputy clerks and a lead employee for absentee voting. But this move doesn’t amount to a net gain of three election positions because one election staff member recently left the office and Verbick was reassigned.

Madison officials said after the election that the clerk’s office — not voters — was responsible for the ballots’ late arrival. Election officials had received and sorted the ballots in time to be delivered: They arrived on the Monday before Election Day and were sorted that same evening, then put on a shelf to be delivered in the afternoon of the following day, records show.

Emails, spreadsheets and Microsoft Teams messages obtained by Votebeat show that Verbick was in charge of absentee ballots and accepted some blame for their late arrival.

Around 4 p.m., Verbick sent a message on Microsoft Teams that he realized he sent out officials to deliver ballots that afternoon without the batch of absentee ballots including the 23 votes that would end up arriving late, former clerk’s office staff member Bonnie Chang said in an email to McComas.

Per that same email, Chang said that about an hour later, she scanned a spreadsheet that showed polling sites were still missing absentee ballots. She then contacted Verbick to find out how many ballots were in the late-discovered bin and whether he needed help delivering them. She wrote that he wouldn’t say how many ballots were found or whether more staff were needed to deliver ballots.

At around 6 p.m., Chang said, the clerk’s office sent additional staff to help deliver the ballots as early as possible. She said most got reassigned to other tasks.

By the time that additional help arrived, Verbick told Votebeat, the ballots had already been sent out for delivery. He said he didn’t think the couriers who were already dispatched to deliver the ballots would have trouble delivering them on-time.

In hindsight, Verbick said, he would have used those additional staff to lighten their load. But he also said he could have planned for the additional staff better had anybody told them that they were en route to help him out.

That night, Verbick sent an email to McComas taking blame for not putting the batch containing the 23 ballots on the planned afternoon drop-offs to polling places.

“Missing the bin of envelopes with the initial afternoon route is my fault,” he emailed McComas at about 10:45 p.m. on Election Day. “I had all of them reviewed this morning and ready to be run with the mail delivery.”

Verbick told Votebeat he forgot about the ballots because election workers in the clerk’s office hadn’t told him about a planned USPS delivery around noon that Tuesday. Believing the delivery had not happened, he went to the post office to investigate.

Before leaving, he said, he moved the batch of ballots that later arrived late into a secure area because there were no other full-time clerk’s office staffers available to watch them while he was gone. It was there that he forgot the ballots.

The error, Verbick told Votebeat, reflected chronic understaffing in the clerk’s office — a problem exacerbated by the increase in absentee voting since the 2020 election.

In an email to McComas, Verbick said he didn’t get additional staff that he thought would help process ballots, and that he didn’t intentionally ignore messages from office staff.

Relying on hourly and temporary workers to fill those gaps is not enough, he told Votebeat.

In an email to Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway sent the night of the incident, McComas said that she would “firmly address the lack of communication” and would have more staff in August and November, including the new deputy to oversee absentee ballots.

Wisconsin Elections Commission chair Ann Jacobs called the latest error “absurd” at a commission meeting in late April. The commission voted to investigate Madison over the error, meaning the agency’s first two authorized investigations in its history both center on Madison: one for the 2024 ballot snafu and one for the latest one.

Ultimately, the votes affected by this year’s error were counted. Officials said these 23 ballots were correctly, legally cast, counted and checked into the pollbooks just like any other valid absentee ballots — the only problem was that they were delivered and counted after polls formally closed. The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted that the city and county erred in counting the ballots since state law held that ballots must be delivered to polling places “no later than 8 p.m. on election day.”

A Dane County judge, however, reversed that order, ruling that the ballots should be counted because they were properly cast, and precedent held that voters shouldn’t be disenfranchised because of clerk errors.

Verbick scrutinized for 2024 election snafu

This was the second time in about two years that Verbick has faced scrutiny over allegations that he failed to act decisively when absentee ballots were at risk of being left uncounted.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission previously scrutinized Verbick for his inaction after the 2024 presidential election, when nearly 200 voters were disenfranchised.

When Maribeth Witzel-Behl, the clerk at the time, was on vacation after the election, Verbick was in charge of the office, Witzel-Behl told the commission in a deposition.

Verbick, on the other hand, “testified that he is generally in charge when Clerk Witzel-Behl is not in the office, but that he is ‘not always the point person on everything in the office,’” and wasn’t sure who the point person would have been, according to the commission investigation.

The commission stated that Verbick’s involvement was “minimal” by his own account, and that nobody took responsibility for those ballots: “It was always someone else’s job.”

After learning about the ballots, the commission stated, Verbick “did not instruct anyone to determine how to get the ballots counted.”

Verbick was sued in his personal capacity for his role in the error, and declined to comment about the 2024 snafu. The case is ongoing, and the plaintiffs are demanding financial damages for being disenfranchised.

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

Secretary of State Jane Nelson, Texas’ top election official, steps down

2026-06-02T21:51:28+00:00

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

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced Tuesday she will resign effective July 17, capping off three and a half years as the state’s top election official.

“It has been my goal to ensure that voting in Texas is secure, accessible and fair,” Nelson said in a press release. “We have worked extensively to ensure accurate voter rolls and to educate voters about what they need to know to vote with confidence.”

The press release did not say why Nelson is resigning from her role. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.

How the Texas secretary of state’s resignation could complicate the midterm elections

By law, Gov. Greg Abbott is required to nominate someone to fill the vacant position “without delay.” It’s unclear how quickly Abbott will move to fill Nelson’s role or whom he is considering for the job.

Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the governor praised Nelson in the press release. “Secretary Jane Nelson has been a true champion for the people of Texas and an extraordinary Secretary of State,” he said. “I am deeply grateful for her long and loyal service and outstanding leadership.”

Nelson, a Republican, served in the state Senate for 30 years before becoming secretary of state in 2023. Nelson was the longest-serving Republican woman in Senate history and the first woman to lead the Senate Finance Committee, which writes the state’s budget.

She was also the first secretary of state to be confirmed by the Senate since 2017. Nelson’s three immediate predecessors resigned without receiving a full-Senate confirmation vote.

The release noted that Nelson presided over “seven successful statewide elections with a cumulative 27 million ballots cast,” and managed the disbursement of millions of dollars in grants to local counties, among other things.

During her time as the state’s top election official, Nelson’s office complied with the U.S. Department of Justice’s request for access to the state’s full voter roll, one of 15 states to do so. The data Nelson’s office handed over included identifiable information about the state’s 18 million registered voters, including dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Election security experts and voting rights groups criticized the move, saying it was a violation of voters’ privacy.

Nelson’s office also began using a federal database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, last year to verify the citizenship status of registered voters. The state said the review identified 2,724 potential noncitizens on the voter roll, but county election officials later determined some of the flagged voters were actually citizens after all. In addition, they found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through the Texas Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship, such as a passport, and keeps copies of such documents on file.

Nelson’s use of SAVE has led to at least two lawsuits by voting rights groups who claim the database is inaccurate and could lead to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters. They also argued the state should have checked DPS records before sending the list of potential noncitizens to county election officials for investigation. Last month, Nelson’s office asked DPS to check the entire list of potential noncitizens against its driver’s license records.

The lawsuits are still pending in federal court.

In the past year, Nelson’s office has also come under scrutiny from county election officials following the overhaul of the state’s election management and voter registration system, known as TEAM.

Since its release a year ago, election officials have repeatedly asked Nelson’s office to fix the system’s functionality problems, which they say make completing already time-consuming voter registration tasks less efficient.

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

Arizona promised these voters privacy. It accidentally broke its vow.

2026-06-01T18:46:00+00:00

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

Staff at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office accidentally publicly released the home addresses and telephone numbers of hundreds of voters whose information the state had pledged to keep private, an incident that potentially risked exposing them to physical harm and harassment in the months leading up to the 2024 election.

Emails obtained by Votebeat show that the error affected a fraction of voters in the state’s address confidentiality program, which includes victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. It also exposed information about certain voters who were protected via court order, such as judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials.

Records show the error went undiscovered and uncorrected for nearly nine months. During that time, the voters’ personal information was released to a number of political and consumer data firms via the office’s routine public records request process.

State law says the secretary of state “shall not disclose any address or telephone number” of voters enrolled in the state’s address confidentiality program unless required by a court order or in response to a request by another state or local government entity.

Weeks before the presidential election, state election officials attempted to claw back the information and notified impacted voters, according to the emails. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, demanded accountability “ASAP” upon hearing of the issue, according to emails sent by Keely Varvel, his chief of staff. The office ultimately fired its director of voter registration, administration, and technology, who it said had caused the error by incorrectly instructing a records analyst on how to pull data from the state’s voter registration system — although records suggest that the director disputed those allegations.

Nonetheless, some voters were left alarmed and confused. Only a handful of the 373 people affected by the error responded to the notice sent out by the secretary’s office, but those who did were concerned about what entities had obtained their addresses and phone numbers.

One voter said they wanted to know “what date this breach happened, and who you released my information to.” Another asked election officials to “elaborate on how the information was released and exactly what steps you have taken to ensure the information will not be released again.” A third, a police officer, said they’d long had their information protected through the court system.

“What does the AZ Secretary of State plan to do about this to protect us,” the voter asked. Records show the secretary’s office responded to concerned voters by releasing documents showing what entities had received their information and those recipients’ responses to the state’s efforts to claw back the information.

Ian Lamoreaux, a forensic psychiatrist who specializes in violence risk assessment, said the situation was “definitely unsettling” for those on the protected list — even though it’s unclear whether any of the voters faced actual harm as a result of the state’s mistake.

“There’s some expectation of privacy,” said Lamoreaux. “There’s an expectation that there’s a system in place that is going to protect you, that’s going to keep you safe from those who are out there wanting to do harm, and then that protective layer is pretty suddenly and kind of strikingly just stripped away.”

State Sen. J.D. Mesnard, who sponsored the legislation that established Arizona’s voter confidentiality program, called the error “a breach of trust.”

“It’s possible that they’ll have covered their tracks sufficiently enough that there won’t be any damage, and no one will ever know the difference,” said Mesnard, a Republican. “But it’s definitely, I’m sure, going to put doubt in people’s minds. The trust factor is broken, and they’re always going to wonder, how protected is it?”

Varvel said in an interview with Votebeat that she regretted the matter. She said the secretary of state’s office had “policies and procedures in place which should have prevented it.”

“Unfortunately, we have members of our staff that fell down on the job and didn’t follow those policies and procedures,” she said. “So, we have done what we can to try to rectify the problem, but we certainly know that’s not making it go away.”

“We certainly apologize for it, and we’re doing all we can to try and make sure [the affected voters are] aware that it happened, be transparent about it, and frankly, hold people accountable,” she added.

How the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office exposed voter information

The error appears to have originated in February 2024, when a records analyst asked Craig Stender, then the director of voter registration, administration, and technology in the secretary of state’s office, for help with pulling voter data to fulfill public records requests, according to emails between senior staffers working to piece together the cause of the issue.

Varvel said in an email to the office’s human resources department that Stender should have instructed the analyst to run an existing, public-facing report in the voter registration database. That report is constructed to remove protected voters from the list that it ultimately produces. The office’s protocol then requires another staff member to double-check the final list to ensure that the query was correctly executed.

Instead, she said he advised the records analyst to pull the information in a way that exposed protected voters’ addresses and telephone numbers and bypassed the second check. The analyst, unaware of the error, eventually sent the records out to requestors.

“If the right process was followed, the redaction would have been made automatically,” Varvel told Votebeat. “That’s how it fell through the cracks — because the right process, which is in place to make sure this is always redacted, was not followed.”

For months, nobody knew that the office was releasing confidential information. Varvel said Stender had worked directly with the office’s public records staff, rather than sending the analyst to one of the people on his team.

Then, the matter came up by chance during a meeting on Oct. 9, 2024. An employee in the room was familiar with the office’s process for pulling voter data and realized the mistake.

Votebeat attempted to reach Stender for comment on this story, but then found an obituary posted by his family. The obituary suggested that he died a few weeks before a reporter reached out to him. The secretary’s office later confirmed he was deceased.

Emails suggest that his version of the story differed from that of senior staff in the secretary’s office. On Oct. 17, 2024, just before he was fired, Stender told the records analyst who had asked him for help that he had never instructed her to use the registration database’s “ballot search” function to incorrectly pull voter information.

“I never did such a thing,” he wrote, adding that the allegation “does not make any sense” because he didn’t know much about the ballot search function. “I was not even aware you were using ballot search until you asked if party could be included. I assumed you meant with one of the canned reports so that is when I went to your desk and asked you to show me how you were generating the data.”

He asked the analyst to “please elaborate on when and where you believe this training happened.”

“This issue is now causing me problems and I do not think it is fair at all that my name is being associated with training you,” he wrote.

In response, the analyst said she recalled Stender showing her the feature “back in February, just before the ballots for the [presidential preference election] were mailed.”

“Looking back, there might have been a miscommunication during our discussions,” she wrote.

Records show protected voters’ data was ultimately delivered to four different out-of-state political data firms and an in-state researcher at the University of Arizona. Three of those firms also openly advertise consumer data offerings on their websites. Combined, at least eight people had access to the voters’ data directly from the secretary of state’s office.

One of those recipients unknowingly passed on the confidential information to another group, a Florida-based polling operation called American Promise. Records show the recipient believed American Promise had deleted the protected voters’ personal information from its database and servers, but it’s unclear whether that organization ever directly confirmed that it did so with the secretary’s office. A person listed in records as a point of contact for the group did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the secretary’s office, said in a statement that staff “went through the proper investigative channels to get the data back from those who originally requested it and are looking into the possible ‘spreading’ following the initial release.” She later said she had “no update” on whether any additional organizations had access to the confidential information.

Arizona’s confidentiality program is supposed to protect vulnerable voters. Is it working?

Former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican, said he ran across the idea for a state address confidentiality program at a national conference for election officials in 2010.

He pitched the idea to Mesnard, who successfully shepherded the legislation through the Capitol.

“There are bad people in this world, and I’m hoping we can all agree that one function of government — the primary function of government — is protecting people from harm,” Mesnard told lawmakers during a committee hearing at the Arizona Senate on March 23, 2011.

Former Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed the program into law on April 19, 2011. It began operating the following year. Bennett said he considered it “an important thing” for domestic violence victims.

“It seemed to be doing what it was intended to do, which was providing these folks protection about their addresses and things getting out to people who meant them harm,” he said. “We tried to solve that problem, and I think we did for quite some time.”

But the recent error at the secretary’s office raises questions about how secure the program actually is — especially because it isn’t the first time that the state accidentally released confidential information about voters it pledged to protect.

In an October 2020 complaint to the State Bar of Arizona, then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, wrote that she had learned of a “functional error” in the state’s voter database that caused it to generate early ballot reports that included 76 protected voters’ confidential information.

“Certain counties provided those reports to the state’s political parties during the election,” she wrote, adding that she “took immediate action to remedy the issue,” including fixing the error in the database and contacting the political parties and affected voters.

Years before that leak, as a state legislator, Hobbs had voted to establish the address confidentiality program. She was a social worker before entering politics and called the legislation “a very important bill” in helping victims of domestic violence “achieve safety once they make the decision to leave their abuser.”

“Many victims of violence don’t feel safe even when they’ve made that break, and this bill will provide them a confidential address,” she said from the floor of the Arizona House on March 7, 2011.

Liliana Soto, a spokesperson for Hobbs, who is now governor, said in a statement that the address confidentiality program is “critical to protecting vulnerable Arizonans.” Soto said Hobbs has “long prioritized voter privacy and safety, including during her time as a legislator and secretary of state,” and that Hobbs acted “immediately” to mitigate risk to protected voters upon learning of the error in 2020.

“The governor believes safeguarding this highly sensitive data must remain an absolute priority,” Soto said, describing any data breach involving the program as “a serious matter.” “She expects state systems to uphold the highest standards of data security.”

Varvel said the previous incident was the impetus behind the office’s existing policies and procedures around how to pull information from the voter registration database in response to public inquiries.

During her interview with Votebeat, she said the office’s rules about handling protected voters’ data hadn’t changed following the most recent error, but that the incident put public records staff on high alert with requests involving any voter information.

However, Jones later said in a statement that the office had also created a new internal list of protected voters and directed public records staffers to compare it against any requests for voter data. She said this “stop list” was implemented “shortly after the incident” in 2024 and is intended to prevent any future accidental leaks of confidential voter information. She added that the office requested funding for its address confidentiality program during state budget negotiations, but was waiting to hear whether it would receive the money.

Votebeat asked Varvel whether she could promise the state’s protected voters that their confidential details wouldn’t be erroneously released again.

“I will say that I always am concerned — like, things are going to happen with data that you’re not anticipating,” she responded. “But, yes, I think that we’re very, very sensitive to this issue.”

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

Maricopa County recorder asks judge to hold board of supervisors in civil contempt of court

2026-05-29T23:43:34+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.

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap is asking a judge to hold the county’s board of supervisors in civil contempt, escalating a longstanding and messy dispute over election control as the state primary creeps closer.

Heap’s filing in Maricopa County Superior Court accuses supervisors of flouting an April 16 judgment from the same bench that ordered them to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to the recorder’s office. He requested that the court compel the board to quickly adhere to the recent decision via a finding of contempt — and if supervisors then fail to comply, he asked that the court levy substantial fines and give the money to his office.

It adds to a spiraling saga that is amplifying concerns about how effectively top officials in the state’s most populous county, a key swing jurisdiction, will be able to administer this year’s midterm election.

Heap has long contended that the board of supervisors usurped much of his power in a deal they struck with his predecessor months before he took office. He sued over the matter last year — and after months of back-and-forth in court, largely won the dispute.

The board unsuccessfully moved to stay the April 16 ruling, arguing it was too close to the primary to implement the court’s directives without risking a tumultuous election. Later, they filed for an appeal, which is still pending.

But in the meantime, the county feud has escalated.

During a recent local election, officials butted heads over how to communicate a new voting option at polling sites. Emails show the recorder’s office and the board’s elections department disagreed over whether poll workers should verbally inform voters that they could opt to show identification at voting sites to have their mailed ballot counted faster.

Then, another scuffle erupted last week over ballot drop box locations for the upcoming primary. The majority-GOP board has set such sites for years under a provision of the state’s election rulebook, and it planned to approve the locations at a May 20 meeting. But just before the supervisors met to do so, Heap, a Republican, sent a letter to the board citing state statutes that he said asserted his office’s authority over ballot drop boxes. He also warned that election workers who handle ballots deposited in “unauthorized” receptacles could face criminal penalties.

That drew strong condemnation from supervisors, a majority of whom are also Republican. One, Democratic Supervisor Steve Gallardo, accused Heap of attempting to sabotage election operations. Ultimately, the board unanimously approved a slate of voting locations — including the drop box sites — for the July 21 primary.

Heap cited both incidents in his filing as examples of “the board’s ongoing usurpation of the recorder’s authority.” He added that the board also hasn’t returned his office’s IT team, which was integrated into a central IT office with the board’s staff under the terms of the deal supervisors struck with the prior recorder — although supervisors recently voted to allocate money to the recorder’s office to create new IT positions. And, he asserted that the board was on track to administer elections unlawfully, questioning whether election results might hold up in court unless supervisors were forced to comply with the April 16 judgement.

“Every day of noncompliance is a day in which the board administers elections in a manner this court has declared unlawful — with the attendant risks to voter confidence and to the legal validity of the election results themselves,” his lawyer wrote.

Board Chair Kate Brophy McGee said in a statement that Heap’s filing “should concern every Maricopa County voter.” She added that Heap has refused to meet with the board to resolve “outstanding issues” related to administration of upcoming elections.

“At every turn, Recorder Heap and his attorneys have sought confrontation rather than collaboration,” she said. “To our dedicated elections staff and poll workers, I want to assure you we have your back. To Maricopa County voters, please know the board of supervisors remains committed to ensuring an elections process that is secure, transparent, accurate and conducted fully in accordance with federal and state law.”

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

Police report: Antrim County Clerk’s husband had unsupervised access to office, computer

2026-05-28T19:57:42+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.

Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s husband was alone in a secure area of the clerk’s office and using the clerk’s computer, according to a report by the Michigan State Police, which investigated the incident.

According to the police report, a county maintenance worker saw Randy Bishop alone in the clerk’s office on Feb. 19, watching a video stream of a county board of commissioners meeting that Victoria Bishop was attending.

Randy Bishop is a conservative talk radio host who goes by “Trucker Randy” and has claimed to have evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Votebeat obtained the report from a local resident who received it in response to a public records request, and confirmed the report’s authenticity with the state police.

The report itself, which is partially redacted, says the case is currently pending review by the Antrim County prosecutor’s office, though that office said its understanding is that the matter was being referred to the state attorney general, whose office did not respond to a request for comment.

The report doesn’t specify what law may have been violated.

According to the report, Bishop was seen in an area of the office which requires secure badge access, and was using the clerk’s computer to watch a Facebook livestream of the meeting, which was open to the public. The couple told investigators he was watching the meeting in the office because he was expecting a phone call and did not want it to cause a disruption during the meeting, according to the report.

Interviews with the Bishops, as well as emails between Victoria Bishop and County Administrator Jeremy Scott included in the report, focus on whether anyone other than the clerk knows her computer login and password, according to the report.

Victoria Bishop told Scott no one has had access to her computer, and she told the Michigan State Police that her husband did not know her login information. Randy Bishop similarly told investigators that he did not log in to his wife’s computer on his own.

Victoria Bishop did not respond to a request for comment. When reached by phone, Randy Bishop said, “It’s all in the report,” and added he had no additional comment before hanging up.

Victoria Bishop has been under scrutiny recently for what the state alleges are illegal efforts to change or cancel voter registrations in the county.

“You do not have unlimited authority to conduct any action you see fit simply because you were elected to office,” Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Election, said in an April letter that also warned Victoria Bishop she could potentially face criminal charges in connection with that incident. No charges have been filed.

The Michigan State Police report regarding Randy Bishop’s access to the clerk’s office shows the state police were contacted by an official with the Office of Investigative Services Enforcement Division of the secretary of state’s office and asked to pause their interviews due to another ongoing investigation.

Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said it could not comment on the investigation into Randy Bishop’s access to the clerk’s office. As for the changes to the voter roll, Benander said the investigation is ongoing and the state has worked with local clerks to restore the registrations of all affected voters.

Victoria Bishop defeated the county’s prior clerk in the 2024 election, saying she would “restore election integrity in Antrim County.” During the campaign, Bishop said she believed “we still have dead people and people who no longer live in Antrim County” on the voter roll, and she promised to work with local clerks to remove such voters.

Hayley Harding contributed reporting.

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

Primary voters could pick nominees for Michigan secretary of state and attorney general under new proposals

2026-05-26T09:00:00+00:00

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

When Republicans and Democrats head to the polls in August for the Michigan primary, they’ll vote on nominees for U.S. Senate, governor, and several other offices.

But they won’t have a say in who will be each party’s standard bearer for the important posts of attorney general and secretary of state. That will already have been decided, months ahead of time, by a narrow group of party insiders.

Michigan is one of the only states where candidates for those positions are chosen by delegates at party conventions, not by voters in primary elections. But two new bipartisan proposals are looking to change that.

On Thursday, Republican Rep. Greg Markkanen and Democratic Rep. Joe Tate introduced a proposed state constitutional amendment that would move the selection of attorney general and secretary of state nominees to primary elections starting in 2027. It would also eliminate elections for board members of the state’s three major public universities, giving the governor power to appoint those officials instead. A sister effort will be introduced by Republican Sen. Ed McBroom when the Senate next reconvenes.

“Voters will get to know the candidates and what they stand for during the primary, and parties will be able to nominate candidates who can handle the rigors of a statewide campaign,” McBroom said in a statement Friday.

Separately, two former party leaders have also teamed up to promote a similar effort. Jason Cabel Roe, the former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, and Lon Johnson, the former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, are launching a campaign to amend the Michigan Constitution to nominate attorney general and secretary of state candidates in primary elections, not at conventions.

Getting either effort passed won’t be easy. First, two-thirds of each chamber of the legislature must vote to put the amendment before voters. Then, a majority of voters must approve the amendment in this November’s election. It’s technically still possible that it could go before voters in the August primary, but that’s unlikely because it would require the amendment to pass the legislature before June 5, less than two weeks away.

It’s unknown if either proposal will attract enough support to pass. Some legislators have already come out in favor of the idea, such as Democratic Rep. Noah Arbit, while others appear against it, such as Republican Rep. Matt Maddock.

Roe and Johnson say they are optimistic after their conversations with leaders in the legislature, but on Wednesday, state House Speaker Matt Hall said he was “focusing on other things.”

“This is not a divisive issue,” Johnson told Votebeat on Thursday. “This is something that both sides, across all spectrums of both parties, [are] looking to have done.”

The change would benefit both major parties, Roe agreed. He laid the groundwork for the change back in 2022, the year Republicans selected Kristina Karamo as their secretary of state candidate and Matt DePerno as their attorney general candidate.

Karamo’s and DePerno’s extremely far-right views — including a false belief that the 2020 election in the state was fraudulent — appealed to Republican convention delegates, but not general election voters. Karamo and DePerno lost to Democrats Jocelyn Benson and Dana Nessel by 14 and 9 percentage points, respectively.

“I was talking to Democrats around the state [in 2022] and they agreed with it, were interested in pursuing a change,” Roe said. “Then, after kicking our ass in the ’22 election, they decided it was a uniquely Republican problem and they were not all that excited to help us save us from ourselves.”

But this year’s Democratic convention got a lot of Democrats interested again, he said. That convention left many delegates frustrated after problems with the website on which they voted caused the convention to run hours longer than expected. There are also concerns from establishment Democrats about whether the candidates selected at this year’s convention, who tended to be farther left, will face their own electability challenges.

In the time since, the convention has gotten even more bad press, with some delegates reporting they broke party rules by voting in the convention remotely and others raising concerns that their votes weren’t counted properly — or perhaps at all.

“All of a sudden my phone started ringing, and people were interested in revisiting it,” Roe said.

Now, Roe, Johnson, and others are working with lawmakers to bring a proposed amendment to the legislature floor. They’re tight-lipped about who specifically might sponsor their own effort, saying they don’t want to get ahead of internal politics.

This week, during the Mackinac Policy Conference, they intend to gather more support from not just political leaders, but other attendees, including business and nonprofit leaders.

Roe and Johnson said they might later turn their attention to other offices whose candidates are also chosen at conventions — Michigan Supreme Court seats, for example, or university trustees — but for now, they’re focused on moving the races they consider most critical.

“We can’t boil the ocean here,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to move very deliberately, and we cannot have a ballot that’s too long and complicated. Reform doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time.”

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

Maricopa County election fight boils over as recorder threatens felony charges over ‘unauthorized’ drop boxes

2026-05-21T15:45:39+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 messy and longstanding feud between Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors over control of the key swing county’s elections has spilled over into a new arena.

On Wednesday, Heap sent a letter to the board asserting his office’s authority over ballot drop boxes and warning that election workers who handle ballots deposited in “unauthorized” receptacles could face criminal penalties.

The letter, written by Heap’s attorney, arrived hours before county supervisors were set to take up a routine vote on drop box locations for the July 21 primary. It set the stage for a lengthy and fiery meeting that put the divisions between the county’s mostly GOP officials on full display.

The spiraling saga is amplifying questions about how effectively top county officials will be able to administer this year’s midterm election.

Supervisors called Heap’s latest letter “shocking,” “appalling,” and “outrageous.” They criticized Heap for not appearing at the meeting, which they said they’d asked him to attend — albeit on short notice.

Democratic Supervisor Steve Gallardo repeatedly said that he believed Heap, a Republican, was purposefully setting up this year’s elections to “fail” and called him “a coward.” Meanwhile, Supervisors Tom Galvin and Kate Brophy McGee sparred with fellow Republican Mark Stewart, the only supervisor who criticized the board’s handling of the situation.

After the meeting, the recorder’s office fired back with a statement, accusing the board of “attempting to seize control over ballot drop boxes” and calling supervisors’ remarks “political theater.” The office also insisted that it had not discussed the proposed drop box locations with the board’s elections department and did not know about them until the planned vote appeared on a public agenda.

But Elections Director Scott Jarrett said he has been meeting for months with recorder’s office staff for routine “menu of service” meetings in preparation for upcoming elections. He said he brought up drop box locations during those discussions.

Ultimately, the board unanimously approved a slate of voting locations — including the drop box sites — for the primary election.

This latest dispute is just the most recent in a larger fight between Heap and the board over election administration in the state’s most populous county. Heap contends that the board usurped much of his power in a deal it struck with his predecessor months before he took office. He has refused to abide by that agreement, which maps out how his office and county supervisors split election responsibilities, and sued the board last year when negotiations over a new agreement turned contentious.

In April, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney handed Heap a legal win in the case, ordering the supervisors to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to the recorder’s office. The board of supervisors has since appealed that decision.

Both sides are publicly acknowledging concerns about their ability to administer this year’s elections as the primary creeps closer. Heap’s statement said the board’s appeal “creates serious legal and operational concerns, particularly this close to major elections.” Brophy McGee and GOP Supervisor Debbie Lesko wrote in a letter to him Wednesday that the county “cannot proceed through the remainder of an important election year with the status quo.”

“The current level of confusion and conflict is not sustainable and does not serve the interests of county staff, election workers, or the public,” they wrote.

Supervisors historically choose drop box locations

County supervisors have long set ballot drop box locations under a provision of the state’s election rulebook that directly authorizes them to do so.

It reads: “All ballot drop-off locations and drop-boxes shall be approved by the Board of Supervisors (or designee).”

But Heap is now arguing that only he can designate such sites — and that the rulebook, which carries the force of law but can’t contradict statutes, is wrong.

In his letter to the board, Heap’s attorney, James Rogers, cited a state law that references the recorder’s ability to establish “early voting locations.” The following sentence of that statute, ARS 16-542, further specifies that such locations “shall require each elector to present identification … before receiving a ballot.” That would appear to suggest that the locations referenced in the law are ones where voters can cast a ballot in person, as that’s when they are required to show ID. Nonetheless, Rogers wrote in his letter that he believed the statute assigned drop boxes “exclusively to the recorder.”

“A ballot drop box is, under any reasonable interpretation of the plain meaning of the statutory text, an ‘early voting location,’ as it is a physical site where voters may deliver their voted early ballots during the early voting period,” he said.

Another statute, ARS 16-411, states that boards of supervisors can “designate one or more sites for voters to deposit marked ballots until 7:00 p.m. on the day of the election.” Rogers said he interprets that law as suggesting that the board has the ability to do so only on Election Day, not during early voting.

“These statutory provisions carefully circumscribe the board’s authority to maintain drop boxes: Only on Election Day and only at voting centers and polling places,” Rogers wrote, later adding that supervisors “cannot simply assume powers” that aren’t specifically prescribed to them in writing. “No statute grants the board authority to establish drop boxes during the early voting period.”

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney’s recent decision in the legal battle between the board and the recorder’s office didn’t specifically assign drop boxes to either entity.

His order noted that Heap held authority over “voter registration, voter list maintenance, the distribution and signature verification of early ballots, and in-person early voting.” The board, he wrote, was in charge of “drawing precinct boundaries, selecting Election Day voting locations, preparing ballots, supplying polling locations, hiring poll workers, tabulating ballots, and canvassing.” His conclusions were based in part on the statutes that Rogers cited.

Heap’s attorney threatens charges for ‘ballot harvesting’

Rogers’ letter further alleges that supervisors could be opening themselves and their workers up to felony charges by maintaining control over drop box locations.

He pointed to ARS 16-1005, which prohibits a person or entity from collecting ballots by “misrepresenting itself as an election official or as an official ballot repository.”

“Any person or entity involved in establishing or operating such unauthorized drop boxes is committing a class 5 felony,” Rogers wrote, adding that bipartisan teams of workers who collect ballots from drop boxes could be charged with “criminal ballot harvesting.”

Supervisors broadly condemned that threat. Galvin said anyone attempting to “put handcuffs” on workers would have to go through the board first.

“The four of us will be the first ones to step in front of them and say, ‘Take us,’” Galvin said, referencing all of his colleagues except Stewart.

He added that Heap — who was elected to his seat with support from activists who questioned the integrity of the county’s elections — was fanning the flames of voter fraud conspiracies.

“We are stuck in this hamster wheel of the 2020 election,” Galvin said. “That is the basis of it — over and over and over again — and someone has to call out the recorder and say, ‘Cut it out.’”

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

Forlini says federal government helped him find 7 noncitizens registered to vote

2026-05-19T17:42:49+00:00

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

Republican secretary of state candidate and Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said he has used his county’s jury pool to find more potential noncitizens registered to vote — and this time, he said the federal government is helping him to verify people’s citizenship.

It’s not the first time Forlini has used the jury pool to try to find potential noncitizen voters. But Forlini told Votebeat on Monday that Macomb County now has “other methods” of checking citizenship “that we didn’t have before.”

Forlini is working with federal officials who have access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database, a tool maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to verify a person’s citizenship. He does not have access himself — local officials rarely do — but by collaborating with federal officials, his team is still able to verify information, he said.

It was not clear which specific federal department he was working with, though. “I can’t tell you offhand,” Forlini said in a phone interview Monday morning. “I honestly don’t know.”

But, he said, the additional support from the federal government has made him more confident than ever that the people he found are registered to vote but are not citizens.

Forlini, Benson disagree on using jury pools to check for noncitizen voters

Forlini made news earlier this year when his team in Macomb County compared the state’s voter file with a list of people who recently recused themselves from jury duty by claiming they were not U.S. citizens. He initially claimed he found 15 people who were on both lists, including three people with a voting history.

A deeper investigation by Secretary of State Joceyn Benson’s office later found that one of the three was a citizen after all, while one was not and had last voted in 2018 before their registration was canceled in 2022. The third was under review at the time.

It can be misleading to compare jury pools to lists of registered voters, because it’s common for people to have similar or identical names, even at the same address. Similar issues have come up when other states have tried comparing different databases to find noncitizens in voting rolls and ultimately came up with inflated numbers of potential noncitizens.

One expert told Votebeat in January that false positives are common when comparing voter databases to others. And in this case, even if the same person is on both lists, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are an illegal voter — for instance, it’s possible that someone lied about being a noncitizen to get out of jury duty.

After contradicting some of Forlini’s findings, the Department of State warned all clerks in March that using jury pools to find potential noncitizen voters could wrongly strip a voter’s registration or cause them to be subject to “undue criminal investigation.” Shortly after that, Forlini won a three-way race for the GOP nomination to be Michigan’s next secretary of state.

Forlini believes he found 7 noncitizens registered to vote

This time around, Forlini said he found 11 people who have been excused from jury duty since the start of 2026 for being noncitizens and were at one time registered to vote in Michigan, including seven who still are. Forlini said he sent those seven names to the Michigan Bureau of Elections, which maintains the statewide voter list, on April 28. It’s not clear if any of the flagged individuals ever actually voted.

Cheri Hardmon, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said in a statement that the department was still reviewing what Forlini sent. “However, this referral to [the Bureau of Elections] is the process we have encouraged clerks to follow when questions arise about citizenship status based on jury lists,” she said.

But this time, Forlini is convinced he is correct. He has gone as far as to maintain numbers on the Macomb County website tracking what he has found.

It’s part of a larger effort, he said, to try to get county clerks access to SAVE. President Donald Trump’s administration upgraded the database last year to enable election officials to run their voter rolls through it, but it, too, has produced many false positives. A ProPublica investigation earlier this year found that the database mislabeled some citizens as noncitizens in at least five states.

Typically, it is state-level officials who work with SAVE. But Forlini is not the first local official to use the database to cross-reference voters’ citizenship. Justin Heap, the recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, used SAVE earlier this year in his own search for noncitizens on his county’s voter roll.

If elected secretary, Forlini said, he would fight to expand access to the database.

“If we’re going to have true partners in the state on this, then we need to work together,” he said.

If nothing else, he said, he would like fewer noncitizens to be allowed into the jury pools. The Department of State has previously fought against that idea, arguing that state law requires them to send counties lists of all county residents with IDs, regardless of whether they’re a citizen. As a result, some noncitizens may be summoned for jury duty — though they are not ultimately allowed to serve on juries in the U.S. under federal law.

Noncitizen voting has increasingly become a Republican talking point, despite the fact that it is extremely rare. Michigan reviewed its entire voter roll last year and found only 16 noncitizens who may have voted in the 2024 election out of 8.1 million registered voters.

But Republicans have argued that even a single noncitizen voter disenfranchises rightful voters. They are pushing a proposal to amend the Michigan Constitution that could appear on the November ballot this year requiring new voters to prove their citizenship with a document such as a passport or birth certificate. Democrats, meanwhile, have argued that such requirements could disenfranchise eligible voters instead.

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

Tina Peters’ commutation has left election officials feeling betrayed

2026-05-19T09:00:00+00:00

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When Colorado Gov. Jared Polis first signaled that he was considering clemency or a commutation for Tina Peters, a former county clerk who was convicted for helping to breach her county’s election systems in an effort to uncover fraud in the 2020 election, election officials urged him against it.

Pam Anderson, another former county clerk who defeated Peters in the 2022 Republican primary for secretary of state, in January accused Polis of “enabl[ing] violent, lying, bullying criminals” by considering clemency. Caleb Thornton, a lawyer for the Colorado secretary of state’s office who testified at Peters’ trial, wrote in February that the possibility of a commutation was “a slap in the face to all election officials around the country.”

Their pleas didn’t work. On Friday, Polis, a Democrat, said he would commute Peters’ sentence; she is expected to be freed on parole June 1. In a commutation letter and press interviews, Polis said he believed her sentence of nearly nine years in prison was too harsh for a first-time nonviolent offender, and that the severity of her sentence was based in part on what he said was her incorrect belief in conspiracy theories about election fraud — not solely her illegal actions.

Now, many Colorado election officials who have spent years working to convince the public that they run free and fair elections feel betrayed by the governor’s decision and don’t believe Peters has shown enough remorse to merit relief.

“We needed the governor to hold the line, and he let us down,” said Lori Mitchell, the clerk and recorder in Chaffee County. “We protected everything, and basically he’s saying the one woman who betrayed that trust for the public — she deserved to go home early. It’s just hard to even explain to my staff.”

In a social media post Friday, Peters said she had “made mistakes,” and “going forward I will make sure that my actions always follow the law.”

Polis’ decision came as election officials remain under pressure, preparing for what promises to be fraught midterm elections this year. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly advocated for Peters’ freedom, continues to suggest elections are rigged. His administration is again investigating previously debunked allegations about the 2020 election, and some activists who supported his claims in 2020 now hold official positions in the federal government.

Mitchell, a Democrat who is not running for reelection as clerk, said that she believes Polis gave in to Trump’s campaign to free Peters. She predicted that those who promote conspiracy theories about elections and consider Peters a martyr will see this as a victory. “She is going to be on the pedestal, and I think that’s really bad for elections in this country,” she said.

Election officials feel abandoned

In 2024, a jury convicted Peters of multiple charges in connection with a 2021 breach of her county’s election equipment that forced the county to eventually replace it. Her case became a cause celebre among those who believe the 2020 election was rigged, and Trump even issued her a federal pardon, though it had no legal effect (she was convicted of state crimes, not federal ones). Colorado officials and others linked Trump’s campaign for her freedom to his administration’s withholding of unrelated federal funds from Colorado.

A Colorado appeals court in April upheld Peters’ conviction but threw out her sentence, finding the trial court judge’s criticism of her beliefs during the sentencing went too far. The panel ordered her resentenced but did not free her from prison. The court had not yet resentenced her.

Election officials have for months warily parsed Polis’ signals that he was considering taking action in the Peters case and didn’t hold back once they learned of it.

“A clear message is being sent to those willing to break the law and attack our democracy for the president that they very likely will not face consequences for their actions,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said in a press call shortly after the news broke Friday.

During the same call, Matt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado Clerks Association, said the group was “furious, disgusted, and deeply disappointed” by Polis’ decision.

Later that day, in an interview with Votebeat, Crane said that “election officials just feel very alone right now.”

Jessica Huseman contributed reporting.

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

Arizona AG and conservative rival file lawsuits to oust new recorder in Navajo County

2026-05-15T21:45:53+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, July 13, 4:30 p.m. MST: Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David McDowell ruled on July 6 that Navajo County Recorder David Marshall could keep his seat, rejecting claims that he was ineligible to hold the office under the Arizona Constitution. A spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office said it would appeal the decision.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is seeking to oust newly appointed Navajo County Recorder David Marshall from his position, arguing that he isn’t eligible to hold the office under a long-disputed section of the state constitution.

Her legal challenge, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court on Thursday, comes on the heels of a similar lawsuit against Marshall, a former Republican state representative who quit his post to take the recorder’s appointment. Realtor Suzanne Hudspeth, who lost out to Marshall for the recorder job, filed that case earlier this week.

Both cases center on a provision of the state constitution that says “no member of the legislature” can hold a different elected office or government job “during the term for which he shall have been elected.”

Historically, there have been mixed interpretations of what exactly that means. It could mean that a lawmaker simply has to resign their seat before being sworn into another office, as Marshall did. But some say it means that a state legislator cannot hold another office until the end of their elected term. In Marshall’s case, that would bar him from becoming recorder until January 2027.

State prosecutors wrote that Marshall was “ineligible to hold any other office until the expiration of the term to which he was elected,” and was “unlawfully” holding the recorder’s seat. Hudspeth said in her suit that Marshall was “usurping” the office.

Marshall did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat — but he looks poised to fight back. His attorney, Linley Wilson, wrote in a May 6 letter to Mayes that she had erred in her reading of state law.

“Respectfully, your office’s position is incorrect,” Wilson wrote. “The constitutional text, its historical purpose, the relevant Arizona authorities, applicable statutes, and persuasive decisions from other jurisdictions all strongly support the conclusion that Recorder Marshall is lawfully holding the office.”

The new cases represent yet another odd turn in a long-running saga involving the position. Former Navajo County Recorder Tim Jordan, a Republican, resigned earlier this year after taking a plea deal on criminal charges connected to a road rage incident.

Then, the county board picked Marshall to fill the vacancy, a decision that left many political observers scratching their heads. State law required the board, on which Democrats hold three of five seats, to pick a member of the same political party as Jordan. But Marshall appeared the farthest right of the three finalists. As a lawmaker, he was a member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, and he supported legislation to ban vote centers, severely restrict mail voting, require ballots cast in local elections to be counted by hand, and more.

Now, Mayes and Hudspeth are strange bedfellows.

Hudspeth, like Marshall, is a Republican. She’s being represented by Tim La Sota, a conservative attorney who had signaled for weeks that he intended to take up a case challenging Marshall’s eligibility — which is surprising, given that he has long been closely affiliated with many of Marshall’s former allies in the Arizona Capitol.

Meanwhile, Mayes, a Democrat, has been praised by many members of her party as its fiercest fighter in Arizona. She faces reelection this year.

Key constitutional provision has long been disputed

Existing case law and historical interpretation has split on the exact meaning of the constitutional provision at issue.

Mayes and Hudspeth each cited a 1977 advisory opinion authored by former Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat. He wrote that the “constitutional provision, on its face, clearly prohibits the taking of any other office or employment during the elective term, whether or not the legislator resigns.”

“Therefore, unless you resign from your position as Navajo County recorder, this office will be required to file a quo warranto action in the Arizona Supreme Court,” Mayes wrote in an April 24 letter to Marshall. “I encourage you to promptly resign so as to avoid such an outcome. I wish you the best and seek only to ensure that important offices are held lawfully under the Arizona Constitution.”

But Wilson said in her letter to Mayes that legal opinion is far from bulletproof. She called it “outdated,” “nonbinding,” and “unpersuasive,” and said it represented “one lawyer’s view of the law and nothing more.”

She also cited several prior court cases — all arising under slightly different circumstances than Marshall’s appointment — that she said contradicted Mayes’ and Hudspeth’s interpretation of the law.

In 1973, the state’s highest court held that the attorney general could not bar the appointment of a member of the Arizona House of Representatives to a vacancy in the Arizona Senate, she noted. In 1984, it ruled that enforcement of the state’s resign-to-run law should arise only where “an incumbent does not resign as he is required to” before offering themselves for another position.

Additionally, Wilson pointed to Pickrell v. Myers, a 1961 case in which the court determined that a person who was elected to the legislature, but was never seated or took the oath of office, was able to pursue appointment as a superior court judge. The court specifically grounded its reasoning in its interpretation of what it means to be a “member of the legislature” under the state constitution, she said.

“Here, Mr. Marshall resigned from the Arizona House of Representatives before he was sworn in as Navajo County recorder,” Wilson wrote. “When he assumed the recorder’s office, he was not a ‘member of the legislature.’”

La Sota also cited the 1961 case in his filing on behalf of Hudspeth — but he drew the opposite conclusion from it, suggesting that since Marshall had been sworn in and seated, he did qualify as a “member.”

Wilson said that she was unaware of any case in which a court in Arizona had ever held that a legislator who resigned before assuming another appointed office was subject to ouster.

“To our knowledge, every reported case in which ouster resulted involved a public officer who failed to resign or failed to cure a disqualification before assuming office,” she told Mayes, adding that “the facts here present a poor vehicle” for legal action.

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

The FBI is contacting Wisconsin election officials. Here’s what we know.

2026-05-15T18:50:27+00:00

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

The federal government’s probe into the 2020 election has reached Wisconsin, with several current and former election officials, including multiple people in Milwaukee, confirming they have been interviewed or approached by the FBI.

The exact nature of the investigation remains unclear, though it appears to be at least somewhat centered around the 2020 election. The agency’s election investigations elsewhere in the country have featured subpoenas for ballots and other election records, but legal experts still say it won’t be easy for the federal government to convince a court to give it access to ballots.

Milwaukee County officials are nonetheless preparing for that possibility, in part because they still retain ballots from the 2020 election, though they declined to discuss those preparations or comment on the record. Those ballots contain identifying information that could, in some cases, allow otherwise unidentifiable absentee ballots to be matched to the voters who cast them. Milwaukee is one of the few jurisdictions in Wisconsin that still has ballots from that election, and the city has long been a target of voter-fraud accusations and related attacks from the political right.

Elsewhere in Wisconsin — in communities whose elections have faced less scrutiny and in the vast majority of municipalities where 2020 ballots were destroyed according to the standard retention schedules in state law — election officials are less alarmed and are instead focused on preparing for the midterm elections.

Still, news of the FBI interest has created confusion and some fear on the part of voters and election officials.

What happened?

So far, the FBI has contacted multiple current and former election officials in Wisconsin.

The FBI interviewed Wisconsin Elections Commission deputy administrator Robert Kehoe within the last few weeks. The news of the interview was first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The interview focused on the 2020 election, with agents asking Kehoe to explain how Wisconsin elections operate.

The agency has also attempted to contact Milwaukee County Election Director Michelle Hawley. An agent left a business card at Hawley’s home when she was not there. Milwaukee County Clerk George Christensen criticized the agency for approaching Hawley at her home rather than through the county.

“While we cooperate with all legitimate law enforcement actions, we will defend against any attack on our democracy and will defend the rights of voters of Milwaukee County,” Christensen said in a statement.

Agents also left a card for, called, and texted a former Milwaukee election official, who confirmed the contact to Votebeat but requested anonymity because of personal safety concerns. That official declined to say whether they responded to the FBI.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson confirmed the FBI has reached out to city employees about the probe.

“The president for whatever reason cannot seem to let it go that he lost an election,” Johnson told a WISN 12 reporter.

Wisconsin Elections Commission spokeswoman Emilee Miklas declined to comment for this story. Other officials declined to speak on the record, and an FBI spokesperson didn’t answer Votebeat questions about the probe.

David Becker, the executive director of the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former Justice Department voting section attorney, said the federal government’s actions appeared more to be aimed at intimidating election officials than producing actionable criminal cases.

He pointed to FBI Director Kash Patel’s public statements in April suggesting arrests related to the 2020 election were coming, as well as federal officials discussing potential cases on social media before they’re brought before courts.

“If you think you’re going to bring charges and prosecute individuals, you don’t do anything that the federal government has done over the last few months,” he said.

Becker also noted that any potential federal crimes connected to the 2020 election are “well beyond the statute of limitations for any potential federal jurisdiction or crimes,” adding, “This is a problem for any investigation relating to 2020.”

Even so, Becker said election officials’ worries were justified. He said the Election Official Legal Defense Network, which he leads, has received more requests for legal assistance from election officials than ever before “even though all of these efforts indicate that the federal government knows it’s got nothing.”

How do the events in Wisconsin relate to probes elsewhere?

It’s unclear how the FBI interviews in Wisconsin relate to the agency’s scrutiny of the 2020 election in other states.

In January the FBI raided a Fulton County, Georgia, election office seeking records tied to the 2020 election. About a month later, the agency subpoenaed records related to the audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix.

Separately, the U.S. Justice Department has sought access to 2024 ballots in Wayne County, Michigan, home to Detroit.

Those jurisdictions share several characteristics with Milwaukee County. All are located in highly competitive swing states won by former President Joe Biden in 2020, and all became central targets of President Donald Trump, who repeatedly challenged the election results despite court rulings, audits, and reviews repeatedly reaffirming his loss.

Fulton, Wayne, Maricopa, and Milwaukee County are the largest and most heavily scrutinized election jurisdictions in their respective states. Each has been the subject of persistent conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, many of which remain prevalent on social media, even after extensive investigations found no evidence of widespread fraud.

“What’s really disconcerting,” said former longtime Wisconsin election chief Kevin Kennedy, “is the fact that there is a clear pattern here to try and continue to stir up issues that were resolved in every single opportunity there was to review them, whether it was a court case, an independent audit or the actual certification and review process that exists.”

What comes next?

The short answer is that nobody really knows.

Officials have been considering the possibility that the federal government may seize the city’s 2020 ballots, which contain personally identifiable information.

Kennedy said recent actions by the Trump administration offer “no reason to think that information that should be protected is going to be protected.”

Kennedy said Wisconsin’s decentralized election system was intentionally designed to distribute authority among local jurisdictions — both to keep election administration accountable at the community level and to limit the amount of sensitive voter information concentrated in any one place.

“You put that at the national level,” he said, “and it only takes one bad actor — and we’ve got evidence there’s more than one of those already in the federal government — to totally disrupt the process when you consolidate that kind of information that’s protected through the various state and local laws and practices.”

Becker said it will be an uphill battle for the federal government to successfully obtain Milwaukee’s ballots. But he said the mere possibility that federal officials could theoretically identify how individual people voted is deeply troubling.

“That is not the way a democratic society works,” he said. “Now, I don’t think they’re likely going to be able to do that. I think that’s going to be incredibly difficult. It’s not impossible, but the fact that they seem to engender this fear is troubling enough.”

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

Jocelyn Benson unveils ‘firewall’ for election oversight, governor run

2026-05-07T17:36:45+00:00

This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter here.

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

As she runs for Michigan governor, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says she will “recuse” herself from all decisions and administrative tasks that have a direct impact on the gubernatorial election.

Benson announced the new “firewall” policy late Wednesday. Her office said she had been working on it since September, but its release comes as Republican rivals question her ability to fairly oversee elections in which she competes.

In a letter to the Board of State Canvassers, Benson said she formalized the policy “in the interest of transparency, and to establish precedent of a public-facing firewall policy” that future secretaries of state could adopt.

“These processes largely reflect how the Bureau of Elections and I handled potential conflicts of interest during my reelection campaign in 2022,” Benson wrote in a letter to board Chair Richard Houskamp, a Republican appointee.

Michigan elections are administered by local clerks, and state-level functions are carried out by nonpartisan civil servants in the Bureau of Elections. Benson’s conflict of interest policy largely involves the bureau keeping its work private from Benson until decisions have been finalized.

Benson’s new policy, developed with help from the nonprofit Election Reformers Network, outlines six ways she will avoid conflicts of interest:

Petitions for ballot access: While Bureau of Elections officials review candidate petition signatures and make recommendations to the Board of State Canvassers about their validity, Benson won’t be provided with a copy of their reports until they’re publicly available online.
Affidavits of identity: Benson won’t be informed of any disqualifications of candidates due to errors on required affidavits “until the review process has been completed and the candidate has been formally notified of the result.”
Recount petitions: Until requests for recounts have been received by the Board of State Canvassers, Benson won’t be informed of any pending petitions.
Post-election audits: Similarly, Benson won’t get to see any post-election audit results until the reports have been finalized and shared.
Campaign finance questions and complaints: Until the November election is certified, Benson is delegating all her authority to make declaratory rulings on campaign finance questions and to determine whether campaigns violated state law. Director of Elections Jonathan Brater will be in charge of those decisions. “The secretary will be isolated from department conversations regarding [Michigan Campaign Finance Act] complaints and from any communication with the Attorney General’s office regarding MCFA complaints,” according to the policy.
Supervising local elections: The state has on some occasions stripped local officials of election administration duties if they are found unfit. Brater will be in charge of those decisions through the November election without informing or consulting Benson.

The policy does not require any additional steps to ensure Benson’s office completes “certificates of election” after results are certified by canvassers. “There is no mechanism or standing for the secretary or department staff in their professional capacities to challenge the certified results,” the document reads.

GOP complaints

As secretary of state, Benson is Michigan’s chief election officer, and multiple GOP hopefuls have argued she can’t be trusted to supervise fall elections as a candidate for governor.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Perry Johnson last month suggested the federal government should be in charge of signature validation.

“I just think that because we end up having the secretary of state in charge of her own election, that she ought to recuse herself,” said Johnson, who was one of five candidates kept off the ballot in 2022 due to faulty signatures.

He later went further on social media, arguing Benson “must recuse herself from overseeing this election” entirely.

Fellow GOP candidate Aric Nesbitt has urged the U.S. Department of Justice to oversee Michigan’s August primary and November general election, arguing Benson “cannot be trusted to manage” them.

Democrats and Republican officials who have served at the center of Michigan election administration contend those claims misrepresent the electoral process and overstate Benson’s role.

The Election Reformers Network, the nonprofit organization Benson worked with on the new firewall policy, recommended secretaries of state establish policies because “opposing candidates often exaggerate the risks for political gain.”

Not ‘a legitimate concern’

The bipartisan Board of State Canvassers ultimately decides which candidates get on the ballot and certifies election results, which are compiled by local election clerks across the state and are reviewed by county-level boards.

Canvassers have disputed suggestions that Benson could influence or taint the signature verification process.

“I don’t think it’s a legitimate concern,” Republican Chair Richard Houskamp previously told Bridge. “Secretary Benson’s nowhere near those signatures.”

Democratic Vice Chair Mary Ellen Gurewitz agreed: “That’s just bullshit, and they know it,” she said of GOP candidates questioning the process. “The secretary of state is not involved [in signature verification]. Never has been.”

Past secretaries of state have been candidates in elections they oversaw, most commonly while seeking reelection. Benson’s predecessor, Republican Ruth Johnson, won a state Senate race while serving as secretary of state in 2019.

Chris Thomas, who served as Michigan’s director of elections for 36 years under Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, said impugning the process is nothing new.

“People grab on to it as just a way to take shots at their opponents,” Thomas said.

This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Amid GOP doubts, Jocelyn Benson seeks to assure voters she can run fair election

2026-05-04T16:14:01+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.

Amid Republican calls to recuse herself from overseeing fall elections she will compete in, Michigan Secretary of State and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson is preparing to release a new conflict-of-interest avoidance guide.

Benson has been developing the document for nearly a year with assistance from the Election Reformers Network, a progressive group that has developed recommendations to help secretaries of state build trust in elections when they are on the ballot.

Her office will finalize Benson’s plan “in the coming weeks,” spokesperson Angela Benander told Bridge Michigan.

“The public wants to know, and we want to reassure them,” she added.

It’s unclear whether Benson will try to adopt formal rules to avoid any potential conflicts, or whether she will simply pledge new safeguards to ensure fair administration of an election her office will oversee. Benander said they are “looking at the options we have within existing law.”

But the forthcoming document could address at least some of the concerns raised by Republican gubernatorial candidates hoping to face Benson in the general election.

While experts say those concerns are largely unfounded or overstated, multiple GOP hopefuls have questioned Benson’s ability to supervise fall elections as the state’s chief elections officer.

Last month, as he dropped off petition signatures to qualify for the August primary ballot, GOP gubernatorial candidate Perry Johnson suggested the federal government should be in charge of signature validation.

He went further on social media, arguing Benson “must recuse herself from overseeing this election” entirely.

Benson’s office called Johnson’s suggestion of a federal takeover “alarming” and noted “the federal government has no legal authority to run our elections.”

But he’s not alone. Fellow GOP candidate Aric Nesbitt has urged the U.S. Department of Justice to oversee Michigan’s August primary and November general election, arguing Benson “cannot be trusted to manage” them.

But Democrats and Republican officials who have served at the center of Michigan election administration contend those claims misrepresent the electoral process and overstate Benson’s role.

Here are the facts.

‘I don’t think it’s a legitimate concern’

Whether it’s signature verification for candidates to get on the ballot or confirming vote tallies in November, the final sign-off on those weighty decisions rests with the Board of State Canvassers, a four-member bipartisan body.

Canvassers ultimately decide which candidates get on the ballot and certify election results, which are compiled by local election clerks across the state and are reviewed by county-level boards.

Citing those and other safeguards in the system, Benson’s office has pushed back on GOP candidate claims about the fall elections.

“Either these candidates for governor haven’t bothered to take a few minutes to read and understand Michigan Election Law or they know they’re spreading lies about the process,” said Benander, the State Department spokesperson.

Democratic and Republican state canvassers also disputed suggestions that Benson could influence or taint the signature verification process.

“I don’t think it’s a legitimate concern,” said Republican Chair Richard Houskamp. “Secretary Benson’s nowhere near those signatures.”

The Michigan Bureau of Elections, which is part of Benson’s department but is staffed by nonpartisan civil service employees, reviews petition signatures submitted by candidates and recommends whether canvassers should certify them. Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater serves as the board’s secretary under state law.

Houskamp noted that during his tenure on the board, Benson has never attended a meeting of his board. It’s an indication, to him, that the electoral system is working as intended.

As for vote counting, Michigan has a highly decentralized system. The state largely relies on the results submitted by municipal and county clerks and certified by county canvassers.

“Even though those all route back to the Bureau of Elections, and we are the ones that certify the elections as the board of canvassers, Jocelyn Benson is not in a position to touch ballots or to handle signatures,” Houskamp said.

Room for guardrails?

It’s not just conservatives asking elected officials to consider conflicts of interest.

The progressive Election Reformers Network, which Benson’s office is working with to develop conflict guidance, has advised officials that “voters can worry about election officials overseeing their own races.”

The group also notes that “opposing candidates often exaggerate the risks for political gain.”

The network recommends that secretaries of state who will be on the ballot determine what decisions they may have to make that could create — or be perceived to create — a way to help their own election or party.

Those officials should assess any “legal and feasible” steps they could take to “reduce, suspend, or make more transparent their role in that decision.”

And the resulting conflict-of-interest avoidance program “should be made public, so it can help build voter confidence and demonstrate proactive effort to address voter concerns,” the groups said.

“Even if the assessment concludes that no options exist for secretaries to lawfully reduce their role in areas of potential conflict, that fact is important to make clear to voters.”

Chris Thomas, who served as Michigan’s director of elections for 36 years under Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, said impugning the process is nothing new.

“People grab on to it as just a way to take shots at their opponents,” Thomas said. Asked about calls for the federal government to supervise Michigan elections, he let out a lengthy laugh.

Past secretaries of state have been candidates in elections they oversaw, including Benson’s predecessor, Republican Ruth Johnson, who won a state Senate race while serving as secretary of state in 2019.

“Everyone has a boss,” said Thomas, acknowledging state elections directors work under partisan secretaries of state. But those secretaries of state have avoided major conflict-of-interest allegations by leaving election-related tasks to civil service employees, he added.

The U.S. is an outlier among Western nations, many of which do more to insulate the electoral process from political influence, leaving oversight of elections to a central board of civil service officials.

“If somebody wants to make an argument we shouldn’t [have political appointees in the process], and has an idea about how else to do it — great, but just to use it as a stick to club somebody is really poor sportsmanship,” Thomas said.

Houskamp, the Republican who has served on the Board of State Canvassers for four years, told Bridge he worries about the pressure on the electoral system “every single day.”

“I’m very concerned that people are throwing rocks at a very fragile glass house in general, not just in terms of the things we do,” Houskamp said. “The procedures, the processes, these have become a favorite target for politicians on both sides of the aisle — I think that that’s not healthy.”

This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Judge dismisses felony charges in Michigan election tampering case

2026-05-04T14:41:28+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 Hillsdale County judge on Thursday dismissed felony charges against a former election clerk and attorney accused of allowing unauthorized access to voting equipment following the 2020 presidential election.

A lower court made an “error of law” and “abused its discretion” when it ordered Stephanie Scott and Stefanie Lambert stand trial on related felony charges, Circuit Court Judge Sara Lisznyai wrote in an eight-page ruling.

Scott was serving as Adams Township Clerk in 2021 when she refused to turn over a missing tabulator amid a quest to prove the prior year’s presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump. Lambert, of metro Detroit, served as her attorney at the time.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged the pair with multiple crimes in 2024, alleging they gave an unauthorized computer examiner access to voter data, including non-public voter information.

But Scott and Lambert were erroneously bound over on trial based on a faulty understanding that the Michigan Freedom of Information Act had made that voter information “confidential,” Lisnyai ruled Thursday.

The judge dismissed the felony counts as a result.

“The court’s opinion wrongly suggests that election officials can release sensitive voter information protected from disclosure by state and federal law,” Nessel spokesperson Kimberly Bush said in a statement.

“While we are considering our next steps, including making a determination regarding an appeal, we are extremely disappointed and concerned about the implications this may have on upcoming elections.”

Scott still faces a 90-day misdemeanor charge of disobeying a lawful instruction or order of the secretary of state as chief election officer, which Lisnyai said should be handled at the district court level moving forward.

Her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.

Lambert’s attorney, Peter Ticktin, celebrated the dismissal of charges against his client. The case was a “lawfare attack on an effective and innocent lawyer,” he said in a statement.

Lambert is expected to stand trial on separate tabulator tampering charges in Oakland County. But Ticktin predicted that case will be dismissed too because, he said, Lambert “did nothing wrong.”

This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Tensions mount as Michigan and Antrim County clerk threaten legal action against each other

2026-05-01T19:11:08+00:00

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

The Michigan Bureau of Elections has formally demanded that Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop stop trying to change or cancel voters’ registrations in her county.

If she doesn’t, she could face criminal charges, Jonathan Brater, the bureau director, wrote in a letter dated Thursday and obtained by Votebeat. She could also lose her ability to help administer elections in her northern Michigan county.

“You do not have unlimited authority to conduct any action you see fit simply because you were elected to office,” Brater wrote, a direct response to a press release Bishop put out last week.

Bishop declined to comment and hung up on a Votebeat reporter when reached by phone Thursday.

Bishop, a Republican, has previously claimed that Antrim County’s voter roll is cluttered with people who are dead or no longer live in the county. In March, she sent postcards out to many voters warning them that if they did not confirm their address and registration, they could be deregistered. Records obtained by Interlochen Public Radio show that about 1,800 people received such notices — 8% of the county’s total registered voters as of November 2025.

The state Bureau of Elections sent Bishop a letter on April 14 warning Bishop that her actions were illegal and fell outside her authority as a county clerk. In Michigan, municipal clerks — those at the city and township level — are in charge of maintaining voter registration lists.

The notices have confused voters and municipal clerks alike. For instance, Banks Township Clerk Julie Chellis pointed out that a state guideline says unless a clerk has indication that a voter has moved or died, they should not be removed from the roll unless it’s been more than 20 years since they last voted — but many of the affected people are still active voters.

“The list doesn’t make sense to me, because there are 18-year-olds on that list. Where did you get that list from?” she said. “There are people that are voting absentee, as we speak, that I have ballots coming for, who are on that list.”

Relations between the bureau — which creates guidelines for clerks of all levels across the state — and Bishop have significantly deteriorated as a result of the controversy. The same day the state sent its latest letter, Bishop’s husband, a radio host known as Trucker Randy, spent much of his morning show raising money for Bishop to sue Brater as well as Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

It appears no suit has been filed yet. But a fundraising website set up by Bishop suggests that she is not planning to sue over the letters from the bureau, but rather over rules Benson and the Michigan Department of State have implemented or proposed on how to run elections.

Trucker Randy said during his show Thursday that the decision to file suit came after God told Bishop to “pick up the sword.” They are working with Kevin Kijewski, a former Republican candidate for attorney general who provided the legal defense for one of President Donald Trump’s electors who allegedly submitted a false certificate of election to Congress in 2020. Kijewski told Votebeat on Friday that he did not comment on “potential client matters.”

“Vicki just made the decision,” Trucker Randy said Thursday. “She says, ‘Somebody’s got to stop [Benson]. Somebody’s got to stop her.’ I said, ‘Well, why not you?’”

In its April 14 letter, the Bureau of Elections asked Bishop to answer several questions about her actions by April 23. It appears she tried to respond to some of the questions on April 20 but had multiple typos in the email address to which she sent her answers. In its Thursday letter, the bureau said it had not received an official response from Bishop, although it acknowledged her April 19 press release. However, Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said Friday the Bureau of Elections had finally received Bishop’s response and was reviewing it.

Benander also confirmed that the Bureau of Elections’ letter was already being prepared before Bishop announced her intention to sue.

“This is unrelated,” she said.

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

Questions swirl as Democratic board picks an ultraconservative new recorder in Navajo County

2026-04-27T13:38:20+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.

Supervisors in Navajo County had narrowed their pool to three finalists by the time they met to appoint a new recorder.

One, Jose Lerma, was a voter registration coordinator in the recorder’s office and familiar with the elections side of the job. Another, Suzanne Hudspeth, was a local realtor — experience that could help with the recorder’s responsibility to manage public records, including property documents and government information.

The final candidate, state Rep. David Marshall, seemed perhaps the least likely choice for the board of supervisors, on which Democrats hold three of five seats. State law required them to pick a member of the same political party as former Recorder Tim Jordan, a Republican who resigned in January. But Marshall was the most ideological of the three finalists. In the Legislature, he was an out-and-proud member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus. He had supported legislation to ban vote centers, severely restrict mail voting, require ballots cast in local elections to be counted by hand, and more. And he was in the midst of a contentious primary campaign for a seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Supervisors conducted their final interviews with the candidates on April 14 in executive session, a type of closed-door meeting that allows policymakers to privately discuss certain sensitive topics. Upon returning to the dais, they scribbled down their votes on small sheets of paper.

Then, they announced their choice: Marshall.

Their decision left many political observers scratching their heads — and raised questions about what it means for the rural northern county’s elections. Marshall, who did not respond to requests for comment on this story, said in an April 23 statement that he was committed to “ensuring our elections are secure, transparent, and worthy of the confidence of every citizen.”

“The role of county recorder may not carry the same visibility as a legislative seat or a statewide campaign, but its importance cannot be overstated,” he said. “The integrity of our elections and the protection of property rights form the bedrock of a free and self-governing society. These are not abstract principles — they are the foundation of public trust.”

It also appears that the appointment may have caused a rift between Marshall and some of his closest allies at the state Capitol. An attorney closely affiliated with the Freedom Caucus is now raising legal questions about the appointment.

Supervisors acknowledged the surprise in interviews with Votebeat. One, Democrat Dawnafe Whitesinger, called the situation “fairly complicated.” Another, Republican Daryl Seymore, when asked why the majority-Democratic board had chosen Marshall, said it was “a loaded question.” Other supervisors did not respond to a request for comment.

But Whitesinger and Seymore indicated the choice came down to a combination of qualifications, intraparty politics, and questions asked of the candidates during final interviews in executive session — details they can’t disclose under state law.

Why did Navajo County supervisors pick Marshall?

The board’s vote for the new recorder did not fall along neat partisan lines.

Whitesinger, along with Republican Jason Whiting and Democrat Fern Benally, voted for Marshall. Democrat Alberto Peshlakai voted for Lerma, and Seymore voted to continue interviewing the candidates.

Seymore told Votebeat that he wanted to continue the process because he still had unanswered questions, but he declined to share more, saying he couldn’t reveal anything about conversations had in executive session. Still, he said he was confident that Marshall had a “solid understanding” of existing state law and the voting process.

Although Marshall pushed for controversial election changes as a legislator, Seymore said he felt that Marshall would follow the law while overseeing voter registration, list maintenance, and other election-related duties that fall under the recorder’s office.

Meanwhile, the local GOP was pushing the board to put a long-tenured Republican in the seat. One of the candidates, Lerma, had previously been registered as an unaffiliated voter but re-registered as a Republican earlier this year to seek the appointment.

Navajo County Republican Committee Chair Lisa Green took the speaker’s podium before supervisors conducted final interviews to urge that they appoint someone registered with the party as of the 2024 general election.

“To be clear, this request is not a comment on the character of any potential appointee on the vetted list presented here today,” Green said. “We are simply pointing out that the Republican Party platform of personal responsibility, limited government, and individual liberty is not something to change at will, but a set of core beliefs.”

Whitesinger said supervisors were “looking for a candidate that best aligned with Navajo County,” adding that they also wanted someone who would “protect the rights of citizens to register to vote and also cast their vote.”

“That means for every citizen, from the very tip of Navajo County and the southern area of Cibecue, all the way up to the northern region of Monument Valley and Kayenta,” she said. Marshall drew strong support from White Mountain Apache Tribal Council Chairman Jerome Kasey III and Councilwoman Annette Tenijieth.

Whitesinger said she was hesitant to say much more, noting that she had to protect the confidentiality of conversations that took place in executive session. But she said she has always “tried to make decisions in the best interest of the county.”

“I know that all our citizens are concerned about the decisions — not only this decision, but every decision — that we make as a board of supervisors,” she said. “I, too, live in this county and want it to continue to function as professionally as it has in years past.”

Conservative attorney questions legality of Marshall’s appointment

Before being sworn into his new role on April 21, Marshall resigned his legislative seat and formally pulled out of the Corporation Commission race.

But there’s still one potential legal complication with his appointment. The Arizona Constitution states lawmakers cannot hold other state or county offices “during the term for which he shall have been elected.”

Tim La Sota, an attorney who has long represented archconservatives in Arizona, is loudly making that argument. In an April 16 letter to county supervisors, he wrote that their appointment of Marshall was illegal.

“It seems that the wise move would be to rescind this appointment before Mr. Marshall can purport to accept it by taking the oath of office,” he wrote.

When Marshall was sworn in, La Sota followed up with a similar letter to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat. He accused Marshall of “illegally usurping office.” Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for Mayes, said prosecutors were “looking into the matter.”

La Sota did not respond to questions on whether he was writing in his personal capacity or serving a paid client. He also did not say whether his involvement implied some sort of rift between Marshall and his longtime allies at the state Capitol — several of whom have used La Sota’s legal services in the past.

But Marshall’s appointment seemed to catch at least one of his colleagues by surprise. State Rep. Ralph Heap, another Freedom Caucus member who is gunning for a seat on the Corporation Commission, told KJZZ hours before the board picked Marshall that he was hoping his fellow candidate wouldn’t take the job.

Marshall said on April 23 that he hadn’t made the decision lightly and that he still supported Heap.

“While I have stepped away from that race, I have full confidence it will continue in capable hands,” he said in a statement, adding that Heap would “serve Arizona well.”

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

Antrim County voters confused after clerk attempts to cancel hundreds of voter registrations

2026-04-23T18:38:26+00:00

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

Update, April 27, 10:30 a.m.: This story has been updated to reflect that Bishop did not respond to the state by the deadline.

Hundreds of voters have reportedly been affected by Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s attempt to cancel voter registrations in the small northern county, leaving voters confused and local clerks frustrated.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections sent a letter to Bishop last week accusing her of improperly changing and canceling voter registrations. Such changes “fall outside the scope” of her authority as a county clerk, the bureau wrote, and failed “to comply with the law.” Michigan law puts municipal clerks, not county clerks, in charge of voter list maintenance.

Bishop did not meet the Thursday deadline to respond to the state with an explanation of why she made the changes and lists of the affected voters.

Antrim County voters confused about cancellation notices

Meanwhile, the affected voters are left to wonder why they were targeted for deregistration. Barbara Mullaly, a voter in Elk Rapids, received a notice in mid-March from Bishop’s office informing her that her registration was at risk of being canceled.

Such notices are supposed to be sent only when a municipal clerk receives reliable information that a voter has moved. But Mullaly said she’s voted from the same address for years, missing only a single small election.

“Yes, voting is a privilege and a right, but I do not have to vote,” Mullaly said. “If I don’t want to vote for four years, that shouldn’t negate my voter registration.”

The notice of cancellation she received said that if she didn’t vote “by the second November general election following this notice,” her registration would be canceled. It also included a postcard that Mullaly was supposed to send back to Bishop confirming her personal information, such as her driver’s license number.

Mullaly called Bishop to ask why she’d received the card and was told she hadn’t voted in the past two elections.

“I said, ‘Well, obviously you have this information wrong,’” Mullaly told Votebeat. “The arrogance was pretty astounding.”

Mullaly said she didn’t feel comfortable sending the card back to Bishop, so she turned it in to her township clerk instead.

“If she wants it, she can get it from my local clerk,” Mullaly said.

Mullaly is far from the only voter who received such notices in Antrim County. The deeply conservative county on the shores of Lake Michigan has about 24,700 people living in it, but each of the individual townships and villages within it have only a few thousand people at most.

That’s why it was a surprise that 250 voters in Banks Township received notices that their registrations were on the line — 19% of the township’s 1,300 registered voters. Banks Township Clerk Julie Chellis told Interlochen Public Radio that a number of those people were 18-year-olds who hadn’t voted in previous elections because they weren’t old enough to be eligible.

She told IPR it was “more frustrating than anything” and created more work for her as she tried to ensure voters’ registrations didn’t get canceled.

It’s unclear if cancellation notices went out to voters in every community in Antrim County or if some were unaffected. Mancelona Township Clerk Mike Biehl and Central Lake Township Clerk Judy Kosloski both told Votebeat on Wednesday that they hadn’t heard of any of their voters getting such notifications.

The first Biehl had heard of the concerns at all, he said, was seeing it reported on the news Wednesday morning.

“I try to stay away from all that,” he said.

Janet Beebe, Milton Township clerk, said Thursday she proactively asked Bishop to not send any notifications to her voters after hearing they were going out to other communities. Bishop seemed to respect that, Beebe said.

She first learned about the notifications in conversations with fellow clerks. County clerks aren’t always particularly close with their local counterparts, Beebe said, but Bishop’s predecessor would have at least given her a heads up, she said.

“We were blindsided,” Beebe said of the notifications going out across the county. She’s been looking for patterns in which voters received notifications, but there don’t appear to be any. In some cases, people in other communities who had cast ballots as recently as last year got the notices, Beebe said.

She hasn’t heard anything from her voters, but she’s not sure if that will remain the case. At the end of March, Bishop promised to send Beebe a list of voters in Milton Township that Bishop was considering notifying. Beebe has asked repeatedly for that list and not yet received it, she said.

Bishop argues Antrim County voter roll is bloated

Bishop has not responded to multiple requests from Votebeat to respond to the state’s letter or the concerns of voters. Her office, however, put out a public statement earlier this week that called her actions a “corrective audit” based on federal laws such as the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

“In a high-stakes administrative environment, the risk of an over-inclusive and inaccurate voter roll poses a greater threat to public confidence than the risk of aggressive verification,” Bishop’s release said.

The release argues that she was “addressing local-level inaction” for local officials who didn’t have the money or staff required to maintain the rolls. It also disputes the state’s assertion that she should have independently verified voters’ statuses before sending the notices, arguing instead that the notices are “the trigger for verification.”

Bishop’s actions — which could lead to criminal penalties, according to the state’s letter — come after her 2024 campaign, in which she promised to clean up the county’s voter rolls. She is associated with the wing of the Republican Party that claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump.

Bishop’s statement suggested she did not feel chastened by the Bureau of Elections’ letter. The statement argued her election “represented a decisive directive from the electorate to prioritize the stewardship and accuracy of the democratic process.”

“Victoria Bishop will ensure the 2026 electoral cycle is governed by a voter roll that is both accurate and beyond reproach after forwarding the information discovered to her local clerks for their review, determination, and final actions,” the release said.

Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, said on Wednesday that they did not consider the statement a response to the state’s letter. Bishop did not meet the state-imposed deadline, a state official confirmed Monday morning. What comes next will be up to the Bureau of Elections.

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

Amid an elections power struggle, Maricopa County officials hurl unsubstantiated claims of voter disenfranchisement

2026-04-20T15:13:31+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.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney appeared somewhat exasperated with the parties sitting before him in a drab courtroom in Phoenix on Feb. 11.

He was presiding over a civil case that centered on a messy battle between mostly-GOP county leaders over election control. Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap contended that the county board of supervisors had usurped much of his power in a deal they struck with his predecessor months before he took office. Supervisors said the changes were limited in scope and argued that Heap wasn’t negotiating in good faith.

After nearly nine months, the case was testing the court’s patience. Blaney acknowledged that there was “a lot of vitriol and a lot of emotion” in the dispute, but he urged the two sides to find agreement.

“As I’ve stressed all the way through this case, courts don’t like stepping into political cases like this and placing themselves in between political elected officials,” he said, adding that county leaders needed to “just resolve this thing.”

They never did. Heap refused to drop his legal challenge, even as the board handed him control over early, in-person voting, which was previously administered by their staff.

Meanwhile, supervisors flexed their statutory muscle, forcing Heap to testify under oath at a special meeting under the provisions of a state law that gave them the option to remove him from office if he didn’t comply.

The dispute — this chapter of it, anyway — came to a close late last week when Blaney finally picked a side: Heap’s. On Friday, he issued a judgment ordering the supervisors to return control of several election-related functions and information technology staffers to the recorder’s office.

But this may not be the final word. The board is considering an appeal, which could drag the feud on through the general election.

As both sides seek to defend themselves amid the messy and increasingly public saga, Heap and the board have each suggested that the other has disenfranchised voters, sparking counterclaims of political gamesmanship, lies, and hypocrisy.

But Votebeat examined those criticisms and found that they appeared false or lacked significant context.

Two high-level staffers in the recorder’s office said during a court hearing in January that the supervisors’ refusal to purchase a ballot sorter and scanner had prevented a small number of eligible voters’ provisional ballots from being counted in the 2024 election. But county records reviewed by Votebeat showed no evidence to support those claims, which Heap has since partly walked back.

Multiple supervisors have also questioned whether a new approach Heap took to verifying signatures on mail-ballot envelopes prevented eligible ballots from being counted in the 2025 election. But while a significantly higher share of ballots were indeed rejected for signature issues in that election, ballot rejection rates have generally been on the rise over the last several election cycles.

The continuing fight between Heap and the supervisors raises questions about how effectively election officials will be able to administer the upcoming midterm election in the county, a key political battleground where past recorders and supervisors largely kept their disagreements under wraps and stood unified against external scrutiny.

What’s more, the back-and-forth could exacerbate voters’ fears of election malfeasance, contributing to an already toxic environment as President Donald Trump’s administration attempts to relitigate the outcome of the 2020 presidential race and the state braces for another contentious election cycle.

Voters enter Wesley Community & Health Centers at Central City to drop off their ballot for the 2024 election in Maricopa County on Nov. 5, 2024, in Phoenix, Ariz. An ongoing battle for election control in the county could impact voters' trust in 2026.

“It compounds the problem in the public’s eye when a recorder is accusing the board, and the board is accusing the recorder, of each doing things that one side of the political spectrum thinks is terrible and the other side of the political spectrum thinks is appropriate,” said Ken Bennett, a Republican who previously served as a state lawmaker and Arizona secretary of state.

Tammy Patrick, a former election official in Maricopa County and chief programs officer at The Election Center, a nonprofit association of election officials, said county leaders should be “dialing down the rhetoric,” rather than “turning it up.” She added that Maricopa County was long viewed nationally as “a bellwether of how we should trust our election outcomes and their legitimacy.”

“In this moment, it’s just really important that level heads prevail,” she said.

Nonetheless, both Heap and the supervisors have repeatedly defended their actions.

Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican, said she and her colleagues chose to air their concerns publicly only after Heap refused to answer their questions about the voters whose ballots were rejected in the November 2025 election.

Speaking before Blaney’s decision, she noted the board is charged with setting the county budget, canvassing election results, and overseeing county functions, and that it routinely asks questions of its own staff in the elections department.

“We needed information about lots and lots of things,” Brophy McGee said when asked why the board chose to compel Heap to testify. “It did, in fact, work. He came, he testified.”

Meanwhile, Judy Keane, a spokeswoman for Heap, said in a statement that his office “stands fully behind the testimony of its employees.” She declined to answer specific questions about the staffers’ disenfranchisement claims and Votebeat’s findings, citing pending litigation.

Records suggest provisional ballot voters aren’t being disenfranchised

During a court hearing on Jan. 26, two recorder’s office employees — Chief of Staff Sam Stone and Director of Voter Registration Janine Petty — testified under oath that some provisional ballot voters had been disenfranchised in Maricopa County.

That type of ballot is used when there is a question about a voter’s eligibility, acting as a safeguard to ensure that no one is wrongly turned away from a polling location. Officials later research provisional voters’ eligibility to determine whether their ballot should be counted.

Often, voters cast provisional ballots as a result of Arizona’s unique, bifurcated registration system. In order to vote full ballots that include state and local races, the state requires voters to provide documents proving their citizenship and residency. If they don’t, they’re allowed to vote only in federal races.

In 2024, a new state law extended the period for voters to submit documentation and have their provisional ballots counted. Accordingly, Petty said many voters provided passports, birth certificates, and other documents, and her team struggled to meet the deadline to review them. As a result, she said, voters who should have been allowed to vote full ballots in the 2024 election only had their federal-race votes counted.

Petty said supervisors were preventing her office from fulfilling its statutory duties by refusing to purchase a specific ballot scanning and sorting machine to address the problem. Heap has repeatedly requested that county supervisors pay for that machine, built by Runbeck Election Services, during the annual budgeting period. It would cost at least $325,000, plus about $40,000 each year to pay its mandatory licensing fee.

Currently, Petty said her team has to scan provisional ballots by hand, one at a time, a process she likened to “looking for a needle in a haystack.” She said the machine that the recorder’s office is seeking to purchase could sort and scan about 18,000 ballots in an hour.

Stone also testified that the machine was needed to ensure eligible voters’ ballots were counted, and framed it as a persistent issue, saying disenfranchisement was “happening now.”

But Votebeat couldn’t substantiate the claims. A records request for emails and texts between Petty and leaders in the recorder’s office at the time — including former Recorder Stephen Richer, former Chief of Staff Abby Raddatz, and former Chief Deputy Recorder Darron Moffatt — didn’t turn up any that referenced issues with scanning provisional ballots.

The recorder’s office’s 2025 requests to the board for funding for the machine also don’t mention voters having been disenfranchised without it. Furthermore, emails between Petty and top staffers in the recorder’s office and election department show that she confirmed that her team was done processing provisional ballots on Nov. 13, 2024 — two days before the deadline.

Election workers open ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center for the 2024 election in Maricopa County on Nov. 5, 2024, in Phoenix, Ariz.

“In other news, we have processed all conditional provisionals that can be cured,” Petty wrote. “We are done!”

The share of provisional ballots rejected in the 2024 election did rise significantly. That year, Maricopa County rejected 22,411 provisional ballots in the general election — about 86% of provisional ballots cast. That’s up from a 62% rejection rate in 2022 and a 66% rejection rate in 2020.

That higher rate held roughly steady in the 2025 jurisdictional election, with the county rejecting 238 ballots — about 82% of provisional ballots cast.

But that doesn’t necessarily support Petty’s claim. The same law that created more work for Petty’s team also required voters to prove their address before casting their vote. Richer told Votebeat that resulted in more provisional ballots than usual, ultimately leading to higher rejection rates across the state. Pima County, the second-most populous in the state, saw a similar increase in its provisional ballot rejection rate in 2024 compared to the 2022 election, according to data tracked by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Later, in a Jan. 28 meeting, Heap partly walked back his staffers’ claims. He said that disenfranchisement was not happening under his administration, as Stone had suggested.

“We didn’t say that any voters have been disenfranchised since I took office,”said Heap, whose term began in 2025. “If there were any voters disenfranchised, it was under the previous administration.”

Richer pushed back on that allegation and told Votebeat that Petty never brought any such problem to his attention.

“I’d certainly never heard of this before,” he said, adding that the idea that he would have ignored any disenfranchisement was “so silly.” He noted that no one at the recorder’s office had mentioned any voters getting disenfranchised until the office started feuding with the board of supervisors.

Keane, the spokesperson for the recorder’s office, defended Petty’s testimony. Votebeat also reached out to Petty and Stone but did not receive a response.

“Janine Petty is the leading expert in the state of Arizona on voter registration and election procedures,” Keane said. “Her professionalism and service in our office has been exemplary.”

During a press gaggle in February, Votebeat asked Heap whether he had identified any specific voters who were disenfranchised in 2024.

“We have looked into the issue — I can’t say specifically a number, but she identified that we have a serious problem,” Heap responded, referring to Petty’s testimony. “We will continue to look into that.”

Supervisors’ concerns about new signature verification process ignore context

Heap and his staff haven’t been the only ones questioning the administration of past elections in Maricopa County.

Supervisors have voiced concern that a new approach Heap took to signature verification prevented eligible voters from having their mail ballots counted in an election last year.

Trained staff in the recorder’s office have long compared the signature on the outside of a voter’s ballot envelope to their prior signatures as a safeguard against fraud. When a voter’s signature doesn’t match, election officials attempt to contact the voter to fix their signature, a process known as ballot curing.

After taking office, Heap added additional layers of review to the signature verification process. Previously, one person reviewed a batch of ballots, then rechecked their own work before sending questionable signatures to a manager to determine whether the ballot needed to be cured. Signatures marked as good went into an audit queue, and a manager would perform a spot check on a smaller sample.

Under the new process, bipartisan teams examine each signature simultaneously. A questionable signature goes to a manager, who then determines if it needs to go to a third level of examination.

A person brings a rolling cart of ballots to a cage of ballots at Runbeck Election Services during the March 2024 presidential preference election.

A low-turnout, all-mail election held on Nov. 4, 2025, was the first test of Heap’s new system. His office ultimately rejected 5,903 mail ballots over mismatched signatures — roughly 838 for every 100,000 ballots cast, more than double the rate of the 2024 general election.

That prompted alarm from supervisors, who questioned the rejections during the certification of the election. Later, Brophy McGee said she was concerned that Heap had opted to test the new process in a live election, rather than running a mock one “as is normal practice.”

“Our voters were your first test sample,” she wrote in a letter to Heap on Jan. 22. “It is important to ensure no qualified voters were unnecessarily rejected by your new process.”

During a heated budget meeting on Jan. 28, Supervisor Tom Galvin called Heap’s new signature verification process a “looming disaster.”

But it’s difficult to know whether Heap’s new process wrongly rejected any voters, and it’s unlikely that it was the sole contributing factor in the increased rejection rate. In fact, ballot rejection rates have been on the rise in Maricopa County for years.

In 2020, Democratic Recorder Adrian Fontes rejected about 30 mail ballots for every 100,000 cast.

When Richer, a Republican, took office, he implemented a stricter signature verification process in response to false claims of voter fraud and pressure from his own party. In the 2021 election, the county’s rejection rate increased to roughly 190 mail ballots for every 100,000 cast.

Then, in 2024, a state law shortened the period for voters to cure their ballots. With Richer still at the helm, the county’s rejection rate in that year’s general election was about 400 for every 100,000 mail ballots cast.

Richer told Votebeat that it was “hard to say” exactly what might be causing the increased rejection rate under Heap. He said it could have been because the new signature verification process flagged more ballots as needing to be cured, but it also could have been because fewer voters actually stepped forward to cure them.

In larger elections, political parties typically assist with the curing process by contacting registered Democrats and Republicans to urge them to cure their ballot. But the parties don’t usually mount such ballot-chasing operations during smaller elections unless races are particularly tight.

Patti O’Neil, chair of the Maricopa County Democratic Party, told Votebeat her party didn’t do any ballot-chasing in 2025. Craig Berland, chair of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, did not respond when posed the same question.

The fact that the election was entirely conducted by mail may have also contributed to the higher rejection rate. Heap theorized last year that the all-mail election may have brought out voters who hadn’t voted by mail in several cycles, or even decades, and who have only one signature on file to compare.

“I think it’s the nature of this type of election compared to a regular election,” he said at the time.

Even if Heap’s new process did contribute to the higher rejection rate, it does not appear that it did so with any partisan bias. A Votebeat analysis of curing data from last year’s election showed the partisan breakdown of voters whose ballots were sent to curing was roughly in line with party registration numbers in the county at the time, as was the partisan breakdown of voters who confirmed or fixed the signatures on their ballots.

Additionally, training materials obtained from the recorder’s office showed no indication of reviewers being incentivized to flag questionable signatures.

Feud between Heap and supervisors could spill over into the 2026 election

As county supervisors prepared to compel testimony from Heap in February, an unusual video appeared on two of the county’s social media platforms.

It contained footage of supervisors blasting Heap for refusing to answer their questions. In one particularly spicy clip, Galvin accused Heap of playing “political games” and “lying” to the public, as dramatic music played in the background.

It concluded with a taunt: “It ends on Wednesday. See you there, Justin Heap.”

Heap has made similar statements about the board. In January, he accused supervisors of throwing a “juvenile temper tantrum” after a raucous budget meeting in which supervisors criticized his new signature verification process and read aloud partisan social media posts from Stone, including one which referenced picking sides in “the coming civil war.” More recently, Heap said the board was “lying to voters yet again” amid bickering over an early voting plan for the upcoming primary election.

The board, though, has appeared to back off publicly criticizing Heap in recent weeks. Brophy McGee said Heap still hasn’t answered all of her questions but has provided enough information to allow county officials to “muddle through” the budget process and election preparations.

These days, she said, county officials are focused on working together to prepare for the upcoming election. There’s a “disparity,” she said, between “what’s happening on the ground with staff working together and social media.”

Even so, the bad-mouthing — and the apparently false and misleading remarks that it’s based on — has already caught on outside the walls of the Maricopa County Administration Building.

Days after the board posted its video on social media, the Maricopa County Democratic Party accused Heap of “working hand-in-glove with the White House to steal the 2026 election.” It tagged the county board’s account in its post.

Later, as supervisors forced testimony from Heap, the local party released a statement in support of the move. It said Heap’s “erratic behavior” suggested that he had succumbed to “pressures from within his own party, rather than uphold his duty to administer elections impartially and fairly,” and added that voters deserved elections free from “chicanery.”

Meanwhile, dozens of people showed up to support Heap as he appeared before the board. Many wore pins or carried signs declaring, “We ♥️ courageous election workers,” an apparent reference to recorder’s office staffers’ testimony in court. The swag was provided by Strong Communities Action, a nonprofit run by local conservative activist Merissa Caldwell, who is married to one of Heap’s senior staffers.

People in line to enter a county meeting wear badges showing support for Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap on Feb. 18, 2026, in Phoenix, Ariz.

During the meeting, the crowd occasionally jeered and booed county supervisors. Afterward, they gathered to shake hands, hug, and take photos with Heap.

Outside observers fear the effect the heightened rhetoric could have on the 2026 midterm election.

“When the recorder and the board are throwing rocks at each other, people are going to line up behind the ones that they think they’ve heard the right thing about, and join in the rock throwing,” said Bennett, the former secretary of state.

He added that he’s certain the battle won’t “end pretty.”

“It does not end by instilling confidence, increasing confidence, or maintaining confidence in our elections,” he said. “It ends by destroying confidence in the minds of American and Arizonan voters who are left to pick one side or the other.”

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

These states could elect new top election officials in 2026

2026-04-20T09:00:00+00:00

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

Presidential and congressional races get all the attention, but if you care about how elections are run, there’s a whole other set of elections you need to get hip to.

This fall, voters will elect the next chief election officials — usually, but not always, the secretary of state — in 24 states. (If you’re thinking that it’s a bad idea for the people who run elections to run in elections, take it up with those states’ constitutions.) And another five will be indirectly determined by the midterm results.

The stakes are high: The winners of these contests will oversee the 2028 presidential election in an environment in which election administration has become increasingly politicized. Several of these posts could flip between Democrats and Republicans, but don’t sleep on the safe seats either: Due to retirements, at least 10 states will have a new hand on the election tiller next year.

With primaries and nominating conventions now afoot, we already have a decent idea of who some of those new election officials might be. Here’s a breakdown of which offices could turn over.

Several secretary of state offices could flip parties

The most closely watched races will surely be in the presidential swing states. However, elections in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are run by appointees, not elected secretaries of state. That leaves the secretary of state elections in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada.

In Michigan, the race to replace Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (who is running for governor) is already well underway. At a convention last month, Republicans nominated Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini, while Democrats nominated Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist at their convention on Sunday.

In Arizona and Nevada, Democratic incumbents Adrian Fontes and Francisco Aguilar are running for reelection, and they’re both waiting to see what kind of Republican opponent they will face. In Arizona, state Rep. Alexander Kolodin was involved in the legal effort to overturn the 2020 election, but his primary opponent, former Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda, has defended the state’s voting practices. And in Nevada, the Republicans with the highest name recognition are far-right former Assembly members Sharron Angle and Jim Marchant, but moderate Gov. Joe Lombardo has endorsed businesswoman Shirley Folkins-Roberts.

Georgia is the only Republican-held seat of the quartet, but incumbent Brad Raffensperger is now running for governor. The GOP candidates to replace him include Raffensperger staffer Gabe Sterling, who has vigorously defended the legitimacy of the 2020 election; former state Rep. Vernon Jones, who has claimed the 2020 election was stolen; and state Rep. Tim Fleming, a former deputy secretary of state under Brian Kemp. The Democratic field includes former Judge Penny Brown Reynolds and Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett, who defied a judge’s order by refusing to seat two Republicans whom she called election deniers on the county board of elections.

There may also be competitive races in some more surprising states.

In Indiana, Secretary of State Diego Morales has been criticized, even by fellow Republicans, for mismanaging his office. If he can get past the two candidates challenging him for renomination, he could be vulnerable in November against Democrat Beau Bayh, the son of former Sen. Evan Bayh and grandson of former Sen. Birch Bayh, who led a campaign against the Electoral College.

In Ohio, the coattail effect from strong Senate and gubernatorial candidates could help Democrats in their quest to replace term-limited Republican incumbent Secretary of State Frank LaRose. Two Republicans and two Democrats are running in the May 5 primary.

And in Alaska, the lieutenant governor oversees election administration, meaning the state’s next chief election official will be determined by the outcome of the open-seat governor’s race. Thanks to the state’s unpredictable top-four primary and ranked-choice voting system, the new lieutenant governor could be a Republican, a Democrat, or even an independent.

Finally, the New Hampshire secretary of state position is unusual in that it is elected by the state legislature, not the voters. But the 2026 election could still indirectly cause the job to turn over. If Democrats win a majority of seats in the New Hampshire legislature, it could spell trouble for incumbent Republican David Scanlan.

Primaries will determine these states’ next top election officials

Six other states will have new secretaries of state in 2027 because incumbents aren’t seeking another term. But these races aren’t expected to be competitive in the general election, meaning primaries will effectively determine who will oversee their elections for the next four years. The Republican contests will be especially important to watch, given the party’s split over whether U.S. elections are fundamentally secure or rife with fraud.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray is one of the few sitting election officials who embrace the latter view, but he’s running for Congress this year. He endorsed state Rep. Rachel Williams, the chair of the hardline conservative faction in the state House, as his successor. Williams has made “ending ballot harvesting” a centerpiece of her campaign. The rest of the primary field is still taking shape, with only one other Republican currently in the race.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen has similarly questioned the security of past elections but is now running for lieutenant governor. The front-runner to replace him, attorney Caroleene Dobson, says that Alabama still has “a lot of work to do when it comes to election integrity.” Dobson has proposed creating a division within the secretary of state’s office to investigate election fraud.

In blood-red Kansas, two Republicans are running to replace Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who’s campaigning for governor. State Rep. Pat Proctor, the chair of the House Committee on Elections, has championed several bills restricting voter access and decried what he sees as an “axis of ballot harvesting.” His opponent, state Rep. Ken Rahjes, has been more circumspect, saying, for example, he would have “a lot of questions” about the federal government intervening in elections.

And in Arkansas, where incumbent Cole Jester can’t run for another term, we already know who the next secretary of state is likely to be: state Sen. Kim Hammer, who won the Republican nomination last month. Hammer wasn’t the most conservative candidate in the primary, but he did make a name for himself sponsoring bills to limit the state’s ballot initiative process.

The list of open secretary of state seats in blue states is shorter, but Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver are both running for other positions (attorney general and lieutenant governor, respectively). In Colorado, the Democratic contest is between state Sen. Jessie Danielson and Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez. And in New Mexico, the primary features two county clerks: Santa Fe’s Katharine Clark and Doña Ana’s Amanda López Askin.

And just in case that wasn’t enough turnover: There’s also a decent chance that Florida and Maine get new secretaries of state, depending on the results of their gubernatorial races. In Florida, where the governor appoints the secretary of state, Gov. Ron DeSantis is term-limited — meaning that a new governor will be elected in November who could replace Republican Secretary of State Cord Byrd with their own choice. And in Maine, Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is hoping to be elected governor in her own right, which would require the legislature to elect a new secretary.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Garlin Gilchrist wins Democratic nomination for secretary of state

2026-04-20T03:50:12+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.

DETROIT — Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II won the Democratic nomination for secretary of state at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention on Sunday.

The choice by Democratic delegates sets up what’s expected to be a tight general election between Gilchrist and Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini, who won the Republican nomination last month. Whoever ultimately wins will be Michigan’s next top election official, replacing Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

Gilchrist defeated two other Democrats, former Michigan Lottery Commissioner Suzanna Shkreli and Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, for the nomination on the first ballot, meaning he received an outright majority of the votes cast. Exact vote totals were not immediately available.

The convention took place at Huntington Place, one floor up from where supporters of President Donald Trump banged on windows in the days after the 2020 election, demanding to stop the counting of absentee ballots. There were more than 7,250 delegates at the convention.

Michigan doesn’t choose its secretary of state candidates through primaries. Instead, parties select their nominees for certain down-ballot offices, like secretary of state and attorney general, through a delegate vote at conventions. Candidates at the Democratic convention must first get signatures from 15% of delegates in order to be considered for statewide office.

If Gilchrist wins the general election, he will be only the second Black secretary of state in Michigan’s history, following Richard H. Austin, who served from 1971 to 1995. It would also make him the first Democrat since Austin to succeed another Democrat in the seat.

Gilchrist is a software engineer turned lieutenant governor

Gilchrist has served as the lieutenant governor of Michigan since 2019, when he was sworn in as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s second-in-command.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Gilchrist has a background in software engineering — an experience that he says would help him be an effective secretary of state. He worked for Microsoft and a number of political advocacy groups before moving back to Michigan to work for the City of Detroit as a developer.

He ran for Detroit city clerk in 2017, but lost to longtime Clerk Janice Winfrey by just shy of 1,500 votes. Other than lieutenant governor, he hasn’t run for any other elected offices.

A native Detroiter, Gilchrist still lives in the city with his wife and their three children.

State Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, nominated him for secretary of state at the convention. Brinks argued that Gilchrist would be “ready for the job on day one.”

“As secretary of state, he will protect the right to vote, defend the will of the people, and ensure Michigan’s elections remain secure, fair, and free from political interference,” she said.

The delegates who voted for Gilchrist said they liked his energy and considered him the candidate most likely to win a competitive general election. Tom Finholt, a delegate from Ann Arbor, told Votebeat he supported Gilchrist’s “take-action stance.”

“I see him protecting the state from federal encroachment on elections,” Finholt said while wearing a Gilchrist shirt and holding a cutout of the lieutenant governor’s face. “He’s a tech guy, and I think that means he will be able to see through the smokescreens of the tech oligarchs.”

Finholt — who helped hire Gilchrist to one of his previous jobs as founding director at the University of Michigan’s Center for Social Media Responsibility — lauded the work Gilchrist has already done as an elected official and said he was the best candidate to build on Benson’s accomplishments in the office.

Gilchrist vows to protect elections from Trump

If elected, Gilchrist has promised to fight Trump’s executive orders on voting, including protecting Michigan voters’ right to vote by mail.

“If he wants to mess with Michiganders’ right to vote, he’s gonna have to come through me,” Gilchrist tweeted about Trump after his most recent voting-focused order, which aims to restrict mail voting and potential voting by noncitizens, including through the creation of citizenship lists.

It’s part of a larger emphasis that Gilchrist has placed on voter privacy since joining the race in January after dropping his gubernatorial bid. After Republicans nominated Forlini, Gilchrist immediately took shots at him as a “MAGA extremist” who would work with federal Republicans to “weaponize [voters’] private data.”

Forlini returned the favor on Sunday night after Gilchrist was nominated, saying in a statement that while he respected Gilchrist as a person, “I am concerned with what I had read in the Detroit News recently, that Mr. Gilchrist showed up for work in his current role only 6% of the time," contrasting Gilchrist’s frequent absences presiding over the Michigan Senate as lieutenant governor with Forlini’s “100% attendance” rate as a state representative.

Gilchrist has also promised to advocate for legislation to improve campaign finance regulations and ensure voters know their ballots are secure. On his campaign website, he has also promised to modernize licensing and registration for cars and “hold accountable companies that rip you off when you get your car fixed.”

After his victory was announced around 9 p.m. on Sunday, Gilchrist was exuberant. In his acceptance speech, he criticized Republicans for being “small,” citing his own height — 6 feet, 8 inches — as the stature needed to defend voting rights against Trump.

“We need to make sure Donald Trump is not as successful at rigging voting as he has been at raising prices,” Gilchrist told the crowd.

Gilchrist told Votebeat after winning the nomination that the first thing he expected to do if he wins the job is to prepare for all the elections ahead.

“We have to make sure that we start getting prepared for the election administration challenges that will inevitably come from the Trump administration during our 2027 and 2028 elections in Michigan,” he said. “We need to make sure we get to work preparing the rule-making process for the next independent citizens redistricting commission.”

Gilchrist faced criticism for comments from his governor bid

Secretary of state was not the first job Gilchrist sought this election cycle. He was originally running to replace the term-limited Whitmer before dropping out in January and switching to the secretary of state race.

He was criticized for saying during a speech at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s national convention that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “is committing a genocide on the Palestinian people.” He later apologized but clarified that, while he was not retracting his beliefs, he regretted that some had perceived the comments as anti-Semitic.

Gilchrist’s opponents also questioned whether he really wanted to be secretary of state or just jumped in after recognizing there wasn’t a clear path to the governorship. Shkreli told MIRS earlier this month that Gilchrist “told me point-blank that he didn’t want this job.” Shkreli joined the race in December, more than a month before Gilchrist did.

Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall, a Republican, pointed to that in a tongue-in-cheek “endorsement” of Gilchrist in which Hall said Gilchrist would be the easiest secretary of state candidate for Republicans to beat.

Asked about it Sunday, Gilchrist said that his goal for the job was to “prevent MAGA from using it to consolidate power and hurting and targeting people.”

“I’m running for this office because it is important and because the threat to votes, voting, and voters in Michigan is so urgent that this office is the one that we need to make sure that we hold,” he said.

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

How one Wisconsin county is making running elections easier for new clerks

2026-04-16T09:00:00+00:00

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

ROCK COUNTY, Wisc. — Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead’s election operation is a well-oiled machine. She comes to the polls at 6 a.m., a pot of cowboy beef stew in hand to warm up for her poll workers, and takes a backseat as she lets the town’s longtime staffers settle into their rhythm.

Having run well over 100 elections, administering the Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 7 in the 1,200-person town felt like second nature. Hookstead, now 65, has spent three decades in the role — a depth of experience many towns have lost since 2020.

Twenty miles south sits Clinton, where 59-year old Town Clerk Shannon Roehl-Wickingson was administering her first election on her own. It will take years for her muscle memory to rival Hookstead’s. But, she may get there faster than many of her peers in Wisconsin — or across the country. Rock County has a support and training system that most new clerks can only dream of.

That kind of hands-on help the county provides is increasingly rare. Nationwide, election official turnover has hit record highs since 2020, driven by harassment, political pressure, and exhaustion. And Wisconsin has been especially hard hit: Since elections are run at the municipal level, the state relies on around 1,850 individual municipal clerks to run its elections. Many new clerks land the job with little guidance and figure it out as they go.

As the job has grown more complex, more scrutinized, and more politicized, municipalities are left scrambling to replace experienced officials and train newcomers fast enough to keep up. Rock County — where five of 29 municipalities had first-time clerks running elections last week — is testing a more hands-on approach to that transition, pairing new clerks with experienced ones and building a network that helps them learn the job in real time.

Town of Clinton Clerk Shannon Roehl-Wickingson ran her first election as clerk on April 7, 2026.

But hiring is only half the battle. Keeping clerks can be even harder, in part because the job is both sprawling and slow to master. Beyond running elections, a single clerk may take meeting minutes, issue licenses, sell public land and even oversee cemeteries. All responsibilities, especially elections, are governed by a shifting patchwork of legal obligations that can take years to learn but often change quickly. Rock County is hoping to fix that.

“If I wouldn’t have had help, I might have thrown in the towel by now because it’s very daunting,” said Roehl-Wickingson. “For God’s sake, in today’s climate, with voting, you just don’t want to make mistakes. But there’s tremendous support. You just have to ask the questions.”

The approach is deliberate: County Clerk Lisa Tollefson ensures municipal clerks are trained beyond state requirements, and works to recruit long-serving or retiring clerks as mentors. During the busiest times of the year, her husband, Town of Harmony Deputy Clerk Tim Tollefson, makes the rounds to check in with new municipal clerks to make sure everything is moving smoothly.

Together, they push clerks to stay in close contact, with them and with each other — swapping advice on absentee voting, preparing for budget season, or gathering in person with a brandy Old Fashioned to celebrate a well-run election.

Part of Tollefson’s motivation for creating the county’s support network comes from experience. When the Democrat first became Harmony’s town clerk in 2010, she knew resources were available but “felt really shy about reaching out” for help. “I don’t want anyone to ever feel that way.”

Now, she goes to public tests for every new clerk, making sure they understand there’s no dumb questions and telling them that she has been in their shoes.

In Hookstead’s view, Lisa Tollefson is the coach, municipal clerks are the assistant coaches, and poll workers are the team players.

“None of us could survive without the other one,” she said. “We’re a team. We work very well together in this county.”

Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson (far right) and two staff members work to build camaraderie across the county as new clerks replace longtime officials who have left.

‘Clerk gene’ essential to long tenures

Making a longtime clerk out of a new recruit takes some luck and some science.

In some cases, it also starts off with a little bit of deceit.

Many clerks have similar origin stories in Wisconsin: They were persuaded to begin their jobs by a town board member who made the job sound easy. Just taking minutes, they’re told. Little mention of elections, budgets, licenses or managing municipal property. That was the pitch that drew both Tollefson and Hookstead into their first clerk jobs.

Once on the job, they quickly realize how much more it entails. Some hunker down. Others leave.

What separates the two, Lisa Tollefson said, is the “clerk gene.” She described it as a mix of curiosity, a lack of timidity, and a desire to help the public. And while some — herself included — stumble into the role of clerk and step up to the job, Tollefson said transparency about the job is the best way to recruit and retain staff. “Being open about all the duties,” she said, “is huge.”

Roehl-Wickingson, whose previous job included helping union workers sign up for benefits, said the desire to help others has carried over for her. In both elections and unions, those who are indifferent are “definitely in the wrong place.”

Right now, Lisa Tollefson said, every chief election official in Rock County has what it takes to be a clerk. That’s a blessing for her office, which saw a lot of clerk turnover after the highly contentious 2020 election, when a wave of retirements rocked the workforce. Just eight of 29 Rock County municipalities still have the same clerks as they did six years ago.

“There were some older clerks at that time,” she said, “and they’re like, ‘I’m not doing another. I’m done.’”

Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson said she didn't want new clerks to feel shy, as she did when she started as a town clerk.

To keep new clerks from burning out, Lisa Tollefson tries to reinforce that instinct to be a supportive clerk with training and support.

She has encouraged her clerks to become trainers themselves, including to train poll workers to be chief inspectors and to use the state’s electronic pollbook system — something most poll workers aren’t usually trained to do.

The need for such advanced planning became clear in 2020, when nearly every worker at one Rock County polling location was exposed to COVID-19 during a public test and could no longer serve on Election Day. Two poll workers didn’t come to the public test, though, and because they were trained to be chief inspectors, the location was still able to open and proceed normally. That year, Tollefson also trained about 50 county employees as chief inspectors as an additional cushion against emergencies.

The benefits of this preparation and community-building also show up in smaller moments. At a recent public test of voting equipment, Tollefson said she watched experienced poll workers reassure a new clerk that everything would be OK. “There’s a lot of strength in the poll workers,” she said.

It’s an example set by Tollefson herself. She is a constant presence for clerks, Hookstead said. She offers advice and checks in, reminding clerks that she’ll be up at 5 a.m. and ready to provide any support she can offer on Election Day.

“She’s just willing to make our lives so much easier,” said Hookstead. “And it is through training — her trainings are fun.”

Rock County clerks also seem to have found another reliable strategy for finding and retaining election workers: recruiting family members.

After Tollefson left her first job as the Harmony town clerk, she recruited her husband to replace her after nobody else applied. He later became the town’s deputy clerk. Hookstead’s mom, daughter, and husband have all served as poll workers in Lima. In the Town of Magnolia — in western Rock County — clerk-treasurer Graceann Toberman was preceded by her mother as treasurer. Together, they’ve spent more than 60 years in the role.

Roehl-Wickingson was also recruited by family. When the Town of Clinton needed a new clerk, she got a call from her daughter, who works in the county clerk’s office, suggesting it would be a good part-time job in retirement. (Unlike Lisa Tollefson and Hookstead, Roehl-Wickingson said she received an accurate summary of what the job entailed.)

“You get the bug,” Lisa Tollefson said. “It happens all the time.”

Longtime clerk says county helps her understand changing rules

Hookstead has had the bug for 30 years. She has silvering blonde hair and, on Election Day, wore a green cardigan and a nametag identifying her as clerk — not that anybody is unfamiliar with her. She said she’s not quite ready to retire as a clerk.

If anything, she’s prepared to spend even more time on the job. Having just retired from her full-time position as secretary at a school in Whitewater, she’s decided to redesign the town’s website and re-organize its paperwork system.

Still, she knows she won’t do it forever. If somebody comes along to replace her — something Hookstead acknowledged wasn’t terribly likely — she said she’s ready to step aside.

The home of Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead, where residents vote absentee, overlooks her beef farm.

Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead sorts through election materials at her home.

Hookstead lives and does most of her work from home on a 180-acre beef farm in town.

The 1,300-person town is sparsely populated, with no bars, no restaurants, and no grocery stores — just dairy and cattle farms, a Presbyterian church, and a small cluster of homes near the town center. On Election Day, its town hall had pop-up voting booths next to its wood-paneled walls and a check-in booth by the front entrance, a setup that Hookstead has meticulously spaced out to provide the best flow for voters, some of whom are in wheelchairs.

For early in-person absentee voting, residents don’t go to a government office. They go to Hookstead’s house.

Voters go to her kitchen and take a seat at what she calls her voting table. Given its placement, with several seats surrounding it and a sack of onions on top, you’d be forgiven for calling it a kitchen table. Hookstead concedes it’s both.

Voters cast their ballots there, overlooking a cattle field and a swamp frequented by geese and sandhill cranes. If two voters come to her house at the same time, they sit on opposite corners of her kitchen table while Hookstead waits for them in the living room, near a mounted buck that her husband killed with a bow.

It’s a laid-back setting, Hookstead said — one where voters can both cast a ballot and talk about the price of corn.

When she started her job, things worked differently. There wasn’t much early absentee voting, and almost every voter cast their ballot on Election Day, hand marking them and dropping them into several wooden boxes at the town hall. Hookstead would unpack the ballots at the end of the night and hand-count for several hours.

Now, electronic tabulators and shorter ballots have sped things up. Even so, the job has grown more complicated — especially as election rules have shifted in recent years. Hookstead said she’s been frustrated by rapidly changing election rules since 2020, particularly when they don’t seem to follow clear logic. She pointed to one rule blocking voters from returning their elderly parents’ ballots, with only limited exceptions.

That’s where the county support system comes in.

Tollefson, the county clerk, notifies Hookstead and other clerks of new rules and guidelines — sometimes before the Wisconsin Elections Commission does — and always makes herself available for questions.

“I have told Lisa that when she leaves, I’ll be going,” Hookstead said.

Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead is assisted by a crew of longtime poll workers as she runs the April 7 election.

New Clinton clerk runs successful election after weeks of nerves

In the Clinton Town Hall, just off County Road X, Roehl-Wickingson last week was running her first election as town clerk. She spent the day answering questions from poll workers, working through new problems, and greeting older residents curious about the new person running their elections.

Some had been skeptical, particularly because she lives 20 miles north in Harmony. A law passed last year allows municipalities to appoint clerks who live outside of town borders.

“I’ve been nervous all day,” she said, as she sat in the clerk’s office on Election Day with paperwork instructing her what to do at every step. She added that each time her chief inspector comes around to ask her a question, “I think, please let it be easy.”

Roehl-Wickingson was a longtime General Motors employee, working at the Janesville plant as an assembly worker until its mass-layoffs in late 2008. She then worked as a union representative at a GM plant in Kansas City, where part of her job was spent registering union workers to vote and getting out the vote. She retired in 2024, wanting to get back home to her family in Rock County.

But retiring doesn’t mean she’s “ready to sit still in the rocking chair,” Roehl-Wickingson said from her office, where she sat beneath a street sign reading “Clerk Way.” She shuffled through stacks of paper, checking lists, double-checking them, pausing only to answer a question before returning to the lists.

When her daughter told her about the clerk opening, she felt she was the right person to take it on. Roehl-Wickingson said her position as a union rep prepared her for the contentious election landscape.

“I won’t say I’m thrilled to death about it, but I knew the atmosphere,” she said. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

Even so, the lead-up to Election Day was consuming. She said she barely slept the night before, instead rereading the election manual again and again, afraid she might miss something.

“My husband was like, ‘You’re gonna get sick,’ because I’ve been nervous the last couple of weeks and running ragged, making sure I had everything,” she said.

By early afternoon on Election Day, Tim Tollefson had turned up to meet with Roehl-Wickingson. He was making his way around the county to check on new clerks, a task he took on after his wife encouraged him to help mentor the wave of new clerks.

Much of the job, he said, is procedural, not entirely different from managing inventory at his former job as a manager at the outdoor recreation retailer Gander Mountain. Tollefson said some bits came easy for him, and the rest came with time. Two years, he said, is around how long it can take to start feeling like you have a grip on the role.

Until then, it can be overwhelming.

Both Tollefsons have been essential to her success, Roehl-Wickingson said. Without the support system, she said she would have felt lost doing things like compiling the town budget.

“You definitely need guidance,” she said. “You just don’t know what you don’t know,” she said.

That guidance extends beyond any one person. Over time, Roehl-Wickingson said, the job has started to make more sense — in part because of formal training, but just as much because of the network of clerks across the county.

“If [Lisa] didn’t pull us together, I’m not sure we would have that on our own,” she said.

By Election Day, Roehl-Wickingson had done everything she could to prepare. Too nervous to set up the polling place the day before, she went in on the Saturday before Election Day, spending hours making sure every table, sign, and voting booth was exactly where it needed to be.

As the day wound down, she glanced at the analog clock on the wall: just before 8 p.m.

The room had emptied. No last-minute voters came through the door.

When the clock struck the hour, her chief inspector closed the polls.

There was plenty left for Roehl-Wickingson to do. But first, she checked the numbers — ballots cast versus the number of voters checked in.

Both were 225.

“I’m so glad,” she said, thanking her chief inspector.

For all her nerves, the first outing of Roehl-Wickingson’s late-blooming career as an election official was a success.

“At times, it’s very consuming and daunting and overwhelming, but at the same token, today, I feel kind of a sense of excitement,” she said. “And it’s rewarding to know that you’ve been a part of it, and you put it together, and you’ve been that cog in the wheel.”

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

Pennsylvania county bans poll workers from using election prediction markets

2026-04-15T09:00:00+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.

A county in southeastern Pennsylvania has banned its poll workers from using prediction markets to bet on elections.

The board of elections in Delaware County, outside of Philadelphia, recently approved a resolution that amended the oath poll workers take ahead of the election to include the ban.

“I think they’re a pernicious, horrible factor and I don’t think elections should be bet on in one shape or form,” said Delaware County elections director Jim Allen. “The last thing we need is the referee in elections being accused of having a financial stake in these so-called prediction markets.”

Prediction markets offer users the opportunity to take financial positions on outcomes in sports, world events, and even elections.

For example, Kalshi, one such prediction market, has a U.S. elections section that currently allows users to put money on who will win the California governor’s race or which party will win control of the U.S. Senate this year. Polymarket, another popular prediction market, has over 500 events related to the midterms that users can bet on, including who will win the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district.

Under Pennsylvania law, poll workers are already prohibited from “directly or indirectly” betting on the results of an election or primary election. Delaware County is going a step further by adding prediction markets specifically to the oath.

The markets argue that their systems are not the same as betting.

For instance, Arizona’s attorney general is currently pursuing a criminal case against Kalshi for violating that state’s law on election betting, but Kalshi has argued it is a financial market rather than a gambling operation. That’s because, instead of betting against the house as one would in a casino, users are buying and selling “Yes” or “No” contracts tied to the probability of the outcome of an event.

There hasn’t been any similar legal action in Pennsylvania testing whether prediction markets violate the ban on election betting here, and the county election board’s resolution that added the prediction market ban to Delaware County’s oath wouldn’t carry the same weight as a state law.

A non-comprehensive survey of other counties in Pennsylvania found none that have similarly banned poll workers from using prediction markets beyond the existing ban on betting. The Pennsylvania Department of State did not respond to a question about whether its staff was prohibited from using prediction markets to take a stake in elections.

Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, said she wasn’t aware of any other jurisdiction taking similar steps, although she noted that in Maryland — where gambling on elections is illegal throughout the state — the state board of elections recently put out a statement advising that use of prediction markets for wagers involving elections, at best, violates the spirit of state law and, at worst, could carry criminal penalties.

“The most fundamental worry that comes to mind for me is that prediction markets could create financial incentives to influence outcomes rather than just predict outcomes,” Morrell said.

She warned that commodifying elections in general could have detrimental effects for democracy.

“If we make votes become like a financial instrument, then it really degrades the character of those votes,” she said. “Now we’re shifting the framing from who should lead to who will win, and that’s a very different question.”

State Rep. Danilo Burgos, a Democrat from Philadelphia, has said he plans to introduce legislation to regulate prediction markets, while state Sen. Lindsey Williams, a Democrat from Allegheny County, has suggested legislation to address the risk that public officials could use non-public information to profit through prediction markets. However, neither proposal has yet been actually introduced.

Allen said that, while the rules on these markets may change in the future, elections are still happening in the meantime and public trust in their integrity needs to be maintained.

“We have the Wild West out there on this front, and we need to do something to prevent it from seeping into the election process,” he said.

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

Antrim County clerk allegedly changed, canceled voter registrations, state says

2026-04-15T00:56:43+00:00

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

The Michigan Bureau of Elections is demanding answers from a controversial county clerk who reportedly canceled or changed voters’ registrations when she wasn’t supposed to.

The bureau sent a letter to Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop on Tuesday saying it had received information suggesting she had made voter registration changes “that fall outside the scope of your statutory authority and fail to comply with the law.”

Bishop, a Republican, was first elected in 2024 on a platform of cleaning up Antrim County’s voter roll. She is associated with the wing of the Republican Party that claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump.

Michigan says Antrim County clerk canceled voter registrations

The bureau learned that Bishop, who took office in 2025, apparently sent confirmation and cancellation notices — essentially, notices sent by election officials when they believe a voter has moved — to an unknown number of voters who didn’t vote in the last two major elections. However, the bureau noted in the letter, “Michigan law is explicit that a clerk may not cancel, or cause the cancellation of, a voter’s registration solely because a voter has missed one or two elections.”

The bureau also said it has information suggesting Bishop did not independently verify the information she acted on to send the notices, as required by the state’s election officials’ manual.

The letter says Bishop also allegedly changed voters’ statuses in the state voter file, known as the Qualified Voter File or QVF, to “Cancel” or “Reject” “without any agreement or delegation of authority allowing you to do so from the affected local jurisdiction.”

County clerks aren’t allowed to unilaterally update the QVF or send such notices to voters, even for proper reasons. Michigan law puts local clerks — at the city and township level — in charge of maintaining voter records for their jurisdictions.

The letter, signed by Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater, asks Bishop to provide a detailed explanation of what she did and why, as well as a justification for her actions. It goes on to request lists of the voters to whom she sent notices and whose status she changed in the QVF.

Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, said that the bureau began looking into Bishop’s actions after receiving “reports about concerning activity” from voters and local clerks alike. From there, state officials looked at the QVF and found enough irregularities to prompt the requests to Bishop.

“The BOE is able to see the activity of clerks in the QVF,” Benander said.

Bishop did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday evening.

Antrim County is a hotbed of election conspiracy theories

Controversy has swirled around Antrim County elections even before Bishop took office. The northern Michigan county was at the center of election conspiracy theories following the 2020 election, when the county’s unofficial results initially showed Joe Biden winning the heavily Republican county by a few thousand votes. The error, which occurred after ballot tabulators weren’t correctly updated, was quickly corrected, but Trump and others seized on the mistake as evidence that voting machines were rigged against him.

In the 2024 election, Bishop defeated the county clerk who had overseen the error by pledging to “restore election integrity in Antrim County.” During that campaign, Bishop said she believed “we still have dead people and people who no longer live in Antrim County” on the voter roll and promised to work with local clerks to remove them before the 2026 election.

Bishop is married to Randy Bishop, a conservative talk radio host best known as “Trucker Randy” who has claimed to have evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.

Antrim County will hold a few small elections in May, but township clerks will do the vast majority of the work to oversee those.

But if Bishop is unable to provide the requested information to the state, it could be the first step in ultimately stripping her of her election-related duties. The state has done it before — Stan Grot, the Shelby Township clerk, only recently had his own authority reinstated after being accused of election-related felonies. Other local clerks were removed just before the 2024 election for telling state officials they planned to hand-count ballots.

It is also possible Bishop could face criminal charges. The letter notes that failure to “obey a lawful instruction given by the Secretary may result in a criminal misdemeanor.”

It wouldn’t be Bishop’s first brush with the law; last year, the Michigan Department of State reprimanded Bishop for filing incorrect campaign finance disclosures, and a judge found her in contempt of court.

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

Wisconsin GOP advised officials not to count late-arriving ballots, raising possibility of legal challenge

2026-04-14T13:28:15+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.

An attorney for the Republican Party of Wisconsin told local officials ahead of a key vote last week that Madison should not count 23 absentee ballots from last week’s Supreme Court election that arrived at polling places after they had closed — a dispute that could set up a legal challenge.

The GOP weighed in hours before the Madison Board of Canvassers voted unanimously on Friday to count the affected ballots. On Monday, the Dane County Board of Canvassers followed suit, voting 2-1 to count the ballots.

Election officials make these judgment calls all the time, and, historically, courts have allowed them. Officials are routinely called upon to address whether a witness address is complete, whether a damaged ballot can still be counted, or the like. These issues are usually resolved locally and without controversy.

But disputes like this — over how to interpret the law and whether late-arriving ballots should count — are harder to contain. Experts say leaving those decisions to individual counties risks inconsistent outcomes across Wisconsin, especially in a high-stakes election season.

Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, said that kind of patchwork approach is a recipe for conflict.

“This is not tenable in the current political atmosphere,” Hasen said.

Dane County votes to count ballots despite GOP opposition

The kind of disagreement worrying Hasen was on full display at Monday’s meeting of the Dane County Board of Canvassers. Two canvassers said there was a clear answer about what to do with the ballots — but they arrived at different ones.“I don’t think this is hard,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said.

“I don’t either,” said canvasser Mike Willett, a former Dane County supervisor and a Republican appointee on the board.

McDonell voted to count the ballots, while Willett voted against it, saying the board had previously rejected late-arriving ballots and he didn’t want to create exceptions.

Erik Paulson, the other Democrat on the board, sided with McDonell to count the ballots.

Republican opposition was already taking shape before the vote. Emails obtained by Votebeat show that Nicholas Boerke, an outside attorney for the Wisconsin GOP, urged city and county officials on Friday not to count the ballots.

“We recognize this situation may have resulted from an unfortunate logistical failure. However, administrative error does not create statutory authority that otherwise does not exist,” he wrote.

“Voting absentee is a privilege granted by the Legislature that comes with inherent risks and the election day deadline for the receipt, processing, tabulation, and counting is mandatory,” he continued.

The canvass, Boerke told officials, was a “ministerial process, not a vehicle for processing absentee ballots” that weren’t received by the time dictated in law, “nor a mechanism to conduct an unauthorized recount.”

Amber McReynolds, an assistant attorney for Madison, responded that counting the ballots was in line with court decisions and past Wisconsin Elections Commission recommendations.

Boerke responded, telling officials the GOP maintains “that the statutory language is clear—absentee ballots that are not timely delivered to polling locations before 8 p.m. may not be counted.”

Boerke didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the GOP would sue Madison.

Error led to 23 Madison absentee ballots arriving late

The ballots at issue arrived at the city clerk’s office on Monday, April 6. The absentee ballot courier carrying the ballots left a city facility at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 7, to deliver ballots to 17 different polling places, but the courier did not make it to the last few polling places until after the 8 p.m. deadline.

Officials said these 23 ballots were correctly, legally cast and checked into the pollbooks just like any other absentee ballot — the only problem was that that happened after polls formally closed.

Madison Clerk Lydia McComas said it was a critical error to put just one person in charge of delivering ballots to so many polling places. Madison is the largest city in Wisconsin that still chooses to count absentee ballots at individual precincts rather than at a central location — a decision that requires ballots to be transported across the city on Election Day.

It remains unclear, however, why the ballots departed from the city’s facility so late in the day. Across the state, clerks design their Election Day logistics to ensure ballots are delivered by that cutoff. McComas said it was her and her staff’s understanding that the law required ballots to be delivered to polling places by 8 p.m.

There appears to be little appetite among clerks to formally extend that deadline.

“I do not plan to take advantage of whatever ruling comes here tonight,” McComas said ahead of the county vote, implying that she wouldn’t take advantage of the canvassing board’s leniency and plan for future late deliveries accordingly.

McDonell said rejecting the ballots would penalize voters for something outside their control. “And I think that’s very problematic,” he said.

Disagreement over Wisconsin election law is ripe for legal challenges

The statute at issue in this situation says ballots must be returned so that they’re delivered to polling places “no later than 8 p.m. on election day.”

“If the municipal clerk receives an absentee ballot on election day,” the law continues, “the clerk shall secure the ballot and cause the ballot to be delivered to the polling place serving the elector’s residence before 8 p.m. Any ballot not mailed or delivered as provided in this subsection may not be counted.”

At the county-level meeting on Monday, county attorney David Gault, arguing that the ballots should be counted, took the position that the law does not apply here because the ballots were received before Election Day.

“The clear intent of everything in the statutes,” he said, is not to punish the voter for mistakes made by election officials.

“That’s certainly an interpretation,” said Willett, the conservative member of the county canvassing board. “When we start making these exceptions, these exceptions just grow.”

What’s clear to Bryna Godar — a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative — is that the statute is “ambiguous about this type of situation.” She said one part of the law appears to govern voters returning ballots on time, while another addresses ballots received on Election Day — leaving situations like this unclear.

“Because there is no voter fault here from what we know so far, there would be good reason to still count those ballots,” she said, adding that rejecting them could raise constitutional concerns.

At the city meeting on Friday, McReynolds noted that courts ruled in the 1970s and 1980s that ballots should be counted as long as there’s “substantial compliance” with election laws and no evidence of “connivance, fraud, or undue influence.”

In 1985, however, the Legislature passed a law emphasizing that absentee voting is a privilege exercised outside the usual safeguards of the polling place and that ballots not meeting legal requirements “may not be counted.”

Boerke cited that law in his exchange with the city and county, as conservatives have done repeatedly in issues of absentee ballot missteps and controversies.

Still, the courts have continued to show flexibility. In a 2004 dispute, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that “the failure on the part of the election officials to perform their duties should not deprive the voters of their constitutional right to vote.”

Lawyers often say that it’s more important for a law to be certain than for it to be right, said Hasen, the UCLA professor. Uncertainty — especially when there are good-faith arguments on either side — is one of the most dangerous situations in election law.

“That just creates all kinds of issues of equal protection and due process and election fairness,” he said. “So the more that these issues can be resolved one way or the other, not in the heat of a very close election, the better it is.”

If an election hinges on ballots like these, he said, a lawsuit is all but inevitable.

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

A California sheriff seized ballots, testing the limits of local power over elections

2026-04-13T09:00:00+00:00

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

Over the past few weeks, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — who is also a Republican candidate for governor of California — has taken the unusual step of seizing ballots from a recent election, launching his own recount, and opening a criminal investigation into how the election was run.

“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” Bianco said during a press conference after he and his deputies seized the ballots last month.

The premise of Bianco’s investigation is sharply disputed. Bianco has pointed to the claims of a conservative citizens’ activist group that says it found an apparent discrepancy of tens of thousands of ballots — a figure election officials and independent experts say stems from a misreading of preliminary vote data, not an actual gap between ballots cast and ballots counted.

California’s attorney general moved to stop the investigation, which is now on pause. Bianco seized more ballots, anyway, and says the effort to stop his recount is “politically motivated.” Courts this week ordered the unsealing of the warrants used to justify the seizures, which showed a yearslong relationship between Bianco’s office and the conservative activist group. On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court also ordered a halt to Bianco’s investigation.

And the ripples may be spreading beyond California. Bianco told USA Today last week that the publicity has prompted law enforcement officials around the country to contact him because they’re interested in conducting similar election investigations.

Local law enforcement has a clearer path to investigate elections

As the president has called for Republicans to “nationalize the voting,” a lot of people right now are worried about the possibility of federal intervention in the midterm elections — in no small part due to the administration’s efforts to seize election materials from across the country. But Blanco’s efforts raise different questions.

Local actions like those in Riverside can move with a speed and force that federal interventions rarely match, and their consequences can cut closer to the machinery of elections itself.

Elections in the U.S. are run locally. So is law enforcement. That overlap creates a real vulnerability. The same county responsible for storing and counting ballots is also overseen by a sheriff who can get a warrant, enter election facilities, and take materials as part of a criminal investigation. In contrast, federal authorities seeking to obtain election materials have to establish jurisdiction and work through multiple layers of oversight. A local sheriff can act much more quickly, often before state officials or courts have time to respond.

Bianco, for example, used a standard criminal process. After opening a fraud investigation, his office got search warrants from a local judge and sent his own deputies to the county registrar to take custody of the ballots, just as they would in seizing evidence for any other criminal case. Within weeks of a complaint, hundreds of thousands of ballots were in law enforcement hands, and the same law enforcement agents began a recount.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said those differences can sometimes cut the other way — as they have, at least in part, in California. There, the attorney general has been able to intervene quickly, ordering Bianco to halt his investigation and filing multiple legal challenges that prompted Bianco to pause the effort while courts sort out whether it was lawful. In California, Levitt said, the attorney general has more authority over local law enforcement than you might find elsewhere.

Still, that’s a different path than federal officials followed when they seized 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, in January. Federal authorities had to build a case, coordinate with prosecutors, and get approval through several layers of Justice Department and judicial review before initiating the seizure. While critics of the Trump administration say review has become a formality, it’s a formality that still takes a lot of time. And while Bianco got right to work on a recount, it’s still unclear exactly what the DOJ intends to do with Fulton County’s ballots.

Joshua Douglas, a professor at the University of Kentucky specializing in election law, said that despite Riverside’s presence in the news, interference by local law enforcement in local election administration remains rare. Even in Northern California’s Shasta County, which has been consumed by fights over election administration for years, the sheriff has remained completely uninvolved.

“In the routine aspect of election administration,” Douglas said, law enforcement would only be involved “after the fact, when there were specific allegations of wrongdoing at the polls” by those qualified to make such assessments. In Riverside, by contrast, Bianco has pointed to disputed claims about vote totals — raised by a citizens group and rejected by election officials — rather than any verified evidence or specific allegation of criminal conduct to justify opening an investigation.Some law enforcement offices have fraud hotlines, which have been popular for decades, but rarely turn up anything. Other times they’ll investigate after specifically being asked to by the elections office or the local district attorney. Typically, Douglas said, that’s “good for confidence in the system — because most often something is investigated because of an accusation, but nothing nefarious actually happened.” The investigation in Riverside, he notes, is proceeding on a fundamentally different track. And while that’s concerning, he doesn’t expect that other law enforcement offices will act in the same way.

The political implications of the investigation are murky

Lots of things make Riverside a special case. Chiefly, Bianco’s candidacy for governor raises an obvious question of self-interest — he may be using the powers of his office to elevate a political issue that he thinks will benefit him as a candidate. He is also stepping into the administration of the same election system he wants to compete in — a personal conflict many have long complained about in relation to secretaries of state who run for office during their tenures.

But the political upside he appeared to be chasing has proven more limited than it first seemed.

Former President Donald Trump, whose backing could have consolidated Republican support behind Bianco, instead endorsed his opponent, Steve Hilton — a move that reshapes the dynamics of the race and undercuts the idea that Bianco’s high-profile investigation translated into political momentum.

Bianco will now have to reckon, in court and in the political arena, with his decision to seize more than half a million ballots, breaking the chain of custody. Sensitive voter data — signatures, addresses, voting records — could be put at risk.

How that plays out now could shape the risk of similar interventions by local law enforcement elsewhere — a potential threat to the safe, free, and fair conduct of elections that experts say is worth as much attention as any other.

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

Can Madison count some ballots delivered after an 8 p.m. deadline?

2026-04-10T00:40:42+00:00

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

Update, April 10, 4:45 p.m.: The Madison canvassing board on Friday unanimously voted to count the 23 ballots that arrived after 8 p.m. on Election Day. Assistant City Attorney Amber McReynolds said the error was made by the city clerk’s staff, not voters, and that past precedent supports counting the ballots. The county canvass begins Monday.

Madison poll workers on Election Day counted 23 absentee ballots that arrived at four polling places after 8 p.m. Tuesday, despite a state law requiring that absentee ballots be “delivered to the polling place no later than 8 p.m.” in order to be tallied.

The law provides no clear exception to that deadline and says ballots not delivered on time “may not be counted.” But court rulings have given boards of canvassers broad discretion in these cases, allowing them to count ballots as long as there’s “substantial compliance” with election laws and no evidence of “connivance, fraud, or undue influence.”

A past Wisconsin Supreme Court case held that election statutes don’t need to be fully complied with, so long as election officials preserve the will of the voter.

City election officials instructed poll workers to count and mark the affected ballots — which all arrived by the end of the night on Monday, the day before Election Day — in case the city, county, or state decides to exclude them.

It is unclear why the ballots — which had been in the city’s possession for several hours before the deadline — were so delayed in arriving at the polling places.

The late delivery marks another potentially significant error in how the city handles its ballots, after it faced extensive public scrutiny and a state investigation for disenfranchising 193 voters whose ballots were misplaced in the November 2024 election.

It’s the first high-turnout election run by City Clerk Lydia McComas, hired to replace the clerk who oversaw the 2024 ballot snafu. McComas said her office had informed the Wisconsin Elections Commission of the situation.

Ballots left the city late and got to polls after deadline

Those ballots were in the hands of a ballot courier, who left a city election facility around 6:30 p.m. to deliver ballots to the polls. The courier arrived at those final four polling locations after 8 p.m., reaching the final one at about 8:30 p.m, delivering a combined 23 ballots to all of them, according to a statement from the city.

“Due to a longer-than-usual delivery time, the very last few ballots arrived at four polling places shortly after polls closed,” McComas said.

When similar incidents happened in the past, the county board of canvassers didn’t count those votes in the final canvass based on legal advice, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said. He said he’s waiting for more details before deciding how to proceed with these ballots at Monday’s county canvass meeting.

In those past incidents, the county board decided that not counting the ballots in the final county tally “was an obvious choice based on the way the statute’s written,” McDonell said. “The statute isn’t vague.”

Given the ballots’ timely arrival, McDonell said, “they should have gotten out to the polls and should have been counted on time.”

Other municipalities have counted ballots discovered late

Other election officials have at times decided to count ballots discovered after the 8 p.m. deadline, but the rules for municipalities are different depending on their procedures for counting absentee ballots.

In November 2020, Milwaukee workers discovered nearly 400 uncounted ballots during a recount. A campaign representative for President Donald Trump objected to those ballots being included, but the municipal canvassing board unanimously decided that they should count.

At the February 2022 election, Wauwatosa election officials discovered 58 unopened ballots. After consulting the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the city attorney for advice, the city clerk convened the Wauwatosa Board of Canvassers, which included the missing ballots in the totals.

But the rules that allowed Milwaukee and Wauwatosa to count those ballots may not apply to Madison. In both of those cities, absentee ballots are counted in a central location. In Madison, absentee ballots are counted at the polling locations where the registered voter would have voted in person.

In cities like Madison, election workers must deliver absentee ballots to polling places by 8 p.m. For central count municipalities, by comparison, state law only says election officials there shall count ballots received by the clerk by 8 p.m., without clarifying that they must be in a certain place by that point.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has said the 193 ballots Madison missed in 2024 could have been counted had the city made the appropriate notifications to state authorities. But those ballots were likely already at polling places on Election Day — unlike the 23 ballots here, which arrived after the deadline.

Correction, April 10: Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell was misspelled in an earlier version of this article. It has been corrected.

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

After ‘false elector’ charges cleared, Michigan clerk can once again run his township’s elections

2026-04-09T09:00:00+00:00

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

Stan Grot is once again in charge of Shelby Township’s elections.

Grot, the Shelby Township Clerk, was one of 16 people charged with a number of felonies connected to their role as so-called “false electors” for President Donald Trump in 2020. As a result, the state stripped Grot of his ability to run the community’s elections in 2023.

Those charges — against Grot and the others accused — were dropped in September. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel last month announced she wouldn’t appeal the dismissal of charges, after determining that her chances of success on appeal were limited.

And now, the Michigan Department of State confirms Grot is once again leading elections in his Macomb County community. The state notified Grot of the change in January, according to spokesperson Angela Benander.

The reinstatement came three years after Director of Elections Jonathan Brater wrote in a letter that Grot was to stop administering elections “to ensure public trust and confidence in the integrity and security of elections.” His deputy, an unelected official named Craig Cowper, was tasked with the work in his absence.

Grot did not respond to requests for comment from Votebeat. He had previously described the experience of facing charges as “pure hell” and said he “did nothing wrong.” Elections are a “very small” part of the job, he told The Detroit News in 2024.

He and his attorney maintained his innocence. They said party officials told Grot the document he signed — which falsely certified the state’s electoral votes for Trump — was a contingency, signed in case President Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan in 2020 was overturned. Biden ultimately won the state by more than 150,000 votes.

Grot has been the clerk in Shelby Township since 2012, and has often run unopposed by Democrats in the city of about 80,000. He won re-election multiple times, including in 2024, during the time he was barred from running elections.

Nessel has maintained that the slate of “false electors” committed crimes including election law forgery and several counts of conspiracy, going so far as to release a 110-page report laying out the argument. The charges against Grot and the others were dismissed when a judge ruled last year that prosecutors had not sufficiently proven that the people in question had criminal intent.

“The dismissal of the false slate charges does not change the facts, and it does not change history,” Nessel’s report read. “What Michigan’s false slate did was wrong.”

Shelby Township’s next election is in August.

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

Anthony Forlini wins Republican nomination for Michigan secretary of state

2026-03-28T22:45:41+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.

NOVI, Mich. — Michigan Republicans have selected Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini to be their secretary of state candidate, moving a key piece into place for November’s closely watched contest to be the state’s next top election official.

At the Michigan Republican Party’s endorsement convention here on Saturday, Forlini won 55% of the vote on the first ballot, avoiding a second round of voting. Oakland County activist Monica Yatooma received 25%, and Clarkston school board member Amanda Love received 19%.

Unlike in most other states, Michigan parties select their nominees for secretary of state and certain other down-ballot offices, like attorney general, through a delegate vote at conventions, not in statewide primaries. Democrats will select their secretary of state nominee at their convention on April 19.

The winner of the November general election will succeed Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is term-limited and running for governor. As Michigan’s top election official, their job duties will include issuing IDs, registering vehicles, and overseeing the 2028 presidential election in the crucial swing state.

If Forlini wins the general election, he would be the state’s first Republican to hold the office since Ruth Johnson from 2011 to 2019.

Forlini touted his experience running elections

Forlini was elected Macomb County clerk in 2020 and won a second term in 2024. As part of that job, he oversees elections in the state’s third-most-populous county and maintains vital records, such as marriage licenses and birth and death certificates.

A graduate of Western Michigan University, he previously served in the Michigan House and as supervisor of Harrison Township and has also run a financial services firm. He has three children and four grandchildren.

Forlini’s supporters credited his victory to his experience running elections. Brian Pannebecker, a delegate from Macomb County, said he voted for Forlini because he’s known him for more than two decades and considers him a good person.

“I’ve followed his career, from Harrison Township to state rep, and I know him to be honest and a decent family man,” he said.

Even those who voted for other candidates liked Forlini’s background, they told Votebeat.

“Forlini seems like a good guy,” said Bill Holt, an Oakland County delegate who wore an Amanda Love shirt at the convention. “He’s got good experience.”

Forlini was excited but subdued after his victory, explaining that he had a cold. But he told reporters he was looking forward to campaigning to a broader base of voters now.

“I think it’s what Michiganders are looking for,” he said of his campaign message. “People in Macomb County, a purple county, are looking for people to work hard and do their job. The politics is not important. It’s important we do what we say we’re going to do.”

Conventiongoers were also excited about Forlini’s perceived electability, a top concern for the party after it nominated Kristina Karamo as its secretary of state candidate in 2022. Karamo, who repeated Trump’s baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud in the 2020 election, lost to Benson 56% to 42%.

A wall of campaign signs at the Michigan GOP convention in Novi on March 28, 2026.

Pannebecker expected Forlini would be able to turn out voters who otherwise might not cast ballots in the midterms.

“He’s got a loyal base,” Pannebecker said. “He’s well known and well liked. It’s going to make a difference.”

Sen. Jim Runestad, the chair of the Michigan GOP, said that Forlini and Doug Lloyd, who was nominated for attorney general, are both “highly qualified” candidates.

Forlini “has done a wonderful job” as Macomb clerk, Runestad said, and has a track record of defeating incumbent Democrats in past elections.

“We couldn’t have gotten a better candidate for secretary of state,” he said.

Forlini’s platform emphasizes election security

Stylistically, Forlini is more of a mainstream conservative than his rival Yatooma, a prolific X poster who won backing from a number of prominent people who have cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election and campaigned at the convention with signs that read, “ARREST JOCELYN BENSON.”

But Forlini has still made election security a major focus of his campaign and tenure as Macomb County clerk. That was a top issue for conservative voters across the convention, Pannebecker said.

Forlini regularly touts that, as clerk, he conducted a forensic audit of the 2020 election in his county, which turned up no outside interference. He also introduced watermarked paper for ballots and hash validations on tabulators — an algorithmic tool that helps election officials verify software was not tampered with after certification.

Ahead of the 2024 election, he trained poll workers at the county level — unusual in Michigan, where each municipality runs its own elections — to ensure everything across the county would run smoothly. As secretary of state, Forlini has promised to clean up the voter rolls and provide additional training for election workers.

Forlini has also teamed up with Americans for Citizens Voting, a group attempting to put a question on the November ballot about whether Michiganders should need to prove their citizenship to register to vote. He promoted a number of ACV’s signature-gathering events over the winter and encouraged those who were gathering signatures for the effort to make sure they returned them to be counted. When ACV announced it had enough signatures to potentially make the ballot, Forlini called it “phenomenal” in a campaign email.

Forlini has also attempted to root out noncitizens on the voter roll in Macomb County using the list of people who claimed to be noncitizens to get out of jury duty. His investigation identified 15 potential noncitizens, but the Michigan Department of State later found the number was smaller and that a number of people Forlini flagged were actually citizens.

In addition, Forlini has repeatedly emphasized transparency as one of his major platform planks. He recently released tens of thousands of ballot images online as part of the county’s new “Ballot Verifier” program, and he has promised to make records requests responses more “straightforward and timely,” according to his campaign website.

While Forlini sees elections as a critical part of being secretary of state, he told Votebeat earlier this month he’s also interested in the less flashy parts of the job. That includes things like overseeing the Office of the Great Seal, which handles notaries, as well as modernizing the state’s driver’s license and registration programs.

Forlini faced scrutiny over hiring Jan. 6 attendee

Back in 2022, Forlini faced criticism for hiring Genevieve Peters Scott (now a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate) to train poll workers in Macomb County. Peters Scott attended the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to reporting by Politico, and encouraged the crowd there to “storm the gates.”

Forlini told The Detroit News at the time that Peters Scott was one of several people who applied for the job and was “head and shoulders” above other candidates.

Peters Scott, speaking to Votebeat on Saturday, said that Forlini picked her because of her “passion and energy.”

She applauded his victory, saying he would be the “most outstanding secretary of state Michigan ever had or will have.” Welling up, she called him a man of “deep integrity.”

“He doesn’t go to make friends, he goes to set the standard,” Peters Scott said. “And, on the way, he sets the standard and makes friends.”

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

Embattled Chester County election director Karen Barsoum to resign after primary

2026-03-26T20:03:57+00:00

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

The election director in Chester County, under fire for a series of administrative errors and accusations of a hostile work environment, is resigning from her role.

In a Thursday memo to staff of the county’s voter services department, Karen Barsoum said her final day with the county would be June 12, after the county’s 2026 primary election results are certified.

“After careful consideration, I feel it is the right time for me to embrace new opportunities for both professional and personal growth,” the letter said. “After my service with the County ends, I will be announcing my future plans.”

Barsoum had faced criticism from the public in recent months following a highly publicized pollbook error in the 2025 municipal election and more recent revelations that the county had misprinted names on mail ballot applications in that same election. She also faced complaints of a toxic work culture at the department under her management.

Last November, the county’s pollbooks, which are used to check in voters at polling places, were printed without independent or third-party voters, forcing those voters to either cast provisional ballots or return once supplemental pollbooks could be printed. The error resulted in more than 12,000 voters having to cast provisional ballots, although nearly all of them were eventually counted.

An independent investigation eventually determined that human error was the root cause of the mistake, but that poor employee training and insufficient double-checking had compounded it and allowed the erroneous pollbooks to be deployed on Election Day.

At a county board of elections meeting in February discussing the error and the county’s plan to prevent it from happening again in the future, speakers called for Barsoum to be fired. Some were former employees of the department who accused department leadership of creating a negative work environment. In December, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a report highlighting the department’s high staff turnover under Barsoum, with some former employees accusing her of “bullying” and creating a “hostile work environment.”

Shortly after that February meeting, Votebeat and Spotlight PA reported that the county had sent mail ballot applications to voters that mistakenly switched the voters’ first and last names, which the county said was the result of a printing error made by its vendor.

Asked what her plans were after leaving the department, Barsoum referred Votebeat and Spotlight PA to the statement in her letter that she will announce that after her employment with the county ends.

A spokesperson for the county said the board of elections “appreciates Ms. Barsoum’s work on behalf of the Department of Voter Services over the past five years” and that it is moving quickly to find a new director.

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

Michigan warns clerks against using jury pools to hunt for noncitizen voters

2026-03-12T21:44:38+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.

Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini has started what he calls “a movement” to compare jury duty questionnaires — specifically the forms where people claim they are not U.S. citizens and therefore ineligible to serve — with voter rolls. The Michigan Department of State is urging caution.

MDOS sent a memo to election officials statewide on Thursday advising them of the potential pitfalls of comparing jury lists to the Qualified Voter File. A copy of the memo, obtained by Votebeat, warns that without collaboration with legal counsel and state election officials, missteps in the process could wrongly strip eligible voters of their registration or expose them to scrutiny.

“It is critical that election officials proceed carefully before cancelling or changing voters’ status in QVF to ensure that U.S. citizens have the opportunity to confirm their eligibility,” the office warns. Following these steps ensures eligible voters “do not have their registrations cancelled, and they are not otherwise accused of improper conduct or subject to undue criminal investigation.”

Comparing the jury pools — and the people who self-select out by claiming a lack of citizenship — with the voter rolls can be a fraught way to find noncitizens. But Forlini says it doesn’t need to be hard.

Forlini began his mission earlier this year, when he announced that he had identified hundreds of people who had sought to be excused from jury duty in Macomb County by saying they weren’t citizens. Of those 230 people, he found 15 that were also on the voter rolls.

Three of those people had also voted in the county, his office found. The Michigan Department of State, upon investigating Forlini’s claim, found that one person had cast a ballot in 2018 despite not being a citizen. Another was a citizen, while the third was under review. State officials also confirmed that some of the other people Forlini’s office had flagged as potential noncitizens based on the jury lists were in fact U.S. citizens after all.

It’s led to a messy fight between the Macomb County Clerk and the Department of State. Forlini has more recently said that of more than 600 people who reported a lack of citizenship in Macomb County in 2025, 18 were at some point registered to vote.

“Do I not, as the county clerk, have a responsibility … of at least looking back and forth to see if there is some similarities?” he told Votebeat on Thursday, adding that he had heard from other clerks who had started reviewing their own voter rolls in the same way. “The system is flawed.”

At least one other clerk has contacted the Department of State about using the jury lists and other databases to check registrations, department spokesperson Angela Benander said Thursday. The Bureau of Elections has also heard “indirectly of one or two others” exploring the idea, Benander said.

Forlini said it should be easy to separate noncitizens in the jury pool lists shared between MDOS and the counties. The Department of State says it isn’t that simple.

When the state sends counties lists of people for jury duty, it is required to include all county residents with driver’s licenses or state IDs — not just citizens. That means that sometimes, the list will include people who aren’t citizens — as well as people who weren’t at the time of registering for an ID but have since naturalized and may or may not have updated their citizenship statuses with the state.

“People often don’t update their citizenship status until they renew their driver’s license, “which may be years later,” the memo says. If the department tried to remove everyone listed as a noncitizen from the driver file, it would also exclude thousands of people who have since become U.S. citizens.

That would mean that “a large number of Michigan citizens who are legally obligated to report for jury service” wouldn’t be called, it continues.

Comparing two databases also comes with practical challenges. While MDOS controls both the Qualified Voter File and the driver file (known as CARS), they are administered by separate divisions within the department, the memo says.

Plus, someone might have a similar name but be a different person, someone might have filled out a form incorrectly, or someone may have falsely claimed noncitizenship to avoid jury duty.

In other jurisdictions around the country, efforts to cross-check jury lists or SAVE, a federal citizenship database, to identify noncitizens has resulted in U.S. citizens being wrongly flagged or even removed from voter rolls.

Dealing with citizenship can be “more tricky” than something like whether a voter has moved, said Marc Meredith, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on election administration.

Citizenship changes regularly — roughly 17,000 people become citizens in Michigan each year, the memo notes. Each day that passes after a given list was produced is another day someone may have gained citizenship, Meredith said. Someone on the voter rolls who isn’t a citizen is a concern, he said, but so is wrongfully removing eligible voters.

He said both scenarios are genuine threats, and the debate ultimately hinges on how people weigh the tradeoff. Conversations also polarize quickly.

“You’ll hear people say that we should do everything to avoid a single case [of noncitizen voting], and you’ll hear that one person prevented from voting is too many,” he said. “Most people, I think, would believe the truth falls somewhere in between.”

Noncitizen voting is already illegal and extremely rare. A statewide review last year identified 16 potential noncitizens who may have voted in the 2024 election, Michigan officials said at the time. But the MDOS memo also noted that roughly half of those initially flagged for review were in fact citizens, warning that without the additional review steps the state undertook, “U.S. citizens could have been referred for prosecution.”

The final number — representing a tiny fraction of the more than 5.7 million votes cast in the general election that year — mirrors what has been found by similar reviews in other states. A review in Georgia found 20 noncitizens among its 8.2 million registered voters in 2024.

Even so, the debate around noncitizen voting remains politically potent in Michigan and nationally. Organizers in Michigan said they submitted 750,000 signatures earlier this month for a proposal that would ask voters this fall to amend the state constitution to require would-be voters to show proof of citizenship upon registering. It would also require current voters to do so if the state can’t independently verify their status.

Nationally, President Donald Trump has touted the SAVE America Act, a controversial elections bill that would introduce many of the same provisions federally — going so far as to say he won’t sign any other bills until it passes.

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

Candidates’ faces on punching bags linked to 37 uncounted ballots in Hamtramck, Michigan

2026-03-10T23:28:20+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.

Punching bags hanging inside Hamtramck’s city clerk’s office — one with mayoral candidate Muhith Mahmood’s face taped to it — helped set off a chain of events that left 37 ballots uncounted in the city’s Nov. 5 mayoral election, a race Mahmood lost by just 11 votes.

Mahmood, a former city council member, told Votebeat the episode has left him and his supporters questioning the outcome. “We all talk about transparency,” he said. “This is not a good example.”

Mayor Adam Alharbi, who defeated Mahmood in the race for mayor and was sworn in in January, confirmed Tuesday that the punching bags were one reason interim City Manager Alexander Lagrou and a number of other unauthorized city officials entered the clerk’s office after the polls closed on Election Day. Aside from Mahmood, the image of a City Council candidate whose name is not yet public was also featured on the bags.

Inside the office were 37 uncounted absentee ballots. Officials’ entry broke the chain of custody, and canvassers ultimately chose not to count them as a result. Though those ballots could have changed the outcome of the narrowly decided race, they were not part of the count — including the recount requested by Mahmood, which slightly increased Alharbi’s margin of victory from 6 to 11 votes.

The fallout has upended Hamtramck City Hall. Former City Clerk Rana Faraj’s firing was reported Tuesday by The Detroit News, with officials citing the punching bags and the handling of the ballots as reasons for her dismissal. Meanwhile, Mahmood has appealed a judge’s decision allowing the ballots to remain excluded, leaving the legitimacy of the razor-thin result under continued scrutiny.

That December ruling said that canvassers had the authority to leave the 37 ballots out of the final count. The case now sits before the Michigan Court of Appeals.

No one knows who cast those ballots or who they were for. Months after Alharbi was sworn in as the city’s new mayor, Mahmood and his supporters still harbor doubts.

“Whoever they voted for, that should be in the count,” Mahmood said.

Alharbi maintains that the 37 ballots “came after the election” and should not have been counted to begin with. He has referred to them in the past as “fraudulent,” a characterization disputed by other officials and Mahmood’s lawyers.

Alharbi told Votebeat the decision to fire Faraj was tied in part to what he called “a clear lack of professional neutrality in office” as well as procedural errors relating to elections.

Faraj was placed on paid leave shortly after the November election. In December, she filed a lawsuit alleging that several city officials were retaliating against her for trying to flag “ongoing election integrity issues” in the city.

An attorney representing Faraj did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

How did Hamtramck get here?

Faraj has said that her staff noticed the discrepancy between the number of ballots received and those tabulated on election night. The missing 37 ballots, Deputy Clerk Abe Siblani told Votebeat in November, were the result of “human error at the counting board” where ballots are supposed to be fed into the tabulator.

In her lawsuit, Faraj suggested the problem occurred after workers cut the ballot envelopes open but then mistakenly mixed them with empty envelopes instead of tabulating them.

The ballots were unaccounted for until Nov. 7, when they were discovered, sealed, and ultimately delivered to the county under police escort.

By then, Lagrou and several other non-election officials had already entered the office — a move that broke the ballots’ chain of custody, the system meant to ensure the secure transfer of election documents throughout the election process. City officials have said no one knew the ballots were there at the time. But once the chain was broken, the fight over whether the ballots could be counted began.

Canvassers ultimately declined to take action, leaving the 37 ballots out of the final results.

Uncertainty in a city wracked by election problems

The dispute has unfolded against a backdrop of broader election turmoil in Hamtramck.

In August, two council members were charged with felonies after allegedly forging signatures on absentee ballots during the city’s 2023 council elections. One of them, Muhtasin Sadman, pleaded guilty to reduced charges late last month. The other, Mohammed Hassan, is scheduled for a jury trial next month, according to court records.

Four other men — including three current council members — were named in an April document Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel used to seek a special prosecutor in the case. Nessel has been a vocal critic against Hamtramck’s LGBTQ policies and the petition notes that critics have accused her of bringing other prosecutions due to anti-Muslim bias. Monroe County Prosecutor Jeffery Yorkey has been appointed, but did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

No other charges have been filed.

Alharbi said Hamtramck is working to rebuild its reputation and show “we’re not that anymore,” pushing back against assumptions that city officials are criminals. The punching bags are gone, he said, and he looks forward to welcoming in a new clerk. Alharbi said the city already has applicants for the job.

“And now,” he said, “we have a secure door on that office.”

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

Michigan will pick a new top election official this year. Here’s where the candidates stand.

2026-03-02T10:00:00+00:00

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

The 2026 elections will decide many things. One of them is who will administer the 2028 presidential election in one of the nation’s largest swing states.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson cannot run for reelection in 2026, meaning the state will have a new top elections official for the first time in eight years. Six candidates are running to replace her: Democrats Barb Byrum, Garlin Gilchrist, and Suzanna Shkreli and Republicans Anthony Forlini, Amanda Love, and Monica Yatooma. A fourth Republican, Articia Bomer, filed paperwork to run but told Votebeat she was dropping out and endorsing Forlini.

In Michigan, the two major parties each pick their secretary of state nominees (along with their nominees for attorney general and state Supreme Court) at endorsement conventions instead of primary elections. Republicans will hold their convention on March 28, while Democrats will hold theirs on April 19.

Votebeat reached out to the major-party candidates to ask their opinions on some of the biggest topics in election administration ahead of the conventions.

The questions: What do they think about requiring people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote? What are their thoughts on the security of Michigan’s elections? And what, in their opinion, is the most important part of the job of secretary of state? Elections, of course, aren’t the only part of the job in Michigan — the secretary of state also runs the driver’s license offices and vehicle registration, for example.

Yatooma could not be reached for an interview. Love initially agreed to an interview but then did not call Votebeat back. All other major-party candidates are listed alphabetically below.

Barb Byrum

Byrum, a Democrat, launched her campaign in May. She served six years in the Michigan House from 2007 to 2012. She was elected Ingham County clerk in 2012, a job she won again in 2016 and 2020.

Proof of citizenship

Byrum noted immediately that noncitizen voting is against the law and that there are checks in place to prevent it.

“As a clerk, if I find out a noncitizen voted, I absolutely [would] have gotten all of the information — the application to vote, as well as the voter history — and [turned] that over to law enforcement to do what law enforcement is supposed to do,” she said.

She pointed to state requirements that anyone without an ID who goes to vote signs an affidavit verifying their identity under penalty of perjury.

Election security

Byrum said she is “uniquely equipped” to address election security given her time as a county clerk. She said she’s managed 42 elections while clerk and served on a number of statewide and national boards focused on elections.

“I have quite a bit of experience when it comes to election security and technology,” she said. “I’ve done numerous tabletops [exercises where election officials simulate various hypothetical scenarios] with emergency managers around the state and the secretary of state’s office and other clerks, in regard to all of the physical security concerns that occur during Election Day, early voting, and during absentee counting boards.”

What else is important in the job?

People want a secretary of state who understands election administration, Byrum said, but they also want someone who will listen.

“I have that as well,” she said. “I owned and operated a retail hardware store for 20 years. I was raised in a family business, so I know how to listen to customers and implement their desires.”

Anthony Forlini

Forlini, a Republican, launched his campaign in September. He started his political career as the supervisor of Harrison Township before serving in the Michigan House from 2011 to 2016. He ran for Michigan’s 10th Congressional District in 2016 but came in fourth place out of five candidates in the primary. He was elected Macomb County clerk in 2020 and won the seat again in 2024.

Proof of citizenship

Forlini believes that it’s not enough for people to self-report their citizenship when they register to vote. The government “has some responsibility,” Forlini said, to verify their citizenship. He pointed to his recent attempt to find noncitizens on the voting rolls by comparing them to the jury pool as an example. That effort flagged 15 voters as potential noncitizens, although the secretary of state’s office later said that only five of them appeared to be, while at least three were citizens after all.

“How does this happen? Why does it happen? It’s a systemic problem, not a political problem,” he said. “Nobody wants noncitizens in the jury pool or on the voting records. … So we need to set up systems that are better to avoid this happening.”

Election security

Forlini said he believes Michigan’s elections are physically secure, adding that at least in Macomb County, voters do not feel threatened when they vote and are able to vote their conscience. He was less certain about cybersecurity, saying that when he initially became clerk, he felt there were “holes that could have been manipulated.”

“I think all clerks need … to do a little better job in holding the standards and the protocols in place,” Forlini said.

As clerk, he said he took measures to improve election security such as using watermarked paper for ballots and hash validations on tabulators — an algorithmic tool that helps election officials verify software was not tampered with after certification — and offering more training for clerks and election workers.

What else is important in the job?

Forlini said that while the job of secretary of state has a lot of responsibilities, one thing he thinks no one is paying attention to is the Office of the Great Seal, which manages requirements for notaries public.

“Who is notarizing the notaries? Think about it. With today’s technology, we don’t have … any good processes in place to ensure that that notary did indeed sign and notarize the signature,” he said. “It’s a huge, huge hole. Why do I know that? Because I’m also the register of deeds, and I see it.”

He added that “the bad guys” have figured out how to forge signatures in a way that looks legitimate. Concerns about that don’t often draw a lot of attention, Forlini said, because the office is “behind the scenes.”

Garlin Gilchrist

Gilchrist, a Democrat, joined the secretary of state race in January after dropping out of the race for governor. He has served as Michigan’s lieutenant governor since 2019. He also ran for Detroit city clerk in 2017 but was defeated by incumbent Clerk Janice Winfrey.

Proof of citizenship

Gilchrist said that voting is “reserved for citizens” and that anyone who votes despite not being a citizen needs “to be held accountable for that to the fullest extent of the law.” He also noted that “vanishingly few noncitizens … actually cast ballots.”

“As a process person, I want to make sure that we get that number to zero. I also want to make sure that we are focusing on the right things, and that is again making sure we have a good process,” he said. “But frankly, I want to make sure that more eligible voters in Michigan are doing what they need to do so that they can cast ballots.”

He said his goal as secretary of state would be to increase voter turnout and to protect the state and its voters from “any threats or any interference from the federal government trying to infringe upon our constitutional responsibility as state election officials to operate our elections.”

Election security

Gilchrist said Michigan has made progress on making sure voters know their ballot will be handled securely after it is cast. The state’s elections have withstood a number of audits, he said, demonstrating the state is doing a good job.

“We’re going to continue to make sure that our processes can be safe and secure,” he said. “I want to make sure that we are focused on the right thing. People having confidence in the voting process means that more people will participate in the voting process.”

He pointed to his experience as a computer engineer as an example of making systems work for people.

What else is important in the job?

“It is also important that we bring the whole range of services provided by the secretary of state’s office to the 21st century, making sure people have good experiences in person at the offices, online by appointment, or drop in,” Gilchrist said. He pointed to the state’s campaign finance website as an example of something that needs to work to “shine a light on the dark in our politics.”

He also emphasized a desire to protect Michiganders’ private data to avoid it being used by the federal government for surveillance. Gilchrist pointed to his experience as a software developer as evidence that he takes cyber threats seriously.

Suzanna Shkreli

Shkreli, a Democrat, launched her campaign in December. A lawyer by training, she has served as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Macomb County and deputy legal counsel for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She has also worked as the director of the Office of Children’s Ombudsman, director of juvenile justice reform at the state Department of Health and Human Services, and commissioner of the Michigan State Lottery. She unsuccessfully ran for Michigan’s 8th Congressional District in 2016, losing to then-Rep. Mike Bishop.

Proof of citizenship

Shkreli said that she took issue with the idea that Michigan doesn’t require proof of identity to vote, as anyone who isn’t able to show ID when voting has to instead sign a legally binding affidavit. The discussion around it needs to change, she said.

“The president and [GOP] party leadership and the Republicans are peddling in lies and conspiracies about how our elections are not secure when they are,” she said.

The SAVE Act — a bill currently being considered by the U.S. Senate that would require people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote — would make it harder for people to vote, she said, adding that she didn’t want to see clerks in a position where they had to authenticate people’s documents.

Election security

Shkreli pointed to her experience as a prosecutor and in the governor’s office as evidence that she knows how to handle emergencies. As deputy legal counsel, Shkreli worked the meeting after the 2020 election where Michigan’s electoral votes were officially allocated to President-elect Joe Biden.

“We didn’t really know what to expect, but because of our preparation, we were able to thwart those fake electors and deliver on the governor’s constitutional obligation,” she said.

She considers protecting the vote to be one of the most important parts of the secretary of state’s job and hopes her experience coordinating across agencies will allow her to better support clerks with clear training and communication.

What else is important in the job?

Shkreli argued that the secretary of state’s office is “the most important office that is up for election this year.” She said that the office is “really all about elections right now because of what’s happening across the country,” and that her experience in emergency management makes her especially suited to the role. But that’s not all, she added.

“This is such an important office that gets things done for people every single day,” she said. “Although elections are top of mind for folks, the secretary of state’s office is really making government and life work for folks.”

If elected, Shkreli said she wanted to expand mobile units and improve on customer service and delivery of service across the state.

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

Who will run the next election in small-town Wisconsin? No one knows.

2026-02-24T11:00:00+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.

TOWN OF WAUSAU — Inside the mostly empty town hall on County Road Z last week, a handful of voters cast ballots in wooden booths for a school board race. The biggest question on the minds of local election officials wasn’t who would win — it was who would run elections next year.

After two clerks left within a year, longtime town supervisor Sharon Hunter stepped in because no one else would. Hunter’s term ends next April. Nomination papers for a potential successor are due in January 2027, but local officials still don’t know who comes next.

“Sharon’s not going to do 29 years,” Deputy Clerk Amy Meyer said, referring to the long tenure of the clerk who resigned in late 2024, setting off the cascade of brief replacements.

Hunter, 72, laughed. “I’d be over 100 years old,” she said. “I don’t think you want me here with my walker.”

Sharon Hunter, who moved to the Town of Wausau in the 1970s, stepped in as clerk after a series of resignations left the position vacant. She plans to decide later this year whether she will run to remain in the role.

Hunter’s decision to step up in a town of 2,200 may seem insignificant. But Wisconsin’s election system — one of the most decentralized in the country — depends on people like her. The state requires each of its 1,850 municipalities to run its own elections. That means hundreds of local clerks are needed to keep the system running. By contrast, Texas, a state with nearly five times Wisconsin’s population, relies on county-level election offices and has about one-sixth as many local election officials.

That structure leaves Wisconsin unusually dependent on small-town clerks. Between 2020 and 2024, more than 700 municipal clerks here left their posts, the highest turnover by raw numbers in the nation. As rural communities age and fewer residents are willing or able to take on an increasingly complex job, replacing them has become harder — raising questions about how long the state’s hyper-local model can hold.

The system can absorb one vacancy. It strains under dozens. Elections get stitched together, paperwork piles up, and the quiet machinery of local government — licenses, payroll, meeting notices — shifts its weight onto whoever is left.

Meyer, 55, understands why people don’t want the job — she doesn’t want it either. Like her mother, she has worked elections in town for much of her adult life. She considered becoming clerk, but it wasn’t the right time. She doesn’t want residents coming to her house with ballots or questions, as they once did under the longtime clerk.

“There comes a point in the day where I want to turn my phone off,” Meyer said from the town hall, situated at the center of loosely stitched county roads dotted with ranch homes and small farms, some of them no longer in operation. “I don’t want to hear that your garbage didn’t get picked up, or your neighbor’s dog is barking,” she said. “I just don’t.”

In a small town, the clerk is often the first call for everything from election deadlines to everyday complaints — and the learning curve is steep.

“It’s going to take you practically the first year to learn everything,” Meyer said. “Now, we have somebody new in it, and we have spent half the term relearning.”

Older residents have long filled these roles, but clerks say the job has grown more demanding, with little added support. It is often thankless work for modest pay. In Wausau, the clerk earns about $27,000 a year with no benefits.

Even so, many residents remain committed to keeping elections at the town level. Hunter said preserving local control was her biggest reason for stepping in, though she has not decided whether to seek another term.

“But we do need to have someone coming after me,” she said. “Because I am old.”

In an aging town, succession is unclear

The rural town of Wausau sits just east of the City of Wausau, a community of about 40,000 that began as a logging town in the 1830s and now centers on manufacturing and a burgeoning ginseng farming industry. As the city has grown, the town has increasingly become a bedroom community, as its lower property taxes attract commuters. A handful of farms remain, but the town is less agricultural than it once was.

Its population is slowly growing — and steadily aging. That’s because retirees also make up a large and growing share of the town’s residents. Its median age has climbed by roughly a decade since 2000 and now hovers around 50 — a decade older than the statewide average. The town still must run elections, issue licenses, and post meeting notices. What’s less certain is who will do it.

Here, as in many communities nationwide, the responsibility will likely fall to older residents. Nationally, nearly 70% of chief election officials are 50 or older, according to the Elections & Voting Information Center. In Wisconsin, that share climbs to almost 80%, with the oldest officials concentrated in the smallest jurisdictions.

One poll worker, knitting pink yarn during a lull between voters, said at 71 she was too old to take on the clerk’s job. She had encouraged a younger neighbor to consider it, she said, but the woman had just given birth.

Wausau’s shift reflects a broader reality in rural Wisconsin: The state built a system that depends on hundreds of small-town clerks and their deputies — a structure rooted in an era when farms were multigenerational, churches were full, and civic roles widely shared. That foundation is thinning. About a quarter of Wisconsin’s farms closed between 2002 and 2022, and churches are aging and shrinking. Volunteer fire departments and other local services report persistent staffing shortages.

There is no sweeping rural exodus. Rural counties are mostly growing, largely because retirees are staying or moving in. Wisconsin’s population is projected to age most rapidly in its rural communities, according to UW-Madison’s Applied Population Lab.

Originally from nearby Birnamwood, Hunter moved to the town of Wausau in the 1970s and has worked in public service ever since. For four decades, she wrote federal grants and helped low-income youth map out their futures through the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Her entry into town government came by accident. Upset over a town decision to pave the ends of some residents’ driveways, but not hers or her neighbors’, she ran for town treasurer. What began as frustration became a career: She spent 10 years as treasurer and two decades as a supervisor.

Her path shifted again after the former town clerk, Cindy Worden, retired after 30 years on the job. Supervisors appointed a replacement, but she left after two weeks because of a terminal cancer diagnosis. The next clerk resigned within months, overwhelmed by balancing the duties with a full-time job and raising a family.

As the town searched for a clerk, Hunter and fellow supervisor Steve Buntin, a retired auto mechanic, filled in. Supervisors listed the job on Facebook and the town website. Potential candidates declined. Some didn’t want the scrutiny of elections, and others resisted the administrative grind.

At one point, county officials offered to step in to run elections and charge about $1,000 per election. That was Hunter’s turning point, though stepping into the role meant giving up her vote on the town board — a sacrifice she did not take lightly.

“After you start, you kind of get hooked,” Hunter said. The residents might be “ornery most of the time,” but helping them navigate difficult choices is public service. “It’s in your blood.”

She can return to being a supervisor if someone else steps up as clerk, but, as Buntin put it, “nobody seems to be knocking down the door.”

Last April, the town asked voters to allow clerks to be appointed rather than elected, which would have permitted hiring someone from outside town limits. The referendum failed narrowly. A new state law has since made it easier for small municipalities to switch to appointments, but the town has yet to make the jump.

“You still have to have somebody come forward who wants to be a clerk,” Meyer said. “Just because the state law changed doesn’t make it all that easy.”

Clerks are hard to recruit, and harder to retain

Wausau sits in Marathon County, home to about 130,000 people. To run elections for that population, the county depends on roughly 60 separate municipal clerks — one in each city, village, and town — layered beneath its elected county clerk. In most similarly sized counties elsewhere, such as St. Joseph County, Indiana, or Frederick County, Maryland, a single county office oversees elections for everyone.

There’s little appetite to abandon Wisconsin’s structure. Local clerks argue decentralization limits errors and keeps elections in familiar hands. But filling dozens of posts — and keeping them filled — is no easy task. Of the 13 new municipal clerks who have taken office in Marathon County since the April 2025 election, including Hunter, four resigned within months, County Clerk Kim Trueblood said. Since then, a fifth clerk — in the City of Wausau — has also stepped down.

Trueblood attributes part of the churn to recruitment practices that understate the job. Town and village chairs often approach potential clerks by describing the work as little more than taking meeting minutes.

“Then they get into a job, and it’s the elections, it’s all of the financial reporting, the liquor licenses, everything that they have to do — it’s just overwhelming,” she said. “And people who work a full-time job and have families, I don’t know how they do it.”

Voter check-in materials sit on a table during a school board election that affected only part of the Town of Wausau. Turnout remained slow throughout the day.

The pay rarely offsets the demands. In the town of Wausau, the clerk makes $27,628 per year plus a $1,000 mileage stipend, with no benefits. The job can require 10- to 20 hours a week — and far more around elections — covering everything from meeting notices and licenses to payroll and ballot administration.

Other municipalities in Marathon County pay far less. Kelley Blume, the clerk in the town of Marathon who’s also a deputy clerk for the county, earned just over $10,000 for her town role in 2025. During election seasons, she said, the hours stretch late into the night.

When she was first approached for the job about 10 years ago, she said town officials told her it would only be a couple of hours per week.

“It’s not a couple hours,” she said. “I feel bad for all of these new clerks that think it’s going to be easy.”

She is considering stepping down. The added responsibilities have grown heavier each year, she said, and she wants to spend more time with her children and grandchildren.

Waiting for the next name on the ballot

Hunter says she stepped in to preserve something she believes is worth protecting: the idea that elections should be run by people who know the roads and the names on the ballot, who know which farm sits beyond the bend and which houses were built last year. To her, local government isn’t an abstraction. It’s a neighbor answering the phone.

“I do feel local government is critical, and I would hate to see that be taken away from the residents,” Hunter said. “It’s important they have a voice, and it starts at their local government.”

She knows the structure is imperfect, but pride in local control runs deep here, even as the pool of residents willing to shoulder the work grows thinner. Ultimately, she said, the town may have to bend. Communities could share clerks or other services, even if that means loosening borders that have long felt fixed.

She’ll decide later this year whether to run again. If she doesn’t, she said, the town may take another vote on hiring clerks outside of town limits. In the meantime, she has no regrets about stepping up — even if nobody in town seems ready to follow her lead.

“It’s my civic duty,” she said.

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

Mail ballot application error adds to Chester County’s woes

2026-02-06T21:12:46+00:00

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

A Pennsylvania county election office that was already facing criticism for a 2025 election snafu and an alleged hostile work environment is dealing with another error.

Roughly 145,000 mail ballot applications sent out in Chester County this week for the 2026 elections were printed with the first and last names of voters reversed, according to the county. However, the applications can still be used as they are, the county and state said.

The error comes three months after the county misprinted its pollbooks for the 2025 municipal election and two months after The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article tying the county’s high staff turnover to what critics described as the election director’s heavy-handed management style.

On Monday, the county sent out mail-in ballot applications to voters on its annual mail voter list, sometimes referred to as the permanent list. The list comprises voters who, when applying for a mail ballot the prior year, indicated they wished to be sent an application the following year. Counties around the state mail out those applications around this time each winter.

Chester County officials said they became aware of the reversed names on Wednesday afternoon, but they didn’t post a notice about it on the county website until Friday morning, after the county was contacted by Votebeat and Spotlight PA.

“The County has confirmed with the Pennsylvania Department of State that voters can still complete and submit their applications to Voter Services, either online or using the paper applications, and they will be processed correctly,” spokesperson Andrew Kreider said via email.

Kreider added that the error occurred “during the printing process used by the County’s printing vendor.”

Matt Heckel, a spokesperson for the Department of State, confirmed the applications are still valid. He also said no other county reported similar issues with the vendor Chester County uses.

Thad Hall, election director for western Pennsylvania’s Mercer County, said the data for the applications comes from a spreadsheet from the Department of State. His office sends out its applications itself, but in the past it has also used a vendor.

Hall said counties typically send a letter informing voters they are on the annual list and telling them they can apply again for mail ballots; on the back of that letter is the application. His process involves using a template letter and performing a mail merge to populate that letter with voters’ names and addresses from the spreadsheet. Before sending out the materials to voters, he checks that they were generated properly, and when he used a vendor for this task, the vendor would send him a sample to check for accuracy.

Chester County’s election director, Karen Barsoum, confirmed that the vendor performed the merge and that a sample was sent back to the county for an accuracy check. Barsoum declined to say which employee or division of the office performed the check.

She said the accuracy check was more focused on confirming that the proper information, such as voter ID number or address, was connected to the right voter rather than whether the names were in the correct order.

Hall, the Mercer County director, said at this year’s conference of county election officials, organizers are planning to host panel discussions on leadership, delegation, and having effective vendor interactions.

“We will be doing panels that address these specific issues that have come up twice in Chester County,” he said. “We want to give people the tools to avoid these election pitfalls.”

The mail ballot application mishap comes on the heels of a contentious county meeting Tuesday night at which residents expressed their frustration over the county’s two other recent controversies.

During the November 2025 election, human error resulted in pollbooks getting printed without third-party and independent voters, forcing thousands of people to vote provisionally. (Virtually all of those people’s ballots were eventually counted.) Investigators determined that human error was compounded by the fact that the county did not have adequate processes in place to detect and prevent such problems.

Although the investigation did not conclude that Barsoum management style contributed to the county’s turnover, some commenters at the meeting called for Barsoum to be fired, arguing that her poor leadership had led to the department’s issues. A local blogger and radio station have also called for her ouster.

Following that meeting, county officials declined to comment on Barsoum’s future employment status, and Barsoum told Votebeat and Spotlight PA she had no intention of resigning.

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

What causes long lines on Election Day — and how they can be avoided

2026-02-05T16:39:54+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.

In the November 2022 election, lines at polling places in Ann Arbor, Michigan, spilled out of buildings and down some city streets.

More voters were taking advantage of the opportunity to register and vote on the same day. But the process of registering hundreds of new voters and issuing them absentee ballots had to be done by clerk’s office staff and took up to five minutes per person, leading to waits that were often hours long, City Clerk Jackie Beaudry recounted to Votebeat.

Election officials weren’t willing to let that happen again. So Beaudry, along with other local clerks dealing with similar backups, successfully lobbied lawmakers in Lansing to allow people who register on Election Day to be able to cast regular ballots issued by standard poll workers. In the meantime, voters also approved measures allowing them to vote early in every statewide or federal election, alleviating pressure on Election Day voting.

Those changes cut the time to process each newly registered voter down to almost nothing, Beaudry said, and all but eliminated the city’s long lines in 2024. “I think on Election Day, the longest same-day registration wait was like 15 minutes,” Beaudry said.

Lines at polling places are the bane of election administrators nationwide. Long waits can take hours out of a voter’s day; in the worst-case scenario, they can even deter them from voting, robbing them of their voice in the election. So officials like Beaudry often feel duty-bound to do everything they can to minimize these waits.

The best kind of line, election officials typically agree, is no line at all. But the second-best — one that ensures a voter gets to cast their ballot in a timely manner, even if they do have to wait — relies on a precise combination of policy making, engineering, and sociology to make everything run smoothly.

Supporting them are researchers at universities across the country who study ways to make lines not only more efficient but also more tolerable for the voters who have to wait in them.

Eliminating lines altogether can be difficult. Local and state laws, including those focused on electioneering or election security, sometimes limit what is possible. But even within those confines, experts and election officials around the country have found that good lines are possible, even likely, with a little collaboration and a healthy amount of forethought.

What makes a good line?

What makes a bad line probably feels obvious to the people waiting in it. But what makes a good line is a little less clear cut. Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said there are two answers to the question.

The first is that it should be short. Specifically, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, convened by then-President Barack Obama in 2013, concluded in a 2014 report that, “as a general rule, no voter should have to wait more than half an hour in order to have an opportunity to vote.”

Of course, that’s not always possible. In 2012 — a presidential election before mail and absentee voting became widespread — research found that some 10 million voters probably waited at least that long to cast their ballot, with half of those voters waiting more than an hour.

So the second secret to a good line, Stewart said, is having enough resources to make it move smoothly even if it is longer.

For example, Stewart’s research has found that check-in stations are one of the worst bottlenecks on Election Day. But having an extra person to check in voters allows twice as many voters to get their ballots and start filling them out. That makes the wait shorter, which is key, but also can just make people feel that things are moving faster.

Stewart points to Disney theme parks as a great example. One of the members of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration was Brian Bitton, then the vice president of global park operations at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. The commission held one of its meetings at Disney World, Stewart said, to gain real-world context on how lines can be improved even when they can’t be shortened.

Along with trying to make lines shorter, he said, Disney did things “to manage how people were thinking about the lines they encountered.”

That meant giving people things to do while in line, which in an electoral context could look like giving someone a sample ballot to consider. It also meant giving people live tracking of how long the lines are, so they can decide when to go or know what to expect.

Improving the experience of waiting can be as easy as having staff greeting people in line, Stewart said, or having a poll worker check the pens to make sure no one has to wait for a working one.

“Using staff to make sure the experience is pleasant, that’s efficient to a voter,” he said.

The policies that can make lines bad

Keeping people stimulated while they wait makes them less annoyed, Stewart said. But a number of states have policies that limit what people waiting in line, or the people helping them, can do.

For instance, in Ann Arbor in 2022, volunteers provided those waiting outdoors in the cool autumn temperatures with blankets. That would likely run afoul of the rules in a few other states, where laws ban people from providing food, beverages, or “anything of value” to voters.

Georgia is one of the most well-known examples of that, but similarly strict laws exist in Montana, Idaho, and other states. The laws are intended to prevent candidates from influencing people’s vote. But they can also make waiting in line less bearable.

Gretchen Macht, the founder and executive director of the University of Rhode Island’s Engineering for Democracy Institute, told Votebeat that laws that don’t take real-world experiences into account often end up being too rigid. From an engineering perspective, lines are a matter of balancing systems by meeting needs as they arise.

For example, when Macht’s team looked into the causes of lines at Rhode Island polling places, one culprit was a law that allowed for only one checkout station per precinct.

“That’s what was causing lines, especially if there was any sort of failure, especially if there was high turnout,” Macht said. Her team eventually worked with the state to help amend the law.

And sometimes, the culprit is a local failure to plan. If officials keep tabs on when their polling places are busiest, they can better allocate resources throughout the day, Macht said.

Gathering tangible data on when voters show up and acting on it, rather than just gut feelings about people showing up after the standard work day, can be a lot of work but often pays off, Stewart said. It allows for better messaging on what voters can expect and, in many cases, may motivate them to go at off-peak times or even vote early or absentee when available.

“People are less irritated at waiting in line when they can control being in that line,” he said.

Creative solutions can solve line bottlenecks

The best policies are the ones that consider the human aspects of voting. That means trying to mitigate the irritating parts of lines or the confusing parts of a governmental process. But it also means accounting for quirks, such as voters’ desire to take a picture of their ballot at the voting booth. Officials have found that many voters really relish that opportunity.

But Stewart studied that in Michigan and found that, over the course of the day, such photo taking tied up voting booths and added immensely to wait times.

As a result, many Michigan election officials have begun to include separate photo stations at their polling places, typically separate from voting booths and away from where other voters may be unwittingly caught in the photos, which would go against Michigan’s rules.

In Ann Arbor, Beaudry’s photo stations were originally just posters on the wall. But the city eventually worked with University of Michigan design professors to make the stations more visually appealing. The effort has paid off, especially for younger voters, who find them to be a fun treat after casting a ballot.

But the best thing, Beaudry said? The city’s lines are nearly nonexistent now.

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

Half of Western U.S. counties have lost top election officials since 2020, report finds

2026-02-03T12:00:01+00:00

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

A new analysis from Issue One finds that half of all counties in 11 Western states have lost their chief election official since the 2020 election, underscoring a deepening workforce crisis driven largely by stress, threats, and burnout — not electoral defeat or term limits.

“This isn’t just normal turnover,” the report’s authors wrote in the report, released in advance to Votebeat. “Veteran officials are opting to head for the exits,” taking with them institutional knowledge that can be difficult and costly for local governments to replace.

The study by Issue One, a nonprofit group that works on election and democracy issues, examined post-2020 trends in local election administration in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, and found widespread turnover among top local election officials.

The findings build on earlier research showing elevated departures after the 2020 election but suggest the trend has not eased even after the 2024 presidential race. In 2025 alone, 53 chief local election officials in Western states left their jobs, nearly matching the 55 who departed in the year after the 2020 election.

Election officials have long described their work as demanding and under-resourced, but scrutiny of the profession intensified after false claims of widespread voter fraud gained traction following President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020. Since then, election administrators across the country have reported burnout and serious job-related health consequences, along with harassment, intimidation, and threats — pressures that the report links directly to the pace of resignations.

The issue has become more pressing in recent weeks, as the Trump administration has ramped up attacks on local administrators. While lack of funding, increased local legislation, and scrutiny have continued, Issue One Policy Director Michael McNulty said the administration’s willingness to issue search warrants and file lawsuits means “we are in a different world now.”

The pressure has been especially intense in places where elections are most contested or draw outsize media attention. The report found that 80% of counties where the 2020 presidential election was decided by five percentage points or less experienced turnover, compared with just 40% of counties where margins exceeded 50 percentage points. Large, populous counties also saw higher rates of departures than smaller rural jurisdictions.

In California’s Shasta County, Clerk and Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen retired in 2024 after nearly two decades in the role, citing heart failure and the need to reduce stress. Her successor resigned less than a year later for similar health-related reasons, underscoring how quickly the pressure can take a toll.

In Nevada, longtime Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria said threats escalated to the point that police were checking on his home hourly — and that his family was also targeted. “That’s when it did feel a bit different,” Gloria told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, explaining why he ultimately left after nearly 10 years running elections in the state’s most populous county.

Why election officials keep quitting

Taken together, the data and anecdotes point to a workforce under long-building strain, particularly in places where elections are most closely watched. The report suggests that the very conditions that have made election administration increasingly demanding in recent years — high turnout, national attention, legal challenges, and persistent scrutiny — are also the ones driving experienced officials away, leaving many jurisdictions heading toward the 2026 midterms with less institutional memory and thinner leadership benches than they had just a few years ago.

Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, said that while localities and universities are investing in durable training programs and peer mentorship for new election administrators, much of what it takes to run an election well comes from experience.

“So many times, if there are small mistakes that happen in election administration, it’s human error,” he said.

The concern is not simply that new officials lack commitment or skill, but that they are being asked to take on increasingly complex jobs in a politically hostile environment. The report found that many departures occurred mid-term and that turnover remained high even after the 2024 presidential election, suggesting that the pressures driving officials out have not eased.

“We are not out of the woods yet,” said Beckel. While new officials are coming in “with their eyes wide open” to the new pressures, it will still take a significant increase in support to lower turnover rates ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

Stabilizing an exhausted workforce

The report argues that the turnover trend is not inevitable — but reversing it will require political leaders to reduce pressures on election officials rather than add to them.

Among its recommendations, Issue One calls for stronger protections against threats, harassment, and doxxing of election workers, noting that election infrastructure is already designated as critical infrastructure under federal law. While dozens of states have criminalized intimidation of election officials, the report says enforcement and broader political condemnation of threats remain uneven.

The report also calls for increased funding and staffing support for local election offices, which often absorb new legal and security demands without additional resources. Limiting unfunded mandates, curbing last-minute changes to election law, and investing in recruitment and retention programs — including fellowships that bring new workers into election offices — could help stabilize a workforce strained by burnout, the authors say. Without sustained investment, they warn, jurisdictions will enter future elections with fewer experienced leaders and little margin for error.

“Counties can’t do this alone,” said Beckel. “It really takes people working in partnership and across the aisle to stop re-ligitating the past and to stop treating conspiracy theories as truth.”

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

After a busy week of election news, Trump Cabinet officials ghost election officials at conference

2026-01-30T23:08:55+00:00

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

What a week of election news, huh?

Attorney General Pam Bondi set off a furor when she appeared to link the aggressive immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota to the state’s refusal to share its voter rolls with the Trump administration. The FBI searched a Fulton County, Georgia, election office, apparently as part of a criminal investigation into the 2020 election. Congressional Republicans dropped big new legislation to overhaul election administration.

Against that backdrop, secretaries of state from around the country gathered in a hotel ballroom in Washington, D.C., many expressing growing unease about the implications of the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric around the 2026 elections they’re responsible for administering in November.

Multiple Trump administration officials were scheduled to address the secretaries’ conference at various points, but the plans kept shifting. Earlier this week, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State said Bondi — whose Justice Department has so far sued 24 states and Washington, D.C., for access to their voter rolls — and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would potentially be added to the schedule. Later, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was added to the list of expected officials, less than 48 hours after she appeared at the FBI search in Fulton County.

It wasn’t clear what they were planning to say, and some Democratic secretaries said they planned to skip the remarks.

But after a crowd of secretaries of state, their staff, consultants, vendors, and media members filled the ballroom Friday afternoon, with four chairs set up on the dais, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican, announced that the chairs would stay empty.

“Unfortunately, it appears that we will no longer be having a 3 o’clock session,” Watson said, to rueful chuckles.

It wasn’t the only shift.

An early agenda had called for a Thursday panel with two White House officials, as well as Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, and Heather Honey, the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity for the Department of Homeland Security. Ultimately, only one official, Jared Borg of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, spoke. Borg opened by outlining the administration’s efforts to overhaul a federal database used by many states to verify voter citizenship, as well as ongoing consultations with secretaries of state on that and related initiatives.

Election officials from both political parties had pointed questions.

Referring to comments from Justice Department officials about states’ maintenance of voter rolls, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican and the state’s chief election officer, said it is “problematic to publicly claim that secretaries of state are not doing our jobs and that the federal government has to do it for us.” Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat, asked why the administration wasn’t answering their questions about its election initiatives.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, asked pointedly how the Trump administration squared his executive order on elections with the fact that the Constitution gives authority over elections to the states and Congress. Borg said the question would be better directed to Bondi or Noem the next day.

But as it turned out, Bellows didn’t get the chance, and she wasn’t happy about it. After Watson announced the session wouldn’t happen, a small group of Democratic secretaries of state spoke to the press. “Noem, Bondi, and Gabbard are cowards for not showing up today and answering the questions from election officials from across the country about this administration’s abuses of power,” Bellows said, while secretaries of state from Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont looked on.

Their frustrations with the Trump administration were clear. But the Democratic secretaries ended on a more upbeat note: emphasizing that NASS is still a bipartisan organization, and that their Republican colleagues are just as committed to administering a fair 2026 election as they are.

“Following the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law,” Thomas said, “is not a partisan issue.”

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

Correction, Feb. 6, 2026, 10:12 a.m.: This story has been corrected to reflect that the Department of Justice has sued 24 states for not handing over their voter rolls, not 23 states.

Chester County pollbook mishap resulted from human error and flawed systems, report finds

2026-01-23T21:48:55+00:00

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

UPDATE, Jan. 26, 11 a.m.: This article has been updated with additional comments about SURE from a Pennsylvania Department of State spokesperson.

Human error was the primary cause of a pollbook printing issue that forced thousands of voters in Chester County, Pennsylvania, to cast provisional ballots in the 2025 municipal election, according to a report by outside investigators.

Early on on Nov. 4, 2025, voters and election officials realized that the pollbooks — the printed voter lists used to check people in at polling places — didn’t include the names of Chester County’s more than 75,000 unaffiliated and third-party voters. Those voters had to either wait for supplemental pollbooks to be delivered or use a provisional ballot, an option used when there is some question about a voter’s eligibility.

According to the report — from West Chester-based law firm Fleck Eckert Klein McGarry LLC and released Thursday by the county — the “two inexperienced employees” who generated the pollbook files mistakenly selected the option to include “only voters from the major parties.” The report said the employees had “limited election experience, no formal SURE system training, and no direct supervision during a critical task performed under compressed statutory deadlines.” SURE, or the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, is Pennsylvania’s voter registration database.

As a result of the error, about 12,600 provisional ballots were cast in the county, accounting for roughly 6.4% of the county’s total vote, more than in any other election in the county’s recent history. The vast majority of the provisional ballots were counted after the county confirmed the voters’ eligibility.

Report cites other gaps in the system

The report said there was no evidence of intentional wrongdoing. While the report primarily blamed human error, it said that other factors also contributed to the issue.

First, it noted that the SURE system allows a pollbook with only major-party voters — meant for use in the state’s closed partisan primaries — to be generated without any confirmation or warning screens. The report also said the state’s training did not sufficiently guide employees through the settings needed to generate a general-election pollbook versus one for primaries. Finally, the report said “no policy or procedure was in place” to check the files generated from SURE for accuracy before the pollbooks were printed.

Poll workers previously told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that in years past they had the ability to check pollbooks before Election Day, but the county recently began sealing those materials.

Asked if it would be updating the SURE system, the Pennsylvania Department of State highlighted the ongoing effort to replace it with a more modern voter management system.

“The new system will have validation and quality assurance built in around our business logic — meaning, for example, that a county user will not be able to select ‘only major parties’ for their general election poll books,” the department said in a statement.

After this article was first published, Amy Gulli, a spokesperson for the department told Votebeat that the default setting for the SURE system is to include all voters.

“In this instance, a county employee overrode that default when generating the county’s poll books for the November 2025 election,” Gulli said.

Gulli also noted that counties have been generating pollbooks through SURE since 2010, and in the 15 general elections since then, no other county has had this issue.

The report also said high staff turnover at the county’s election office in recent years “has increased operational risk.” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in December that dozens of employees have left the office since its director, Karen Barsoum, took over in 2021. Some former employees described a toxic work environment under Barsoum.

While the pollbook report acknowledged complaints about Barsoum’s leadership and management style, it said the turnover trend was “not necessarily reflective of a cultural or managerial deficiency” and attributed it to recent high-pressure election cycles and better pay in surrounding counties.

What the investigators recommended

The report recommended several changes to avoid similar failures in the future. Among them, it said the county should ask the Department of State to implement safeguards in SURE that would alert users when they are about to export pollbooks that exclude some voters, as well as ask the state to revise its pollbook training guide.

The county itself should implement a procedure to double-check that pollbooks are accurate prior to Election Day, the report suggested.

“At least two trained staff members, including a supervisor, should independently verify SURE Poll Book generation selections prior to finalization,” the report said. “Before transmitting files to the print vendor, staff should also be required to complete a mandatory audit checklist certifying to the commission that randomly selected precincts have been spot-checked and that Poll Book files include all required data and all required voter categories.”

Allegheny County, in western Pennsylvania, told Votebeat and Spotlight PA in November that it performs such spot checks for accuracy.

The report said Chester County should also more thoroughly document its procedures, as well as who is responsible for performing what steps, and any action that could affect the entire electorate, such as printing pollbooks, should require signatures from a supervisor and administrator.

In a statement responding to the report, the county said that while it believes some sections could benefit from additional context, it otherwise “fully supports and plans to implement the report’s recommendations.”

The county said it has developed an action plan to address all the recommendations. The county board of elections will hold a meeting at the Chester County Judicial Center on Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. to discuss the report and the action plan. If the judicial center is closed that day because of weather, the meeting will be moved to Feb. 3 at 7 p.m.

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

Michigan clerk claims he found 15 noncitizens registered to vote — but his data may not be reliable

2026-01-16T20:07:44+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.

Anthony Forlini, the Macomb County clerk and a Republican candidate to be Michigan’s next secretary of state, said this week that he had found more than a dozen noncitizens on his county’s voter rolls — but there’s reason to be skeptical of his claims.

Forlini told Votebeat on Thursday that a comparison of the county’s jury pool — specifically, the more than 230 people who have recused themselves from jury duty since September by saying they are not U.S. citizens — and the state’s qualified voter file found 15 people who were on both lists.

Forlini said his data shows that “the system is flawed” and needs adjustments. But comparing two separate lists is generally a fraught way to find actual noncitizens on the voter rolls, experts say, and verifying his findings will be difficult. As other states have repeatedly found, lists of people identified as noncitizens are often inaccurate or outdated. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people become naturalized citizens, for instance, and they rarely take steps afterward to update their status with various government agencies.

During a press conference Monday, Monika Rittner, a department supervisor in Forlini’s office, said that three of the 15 people flagged as potential noncitizens had voted before, including one who had voted “several times but has since been removed.”

The jury pool Forlini cited comes from the state driver’s license database, which is separate from the qualified voter file (even though both are maintained by the Michigan Department of State). People do not need to be U.S. citizens to get a license or state ID in Michigan.

David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, and his team have looked into noncitizen voting complaints across the country and found that most allegations are the result of “misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, or outright fabrications about complex voter data,” as CEIR detailed in a July report.

“It is extremely hard to compare data from a jury questionnaire to data in a QVF with certainty and without false positives,” Becker told Votebeat. “Even if you get that part right, there’s still multiple ways in which the data can be misinterpreted.”

Forlini argued that his comparisons were functionally foolproof. He said his team compared names, ages, and addresses to verify that it was the same person who appeared on both lists.

“The scope that we’re doing it, this wasn’t a mass-produced thing,” he said Thursday. “It was a list where we looked at each individual person.”

He has since sent the idea on to other county clerks, and said many of them have thanked him for it.

Forlini said Monday he was handing the information off to Macomb County Corporation Counsel Frank Krycia. On Friday, Forlini said Krycia had handed it off to law enforcement but declined to say which agencies, adding that he’d been advised not to name them while the matter was under investigation. Krycia did not return a call seeking comment.

Forlini is a Republican candidate to be Michigan’s next secretary of state, although he said he was checking for noncitizen voters in his “role as a county clerk.” Doing that work was a matter of “operational efficiency,” he said.

“I’m looking to make things better,” he said.

In recent years, Republicans around Michigan and across the U.S. have zeroed in on noncitizen voting as a threat to American elections. An instance in Ann Arbor in 2024, where a University of Michigan student from China allegedly cast a ballot and turned himself in before fleeing the country, became a focus of Republicans looking to pass a proof-of-citizenship requirement in the state.

The Michigan Department of State said it would look into the claims once Forlini’s office gives it the necessary information.

“We can’t fully evaluate his claims because he hasn’t shared specific details about the list he reviewed, how it was compiled, and how he determined these people were noncitizens,” Angela Benander, a department spokesperson, said in an email.

Noncitizen voting is extremely rare in Michigan and across the country. The Michigan Department of State conducted its own lengthy review of the state’s driving records and voting records last year and found that, across the state during the 2024 general election, it appeared a total of 16 noncitizens had cast ballots — 0.00028% of the more than 5.7 million ballots cast.

“Our department did several rounds of validation in this review to make sure that these individuals actually cast a ballot and to verify their citizenship status,” Benander said in an email. “In each additional round of review, we found more individuals who may have initially appeared to be non-citizens but were, in fact, a U.S. citizen legally able to vote in 2024.”

The state has since established “an ongoing review process” to identify possible cases as they come up.

Other states that have conducted similar audits have turned up similarly minuscule numbers. Georgia, for instance, found about 20 noncitizens in its statewide voter roll of more than 8.2 million people in 2024.

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

Postmarks, interference, physical threats: Election officials brace for the 2026 elections

2026-01-12T10:00:00+00:00

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

Election officials from around the country gathered at a conference in Virginia this week, giving us — and one another — a chance to hear what they’re thinking and worrying about as they plan for the midterm elections this year.

One of their most pressing concerns: the mail.

Updated guidance from the U.S. Postal Service about how it processes mail and when postmarks are applied has sparked widespread concern in recent weeks about whether more mail ballots will be at risk of ultimately not being counted.

Fourteen states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands count mail ballots received within a certain period after Election Day, as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day. In a notice in the Federal Register that took effect Dec. 24, the Postal Service announced that it may not postmark a piece of mail on the same day that it takes possession of it, which could affect ballots dropped in mailboxes on Election Day, for instance.

Speaking at the conference, which was organized by the Election Center, a nonprofit association of election officials, U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner acknowledged the new regulation had sparked “a lot of confusion,” and said it was meant to clarify existing postmarking practices.

Adjustments to the Postal Service’s transportation operations mean that some mail won’t arrive at a processing facility on the same day it’s mailed, according to an agency fact sheet. That means postmarks applied at the processing facility may not match the date the mail was given to a letter carrier or dropped off, the agency said, which is what’s raising concerns about whether some ballots mailed by the deadline could still not get counted.

Earlier in his career, Steiner was a tax accountant, he told the gathering, “and anyone that ever practiced tax accounting knows that there’s only one way to make sure that that tax return that has to be postmarked by April 15 is actually postmarked on April 15”: lining up at the post office and requesting a manual postmark.

Steiner urged the election officials in attendance to inform voters that they can request manual postmarks at post offices with a date that reflects when the ballot was mailed. He promised that the agency would continue to take steps to prioritize the timely delivery of election mail, but said voters need to mail ballots at least a week before the receipt deadline. “We want to make sure that every ballot is delivered, and mailing early is a big part of that,” he said.

Election officials in recent years have repeatedly voiced frustrations with mail delays and urged voters to cast their ballots earlier, so the current questions aren’t entirely new.

But they’re occurring now against a backdrop of rising concern over the federal government’s role in elections, and especially President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on mail ballots. Trump has suggested he might attempt to curb their use through an executive order.

If Trump, or any president, issues such an executive order, “have you gamed out what you’ll do?” Judd Choate, Colorado’s state elections director, asked a panel of postal officials following Steiner’s address. Colorado is one of several states where people vote primarily by mail.

Panelist Adrienne Marshall acknowledged she was asked the same question at a different event over the summer.

“Of course, by the Constitution … we are required to deliver the nation’s mail,” she noted.

Marshall said that, without her legal team there, she was “not sure” how exactly her agency would respond to a theoretical executive order, but said she believes any executive order on mail ballots would likely be aimed more at election officials than the Postal Service.

The Colorado Department of State said it’s prepared for various scenarios that might affect the 2026 election cycle, but a spokesman wouldn’t comment on specifics.

Another session at the conference aimed to prepare election officials for potential election interference, covering a range of scenarios from how to handle Justice Department and congressional observers to the implications of placing polling sites or ballot drop boxes on federal property.

At a session with an FBI representative, election officials raised questions about the threats against them and election workers, a constant refrain since the 2020 presidential election.

And at a session with two members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Vice Chair Thomas Hicks, a Democrat, told election officials to take every opportunity to educate members of Congress about election needs. He noted that two long-serving members of Congress who were instrumental in passing the landmark Help America Vote Act of 2002 — Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican — are retiring after this year, leaving what he described as “a huge, huge void, and that’s a bipartisan void.”

Election officials’ list of worries, in other words, remains long.

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

Dallas and Williamson counties switch to precinct-level voting for primary election day

2026-01-09T10:00:00+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.

In an about-face, Dallas County Republicans last week decided against hand-counting ballots in Texas’ March primary, saying they weren’t able to line up enough workers, among other hurdles.

That leaves just two counties where Republicans will hand-count their primary ballots: Gillespie County, west of Austin, and Eastland County, southwest of Fort Worth.

But Republicans in Dallas and Williamson counties are planning another major change for the March 3 primary election that will also require more election workers, and will affect how voters cast their ballots: They intend to eliminate the use of countywide voting sites on Election Day.

That means voters in these counties — Republicans and Democrats — would be required to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood polling places instead of at more centralized polling locations that can accommodate any voter from anywhere in the county.

Under state law, the parties have wide authority to decide how to run their primaries, but they must agree on whether to use countywide voting. If the Republicans don’t want to offer it, Democrats can’t offer it either.

Michelle Evans, the chair of the Williamson County GOP, said that having voters cast ballots at their assigned polling location brings “a higher level of confidence that the people that are coming in are people that are registered voters in that area, because that is their community.”

Democrats in those counties say they’re struggling to find enough locations to support neighborhood-level voting. “We don’t even have all the locations locked down,” said Kim Gilby, the Democratic Party chair in Williamson County. “To me, this is going to be a nightmare.”

Democrats also worry the change will confuse voters from both parties who have for years been used to countywide sites on Election Day. The move, they say, could potentially disenfranchise voters who go to the wrong location and aren’t able to cast a ballot.

In response to questions, Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West said all voters receive registration cards that list their precinct. “I would hate to believe that we have devolved to a point where we feel the voting electorate is too incompetent to read their own voter registration card,” West told Votebeat in a text message.

Here’s why the shift is happening, and what you need to know:

Who decides where voters can cast ballots on Election Day during a primary election?

Under state law, for Election Day voting, it’s up to political parties to determine whether voters should cast ballots at their assigned neighborhood precinct or at a countywide vote center.

This applies only to primaries. For general elections (which include any election called by the governor), that decision is made at the county level by the county commissioners’ courts.

What about early voting during a primary election?

County officials, not the political parties, manage the two weeks of early voting. Under state law, during early voting, voters can cast ballots in person at any polling location available in their county.

Can’t Democrats split with Republicans and stick with countywide vote centers on Election Day?

No. In order for a county to offer countywide polling places in the primary election, under Texas law, both parties must agree to use them. So the Republicans’ decision to use assigned polling locations in some counties requires Democrats in those counties to do the same, even if the party prefers countywide polling sites.

Why do Republicans favor assigned neighborhood voting sites over countywide voting?

Republican critics of countywide voting claim it makes elections less secure because it could allow people “to double or triple vote,” though there’s no evidence that this can happen. Texas election officials have procedures in place to prevent double voting, including the use of voting equipment that helps officials know in real time who has voted and where.

Some Republicans also say countywide voting makes it easier to pierce ballot secrecy by allowing the public to piece together different pieces of data from public records to figure out what choices certain people made on their ballots.

Votebeat and the Texas Tribune last year reported that it was possible, in limited instances, to link some ballots to the voters who cast them, but the problem wasn’t just tied to voters using countywide voting sites and eliminating it doesn’t fix risks to ballot secrecy. The problem with linking ballots stems from Texas’ push to make almost all election records public, which allowed researchers, in some cases, to cross-reference different public records and find a specific voter’s ballot image.

Republican lawmakers have proposed eliminating the use of countywide voting across the state.

What are Democrats’ concerns with assigned neighborhood-level polling locations?

Using assigned precincts requires, in some cases, twice as many polling locations as countywide voting. Each polling place has to be staffed with workers and furnished with materials and equipment. Texas law requires each polling location to have a minimum of three election workers, who must be paid at least $12 per hour.

Party and county officials say it’s difficult to find enough election workers and enough polling locations that comply with security and accessibility requirements.

Although some public buildings are free to use, they’re not always available, which requires leasing of spaces, at an additional cost.

The countywide polling place program eased some of those costs by allowing officials to use fewer, and more centralized locations, while offering voters flexibility on where to cast ballots.

Democrats are also worried that voters who show up at the wrong polling location on Election Day may be turned away without casting a ballot. Although a voter can ask to cast a provisional ballot if their name is not on the precinct’s voter list, if it’s found to have been cast at the wrong voting location, it won’t ultimately be tallied.

Who pays for the primary elections in Texas?

The costs of primary elections are covered mostly by taxpayers, as well as candidate filing fees.

Political parties in each county have funds generated from local candidate filing fees, fundraisers, and donations that they can use to pay for primary elections and their own administrative costs. The costs for the primary are then reimbursed by the state.

The Texas Legislature allocated about $21 million for the 2026 primary, and the state expects an additional $5 million from candidate filing fees. However, those funds also help cover expenses such as postage for voter registration, operational costs at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, and other administrative costs.

How can voters in Dallas County and Williamson County find out their assigned polling location?

Every registered voter should receive their voter registration card this month from the county elections office. That card has voters’ precinct information.

Voters can also visit their county’s elections website or reach out to their voter registrar to find their assigned precinct.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

After 2024 incident, Maricopa County examines hiring process for temporary election workers

2025-12-22T10:00:00+00:00

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

A search of Walter Alphonso Jamel Ringfield Jr.’s last name on the Maricopa County Superior Court website in May 2024 should have revealed he had been charged with theft eight months earlier.

But a Maricopa County vendor conducting background checks on hundreds of temporary election workers searched his name as “Jamel Ringfield, Walter Alphonso” according to his county employee file, which was included in a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office investigative report obtained by Votebeat through a public records request.

The report shows no records were found with that version of his name.

Ringfield, now 29, was hired. He was employed for fewer than 30 days in June 2024 when a surveillance camera captured him swiping a security fob used to access ballot tabulation machines and keys from a work station in the tabulation room of the Maricopa County Elections Department, according to the report and what officials said at the time.

Officials reported the theft to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which investigated. On March 5, Ringfield pleaded guilty to attempted computer tampering, and a Superior Court judge sentenced him to three years of probation and six months in jail, according to court documents. He has since been released, records show. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Since the incident, the county has faced questions about how it screens temporary election workers. It included a review of hiring practices of temporary employees as part of a comprehensive audit of its election processes that is underway.

Jason Berry, Maricopa County director of communications, in a Nov. 21 email said the county is limited in the information it can provide about a human resources matter. But “the name used for Mr. Ringfield’s background check did not match the court’s database and, therefore, did not produce his court-ordered diversion record,” Berry said. “We’ve had extensive conversations with our background check vendor and have identified steps to prevent this anomaly from happening again.”

Berry said he could not elaborate on those specific steps, though he did confirm that since April, the county has required two reference checks for every temporary employee who works in the ballot tabulation center. In a subsequent email, he said the name was searched as Ringfield had provided it, and “that information is used to run the criminal background check.”

AccuSourceHR said in an emailed statement that it had “reviewed the background screening process for this individual and determined proper procedures were followed and no error was made in the processing of this report.” A representative for the company did not respond to follow-up questions.

Maricopa County needs thousands of temporary workers for elections

Every two years, Maricopa County hires 3,000 to 4,000 temporary employees to help with the primary and general elections, most of whom are poll workers, but 500 to 600 work inside the Tabulation and Election Center, Elections Department spokeswoman Jennifer Liewer said.

There are an assortment of temporary jobs such as working in the mailroom, operating tabulation machines, warehouse drivers, technology technicians, ballot couriers, and serving on bipartisan teams to adjudicate ballots the tabulator could not read.

Many of the temporary employees have returned for years, and temps can eventually gain permanent employment with elections or other county departments, Liewer said.

Each of these temporary employees undergoes a background check.

AccuSourceHR’s one-page report on Ringfield, included with the investigative report from the sheriff’s office, shows the vendor did a county criminal records search and a state criminal court search on the name “Jamel Ringfield, Walter Alphonso,” and also under a second name, Alphonso Sundevil, as well as by date of birth.

The results of all the searches were “No Reportable Records Found,” according to the report.

According to court records, Ringfield was a cashier at a grocery store chain when he stole $1,800 from his drawer on Sept. 30, 2023.

Ringfield’s county employee file does not list that employer, but it says he was self-employed beginning May 1, 2022, and his responsibilities and accomplishments in that time were “Getting a job.”

The Maricopa County Superior Court docket shows prosecutors filed the theft charge against Ringfield on Oct. 3, 2023, and the prosecution was suspended about five weeks later so Ringfield could enter a two-year diversion program, and he was not convicted at that time.

Ringfield’s court record would not have automatically disqualified him from county employment if the county had known about it. Maricopa County is a “second chance employer,” so it is up to department heads to decide whether to hire on a case-by-case basis, Berry said.

County elections audit will examine hiring and training of temporary employees

Liewer said the Elections Department must strike a balance between the need for election security and being properly staffed.

“How do you achieve both of those goals is one of the things we’re constantly striving to improve and reach with every election that we do,” Liewer said in an October interview.

Liewer said the department doesn’t allow any temporary worker to be in the tabulation room, which is under constant surveillance, without a full-time staff member.

The comprehensive elections audit, by the firm BerryDunn, is also supposed to look at the hiring and training of temporary employees, according to the request for proposal and a June 25 press release. The press release said the review will examine the processes for chain of custody, physical security, candidate filing compliance, ballot drop boxes, and vote center selection and setup.

BerryDunn has a one-year contract, and the county expects to have some findings to share next year, Berry said.

Contact Votebeat at az.tips@votebeat.org.

The biggest voting stories in 2025 could shape important aspects of the midterm elections

2025-12-22T10:00:00+00:00

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

From Carrie Levine, editor-in-chief:

The Trump administration moved to exert unprecedented federal authority over elections this year in ways that continue to raise important constitutional questions. Federal judges have blocked major provisions of the president’s sweeping executive order on elections, but that court fight isn’t over yet, and the administration has already said it is working on a second such order. What will be in it? It isn’t clear.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is suing a slew of states in a bid to obtain personal information on millions of voters in what appears to be a new attempt to build an unprecedented national voter database, and the federal government is quietly planning a more muscular role for itself in vetting people trying to register to vote. At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in a major voting rights case. All of this has big implications for this year’s midterm elections and beyond.

From Jessica Huseman, editorial director:

As we head into 2026, I’m struck by how many of this year’s problems will continue unsolved: Redistricting is somehow still underway, election funding isn’t getting better, and election conspiracy theories continue. All this means election administrators are still struggling — a challenge made sharper by Trump’s renewed attacks and early claims that next year’s results can’t be trusted. Their job satisfaction worries me, even as I’m encouraged by how steadily the field is professionalizing.

From Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor:

Is it too obvious if I say redistricting? Dare I say the biggest electoral story of 2025 was the unprecedented rush — mostly, but not exclusively, by red states — to redraw their congressional districts in the middle of the decade for partisan gain. Six states, representing over a quarter of the nation’s House seats, enacted new maps this year, and a few more (lookin’ at you, Florida and Virginia) may do so in the months to come.

And of course, all of 2025’s fights over lines on a piece of paper will become very real in 2026, when those lines will actually dictate the terms of the elections to one-half of an entire branch of government. The results could include voter confusion, extra work for election officials, less competitive elections, and a U.S. House of Representatives that is less representative of the will of the voters.

From Natalia Contreras, Texas reporter:

Although it’s true that Texas’ redistricting battles took up most of the news cycle this year, Republicans’ ongoing push to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls will continue to affect Texans’ access to the polls in 2026.

During the regular legislative session earlier this year, Texas lawmakers tried to pass a law that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Voting rights advocates warned the move could disenfranchise eligible voters. The proposal ultimately failed, but the Texas Secretary of State’s office’s use of a federal database to verify registrants’ citizenship prompted it to flag 2,724 potential noncitizens on the rolls. Election officials raised questions about the accuracy of the data. U.S. citizens were among those flagged by the state in multiple counties, and election officials are still identifying more. In addition, the use of the federal database is being challenged in court, and a ruling may not land until next year.

From Hayley Harding, Michigan reporter:

As we gear up for the mega-election here in Michigan — the governorship, the secretary of state, every statehouse seat, an open U.S. Senate seat, and much, much more — I expect we’ll continue to see a battle between Jocelyn Benson and the GOP.

She remains the Democratic frontrunner in the gubernatorial race, which means attacks on her are an easy way for Republicans to shore up their own base. But will that hurt her with her fellow Democrats too, as her reputation is called into question? And what does that mean for her successor in the secretary of state’s office, regardless of their party?

Every political decision will have direct implications on at least the next four years of election administration in the state. Legislators from both parties feel like they’re struggling to make headway on their election priorities, and a reset of partisan power in any direction could make that even more difficult.

From Alexander Shur, Wisconsin reporter:

Ahead of every election year, Wisconsin clerks lobby the Legislature with the same request: pass a bill to let them count ballots on the Monday before an election. Time and again, they realize it’s easier said than done. This year was no exception.

Typically, legislators introduce a GOP or bipartisan Monday count bill, and it gets stalled somewhere in the Legislature. This year, after extensive infighting, there wasn’t even a GOP bill.

Why is this so important? Well, Wisconsin likes elections, and in 2026 there are four statewide ones. Barring sudden legislative action early next year, that means Wisconsin will remain among a select few states that can’t process ballots before Election Day.

From Carter Walker, Pennsylvania reporter:

Ballot dates. Ballot dates. Ballot dates. It is a perennial issue here in Pennsylvania: Should voters be required to handwrite a date on their ballot return envelope?

But we may have finality before the midterms. A case before the state Supreme Court could finally resolve it. It has been fully briefed and argued, and now we are just awaiting a decision. That said, who is to say some new legal theory, challenge, or piece of legislation won’t change the playing field again for 2026?

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.

Hamtramck clerk alleges she was retaliated against for reporting election fraud

2025-12-10T17:37:36+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.

Amid a contested mayoral election marred by revelations of insecure ballots, the top election official in Hamtramck is suing several city officials, alleging they retaliated against her for trying to expose the city’s “ongoing election integrity issues.”

City Clerk Rana Faraj has been on leave since Nov. 10, days after 37 ballots cast in the 2025 municipal election were initially misplaced in her office. Faraj’s lawsuit alleges that she was put on leave as a way to satisfy city officials who had a grudge against her “after being falsely accused of meddling with the election.”

The lawsuit also provides more alleged details about the circumstances that led to the 37 ballots not being counted. The ballots may have been decisive in Hamtramck’s nonpartisan mayoral race, which was separated by only 11 votes after a recount last week.

Faraj’s suit, filed Monday in Wayne County, underscores the degree to which the relationship between city leadership and election officials has deteriorated in one of Michigan’s most prolifically troubled cities for voting. The suit names the city, its outgoing mayor, all six members of the city council, and the interim city manager as defendants.

Tensions flare between clerk and city officials

Allegations of unscrupulous actors and illegal tactics have plagued elections in Hamtramck for years. In the lawsuit, Faraj alleges that the campaign against her started after she attempted to report “serious violations of Michigan election law” in the city.

In March, Faraj wrote a letter to Attorney General Dana Nessel alleging repeated examples of election fraud in the city. In it, she wrote that an unnamed council member, who she later confirmed to reporters was Mohammed Hassan, had “a long, documented history of obstructing the election process.” That included undermining her work as clerk and intimidating election workers.

After that letter, Faraj says she started to feel bullied and harassed by Hassan’s colleagues on the City Council. The lawsuit alleges that council members told her, “we’re watching you,” and began tracking the hours she worked.

The suit goes on to say that, over the summer, Faraj was “repeatedly warned by multiple individuals, including a ranking member of city leadership, that the City Council was preparing to retaliate against her” for her letter to the attorney general. An unnamed council member told her the council was “trying to find something to hold against” Faraj, the lawsuit says.

But Amer Ghalib, the city’s outgoing mayor and one of the people named in the suit, told Votebeat the city had no problems with Faraj’s letter to Nessel. “When she reported some election issues to the AG office earlier this year, (the) city did not even give her a verbal warning for doing that,” he wrote in an email. “We considered that as part of her job and nothing was wrong with it, and no one took any action against her.”

The city did take action against Faraj, however, after last month’s mayoral election, in which 37 absentee ballots were mistakenly left in their envelopes and not counted on election night. The ballots were later found in Faraj’s office, she told the Wayne County Board of Canvassers last month, whereupon she immediately notified the necessary officials and delivered the ballots to the county.

However, after learning that non-election officials had accessed Faraj’s office while the ballots were there, the county canvassers did not include them in the final count amid concerns about their chain of custody.

According to Ghalib, Faraj was put on leave “due to multiple issues that took place in the clerk office” in the election, including mishandling the 37 ballots but also allegedly allowing unauthorized people — including a former city clerk and a former city attorney — in the office on Election Day.

Meanwhile, Faraj’s suit alleges those ballots were simply a pretense to put her on leave. She argues the city made it seem to the public that she was on leave for wrongdoing, whereas she was told it was for her “physical protection.”

In an interview Monday, Faraj’s attorneys, Jonathan Marko and Reno Arabo, told Votebeat that this was “yet another chapter of city dysfunction” in a community that has seen a lot.

Four members of the City Council, plus one incoming member just elected last month, were named in an April petition by Nessel for allegedly taking unvoted absentee ballots from newly naturalized citizens and filling them out themselves. Two council members, Hassan and Muhtasin Sadman, were charged in August, although felony charges were later dropped against Sadman after two subpoenaed witnesses didn’t show up to court. No others have been charged, although they may be in the future.

“I’ve never seen such a corrupt and dysfunctional governmental entity that continues to do things that defy belief,” Marko said.

For the time being, Faraj is still on leave from the clerk’s office. Ghalib said the city was prepared to welcome her back — until recently.

“The plan was to give her a warning and ask her to come back to work, but her attorney (sent) a request letter asking for $500,000 by the end of that day, or they will file a lawsuit,” he wrote in his email. “The city decided not to be exploited or blackmailed by anyone.”

Ghalib expressed confidence that Faraj’s lawsuit will not succeed. “We think our legal position is … strong in this case.” He did not provide evidence of the request letter, while Faraj’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment about it.

New revelations about the 37 uncounted ballots

Faraj’s lawsuit also sheds new light on the events that ultimately disenfranchised 37 absentee voters in last month’s election.

Faraj had said previously, and repeated in the lawsuit, that her staff had noticed a discrepancy on election night between the number of ballots tabulated and the number of ballots received; the 37 ballots later discovered in her office had somehow been separated from the others. The lawsuit offered a potential explanation for how this happened: “The issue apparently arose because workers had cut open these ballot envelopes but accidentally mixed them with the tray of emptied envelopes.”

The ballots remained unaccounted for until Nov. 7, when they were sealed and delivered to the county under police escort. Such issues “are common and occur regularly in Wayne County,” Faraj’s suit says, insisting she handled the discrepancy “professionally, transparently, and in accordance with all guidance from Wayne County officials.”

Tammy Patrick, chief program officer of the National Association of Election Officials, agreed that it’s not uncommon for election workers to misplace ballots, although steps can and should be taken to limit these occurrences. For instance, she said, states like California and Virginia have designed absentee ballot envelopes with a small hole in them that allows anyone to see whether a ballot is in the envelope without seeing the way they’ve voted.

“After (election workers) empty the envelope, they put a zip tie through it, so you know it’s empty, and put them in bundles,” Patrick said. This may help avoid a situation where the ballots get mixed in with empty envelopes.

When ballots are misplaced, though, it’s often a solvable problem. Such problems are usually quickly caught and fixed, Patrick said. But in Hamtramck, people walking into the clerk’s office changed the calculus.

Originally, Faraj and others said that Interim City Manager Alex Lagrou and two other city employees who were not election officials walked into the sealed clerk’s office on election night. But the lawsuit says five people — Lagrou, City Assessor Konrad Maziarz, and three other unnamed employees — walked in, and that they did so on the Wednesday night after the election.

It’s still unclear why city officials entered Faraj’s office, although the suit says it was for “non-election reasons.” The lawsuit also says Faraj had warned city officials for years that the physical setup of her office was insecure; the municipal mailroom is located inside her office, for instance. The only security measure the city agreed to was to install a keycard access lock on the clerk’s office, the suit alleges — but it “failed to enforce the keycard access restrictions during election season.”

Despite these security concerns, however, Faraj’s lawsuit also states that none of the five people who entered the office were aware that the ballots were there, and that “the 37 ballots … were never spoiled, altered, duplicated, or tampered with.” It is not clear how they arrived at that conclusion.

Patrick said it might have been possible for officials to conduct forensic testing on the ballots to see if they may have been tampered with — comparing ink colors, for example — but Lisa Capatina, the chair of the Board of Canvassers, argued during canvassing that an investigatory step like that would be outside the board’s powers.

Muhith Mahmood, the losing candidate in the mayoral race, has since sued to have the ballots considered. Judge Patricia Perez Fresard on Friday ordered the involved parties to talk to each other to try to reach a resolution.

“At this point, it’s good that it will go to a court to be adjudicated,” Patrick said. “They’re the best ones to determine how to treat those ballots.”

That case is set to come before the judge next Friday. It’s not clear when Faraj’s case will be considered. Court records indicate Judge Adel Harb has been assigned to the case.

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

Wisconsin clerks hope new law can alleviate statewide election official shortage

2025-12-09T20:47:26+00:00

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

Wisconsin clerks say two decisions on legislation this week — a new law expanding towns’ ability to hire clerks and a veto that blocks broader standing to sue election officials — will help ease mounting pressure on local election offices, which have faced record turnover and increasing legal threats.

The new law allows small towns to more easily hire clerks that live outside of municipal limits, a change clerks say is urgently needed as finding small-town clerks has become harder in recent years amid increased scrutiny, new laws and ever-evolving rules. As the new law moved through the Legislature, some small towns ran elections with no clerks at all.

“There are lots of townships that will benefit from this,” said Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican. “It’s going to help tremendously.”

In the past, towns with fewer than 2,500 residents had to hold a referendum to authorize appointing clerks instead of electing them. That took time and the election requirement restricted who could serve, since elected clerks — unlike appointed clerks — must live within municipal boundaries.

The new law allows towns to switch to appointing clerks after a vote at a town meeting.

It also eliminates another hurdle: In the past, even if a town approved the switch, it couldn’t take effect until the end of a term. The law lets towns make the change immediately if the clerk position is vacant or becomes vacant.

That could be critical: Between 2020 and 2024, more than 700 of Wisconsin’s municipal clerks left their posts, the highest churn in the nation, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Trueblood said this proposal won’t be a complete fix to the clerk shortage, but will go a long way toward easing it by allowing municipalities to recruit more broadly.

Likely beneficiaries of the new law include the Town of Wausau, whose longtime clerk retired late last year. Town supervisors then appointed a town resident, who quit after two weeks, forcing supervisors to collectively assume the clerk’s duties for the April election.

In that election, the town put forth a referendum to permanently switch to appointing clerks, but voters rejected it by a narrow margin — something that Town Supervisor Sharon Hunter said was a matter of people not understanding why the measure was critical. The town also elected a clerk, but that same clerk quit in September and the town is once again without a clerk.

“There’s just a lot of different responsibilities,” Hunter said. “And I don’t think people realize that it’s not like in the olden days.”

Hunter added that she’s “very excited” about the new law.

“Elections are coming,” she said, “so we really need to find someone very quickly.”

Veto maintains high bars to appealing complaints

Clerks also welcomed Evers’ Friday veto of a bill that would have made it easier to sue election officials by expanding who has standing to appeal Wisconsin Elections Commission decisions in court.

The Democratic governor’s veto preserves a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision issued earlier this year that limits who can appeal WEC decisions to those who “suffer an injury to a legally recognized interest.” Republicans wrote the bill to expand standing to any eligible voter who files a complaint, regardless of whether they suffered harm — a change clerks warned would overwhelm election offices and the courts

In his veto message, Evers echoed clerks’ concerns, saying the proposal would “open the floodgates to frivolous lawsuits that not only burden our courts, but our election systems as well.”

But Republicans said that despite clerks’ objections, the veto will make it difficult or even impossible to hold election officials accountable for breaking the law.

State Sen. Van Wanggaard, the Republican who wrote the bill, said it could stop a wide variety of complaints from going to court.

“The little guy gets screwed again,” he said in a statement. “This veto makes WEC an unanswerable body whose judgment can never be questioned by anyone.”

In the past, many lawsuits against clerks and other election officials began as administrative complaints filed with WEC before being appealed to court. Filing a complaint with the agency is the legally required first step for most election-related challenges, unless they are brought by district attorneys or the attorney general.

Democrats and liberals have filed complaints over concerns about towns that switched to hand-counting ballots and alleged inaccuracies on candidate nomination forms. Republicans and conservatives have filed complaints over allegedly being denied poll worker positions. Other complaints have involved allegations that clerks refused to accept ballots at polling places, and unproven accusations of ballot tampering.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that prompted the bill halted a lawsuit that challenged the legality of a mobile voting van in Racine. The court did not settle the underlying issue, instead dismissing the case because the liberals who hold a majority on the court determined the plaintiff had no standing.

Given the veto, that situation could recur, with legal questions about elections being left open because cases seeking to resolve them are ultimately dismissed over standing.

At the federal level, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year heard oral arguments in an Illinois case over the legal standard political candidates must meet to challenge state election laws. A decision is pending.

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

Republicans want ‘comprehensive oversight’ of Michigan’s 2026 election. What does that mean?

2025-11-21T21:59:30+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 a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi last week, Michigan Republicans asked the federal government to provide “comprehensive oversight” of the state’s 2026 election.

But the letter doesn’t specify what “comprehensive oversight” means. And it’s not clear that the people who signed the letter agree on the meaning either.

A total of 22 Republican state legislators from both the Senate and the House signed on to the letter, including Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, Sen. Ruth Johnson — a former Michigan secretary of state — and Rep. Rachelle Smit, who leads the House Election Integrity Committee.

The letter asks the U.S. Justice Department to “deploy official election monitors and provide comprehensive oversight for Michigan’s 2026 primary and general elections.” It cites a number of concerns about Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s administration of the election, from the fact that she is running for governor in the 2026 election to her alleged violations of election law.

It is not unusual for secretaries of state to oversee elections they are candidates in. Benson ran the 2022 election that won her a second term, for instance, and Johnson oversaw two separate elections as secretary in which she was also on the ballot. In Michigan, while the secretary of state sets rules and regulations, it is local clerks who typically work with voters more directly, creating a layer of separation between the state’s highest election official and the voters who may or may not be supporting them.

It’s not clear if the Justice Department will take the matter on, but Johnson told Votebeat on Thursday that department officials were already meeting on the request. She said she didn’t know who specifically was involved, and a spokesperson for the department did not respond to a request for comment.

Nebulous views of ‘oversight’

The first part of the Republicans’ request — federal election monitors — isn’t unusual. Monitors watch polling places and vote-counting centers to ensure workers are following processes appropriately. Under President Joe Biden, the Justice Department sent monitors to 27 states in the 2024 general election, including Michigan, and sent monitors for Michigan’s primary election as well. Under President Donald Trump, it sent monitors to California and New Jersey earlier this month after similar requests from members of the GOP in both states, but those monitors were uninvasive and may not have visited certain jurisdictions at all.

“Comprehensive oversight,” though, is a more abstract idea.

To Johnson, oversight in 2026 would be “something that has to be worked out, because you always have to balance everything.” In an interview with Votebeat, she did not go into specifics about what type of intervention she might welcome in Michigan, although she offered one example of something she hopes federal involvement could accomplish: ensuring people don’t vote twice.

That’s already rare in Michigan. Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, pursued charges against several people in an investigation of double voting last year. Charges were dropped against most, while one was sentenced to probation this year.

But a 2022 statewide audit found that, out of more than 11.7 million votes cast from May 2019 to March 2021, 99.99% were not duplicate votes.

Nesbitt didn’t offer much detail about what federal oversight could look like, either.

“We aren’t leaving any options off the table,” he said in an emailed statement. “The level of federal intervention in Michigan’s election is going to depend entirely on Jocelyn Benson’s willingness to cooperate with the DOJ and follow the law. I’m confident the DOJ will do whatever is necessary to ensure our next election is free of any manipulation.”

Nesbitt said that Benson “should welcome DOJ oversight” if elections are as secure as she claims. Johnson, meanwhile, said she would primarily like to see oversight from someone independent.

Johnson argued that circumstances are different from when she was secretary of state and administering elections in 2014 and 2018. “I was nonpartisan in every single way,” she said. “I got in trouble with some people in my own party because of it.” Benson, she said, has not been the same.

The Michigan Department of State argues that isn’t true. Elections in Michigan “are among the most transparent, secure and accessible in the nation,” Angela Benander, a spokesperson for MDOS, said after the letter was released last week.

“Next year’s election will be no different,” Benander continued. “Yet by pouring gasoline on our democracy and asking the DOJ to light a match, these lawmakers ignore these truths. They instead use dangerous, false rhetoric to encourage President Trump to illegally interfere in our state’s ability to hold fair and free elections.”

Federal intervention has few precedents

Experts say the federal government’s ability to intervene in elections is limited. The Constitution is very clear, for example, that states get to establish “the times, places and manner” of elections.

Historically, when the federal government has gotten involved in elections, it has usually been through legislation. During Reconstruction, for instance, Congress passed a series of Enforcement Acts that made it a federal crime to interfere with elections. However, that was at a time when Ku Klux Klan members were using violence to prevent Black voters from casting ballots — a radically different circumstance than the ongoing lawsuits and alleged conflicts of interest Benson faces today.

The timing of the letter is also unusual, said David Becker, an election lawyer who worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and now leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research — the general election is nearly a full year away.

“I don’t know of a single instance in all of DOJ history where a jurisdiction that wasn’t previously monitored had monitors assigned more than a few weeks before,” he said.

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

‘Cured’ ballots push Hamtramck, Michigan, mayoral election to a photo finish

2025-11-18T23:39:37+00:00

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

Update, Nov. 21, 2025: Muhith Mahmood, the candidate who lost the Hamtramck mayoral election by six votes, has requested a recount. The Wayne County Clerk’s Office staff will recount the city’s more than 4,600 ballots by hand.

The Wayne County Board of Canvassers certified Adam Alharbi as the winner of Hamtramck’s mayoral election, after a turbulent post-election review that included a rejected batch of absentee ballots and an unusually high number of “cured” ballots.

Going into Tuesday’s canvassing meeting, Alharbi led City Council member Muhith Mahmood by 11 votes in unofficial results. After the board added 120 cured ballots to those totals, Alharbi won the official tally by only six votes — raising questions about whether the 37 ballots that were disallowed on Friday due to security concerns could have changed the outcome.

Cured ballots are absentee ballots that weren’t counted originally because either the signature on the envelope was missing or it did not match the signature on file. In these cases, the clerk’s office reaches out to the voter and gives them until the Friday after the election to correct it so their ballot can be counted. The 120 ballots that were cured in Hamtramck in this year’s election was an unusually high number; Detroit, which has more than 20 times the population, had only 72 cured ballots. It’s unclear why Hamtramck had so many cured ballots.

The canvas finalizes yet another controversial election in Hamtramck, a city of roughly 28,000 surrounded primarily by Detroit, but it’s likely not over yet. Recounts can be requested within 48 hours of the end of a canvass. Mahmood declined to comment Tuesday on whether he would request a recount. His attorney, Mark Brewer, said he would need to speak to his client.

Greg Mahar, Wayne County’s director of elections, noted Tuesday during the canvassers meeting that four of the city’s five absentee precincts did not balance, meaning the number of ballots tallied in the initial count did not match the number of ballots recorded on the voter rolls as having been cast. That’s unusual: 99% of early and Election Day ballots outside of Detroit either were balanced or explained, Mahar said.

Lisa Capatina, chair of the board, told the crowded meeting room Tuesday that the attorney general’s and secretary of state’s offices “are aware” of the concerns people had around the election.

Those concerns include the disenfranchisement of 37 absentee voters whose ballots were mistakenly left on a desk in the clerk’s office on election night. Three city officials entered the office late that night while the ballots were sitting out, breaking the chain of custody for those ballots, officials argued. Maintaining the chain of custody is a critical safeguard for a fair election, as it ensures that ballots have not been tampered with.

Hamtramck City Clerk Rana Faraj has also been on leave since Nov. 10, a move she said was for her own safety, although it’s not clear what that meant. Other city officials have not provided additional information. She was not back in her office Tuesday.

Other recent elections in Hamtramck have also been marred by controversy. Six people, including four council members, were named in a petition from Attorney General Dana Nessel as allegedly having assisted in election crimes during the city’s last local election in 2023.

The petition alleged those council members — Mohammed Hassan, Muhtasin Sadman, Mohammed Alsomiri, and Abu Musa — and two others conspired to collect unvoted absentee ballots from newly naturalized citizens and fill them out with their chosen candidates.

Hassan and Sadman were charged with felonies in August, although Sadman’s felony charges were later dropped after subpoenaed witnesses did not appear in court. Sadman still faces a misdemeanor charge and is set for a pretrial hearing next month; Hassan is set to face a jury in April, according to court records. No one else has been charged.

Musa and Nayeem Choudhury, one of the others named in Nessel’s petition, both won seats on the council in the 2025 election, as confirmed Tuesday by the finalized canvas. Musa’s victory came despite new accusations of wrongdoing. Just before the August primary, footage from surveillance cameras appeared to show Musa allegedly handing a driver bundles of ballots to place into a city drop box. Michigan law allows only family members or those in the same household to return ballots for voters.

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

Hamtramck batch of absentee ballots won’t be counted, disenfranchising 37 voters

2025-11-14T21:15:42+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.

More than three dozen Hamtramck voters have been disenfranchised after three non-election officials walked into the city clerk’s sealed office on election night, compromising the security of absentee ballots that were mistakenly left there.

The Wayne County Board of Canvassers deadlocked Friday on whether to count the 37 ballots, which were discovered in that office the day after Election Day, having been opened but not removed from their envelopes. Because the board didn’t have a majority of votes in favor of counting them, the ballots will not be included in the final tallies of the election.

It’s not clear whether officials at any level are obligated to tell those 37 voters about the fate of their ballots. Greg Mahar, Wayne County’s director of elections, said he wasn’t aware of any requirements around that. State officials said they weren’t aware of any regulations on that either.

Those uncounted ballots could have been pivotal for the result of the closely contested, open-seat mayoral election in the city, which borders Detroit. According to unofficial results, engineer Adam Alharbi currently leads City Council member Muhith Mahmood in the race by only 11 votes.

At issue in the canvassing board’s deliberations was the ballots’ chain of custody, which must be maintained to ensure the results of the election are accurate and legitimate. Clerk’s offices are sealed around the time of elections, meaning only election officials come into and out of places where ballots are stored.

Due to what officials have said was human error by those who were counting absentee ballots on election night, the 37 ballots in question were opened but never counted. Upon noting a discrepancy in the numbers, election officials looked for the ballots, City Clerk Rana Faraj told the canvassers at their meeting Thursday, but did not find them until the next day. Those ballots were then sealed in a secure envelope and brought to the county.

But the clerk and her team later realized that three other city officials, including interim City Manager Alex Lagrou, walked into the office late on election night, Faraj said. That broke the chain of custody of those ballots, casting doubt onto whether they could be counted.

It’s uncertain why Lagrou and the other officials entered the office. Lagrou could not be reached for comment Friday. It’s not clear who the other non-election officials were.

Becki Carmargo, assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County, told the canvassers on Friday that the board had precedent to reject the ballots based on similar cases in the past. She recommended that the ballots be rejected.

The Democrats on the board, Richard Preuss and Edward Keelean, both argued the votes should be counted. Preuss, the board’s vice chair, said he would like to see affidavits or sworn testimony from the officials who entered the office, because “throwing out votes without having evidence is reckless.”

“I haven’t seen any evidence saying there’s any fraud,” he said, “and to say that these 37 don’t count because of an allegation of potential fraud is completely contrary to this board’s sworn duty.”

Lisa Capatina, a Republican and the chair of the board, argued that such an investigation would be outside of the power of the canvassers. The canvassers are ministerial, she said, meaning their primary job is to confirm the election results.

The canvassers ultimately voted along party lines, and the 2-2 deadlock means the ballots will not be counted.

The mayoral election now hinges on 120 cured ballots tabulated during the canvasser’s meeting Thursday. Those will be taken into the count on Tuesday as the board finalizes the canvas.

Mahmood, the currently trailing mayoral candidate, told Votebeat before the meeting that he hoped the canvassers “did the right thing.”

“At the end of the day, those are people’s votes,” he said. He declined to comment further after the meeting.

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

Ballot custody questions complicate aftermath of Hamtramck election

2025-11-14T00:46:01+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.

Sometime in the hours after last week’s election in Hamtramck, officials who weren’t involved in elections walked into the city clerk’s office, a space that’s supposed to be a secure place to keep ballots.

That revelation has thrown the outcome of the Michigan city’s entire election into doubt, including an exceedingly close mayoral race.

Update: Hamtramck batch of absentee ballots won’t be counted, disenfranchising 37 voters

A total of 37 absentee ballots were initially unaccounted for on election night but were later discovered in the clerk’s office, opened but not yet tabulated. But since those ballots were not secured and could have been accessed by others, it’s currently up in the air whether they will be included in the election’s final totals.

The fate of the 37 ballots now rests with the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, which deadlocked on the decision Thursday and put off a resolution until Friday. City officials’ breach of the ballots’ chain of custody — a core safeguard in election law — has cast new doubt on the city’s election system, which is already under scrutiny amid ongoing criminal investigations and unusually high numbers of corrected absentee ballots.

How the canvassers rule on the 37 ballots could affect who wins the open-seat mayoral election in Hamtramck, a city of about 28,000 that borders Detroit. According to unofficial results, engineer Adam Alharbi currently leads City Council member Muhith Mahmood by only 11 votes.

Ballots discovered after the election

City Clerk Rana Faraj told the board of canvassers on Thursday that her records showed a 37-ballot discrepancy on election night but that no one knew where the ballots were. They were found the next day in the clerk’s office, opened but still in their envelopes. When the discovery was made, the clerk immediately sealed the ballots in a secure envelope and brought them to the county, Faraj said.

The city clerk’s office is normally a secure space, so the discovery did not immediately raise questions about the ballots’ validity. However, Faraj said, her staff later realized several city officials, including interim City Manager Alex Lagrou, had entered the office while the ballots were there.

It’s unusual for non-election officials to go into a clerk’s office around an election, and it is not clear why they did so. Lagrou could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

“This is an issue of election law,” said Lisa A. Capatina, the chair of the canvassers board. Capatina and Toni Sellars, the Republicans on the board, voted against tabulating the ballots, while Democrats Richard Preuss and Edward Keelean voted in favor.

The canvassers ultimately tabled the decision on the advice of Becki Carmargo, assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County. They will reconvene on Friday afternoon. The state deadline for canvassing is Tuesday.

Preuss said he would love to hear from residents before making a decision.

“There seems to be a robust amount of people here at this meeting today that would like to have a chance to speak,” he said.

Those who spoke during public comment at Thursday’s board meeting were split. A number of self-identified Hamtramck residents said it would be wrong to disenfranchise those 37 voters, while others felt those ballots should no longer be considered after the chain of custody was broken.

Investigations into Hamtramck elections

The revelation is yet another blow to election confidence in a city that has been racked by scandal. Several members of the City Council are being investigated for alleged election crimes, and one person who was also under investigation won election to the council last week. There have been accusations of ballot stuffing, intimidation, fraud, and more, including felony charges against council members.

Meanwhile, Faraj confirmed she has been on paid leave since Monday, which she told Votebeat on Thursday during the meeting was “for her safety.” She did not expand on what that meant.

Even if the 37 ballots are eventually counted, the election isn’t over. The city also has 120 “cured” ballots left to include in the final totals, Greg Mahar, the director of Wayne County elections, told the canvassers. That’s a significant number for a city of around 28,000 residents; Detroit, in comparison, had only 72 for a city of nearly 650,000.

It’s unclear why there were so many cured ballots in Hamtramck. Mahar attributed it largely to the open-seat race for mayor, but Detroit — which also had an open mayoral race — did not see the same spike.

“It is a bit unusual,” he told the canvassers.

Correction, Nov. 14: An earlier version of this story misstated the title of Becki Carmargo. She is assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County.

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

Dearborn, Michigan, election clouded by worker misstep

2025-11-14T00:24:39+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.

Wayne County officials say the Dearborn City Clerk’s office may have made the city’s recent election — in which George Darany won another four-year term as clerk — impossible to recount, because workers stored absentee ballots in the wrong container, breaking the chain of custody.

Initial election results last week showed Darany trailing his opponent, Sami Elhady, but overwhelming support from absentee voters helped him win by around 2,400 votes.

Those ballots, however, were placed in “retention bags” instead of certified ballot containers. Certified ballot containers typically have multiple seal points and reinforced sides to ensure security, while retention bags are canvas and not as secure. That decision broke the chain of custody, county officials said Thursday during a Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting.

The improper storage of ballots is potentially a misdemeanor, said Becki Carmargo, assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County.

County officials spotted the problem after Dearborn officials brought the bags to the county for assistance with tabulation. In 21 of the city’s 33 precincts, the number of absentee ballots tallied in the initial count did not match the number of absentee ballots recorded on the voter rolls as having been cast, Greg Mahar, the county’s election director, confirmed to Votebeat.

The county canvassers split 2-2 along party lines over whether to recount the out-of-balance precincts. The board voted to go into recess until Friday, and could reconsider the matter then.

Darany apologized and said his office “mistakenly” chose the wrong bags to store the ballots “in the wee hours of the morning.” The office of city clerk is nonpartisan. Darany previously served in the state Legislature as a Democrat.

“We understand that they’re not certified bags, but the bags were sealed, and they did have the words ‘ballot bags’ on the side, which is how this happened,” Darany told the canvassers during the meeting Thursday, which he attended via Zoom. He did not immediately respond to a phone message from Votebeat requesting comment.

Darany said at the meeting that it was the first time such a thing had happened in his eight years as clerk. Nearly 27,000 ballots were cast in the Nov. 4 election, and of those, just over 7,700 were absentee, according to unofficial results.

Elhady, Darany’s opponent, told Votebeat that it is “alarming that we have a clerk that is not keeping up with the demands of election law.”

He has not decided whether to challenge the election results, he said, but he was disappointed in how it all played out.

Lisa Capatina, chair of the Wayne County canvassers, said she appreciated Darany taking responsibility for the problem. Democrats Edward Keelean and Richard Preuss voted to redo the count, while Republicans Capatina and Toni Sellars voted against it.

“It’s clear to me that there was a loss of the chain of custody,” Sellars said, before voting against retabulation.

Absentee ballots have been a persistent problem for the city in this election. The city had to reprint 10,000 ballots because an extra candidate was left in the City Council portion of the ballot. The reprinting cost more than $3,000, a cost likely to be shouldered by the city.

Ballots are reviewed by several people in the clerk’s office before being printed. Darany also took the blame for that.

Correction, Nov. 14: An earlier version of this story misstated the title of Becki Carmargo. She is assistant corporation counsel for Wayne County.

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

As Hamtramck, Michigan, awaits election results, city clerk is told to stay away

2025-11-12T23:39:48+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.

More than a week after Election Day, results from the Wayne County community of Hamtramck remain in limbo because of dozens of ballots that weren’t counted — some of which may never be tallied.

Thirty-seven absentee ballots were not properly tabulated on election night due to what Hamtramck Deputy City Clerk Abe Siblani called “human error at the counting board.” He said the issue would be resolved during the county canvassing meeting at 1 p.m. Thursday. County officials did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday.

The outcome of the city’s mayoral election may depend on what happens.

It is unclear why the ballots weren’t counted. Mismatches between the number of ballots received and counted are rare, and usually stem from simple counting errors that are corrected before results are sent to the county.

Typically, only “cured” ballots — mail ballots with signature mismatches that have been reconciled — are added in during the canvassing process. Officials say there are potentially also a significant number of those, which could also affect the outcome of the mayoral election: The current margin stands at just 11 votes, with Adam Alharbi narrowly leading City Council member Muhith Mahmood.

Meanwhile, City Clerk Rana Faraj has been absent from the office. Siblani said that city officials told her not to come to work Monday and that he has not heard from her since. Faraj could not be reached for comment.

It’s not clear whether Faraj has been suspended in some way, or why she was told not to appear for work. City officials did not return multiple voicemails asking for information. She did, however, tell TV station WDIV that she “respectfully but firmly” disagreed with the city’s decision. Clerks are appointed by the city manager in Hamtramck, according to the city’s charter, and serve at the pleasure of the manager.

Faraj’s absence is the latest election mystery in Hamtramck, a city of about 28,000 people bordering Detroit that has been rocked by allegations that council members were involved in an election fraud scheme. An investigation into those allegations led to felony charges this year.

“We’re used to scandals at this point,” Siblani said.

In March, Faraj wrote a letter to Attorney General Dana Nessel, asking her office to “take action” on alleged election fraud in the city, saying that an unidentified City Council member — whom Faraj later confirmed to be Mohammed Hassan — “acts as though he’s above the law.”

Nessel later requested a special prosecutor to investigate Hassan, council members Abu Musa, Muhtasin Sadman, and Mohammed Alsomiri, as well as two others. The petition alleged they conspired to collect unvoted absentee ballots from newly naturalized citizens, fill them out, and pay for votes.

In August, Hassan and Sadman were charged with felonies. Felony charges against Sadman were later dropped after two subpoenaed witnesses failed to appear, The Detroit News reported last month, although he still faces a misdemeanor charge. Court records show Hassan is set to have a jury trial in April.

No others have been charged.

Campaign signs for City Council candidates Nayeem Choudhury and Abu A. Musa on Nov. 4, 2025, in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Despite the investigations, Musa and Nayeem Choudhury — who was one of the others named in Nessel’s petition — both won council seats last week, according to unofficial results. Just before the August primary, footage from surveillance cameras appeared to show Musa allegedly handing a driver bundles of ballots to place into a city drop box. Michigan State Police say they are investigating; Michigan law allows only family members or those in the same household to return ballots for voters.

The repeated irregularities have shaken some voters’ confidence in the city’s electoral processes. Several voters told Votebeat on Election Day that they felt charges of election crimes should disqualify a candidate.

Rich Lash, a Hamtramck voter, said he turned up to vote on Election Day despite the scandals because he felt it was his civic duty. He was voting for new people to “shake it up,” he told Votebeat, particularly after hearing from a number of family and friends that his vote wouldn’t matter.

“I’m pessimistically hopeful,” he said just a few hours before polls closed.

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

Pennsylvania’s Chester County seeks explanation for pollbook error as it checks provisional ballots

2025-11-12T17:20:56+00:00

Pennsylvania’s Chester County has reviewed more than two-thirds of the provisional ballots cast on Election Day, and confirmed that it has begun counting eligible ballots, though officials still cannot explain what caused a pollbook error that forced independent and third-party voters to use provisional ballots.

County officials said they hope to have the answer by December, after an investigation by an outside firm.

Pollbooks are the lists of registered voters that workers use to check in voters at the polling place. But pollbooks that Chester County distributed for Election Day omitted third-party and independent voters, forcing thousands of them to vote using provisional ballots. Provisional ballots require voters and election officials to take some additional steps, such as signing the envelope in the correct spot, or they will be rejected for technical reasons, and the ballots must undergo additional checks before they are counted.

More than 12,100 Chester County voters cast provisional ballots in last Tuesday’s election, more than in any other election in the county since at least 2016, according to state data.

As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, officials had reviewed more than 8,200 of the provisional ballots to confirm the voters’ eligibility and to check that required fields on the envelope had been properly completed, county spokesperson Rebecca Brain said. The county began counting eligible provisional ballots Tuesday, and Brain said more than 7,200 had been fully counted, and some partially counted.

Voters can track the status of their provisional ballot on the Department of State’s website.

Investigation will look at root causes and county processes

The county said in a statement Monday that it would select an independent investigator by Nov. 17, and provide an update at the Nov. 21 board of elections meeting. It said it would aim to complete the investigation in early to mid-December and present results in December or January.

“As of today, we identified the key questions that must be addressed through the investigation and presented the Board of Elections with several options for how the review can best proceed,” Chester County CEO David Byerman said in the statement.

Brain said the key questions include the root cause of the problem, as well as “what processes and controls were in place” to check the accuracy of the pollbooks, and “how and why did those processes fail.”

Others are also seeking answers. In an email to its members, the Republican Committee of Chester County asked those who served as poll workers to provide information including how many provisional ballots were used, how they were handled, and what assistance or instructions the county provided.

“We need accurate information from every precinct as to the County’s total failure to conduct a fair and accurate election,” the party said in the email, which was obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA.

County changed its initial instructions to poll workers

Robert Fedick, a judge of elections from East Whiteland Township who oversaw voting at a precinct, said he realized there was a problem early on Election Day, when his third voter of the day was unable to check in.

“Next thing you know, I’m calling Voter Services saying, ‘What the heck?’” he recalled. “It was the hardest election I’ve done in four years. Harder than the presidential.”

Fedick said the county initially instructed him to handwrite voters’ names in the pollbook and allow them to cast a regular ballot. But then, the county told workers to direct the voters to use provisional ballots. One of the county Republicans’ questions to poll workers focuses on this point. Brain said questions about the county’s guidance will be addressed in the county’s investigation.

Fedick said he’s worked with the county’s elections director, Karen Barsoum, for years, and doesn’t believe there was any intentional effort to leave voters out of the pollbook.

“I would just like to know from the county what steps they are taking to make sure this doesn’t happen again, and who didn’t do their job,” he said.

John Young has been a poll worker since 2009, and was serving as the judge of elections in West Goshen Township on Election Day. He, too, said the problem surfaced shortly after polls opened.

“As soon as I asked two or three follow-up questions, I immediately knew what the problem was,” he said.

He was unable to get through to county officials on the phone, but said the training, additional materials the county provided, and roving poll workers helped the workers at his voting site deal efficiently with the influx of provisional ballots.

Young, who works in information technology, said the incident reminded him of a 2018 false missile alert in Hawaii, which was caused by a poorly designed user interface. It isn’t yet clear what caused the pollbook problem, but election officials often complain that the state’s voter management system, known as SURE, has a clunky user interface.

Young said that when judges of elections used to get their Election Day materials the Saturday before the election, some would take the pollbooks out of the box and add alphabetical tabs to the book to help them find names more easily, or otherwise organize them for efficiency. But in recent years, he said, the county began sealing the boxes to prevent them from being opened before Election Day.

He said he understood the precaution, and said “there’s no guarantee” someone would have noticed the error if they could have opened the books ahead of time, “but yeah, there’s a chance.”

Correction, Nov. 12: A previous version of this story misspelled the last name of Karen Barsoum, the Chester County election director.

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

If federal election monitors in New Jersey and California do their job, they pose little threat

2025-11-03T10:00:00+00:00

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

The U.S. Justice Department recently announced it would send monitors to polling sites in California and New Jersey during the upcoming elections, following requests from state Republican parties. Given today’s political tensions, and President Donald Trump’s comments and actions on elections, it’s understandable that the news of federal intervention made many people uneasy.

But the presence of federal monitors at polling sites isn’t new, isn’t necessarily alarming, and doesn’t mean things will go wrong.

The Justice Department has been monitoring elections this way for decades, under Democratic and Republican administrations. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the department’s Civil Rights Division has had the authority to send trained staff to observe elections to ensure that everyone can cast ballots freely and without intimidation. They are not there to run the election or count ballots, and federal law doesn’t intend or allow for them to interfere.

A lot of good things have happened as a result of federal monitoring, and these monitors have also been integral in ensuring that laws intended to protect voters were enforced. Cities like St. Louis, which was the subject of litigation over voting access for disabled people, have seen monitors to ensure that terms of legal settlements were followed. Monitors performed a similar function in Alaska, ensuring language access for voters in Alaska’s native-language jurisdictions.

Court orders also play a role. Union County, New Jersey, for example, is currently eligible for federal observers as a result of a court order under the Voting Rights Act, after the county was found not to have provided adequate voting materials in Spanish.

That’s not one of the places where the Justice Department is sending monitors this year. They will be sent to polling sites in Passaic County, New Jersey, as well as Kern, Riverside, Fresno, Orange, and Los Angeles counties in California.

California officials are criticizing the Justice Department’s decision to send monitors, and state Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said the state will be sending observers to watch the federal observers. California’s U.S. senators, both Democrats, have sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking her to withdraw the observers “due to the Department’s blatantly partisan motivations.”

California, of course, is far from the first state to object over the years, though dynamics often shift based on politics. In 2024, some red states, including Texas, said they wouldn’t allow the observers in; Texas ultimately agreed to do so.

This kind of monitoring happens regularly. Sometimes monitors are assigned to a location because of specific complaints about accessibility, and sometimes it’s because of a history of voting rights violations. Sometimes, local officials request them.

In short, they are intended to be safeguards, not sirens. The elections in California and New Jersey are some of the biggest contests on the calendar this year, so it makes sense to station monitors in those places.

I’m not naïve about the potential risks here. This administration has said some truly wild things about voting, and it’s impossible to forget the attack on the U.S. Capitol. There are reasons to be cautious and to keep a close eye on how this unfolds. But historically, these monitoring efforts have been routine and uneventful — a normal part of how our democracy safeguards itself. In theory, this round should go the same way. At the very least, we know what the historical standard of behavior looks like, and we’ll be able to judge current actions against it in real time.

So if you see these monitors in your community, don’t assume they are there because a scandal is brewing, and don’t let them deter you from exercising your right. Simply vote. In the unlikely event that they do interfere in any way with your voting experience, alert a poll worker, who can ask the county for help.

Years of false claims about elections have done real damage to public trust, and the possibility of voter intimidation is a growing concern. Many voters, advocates and officials worry that the Justice Department’s action may be in bad faith. But historically, the presence of these monitors at the polls is less a sign that democracy is crumbling, and more a reminder that it stands.

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

New clerk in Madison, Wisconsin, typifies movement to professionalize election administration

2025-10-31T10:00:00+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.

As a 19-year-old election worker in Hennepin County, Minnesota, Lydia McComas discovered how meaningful it was to help voters navigate the process. Less than a decade later, she’s the city clerk in Madison, Wisconsin, overseeing one of the most scrutinized election offices in the state and working to rebuild trust after last year’s ballot mishandling scandal.

Between those two points, McComas followed an unusually direct path: a college internship supporting elections planning, then a full-time job in a county elections office along with a graduate program in election administration.

She’s part of an emerging generation of officials who set out early and very intentionally, through internships and university training, to make a career out of election work. Driving this movement toward professionalized election administration are veterans of the field who recognize the need to replace retiring clerks and have spent years creating a stronger, more sustainable pipeline.

Together they are transforming a profession once dominated by civic-minded volunteers and on-the-job learners.

“I’d love for more young people to get involved with election administration and explore it as a future career,” McComas told Votebeat in an interview.

For now, McComas is an outlier in Wisconsin: At 28, she’s among the youngest to hold a municipal clerk position — and one of the few who pursued the election profession, on purpose, from the outset. Nearly 80% of the state’s chief election officials are over 50, and fewer than half have a college degree or higher, according to the Elections & Voting Information Center.

Her rise comes amid historic turnover that highlights the urgency of developing the pipeline of election officials: Between 2020 and 2024, more than 700 of Wisconsin’s municipal clerks left their posts, the highest churn in the nation.

The new generation is fully aware that the job has changed since many of those veteran clerks started, said EVIC research director Paul Manson, with their work under closer public examination and intense political pressure.

McComas’ expertise will be tested

McComas’ new role is about more than elections — she’ll take meeting minutes, process licenses, and handle business registrations, among other duties. But her expertise is connecting with voters, the media, and community partners, and explaining complex election procedures in layman’s terms.

That expertise will be tested immediately in Madison, where trust in the city’s election office is still mending after last year’s controversy over 193 missing ballots. The fallout — investigations, a civil lawsuit, and the suspension and resignation of longtime clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl — left voters demanding transparency.

“There’s pressure to make sure that everything works well, that the public trusts us,” McComas said. She knows the climb will be steep. Most of the staff who weathered that turbulent year remain, seasoned administrators now adapting to greater public scrutiny.

The glare of attention on Madison, she said, mirrors the national reality for election administrators everywhere — their jobs are increasingly under the spotlight of polarization and doubt.

“Last year was really tough, and next year is tough,” McComas said, noting the four statewide elections ahead in 2026.

An early start in the workings of elections

People take different paths into election administration. Milwaukee’s chief election official, Paulina Gutiérrez, came from public safety and legislative work, while Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys was the mayor’s chief of staff. Others arrive from outside government — teachers, bankers, or longtime poll workers who worked their way up.

McComas’ journey into this world started early. As a kid in Minneapolis, she tagged along with her parents to the polls, filling out mock ballots and proudly wearing an “I will vote” sticker. She also joined them knocking on doors for get-out-the-vote drives. Those formative experiences led her to study political science at the University of Minnesota, volunteer on campaigns and intern for U.S. Sen. Al Franken.

Her time on campaigns confirmed that the partisan side of politics wasn’t for her. “I was used to talking to people regardless of their party,” McComas said. “Working for candidates and not doing that just felt wrong.”

Her first job in elections was a college internship with Hennepin County in 2017, supporting the election department on planning, updating training manuals and legislative priorities. McComas was struck by the precision required in running elections and wanted to devote her career to it, she said.

After graduating, she joined Hennepin County Elections full time, first as a general election administrator and then specializing in voter engagement for a jurisdiction of 700,000 voters in and around Minneapolis. She helped voters get registered, and answered questions about voting during a pandemic.

She also oversaw compliance with election laws and developed training for poll workers.

Meanwhile, she pursued a graduate certificate in election administration from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

She was hired in Madison in August.

A new era for training for election officials

Academic programs like the one McComas followed, focusing on elections as a career path, are more common today, but still rare at most universities, where public affairs education focuses more on city management, emergency planning, and public health, said Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the National Association of Election Officials and a longtime election administration educator.

The ones that exist are growing: The University of Minnesota’s election program had just over 50 enrollees in 2017. In 2025, there were over 200. In addition to the Humphrey School, Auburn University offers a graduate certificate in election administration, and Northern Arizona University now provides an undergraduate program.

Meanwhile, 43 states, including Wisconsin, have other types of programs to train local election officials, a Bipartisan Policy Center analysis found. Wisconsin is also among the 22 states offering training specific to new election officials. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Arizona Fellows program places students in county election offices, boosting interest in election work and helping offices engage younger, more diverse voters.

Patrick, who has taught at the Humphrey School since 2016, sees an urgent need to formalize the field and promote it to youth, because so many older clerks are retiring.

“It’s just not on anyone’s radar as an option,” Patrick said, “and I think that that’s part of the work we need to do as a profession, which is particularly challenging in this environment, because now people are aware of election administration for all the wrong reasons.”

Formalizing the pipeline might be even harder for Wisconsin, where most municipal clerks work part-time, and most who work full time spend much of the year working on things besides elections.

McComas said that both Madison and Hennepin County try to do local outreach to universities and have interns to promote election administration as a career path.

Still, she finds herself explaining to many people that running elections is a full-time job, not just a poll-working gig for several days a year.

McComas says she’s prepared for challenge in Madison

In Madison, McComas said her first goal is to rebuild trust.

She plans to draw on her voter engagement background to make that happen. Under interim clerk Mike Haas, the city overhauled many of the systems that failed in the 2024 election, but those improvements, she said, went largely unnoticed because there wasn’t a strong communications plan.

“Next year,” she said, “we will be able to show the public that we are transparent and that we are answering any questions.”

Although her career doesn’t go back decades, McComas said her experience has prepared her for this moment. Her graduate certificate program gave her a broader perspective, she said, and helped reaffirm her commitment to the role.

Beyond school, McComas said the work — and the people she met in Hennepin County — sparked a lasting passion for election administration. Surrounded by colleagues who shared her dedication and curiosity, she found a community she wanted to be part of for the long haul.

“I knew I wanted to devote my career to that work,” she said.

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

How ranked choice voting works — illustrated by the election for Votebeat’s pet mascot

2025-10-30T09:00:00+00:00

You may have heard or read a lot about ranked choice voting recently. In New York City this year, voters selected the Democratic candidate for mayor through a ranked choice election. In Michigan, activists are circulating petitions for a proposal to adopt ranked choice voting in elections in the state, while legislators consider forbidding communities from implementing it.

What is ranked choice voting? Read our special feature to find out.

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.

Pennsylvania criminal case highlights problems with third-party voter registration drives

2025-10-30T09:00:00+00:00

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

In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, workers with an Arizona-based consulting firm conducting a voter registration drive tried to submit fake registrations in Pennsylvania in an effort to earn more money, the state attorney general is alleging in a criminal complaint filed this month.

The case grew out of investigations in a few counties into voter registration applications that prosecutors had flagged as irregular before the election.

But election officials across the commonwealth say the problems with these types of third-party voter registration drives aren’t limited to this incident of alleged fraud. Rather, they say, systemic problems with the way third-party voter registration organizations operate often result in street canvassers submitting incomplete or invalid registrations.

Even when it doesn’t rise to the level of fraud, they say, the practice floods county election offices with extra work to sort through these registrations, and the problem could be mitigated via changes to state law.

Registration drives are a big source of new applications

Every presidential election year, non-governmental organizations and political parties flock to swing states like Pennsylvania to register as many voters as possible, often hiring contractors to manage the outreach to voters and employ local canvassers to collect forms. The applications they submit, several local election officials told Votebeat, can be a mixed bag.

“Some of them are valid and some of them raise red flags,” said Jim Allen, election director for Delaware County.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, nearly 440,000 voter registration applications came from registration drives in 2024, which represents the third-largest source of applications, behind those received through PennDOT, the state’s department of transportation, and online registrations. Roughly two-thirds of those were physical paper applications.

Those often come from canvassers whom potential voters might encounter holding clipboards outside grocery stores, shopping malls, or fairs.

Many applications collected this way turn out to be invalid, or contain incomplete information, which forces county workers to track down the applicant, election officials said. Regardless of how poorly filled out or duplicative each application is, county workers have to process each one and determine whether the individual should be added to the voter rolls. Much of that work is being done during the critical few weeks before the election, when workers also have myriad other tasks to complete.

David Voye, manager of Allegheny County’s Division of Elections, said that during a presidential election year, the county can receive a few hundred applications from voter registration drives every day.

“That’s when it becomes overwhelming for our staff members,” he said. “I would say maybe 30% are ineligible, duplicate, (or) hard to read.”

Allen said any large-scale voter registration drive brings these issues.

“They’re always well-meaning attempts to approach voters about registering to vote or for a mail-in ballot, but sometimes the language on the form or the letter can lead to issues,” he said, “or other times just human error or overzealousness can lead to an excessive number of duplicate or invalid registrations that we have to sort through.” He said he encountered similar issues at a previous election administration job in Chicago.

The applications also frequently come in large batches, as organizations submit all the registrations they have collected over several weeks. Or they arrive on the registration deadline, as was the case for those received from the group now at the center of state Attorney General Dave Sunday’s case, Arizona-based Field+Media Corps.

Complaint says canvassers were paid for collecting more forms

A big part of that case centers on a Pennsylvania law that says it is illegal to pay canvassers on the basis of how many voter registration forms they collect.

The logic behind that law is “if you offer pay per registration, it creates a perverse incentive for someone to make them up to do them faster,” said Forrest Lehman, election director in Lycoming County.

According to affidavits in criminal complaints that the attorney general filed in court in Lancaster County last week, seven people associated with Field+Media Corps last year allegedly faked information on voter registration forms in order to meet quotas for registration forms or boost their pay. The attorney general stressed that investigators found no political or partisan motive.

Investigators said canvassers received bonuses for extra applications they submitted or were threatened with termination if they didn’t gather enough, according to the criminal complaint.

One canvasser, who was not charged, told investigators that her pay reflected how many forms she collected, the attorney general alleged in court documents. For example, the documents say, she told investigators that three forms would net $40, and if a canvasser collected 15 to 16 forms in a single shift, they would be paid as if they had worked 10 hours, even if they had worked less. She also stated that canvassers could be fired if they did not meet a goal of 1.5 to two registration forms per hour.

According to the affidavits, one canvasser who was eventually fired for not meeting the quota told investigators that on some days, she would “make up names and information to meet the quota, due to fear of losing her job.”

In total, one organizer and six street canvassers were charged. No charges were brought against the company itself or executive leadership. None of the seven defendants had entered a plea as of noon Wednesday.

“We are confident that the motive behind these crimes was personal financial gain, and not a conspiracy or organized effort to tip any election for any one candidate or party,” Sunday said in a press release about the charges. “Pennsylvanians should have peace of mind that the election process worked in this case.”

The suspected fraudulent applications, in Berks, Lancaster, and York counties, were announced just before the 2024 election. At the time, county officials said no voter had been fraudulently registered.

In the affidavits, the attorney general said the forms submitted in these counties were fraudulent, and some also contained incomplete information or were duplicative.

The website and associated email accounts for Field+Media Corps, meanwhile, have been deactivated. Messages left on a number listed for the company, as well as sent to the company’s LinkedIn page, went unanswered. No response was received to an email sent to an address associated with Francisco Heredia, the Mesa, Arizona, City Council member who was listed as the company’s CEO.

Heredia last year told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that Field+Media Corps has a zero tolerance policy for workers who submit fraudulent forms, and had said the company would fully cooperate with any investigation in Pennsylvania. Court documents note the company provided “numerous records.”

How more regulation could help

Lehman said the state could help by adopting a law that makes it illegal to hold on to voter registration forms for weeks before turning them in. Field+Media Corps collected thousands of forms that it held on to for weeks, before submitting them in the final days before Pennsylvania’s voter registration deadline, according to court documents.

“Then those voters’ registrations are getting delayed, and they don’t know if they’re registered to vote until the very last minute because we’re processing all these applications,” Lehman said.

Other states already have such laws on the books.

Some counties are already trying to encourage earlier registration submissions. Centre County, home to Penn State University, adopted a policy earlier this year that, among other things, urges organizations to submit forms within 10 days of collection. A spokesperson for the county said the policy was adopted “to prevent confusion or issues with voter registration drive organizers.”

Both Voye, of Allegheny County, and Allen, of Delaware County, said they appreciated the work that third-party organizations do to try to register eligible voters, but they said these issues can cause stress for election workers, particularly in the busy few weeks leading up to Election Day.

Voye thinks the number of poor-quality forms would drop if more groups did their registrations on tablets or laptops. The Department of State has a program that allows organizations to use their own apps to submit voter registration applications directly to county election offices, so county workers don’t have to manually enter the information from paper forms. The county workers still make the final determination on who is eligible to register.

But Allen said he still sees issues with the applications coming through this system, and thinks the state should have a way for counties to see which groups are submitting bad applications, or possibly revoke their access to the program.

The access that the state offers “makes it easy for abuse, so there has to be a degree of accountability,” Allen said.

The terms of use for the program require organizations to “take all precautions to reduce and mitigate fraudulent or erroneous voter registration applications and implement measures to avoid such submissions.”

The department said that on the rare occasions when there appeared to be an issue with applications submitted by a group through the program, it suspended access “until proper quality controls were put in place.”

“There is a lot of good work that comes out of these organizations, but there is also some bad paperwork that comes out,” Allen said. “Our desire is to see them take a little more caution.”

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

Michigan proposal would move election dates, eliminate August primary

2025-10-29T09:00:00+00:00

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

A new proposal from Michigan’s Senate Democrats could shake up the state’s election calendar and would mean major changes for both campaigns and the election administrators. But it could have trouble balancing the interests of municipal clerks and school districts.

Sen. Sam Singh, the Senate majority floor leader and a Democrat from East Lansing, plans to introduce legislation within two weeks to move Michigan’s August primary to May, with some May races potentially shifting to February.

The changes would take effect in 2027, Singh said, potentially eliminating concerns Republicans in the House expressed about disrupting the 2026 election cycle. Because many campaigns are “up and running,” Singh told Votebeat in an interview last week, making changes in the middle of a cycle “was a significant concern.”

If the proposal becomes law, the general-election period would effectively be stretched out by three months each year. Meanwhile, clerks around the state would see a big shift in their election calendar — but it’s not the one they want. Clerks say they want just two elections a year: one in May or June and one in November.

Getting rid of Michigan’s August primary

Election officials have long urged the state to eliminate the August election and instead combine it with the May contests. Held just three months before the general election, August elections tend to draw low turnout. A recent Department of State report also deemed them “impractical” to audit, as the post-election period creeps up on preparations for November.

The Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks’ official stance is that Michigan doesn’t need three elections each year. Keeping all three, regardless of the timing, is expensive for local governments, said Michael Siegrist, the Canton Township clerk and first vice president of the local clerks association.

“We can satisfy the needs of the voters and other jurisdictions, like school districts, with having a May and November election,” Siegrist told Votebeat. “It ensures decent turnout. It’s more economically advantageous for the state of Michigan. Moving the primary to May or June is ideal, but we believe in merging August and May, as opposed to having the February date.”

Consensus on eliminating August primary fades

Last month, as legislators from both parties struggled through a contentious budget cycle, Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House told The Detroit News that they were working on bills that would eliminate the August primary. That brief moment of unity has faded.

Rep. Rachelle Smit, a Republican from Martin Township and former clerk, told The News last month that legislation was in progress to consolidate all elections to May ahead of the 2026 election. However, a Smit spokesperson told Votebeat last week that the House Election Integrity Committee — which Smit chairs — would not consider those bills. Her office declined an interview and did not respond to a request for further comment.

Smit’s pivot follows a new wave of Republican opposition to the plan. Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall told the radio news outlet Michigan Public that he was “very strongly opposed” to changing the primaries ahead of the 2026 election, arguing it would benefit Democrats looking to attack Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, a Democrat who is running for governor as an independent candidate.

Hall and Smit did not say whether they would support the bills if implementation was moved back to 2027.

Singh told Votebeat his proposal has bipartisan support in the Senate. “My hope is with the fact that we’re looking at future elections, that there will be an opening at some point for the House to consider it,” he said.

School leaders prefer three elections

Similar bills have been introduced in the past with limited success, never advancing to the governor’s desk. In 2021, a cluster of bills made it through the Michigan House to the Senate, then controlled by Republicans, ultimately dying there.

At the time, the legislation was opposed by the Michigan Association of School Boards and other school groups across the state.

School districts have to pay for their own elections under Michigan law, including additional fees if the district joins in on an election with other races, or 100% of the cost if the district’s election is the only one on the ballot.

It can be worth the expense, though, if the election helps the district ensure its funding for future years through approval of millages or bond issues.

Jennifer Smith, director of government relations for MASB, said districts want to be “good stewards” of public money, and part of that is ensuring that they can get the best interest rates on their debt issues. Having three elections offers districts opportunities to time their funding requests for when the best rates are available, and her group has long been in favor of maintaining all three.

“That’s what we’ve been fighting about for years,” she said. “Every time they’ve tried to move the primary, the clerks want to, but they’re not the ones that have to go out for the bond like we do. … More dates to do that would be better.”

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

Michigan Republicans demand Benson share full voter roll with Trump administration — unredacted

2025-10-28T19:31:26+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.

Nearly two dozen Michigan House Republicans have signed on to a resolution calling for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to share the state’s complete voter rolls with the Trump administration, without redactions of potentially sensitive identifying information.

Michigan is one of several states being sued by the U.S. Justice Department over their refusal to share unredacted voter rolls in response to requests from the agency. Benson shared some of Michigan’s voter roll — the parts accessible to any member of the public — but withheld personal identifying information, such as Social Security numbers.

The GOP-backed resolution, which was debated at a hearing Tuesday in the House Election Integrity Committee, calls for the secretary of state to share an unredacted copy of Michigan’s computerized statewide voter registration list, also known as the qualified voter file, with federal officials.

“It is inconceivable, in fact unconscionable, that the chief election officer in Michigan refuses to comply with our nation’s top law enforcement official,” Rep. Joe Fox, a Republican from Fremont and the sponsor of the resolution, said at the hearing. “Who does she think she is?”

When questioned by Rep. Stephen Wooden, D-Grand Rapids, Fox appeared unaware that the state had already submitted a redacted voter roll to the Justice Department, saying he was “maybe one of the most confused.” After Wooden provided the date that the file was submitted, Fox said he’d look into it.

The committee approved the resolution 6-3 along party lines.

Rep. Rachelle Smit, a Republican from Martin and chair of the committee, said she appreciated the resolution, as Benson “has been obstructing the work of this committee, the work of this legislature.” Smit and the House GOP have been in a fight with Benson’s agency for months over access to election manuals and whether the Department of State is providing information as required by law to the Legislature.

In total, 23 Michigan House Republicans signed on to the resolution.

The resolution was first introduced on Oct. 23. Early the next day, the Michigan Department of State put out a video and a news release arguing that both state and federal law forbids Benson from sharing personal information.

“Why do they want access to your personal information?” Benson asks in the video. “Well, I’ve asked them that. Other secretaries of state, both Democrats and Republicans, have asked them that. They won’t tell us. Nobody — not the president, the DOJ or any other federal agency — has the right to your sensitive, private voter information.”

Benson, who is in her final term as secretary of state, is running for governor. Both polling and fundraising indicate she’s the likely frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

The Privacy Act of 1974 requires the federal government to provide adequate notice for the collection of public information as well as an explanation for how that information will be used. Other state and federal laws may also prevent the release of such information.

The House resolution acknowledges that concern and says the Justice Department has indicated the data will be kept secure. It also points to several other federal laws — the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 — cited by the Justice Department as reasons that Michigan could be obligated to share the data.

Other states have also refused the Trump administration’s requests for complete, unredacted voter rolls, and have been sued by the Justice Department. Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s secretary of the commonwealth, called the request “a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process.” In Maine, the state’s secretary of state told the administration to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine,” an allusion to a similar rebuff years earlier by Mississippi’s then-secretary of state.

The federal lawsuit against Michigan is ongoing, according to court records, with next steps expected in mid-November.

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

At the Athens County Board of Elections, they still believe in the great Pumpkin

2025-10-27T09:00:00+00:00

Hayley Harding here, your intrepid Votebeat Michigan reporter and noted fan of animals with government jobs. I’ve gathered you all here today to discuss what I’m confident we can all agree is the most important issue of our times: pets, and their indispensable contributions to democracy.

You may remember that over the past few weeks, we’ve asked you to take part in our own pet election. We don’t have results quite yet — stay tuned! — but pets are more than Votebeat co-reporters.

I’ve heard of a number of election offices across the country that have an animal or two to serve as an unofficial mascot. I’d like to tell you about one dear to my heart: Pumpkin, the cat who lives, and works (obviously), in the Athens County Board of Elections.

Athens County is in southeastern Ohio, and its county seat, Athens, is home to my alma mater, Ohio University. Athens is a classic college town — campus melds with the surrounding neighborhoods, and many of the city and county offices are just a short walk from the university proper.

That includes the Athens County Board of Elections, and its elderly star, Pumpkin. When I was a student in 2018, Pumpkin would regularly sit in the window of the Board of Elections office, looking out on Court Street. It earned him a lot of affection from students, and a regular spot on the various “Cats with Jobs” social media accounts (with a photo typically used without attribution from a fellow OU alum, reporter Sam Howard).

Pumpkin has become the face of voting in Athens. While he’s largely retired from the front window — preferring instead to supervise from under desks — his visage still appears on T-shirts and posters encouraging people to vote. The university has even used pictures of Pumpkin to encourage students to “take the Bobcat voter pledge.” People regularly stop by the office to ask about him and occasionally make art dedicated to him.

“There’s a lot of people that will ask us to use his likeness and things like that. We don’t limit his likeness or anything,” Tony Brooks, director of the Athens County Board of Elections, said. The board even took a vote against limiting the use of his likeness or seeking to profit from it.

Brooks, director since March, estimates Pumpkin is now about 14½ years old — which is a pretty impressive age for a once flea-ridden cat who had to be rescued from college students by a previous director.

He is, by anyone’s best guess, probably the only cat ~~running~~ living in a Board of Elections office in Ohio. It’s not extra pressure, Brooks said, although people are sometimes disappointed when they come in to meet him during a busy election season and instead have to come back when his caretakers are less occupied with the business of democracy. (He doesn’t have an owner, per se — he’s more of a free agent, cared for by the entire staff.)

I have to know: Do you know of another election office pet? A salamander who keeps an eye on early voting? A dog sniffing out fraud? A chinchilla who doesn’t do a whole lot but looks VERY cute doing it? I need to know. You can reach me at hharding@votebeat.org.

What Pennsylvania voters need to know ahead of November’s election

2025-10-23T16:42:25+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.

Pennsylvanians will head to the polls next month to vote in some distinctive contests.

The highest profile race this year is for three state Supreme Court justices hoping to remain on the bench. Also on the ballot, representing the smallest possible constituency, are candidates seeking to be precinct-level election workers.

And if you haven’t voted by mail since the 2024 presidential election, there are some changes that could affect you.

Here is what you need to know ahead of the Nov. 4 municipal election:

What are judicial retention elections?

In Pennsylvania, judges and justices on the state’s appellate courts are elected for 10-year terms. As their terms come to an end, jurists run for retention, which means another 10-year term.

When they first run for office, judges run in the primary and declare a political party. But when they run for retention, they’re not running against any other candidate, and no party affiliation appears next to their name on the ballot.

Voters will be asked to simply vote “yes” or “no” on whether the judges and justices should serve another term.

Yes-or-no retention races are the most common way state Supreme Court judges run for additional terms, but Pennsylvania’s combination of initially partisan elections followed by nonpartisan retention races is less common.

Retention campaigns in Pennsylvania are almost always successful. Only one state appellate judge, Supreme Court Justice Russell Nigro, has ever lost a retention race.

If a judge loses a retention vote, the governor, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, would appoint a replacement to fill in until the next municipal election in 2027. The appointment is subject to confirmation by the GOP-controlled state Senate.

Who are the judges up for retention?

Five statewide appellate court judges are up for retention this year, including three state Supreme Court justices.

Commonwealth Court Judge Michael Wojcik is running for another term, as is Superior Court Judge Alice Dubow, although that court does not handle election law issues.

On the state Supreme Court, Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht will be on the ballot.

All five initially ran as Democrats, and the Pennsylvania Bar Association has recommended all five for retention.

Republicans are vigorously campaigning against retaining the judges, especially the state Supreme Court justices, and have repeatedly highlighted their rulings on election law cases. The justices have ruled on everything from gerrymandered congressional maps to rules surrounding mail voting. A key case on mail ballots is currently pending before them, and more election law cases are sure to arise during the 2026 midterm elections.

What are the races for election judge and inspector?

Voters will see a race on their November ballot that is uniquely Pennsylvanian: an election to choose their poll workers, the people who run their voting precincts.

Pennsylvanians have been voting on poll workers since at least 1799.

Some New England states have elected town officials who oversee polling places as part of their job. But according to a report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Pennsylvania is the only state that directly elects officials whose sole responsibility is overseeing elections at the precinct level.

On the ballot are two races for three positions total. Voters will select one candidate for judge of elections and one for inspector of elections.

During the primary, Democratic and Republican voters in each precinct are supposed to nominate one candidate for judge, and each party nominates one candidate for inspector. In the fall, the election judge candidate with the most votes assumes the position. Of the two inspector candidates, the one who gets the most votes becomes the majority inspector, and the second-place candidate becomes the minority one.

The candidate spaces are often blank on the November ballot, since many races go without candidates in the primary. Poll workers are often elected with just a few write-in votes in the November election. If no one is elected, county officials will appoint poll workers.

How will mail voting be different this year?

Since the 2024 presidential election, there have been two important court rulings on mail voting.

First, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that it is unconstitutional for Pennsylvania counties to reject mail ballots on the grounds that the return envelopes are undated or misdated. Counties have rejected ballots in the past for these reasons, and legal fights over the issue have gone on for years.

However, the issue is not yet settled. The case could still be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and another case on the same issue is currently pending before the state Supreme Court. Election officials recommend always signing and dating your mail ballot return envelope, regardless of what recent court rulings say.

Last month, the state Supreme Court ruled that if counties know a mail ballot has a disqualifying error, such as lacking a signature on the return envelope, they have to notify voters before rejecting the ballots. These notifications will typically be sent to the email address the voter used when applying for a mail ballot.

The last day to request a mail ballot is Oct. 28

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

More Pennsylvania voters than ever will use electronic pollbooks this November

2025-10-22T16:18:44+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.

When Pennsylvania voters head to the polls this fall, more of them than ever will be using iPad-style tablet computers to sign in rather than paper.

Over half of Pennsylvania’s counties are now using these electronic pollbooks, with rapid growth fueled in part by an allocation of state money that started in 2022.

Election officials and advocates say e-pollbooks make voting quicker and more efficient, while helping election officials keep more accurate records. Plus, they argue, if the state ever institutes in-person early voting, as many states have done, they will be essential for making sure polling sites and workers have the most current information.

E-pollbooks are digital versions of the printed voter lists poll workers use to check in voters at precincts on Election Day. They speed up check-in by enabling election workers to look up voters’ names quickly, rather than having to thumb through the physical books to find the right page while the line of waiting voters keeps growing, said Megan Maier, deputy director of research and partnerships at Verified Voting.

They typically run on a laptop, tablet computer, or similar device, using specialized software. Most pollbooks used in Pennsylvania run on Apple iPads.

According to data from Verified Voting, 84% of voters across the country will check in with the help of an e-pollbook this November, up from less than 50% during the 2016 presidential election.

In Pennsylvania, the growth has been even steeper.

In 2016, just four counties were using e-pollbooks, according to Verified Voting, and in 2020, it was 10 counties. Now, according to a map from the Pennsylvania Department of State, 33 of the commonwealth’s 67 counties are using them, and at least one more is doing a pilot program this fall.

Mercer County purchased e-pollbooks for its 91 precincts in August, and will use them in next month’s election. Thad Hall, the county’s election director, agreed they help check voters in more quickly and make it easier for workers to resolve issues such as voters being in the wrong location.

But the most important benefit, he said, is that it will make it easier and faster to conduct a critical post-election check known as reconciliation, when counties check the number of ballots they received against the number of voters recorded as having voted, to make sure that the numbers line up.

In counties that use paper pollbooks, this process involves poll workers using the “numbered list” — essentially a manual running tally — of all the voters who come into the precinct, and double-checking it against the number of ballots that are voted in the precinct.

This can introduce human error, Hall said, because poll workers sometimes make mistakes recording voters on the numbered list.

The e-pollbooks, by contrast, automatically keep the tally of all the voters who cast a ballot at a given polling place. And once the polls close, election workers can simply upload all the precinct tallies to the state’s election management system.

Equipment is expensive, but new legislation could help

Jerry Feaser, a former Dauphin County elections director who now works for e-pollbook vendor Knowink, said the surge in e-pollbook use in the state is due in large part to Act 88, a 2022 law that distributed $45 million each year to Pennsylvania counties for election administration — one of the state’s largest-ever investments for that purpose.

Some counties used those funds to purchase equipment while others used them to offset other election costs, freeing up county dollars for big purchases.

Hall said Mercer County couldn’t have afforded the e-pollbooks without Act 88. Mercer County purchased the physical equipment with county money, but Act 88 funds help cover the software and ongoing support costs.

“The Act 88 money is critical for us doing this over time, being able to pay for the recurring cost,” he said.

Even with the state money, the cost can be a barrier.

The Knowink Poll Pad, the most widely used device in the state, costs $1,750 per unit, according to Feaser, and additional software and services can increase that price.

Hall said that in total, Mercer County paid roughly $200,000. For Lancaster County, which currently does not have e-pollbooks, it would cost more than $400,000 to put them in all 240 precincts.

A bill before the state Senate could provide more funding for other counties to purchase the devices while also creating new requirements for them.

The bill, sponsored by state House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), cleared that chamber earlier this year, and would provide $60 million for the purchase or lease of e-pollbooks and election infrastructure equipment.

The bill would also provide a clear definition of what an e-pollbook is and what standards it must meet, something that doesn’t exist in state law now. The secretary of the commonwealth currently regulates and certifies them under other authorities granted in the election code, but McClinton’s bill would codify standards.

Regulation and early voting

E-pollbooks are also practically a necessity for another one of the speaker’s priorities: early voting.

Paper pollbooks need to be printed and delivered to polling sites ahead of Election Day. McClinton’s bill would allow early voting up until the Sunday before Election Day, leaving little time before the Tuesday election to print updated pollbooks that reflect all the voters in the precinct who already cast ballots early.

But the bill is stalled in the Republican-controlled state Senate, where GOP lawmakers have repeatedly said they will not advance election legislation without an expanded voter ID requirement, which McClinton’s bill lacks.

E-pollbooks have run into some problems. Philadelphia experimented with Knowink e-pollbooks in 2019, but ultimately decided to scrap the contract just weeks before Election Day due to difficulties connecting the devices to printers and “inadequate election night reporting,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported at the time. Philadelphia ultimately moved forward with a different vendor, Election Systems & Software, in 2023.

Maier, from Verified Voting, also said that while e-pollbooks typically speed up the voter check-in process, they can cause issues if they haven’t been synced with the most up-to-date voter list.

But in general, the new technology has been popular. Feaser said that after his workers tested e-pollbooks in Dauphin County in 2019, they were reluctant to give them up.

“They said, ‘If you try to take this away from us, we will charge the courthouse with torches and pitchforks,’” Feaser recalled.

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

Texas election officials ask state to halt rollout of updated TEAM voter registration system

2025-10-17T21:49:35+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.

Groups representing election officials across Texas are asking the state to halt the rollout of its updated voter registration system and address issues that they say “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.”

The groups outlined their complaints in a letter sent Friday to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson.

County election officials across the state have for months reported problems that they say began when the state overhauled its voter registration system, known as TEAM, in July. Those issues contributed to a backlog of tens of thousands of voter registration applications, Votebeat reported, though that now has nearly been cleared. Election officials also said issues with TEAM were affecting their preparations for the upcoming constitutional amendment election.

Alicia Pierce, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson, told Votebeat the office has received the letter and is reviewing it. “Our focus right now is making sure every county is ready for the Nov. 4 election.”

Groups cite TEAM’s inconsistent performance

The letter to Nelson was sent by four associations representing Texas county election administrators, county and district clerks, county judges and commissioners, and tax assessor-collectors, all of whom have roles in administering elections.

In the letter to Nelson, as well as in interviews with at least a dozen election officials, they said that while using the new system and inputting voter registration applications, voters’ previous addresses override their new ones, their voting precincts don’t populate correctly, and sometimes the registration information doesn’t save. Officials also said the system is inconsistent, working properly one day but slowly the next.

“Counties have seen substantial delays in processing voter registration applications and updating registration status,” the letter to Nelson said. “Many election officials have observed TEAM incorrectly generating the voter registration list, which compromises election security by complicating the update of poll books and the identification of voters who have received a mail ballot.”

Now, with early voting set to start Monday, election officials across the state want Nelson’s office to resolve existing problems before rolling out any new system features.

“Without these changes, the current state of the TEAM rollout creates undue risk to voters and the integrity of election officials,” the letter says.

The officials also said in the letter that the issues are affecting several smaller Texas counties that rely on TEAM to pull their jury list. “District clerks have documented the new system solely pulling registered voters as jurors instead of those qualified to serve on a jury,” it says.

Calling for solutions and a clearer timeline

Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said the associations sent the letter after weeks of meeting with the state, presenting the problems, and waiting for solutions.

“It’s now the week before early voting and we were still dealing with significant issues,” McGinn said. “We felt it was important to put all of this on the record for the secretary of state.”

In their letter, election officials asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to provide a clear timeline for TEAM bug fixes and publish weekly status updates detailing resolved and outstanding issues. Specifically, officials are seeking “clear communication about the problems that have been solved,” the letter says.

During early voting and the canvass, election officials want the state to establish “a dedicated incident response team,” staffed with technicians who can implement emergency fixes.

Democratic lawmakers apply pressure

Some lawmakers are also asking Nelson to take action.

On Thursday, six state representatives from the Austin area sent a letter to Nelson that says the issues with the system aren’t the fault of the county election officials, who she says have been “working tirelessly within the limits of the tools provided.”

The responsibility, the letter says, “rests with the Secretary of State’s Office to ensure that the system functions as promised, that training on the TEAM software is accessible and thorough, and that voters are not denied their constitutional right to participate in their democracy.”

The letter was authored by state Rep. Vikki Goodwin, and signed by state Reps. Donna Howard, Sheryl Cole, Gina Hinojosa, James Talerico, and Lulu Flores, all Democrats.

Nelson responded that her office had anticipated technical problems with the rollout of such a big update, which involved “the migration of over 20 million records and extensive training with our county partners.”

Nelson also said the financial instability of a voter registration vendor used by multiple counties unexpectedly complicated the rollout, prompting several counties to abruptly switch to TEAM.

“Our staff has completed onboarding 11 of those counties, including Bexar County, onto our TEAM system,” Nelson wrote, according to a copy of her response provided by Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for her office. “We did this in a matter of weeks for a process that usually takes months.”

To check the status of your voter registration application, go to VoteTexas.gov or call your local voter registrar.

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.

Duplicate mail ballots are issued to dozens of Pennsylvania voters

2025-10-09T14:38:30+00:00

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

A handful of Pennsylvania counties mistakenly issued duplicate mail ballots to a few of their voters in recent weeks.

Why that happened is unclear — state and county officials gave different explanations — but they cautioned that the error would have not resulted in anyone being able to have their vote counted twice.

State and county officials said they have found that a total of 68 potential duplicate mail ballots were mistakenly issued. In some of these cases, they said, the ballots may not have reached voters, as the mistake may have been caught after a second ballot label was generated but before a duplicate ballot was actually mailed to the voter.

In Luzerne County, in northeast Pennsylvania, 31 voters received duplicate mail ballots, WVIA reported Tuesday. State officials initially said that the problem was isolated to that one county, but acknowledged a small number of other counties experienced similar issues — although potentially for different reasons — after inquiries from Votebeat and Spotlight PA.

Using publicly available information on mail ballot requests, Votebeat and Spotlight PA identified a few other counties that appeared to have issued duplicate ballots. Election officials in Dauphin, Montgomery, and Carbon counties confirmed that some voters in their counties had been issued or received duplicate mail ballots as well.

Emily Cook, election director for Luzerne County, told WVIA that the cause was an unknown problem with the state election management system, known as SURE.

But Jonathan Marks, deputy secretary of the commonwealth, said the duplicate labels were created in a variety of ways, and at least some stemmed from user error as counties tried to fix an issue with the first mail ballot. SURE’s user interface has shortcomings, he acknowledged, and resolving one issue can create another if counties don’t use the ideal method. Marks said the state is looking at how to improve it.

The Department of State said counties sometimes print duplicate labels for other reasons, such as damage to the original label. “A duplicate label’s existence does not automatically mean an error has occurred,” the department said in a statement.

Both county and state officials stressed that the duplicate ballots have been canceled, and could not be cast or counted. In addition, each ballot return envelope has a unique barcode associated with the voter. When a county receives a ballot back, the code is scanned into the SURE system and it marks the voter as having voted. If a second barcode tied to the same voter were to be scanned, the system would reject the ballot.

After learning of the duplicate mail ballots in Luzerne, state election officials audited the SURE system to check for any additional duplicates, and found 37 potential cases across seven other counties.

In Dauphin County, which includes Harrisburg, Election Director Chris Spackman said the county was informed by the department on Tuesday that “a routine internal review of the SURE system” had discovered a single duplicate ballot sent to a Dauphin voter. Spackman added that his deputy was informed by a contractor who helps the department manage the SURE system that the error was the contractor’s, but he knew no other details.

Megan Alt, a spokesperson for Montgomery County, west of Philadelphia, said the county had notified the state Wednesday morning of a potential duplicate, and workers subsequently discovered three other voters who had received duplicate ballots “as a result of files received from the state’s system.”

Carbon County’s election director, Jennifer Ketchledge, confirmed that her county issued 20 duplicate labels for mail voters. She said the department reached out to her Tuesday and informed her, and the county canceled the additional ballots.

“I have no clue” why it happened, she said, adding that the state was looking into it.

Even if two mailing labels for ballots are generated for the same voter, Ketchledge said the vendor that handles the county’s mail ballot printing and shipping would catch it before the duplicate ballot was actually sent.

Cook, the Luzerne election director, did not respond to a request for comment, but county officials told other news outlets the SURE system shouldn’t allow such errors to happen.

“Assuming that the state’s excuse is accurate, how broken is the SURE system if it cannot safeguard against a county inadvertently sending two labels for the same voter?” Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo told The Citizens’ Voice Wednesday.

“There is nothing sure about the SURE system,” Crocamo added. “The upgrades to SURE system can’t happen soon enough.”

The state said the SURE system’s primary safeguard “is a mechanism that prevents recording more than one ballot per voter in a single election.”

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

How a move to new headquarters will transform election work at Pima County Recorder’s Office

2025-10-07T09:00:00+00:00

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

Pima County voters won’t have to worry about fire sprinklers inadvertently drenching their ballots once the Recorder’s Office and Elections Department move into a new headquarters building next year.

It’s never happened, but in the current space, workers cover the ballots with tarps every night, just in case. The new offices will have a waterless fire retardant, one of many welcome upgrades, Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly said.

“It’s a really big deal,” Cázares-Kelly said oft the overall move and what it means for voters.

It means moving from a space that could not fully accommodate the needs of the Recorder’s Office to one that will consolidate its operations and provide more space for working, training, and storage, allowing more time to serve the voters, the recorder said.

“If we’re not having to drive to multiple locations just to access our equipment, that means more people on our phones, more people training,” she said.

Recorder’s Office and Elections Department stay together

The push for a move to new offices began before Cázares-Kelly took office in 2021. She said the move could happen as soon as May. The new offices will be in a county-owned building located in the southern edge of Tucson that the federal government previously used to process asylum seekers.

The move will keep the consolidated Recorder’s Office in the same building as the Elections Department. An earlier plan would have separated them, which Elections Director Constance Hargrove said would have been a problem, because workers would’ve had to wheel the ballots from one building to another, making them less secure.

“I think the takeaway is the chain of custody, security of the ballots, is our primary concern,” said Hargrove. “And so having the recorder and elections in the same building is a benefit to the county and to the public.”

The Recorder’s Office is still working with architects to design the new space.

Spokesperson Michael Truelsen said the office doesn’t yet have a cost estimate for the planned renovation and move.

‘So much in this tiny space’

The Recorder’s Office now occupies three separate office spaces in Tucson. The office currently designated for elections work is 7,000 square feet. That’s the equivalent of 1½ basketball courts, but it has handled massive volumes for Arizona’s second most populous county. The workers there scanned envelopes, and verified signatures for 518,416 ballots during the 2024 presidential election.

Cázares-Kelly recalls being puzzled at first when a Tucson city clerk and her staff toured the space and told her they were impressed.

“And I said, ‘Really?’ because that’s not usually the reaction that people have,” Cázares-Kelly said. “And they said, ‘We’re so impressed that you’ve been able to do so much in this tiny space.’”

One problem has been storage space for non-electronic equipment such as signage and sign holders. Cázares-Kelly said those items are currently stored in locations around the county and must be rounded up, cleaned, and delivered to polling places every election. (Pima County has had four elections this year).

That won’t be the case with the new office, which has twice as much space for election work.

That will include a designated training room, more meeting space, larger break rooms, a lactation room, a backup generator, and an observation area for the public and media.

The design also has the voter in mind.

“We are specifically designing the space with the idea that voters will come and drop off their ballots in person, and we will have ballot drop boxes located that are accessible, 24/7, at that facility,” Cázares-Kelly said, adding that it will be helpful to have it on the south side of Tucson, near a high-volume shopping plaza.

Hargrove said the Elections Department has not been crunched for space, but will appreciate a larger break room and a training room in the new space. And she noted that visitors in the observation area will be able to see the operations of the recorder and ballot counting at the same time, which is not the case now.

Contact Votebeat at az.tips@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin bill would repeal ‘outdated’ ballot drawdown law and require risk-limiting audits

2025-09-23T10:00:00+00:00

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

Wisconsin’s controversial practice of randomly removing ballots to resolve discrepancies between the number of ballots and the number of voters would be prohibited under new draft legislation that requires meticulous audits in every county.

The draft proposal, obtained by Votebeat from Republican Rep. Scott Krug, will be formally released this week. Krug said the proposed ban on removing random ballots, known as drawdowns, was inspired largely by a Votebeat investigation highlighting election officials’ reluctance to use the practice and questions about its constitutionality.

“That practice undermines public trust,” Krug said, calling drawdowns “outdated.”

Wisconsin’s law allowing drawdowns is almost as old as the state, and it appears to be used most often in recounts. Other states have had similar laws, but most have repealed them.

Drawdowns occur when records show more ballots cast than the number of voters who cast ballots. These discrepancies usually stem from minor recordkeeping errors or process mistakes.

For example, if poll workers discover an absentee ballot envelope was improperly filled out but had already been separated from its ballot, the ballot still counts, leaving more ballots than valid voters. Because ballots are generally unidentifiable, the law would call for election officials to remove one ballot at random.

Multiple Wisconsin clerks have told Votebeat that they loathe the practice, and national election experts have been flabbergasted that it exists.

A legislative study committee in 2005 questioned the practice’s constitutionality without resolving the issue. Courts have similarly scrutinized its use. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has said a drawdown should be reserved as a last resort “when you cannot explain why you have more ballots than voters.”

Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director of the group All Voting Is Local and a former clerk, said he once had to conduct a drawdown. He called it “one of the most gut-wrenching things I think I’ve ever done.”

“Every one of those ballots — it’s an American citizen’s hopes and dreams of the candidate or candidates that they want to represent them,” he said.

Although drawdowns are rare and usually limited to recounts, they’ve drawn national attention.

When President Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, his team invoked the law to seek a drawdown of 220,000 absentee ballots in Dane and Milwaukee counties, calling the practice “the only legally available remedy” to account for what it alleged were unlawfully cast ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court narrowly rejected the effort.

Other states typically require officials to explain discrepancies rather than resolve them by discarding ballots. Krug’s legislation would require exactly that — for election officials to document the discrepancy and record the number and type of excess ballots.

Proposal would require risk-limiting audits

The bill also requires risk-limiting audits, a kind of post-election review designed to give statistical confidence that votes are accurately tallied.

In these audits, workers review a statistically significant sample of ballots that should mirror the vote totals. If the sample doesn’t align with official results within the allowed margin of error, officials review more ballots until it does. The number of selected ballots varies from election to election, depending on how close a race is and how many ballots were cast.

The math behind risk-limiting audits is complex, but election experts and officials have long supported the practice.

Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, a consulting firm, said she has long promoted risk-limiting audits because they can include more ballots than other reviews. They can be laborious in close races but less burdensome in lopsided ones.

Morrell said jurisdictions that have implemented risk-limiting audits have become better at accounting for their ballots and reconciling vote totals, knowing that any issues would become obvious during an audit.

Liebert, from All Voting is Local, called risk-limiting audits “an effective way to ensure a correct count and detect any statistical anomalies,” while boosting voter confidence.

Closer races require larger samples, and in very tight contests, such audits may require a full hand count. Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson said that could happen often, as races across the county tend to be quite close.

Krug’s proposal calls for county clerks to perform a risk-limiting audit for the contest garnering the most votes at each general or spring election before they certify the election results. It also calls for an additional audit of a random contest in those elections that the Wisconsin Elections Commission selects.

A pilot program would begin in 2026, with full implementation in 2027.

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

Michigan poll worker pay varies sharply by location

2025-09-23T09:00:00+00:00

How much a poll worker earns in Michigan depends less on what they do and more on where they do it.

Across the state, pay for election inspectors — the workers who check in voters and keep precincts running — can range from less than $175 a day to more than $300. That means two people doing the same job just a few miles apart might take home dramatically different paychecks.

State law only requires that election officials “receive reasonable compensation,” leaving the exact amount up to local officials. But for poll workers, where they choose to do the job is almost entirely up to them.

Votebeat surveyed more than 60 communities to see what clerks offer their poll workers. The results show wide gaps not only in pay but also in benefits, from free meals to same-day paychecks — and reveal how those differences shape the pool of workers each community can attract and keep.

Clerks told Votebeat that wide pay disparities make recruiting poll workers harder. They’re not only competing with hourly jobs that offer steady pay, but also with neighboring jurisdictions that can afford to pay more. For election officials, who have to find, train, and employ poll workers — typically referred to as “election inspectors” at the base level of training and work — the challenge repeats every season.

The grass is greener in Detroit

The pay divide is particularly stark in Wayne County, where a 20-minute drive could net a poll worker an additional $100 or more. In Detroit, poll workers start at $300 a day, compared with only $225 in neighboring Dearborn. In Livonia, a little farther west, that drops to $170 (although Lori Miller, Livonia City Clerk, recognizes the discrepancy and is working on boosting that).

Communities in smaller counties benefit from the work itself being less demanding.

Mary Hopkins, city clerk of Grand Blanc in Genesee County, said she recalled a worker choosing to go south to Oakland County. “I will say, they might have made more money, but they probably really had to earn it,” Hopkins said, “because our elections are usually relatively small and peaceful, which isn’t always true in those bigger cities.”

In Grand Blanc, a Flint suburb of 8,000 people, Hopkins starts her poll workers at $200 a day. That covers just over 14 hours of work, she said, because elections are generally small-scale. She can manage most of the prep work for the city’s two precincts, meaning election inspectors are able to show up just before polls open to be sworn in and don’t usually have to stay too late after polls close.

That rate, which works out to more than $14 an hour, is well above Michigan’s $12.48 minimum wage and enough to keep the pool of poll workers Hopkins has — which is largely made up of retirees looking to serve their community — pretty happy.

The benefits: pizza, potlucks and same-day paychecks

Often, officials told Votebeat, it’s a matter of relying on the people in your community. Poll workers are typically retirees who enjoy socializing and the pride of serving the public. In many places, the same group comes back each election cycle. Most people don’t shop around for a better pay rate, clerks said. Additional perks certainly don’t hurt, though.

The perks take different forms. In Lansing, for instance, Election Supervisor Robin Stites told Votebeat that allowing workers to serve in shifts, rather than all day, has been helpful for both recruitment and retention. Not everyone offers that option — splitting a shift means finding, training, and managing payroll for up to twice as many people — but it is working for Stites.

In Pittsfield Charter Township, near Ann Arbor, Deputy Clerk Jill Mitchell offers election inspectors boxed lunches and snacks such as granola bars or crackers.

In Burton, near Flint, election officials have ordered pizza (including veggie options for the vegetarians) and sandwiches from local restaurants, Joy Roe, deputy clerk, told Votebeat. Some precincts host their own potluck.

It works because precincts tend to be staffed by the same people each election. They know what others like — desserts, veggie trays, duck stew brought by a poll worker who is an avid hunter, Roe said — and are happy to work together to make the day more enjoyable.

“I miss it sometimes,” Roe said. “I was a poll worker for 16 years before this job, and sometimes I want to sneak out, because I know where the good food is.”

David Elwell, clerk of Blackman Charter Township in Jackson County, has won people over by ensuring that they receive their check for the work before they walk out the door. Many communities make poll workers wait several weeks for checks to be processed through the local government payroll.

“I know the workers appreciate that,” he said.

It also helps that in a number of places around the state, officials have reduced the number of precincts they run. State law has recently changed to allow jurisdictions to change the maximum size of precincts from about 3,000 people to about 5,000 people. So for the first time in years, some clerks said, they expect to have more eligible workers than they may need.

The other benefit: a chance to serve

For poll workers themselves, the benefit typically comes from supporting their community. Anything else is a bonus.

Robert Johncox, a Southfield resident who has served as a poll worker in the city for almost every election since 2018, said he’s never seriously considered leaving his own community because Southfield has a hard enough time finding people already.

“I don’t want to abandon them,” he said with a laugh.

Detroit is just across Eight Mile Road — the city and county line — from Southfield. Johncox could get a significant pay bump if he made the 20-minute drive from his house. As a precinct chairperson, the title for more senior poll workers who work closely with city clerks, he makes $275 in Southfield, compared with $230 for entry-level poll workers. Detroit, meanwhile, pays its base-level poll workers $300. Precinct chairs start at $600.

Johncox doesn’t want to drive, though. And while he certainly wouldn’t say no to free lunches, it’s ultimately the pride of serving his community that keeps him working where he lives.

“I’m retired. I had a good career as an engineer, so I’m really not doing it for the money,” he said. “I’m more there for the helping.”

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

How proposed Michigan budget would affect funds for election support

2025-09-08T22:55:27+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.

Corrected, Sep. 10, 4:30 p.m.: This story has been corrected to include new information from Republican leaders about funds for election support in their budget proposal. They told Votebeat Wednesday that under their proposal, the funds would still be available to support local election officials, but not as part of the Department of State’s budget.

Election officials said this week that they’re concerned that Michigan House Republicans put state election support for local governments on the chopping block in their proposed budget for the coming fiscal year. But GOP leaders say their proposal doesn’t put all funds at risk.

The Department of State’s funding for local election support is a relatively small portion of a huge budget battle that may yet lead to a shutdown of Michigan’s government next month. But in a state that has over 1,600 election officials and dozens of local elections scheduled for November, it represents a critical resource.

One major change in the GOP proposal would be the removal of more than $10 million allocated to the department’s Election Administration Support Fund, which helps to fund early voting and absentee ballots at the local level.

GOP leaders told Votebeat on Wednesday that under their proposal, those funds would still be available to support local election officials, but not as part of the Department of State’s budget. Instead, it would move to the Treasury Department, where the money would be distributed much in the way local revenue sharing checks are.

In the 2024-25 fiscal year, the Department of State’s budget was about $292 million. Proposals from the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office would both boost it to about $296.5 million, while the latest budget proposed by House Republicans would cut it down to $222.5 million.

GOP says the shift would make disbursements more efficient

The election support money, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told Votebeat on Monday, is intended to help clerks navigate the expensive voting rights expansions voters approved in 2018 and 2022. That includes additional staffing for the now-mandatory nine days of early voting in federal and statewide elections, as well as postage for the growing number of absentee ballots.

She added that the Bureau of Elections would be cut by a third under the House’s overall plan, limiting support for tasks such as testing electronic pollbooks and securing ballot drop boxes. Those cuts would ultimately hurt local clerks, she said, because that staff provides critical support for security of elections as well as how smoothly they run.

In a news release Monday, Benson had warned that the budget proposal would force layoffs of more than 400 employees across her department, and the closing of 10% of branch offices where residents get driver’s licenses.

She told Votebeat that she was working with the governor’s office on counterproposals that would reduce her department’s budget overall, as House leaders want, without “creating a lot of hurt to our elections, our department and to the citizens of Michigan.”

Republicans told Votebeat Wednesday that keeping the money with the Treasury Department, where it originates, would cut down on bureaucratic delays.

Rep. Ann Bollin, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee and a Republican from Brighton Township, said in a statement that local election officials told her funds were not “being released quickly or efficiently” from the Department of State.

In a press conference last week, Republicans argued that their proposals targeted waste. Rep. Bollin said that the budget proposed in the House “targets all the priorities of people across Michigan.”

Contingency plans for a government shutdown

If leaders can’t reach a consensus by Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year, the state government is likely to shut down. That could mean that state officials aren’t able to fully support local clerks during their upcoming 2025 elections — including Detroit’s mayoral race, as well as council elections, millages, and ballot proposals around the state.

Benson said her department has a plan that would allow it to keep “some of the lights on, if not all of them” during a shutdown, but noted that state support for local elections would be limited if a shutdown encroached on the November elections.

She added that most major administrative decisions for November’s local elections have already been made and funded locally.

Calhoun County Clerk Kimberly Hinkley said the prospect of a full shutdown doesn’t scare her much. Her county, which includes Battle Creek, has only three elections scheduled in November — a local government millage in Tekonsha (population about 650) and two school millages. Costs for those elections largely fall back on the entities that requested them, she said.

Clerks will get the work done, Hinkley added, but for now, they are waiting for decisions out of Lansing.

“Revenue for all of us across the board, whether it’s the county or local cities or townships, we’re all concerned about what these cuts may look like for our services,” Hinkley said.

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

Special election for Michigan’s 35th Senate District to be held next year

2025-08-29T18:31:23+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.

LANSING — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday scheduled a pair of special elections for Michigan’s 35th Senate District, nearly eight months after the swing seat became vacant.

The primary and general elections for the district — which includes Midland, Saginaw and Bay City — will take place next year, she said, meaning the seat will remain vacant for at least another eight months.

Candidates will have to file to run for the office by Sept. 30, 2025, with the primary scheduled for Feb. 3, 2026, and the general election May 5. The winning candidate will hold office for the final seven months of the four-year term unless they are reelected in November 2026.

“We have a lot of good work to get done before the end of next year,” Whitmer, a Democrat who will be forced out of office by term limits at the end of 2026, said in a statement.

“Michiganders want us to create jobs and grow the economy, invest in schools and boost literacy rates, and, of course, fix those damn roads,” she said. “I look forward to working with the next state senator from this district to tackle these issues and more.”

Balance of power in the Michigan Senate is at stake

Republicans have accused Whitmer of playing politics with the vacant seat in a district they believe they could flip. Former state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat, won the seat by roughly 7 percentage points in 2022 but resigned to join Congress on Jan. 3 — 238 days ago.

If a Republican won the seat, it could effectively shift the balance of power in the Senate and potentially stop all legislation without Republican support from advancing in the chamber.

“After months of unrelenting pressure from Republicans, Gov. Whitmer has come to her senses and realized denying the people of her state the right to vote is not going to help with her presidential aspirations,” Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, who is running for governor, wrote on social media.

“The days of a Democrat majority in the Michigan Senate are coming to an end,” he predicted.

Democrats, meanwhile, said they welcome the chance to defend the seat.

“It’s an opportunity to show our Republican colleagues, from Donald Trump down to Lansing, that their agenda is out of step with Michigan families,” Sen. Darrin Camilleri, a Trenton Democrat who chairs the caucus’ campaign arm, said in a statement.

At least three candidates have already filed to run for the post, including State Board of Education Chair Pamela Pugh and Saginaw County Democratic Party Chair Brandell Adams.

State Rep. Bill G. Schuette, a Midland Republican, has previously acknowledged he’s considering a state Senate run.

Four elections in 2026 for 35th District residents

The new elections will mean voters in the 35th Senate District will go to the polls as many as four times next year: the special election primary in February, the special general election in May, the statewide primary in August, and the November general election.

That schedule adds to what is already shaping up to be a busy election year for Michigan’s local clerks.

Katie Zanotti, Bay County clerk, told Votebeat earlier this year that she wished the election had been scheduled sooner, in part because special elections create a lot of additional work for clerks. Almost all of Bay County falls into the 35th Senate District, meaning clerks there will shoulder much of the burden.

Clerks and their teams must design ballots, run logic and accuracy testing on all their machines, secure polling places, and more each cycle. It can be expensive for local governments and difficult to pull off — and now, there will be almost no break for clerks in the district between each election. There won’t be a required early-voting period for the special election, as it isn’t a statewide race, but clerks told Votebeat they still expect a lot of effort to go toward these new races.

But Rebecca Grzegorczyk, elections coordinator for the Bay County Clerk’s office, said she felt it was probably the best timeline the governor could have chosen at this point. It’s already going to be a busy year, she said, and that specific timeline means officials can pace themselves.

“It’s going to be a full workload,” Grzegorczyk said, “but at least now we know.”

Election won’t help Republicans in budget negotiations

The timing of Whitmer’s call is significant. With the next fiscal year starting in one month, and the Legislature yet to agree on a budget, Democratic control of the Senate remains crucial for the party’s ability to mitigate the deep cuts proposed by the GOP-controlled House. Democrats also hope their electoral prospects will improve as the 2026 midterm elections near.

Republicans had hoped to use the special election to upset the Senate’s Democratic control and force more budget concessions from Democrats. The timing of the election effectively ends that possibility, unless there’s a historically long government shutdown.

A group of residents earlier this month sued Whitmer for failing to call a special election, arguing that the 270,000 people in the district deserve representation as quickly as possible.

Whitmer’s attorneys on Thursday asked a judge to dismiss the case, arguing that the court “does not have the authority to compel the governor to act.”

Some local Democrats have also complained about the prolonged Senate vacancy.

Simon D. Schuster is a Capitol reporter for Bridge Michigan. He can be reached at sschuster@bridgemi.com. Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Michigan says Justice Department silence is stalling effort to turn over voter records

2025-08-26T22:41:09+00:00

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

The Michigan Department of State is trying to send along a portion of the voter registration data requested by the U.S. Justice Department, but one state official says it’s waiting for the federal government to tell it how.

The state is sending only the part of the voter roll that is accessible to anyone, including names and voting history. It is not including Social Security numbers or other private information, citing federal laws that ban it from sharing that.

But Michigan officials say they can’t send anything if Justice Department officials don’t explain how to securely transfer the records.

The qualified voter file, or QVF, is available to anyone who files a Freedom of Information Act request with the Michigan Department of State. The file is massive — it was nearly three gigabytes when Votebeat last requested it in June, even before including additional documents needed to interpret it — and can be difficult to share. When a member of the public asks for the records, for example, the state provides it in a series of compressed files through its FOIA portal.

The federal government asked for the records to be submitted either by email or through the Justice Department’s file-sharing system. Sending the qualified voter file by email is technically possible, but it’s not secure, and the file size makes it difficult. The Michigan Department of State has been asking the Justice Department since last week how to access its file-sharing system and has received no response, Angela Benander, spokesperson for the Department of State, told Votebeat on Tuesday.

The files, she said, are “ready to go over” as soon as MDOS officials get a username and password.

The Justice Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment from Votebeat.

Communications between the Department of State and the Justice Department show that Khyla Craine, chief legal director for the Department of State, requested information on how to transmit information through the DOJ system. The email, shared with Votebeat, was sent Aug. 21 to Timothy Mellett, a trial attorney with the DOJ’s civil rights division who has been actively involved in other voting-related legal affairs.

Neither Mellett nor any of his colleagues had responded as of Tuesday, Benander said.

“It seems strange that they’re not prepared to help us,” she added.

Other states have also declined to share personally identifying information. Pennsylvania responded to the DOJ similarly last week, offering only its own publicly available file. It is not clear if Pennsylvania had any similar problems sharing its data.

The Justice Department has shown a willingness to sue for access to the more detailed information, as it did in Orange County, California, earlier this summer. But states have argued that sharing the information would be a violation of federal privacy law.

In Michigan, Benander said, lawyers specifically cited the Drivers Protection Privacy Act, which bans states from sharing personal information gathered through the DMV and connected to motor vehicle records. Other laws may also apply, including the Privacy Act of 1974, which requires the federal government to provide a notice of why it is collecting information and how it plans to store it.

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

Madison hires new clerk to run elections after year of turmoil

2025-08-20T22:09:17+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.

Madison’s mayor announced the appointment of Lydia McComas, an official from Minnesota, as the city’s new clerk Wednesday, marking a fresh start for election administration in Wisconsin’s state capital after the turmoil triggered by the loss of 193 ballots in November 2024.

McComas, who will begin Sept. 29, previously managed the voter engagement division in Hennepin County, Minnesota, a jurisdiction with over 700,000 voters that encompasses Minneapolis and some of its suburbs.

“I will work every day to uphold the values of accountability, accuracy, and accessibility that are essential to this office,” McComas said in a statement.

Madison is still working to rebuild its reputation after the November 2024 ballot snafu, when election officials lost track of nearly 200 ballots. The error led to the suspension and ultimately the resignation of Maribeth Witzel-Behl, who was Madison clerk for over 20 years and was recognized by other Wisconsin clerks as a leader and mentor.

Mike Haas, the city attorney and former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has served as interim clerk for much of this year.

Beyond adjusting to a new set of election laws in Wisconsin, McComas will have to ensure compliance with several specific orders that the election commission imposed on Madison to keep such errors from happening again.

During her time in Hennepin County, McComas oversaw compliance with election laws and developed training for poll workers. She managed several aspects of the voting process, from registering voters to certifying election results.

“She’ll be able to offer a valuable fresh perspective to our Clerk’s Office operations, while building on the many areas of strength the office has established over the years,” Madison Mayor Rhodes-Conway said in a statement. “She has strong communication skills and has led voter education campaigns with both community groups and the wider public.”

McComas has a political science degree from the University of Minnesota, and a certificate in election administration from the university’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

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

Wisconsin Elections Commission finalizes specific orders for Madison to follow to avoid ballot errors

2025-08-15T17:40:55+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 Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison election officials to follow several specific election procedures to ensure that ballots don’t go missing again in the capital city, rejecting arguments by the interim clerk that the orders may exceed the agency’s legal authority.

The commission’s 5-1 vote Friday came a month after it withheld a first set of proposed orders amid pushback from Madison and Dane County officials, and asked the city to propose its own remedies. Madison interim Clerk Mike Haas said the specificity of the commission’s original proposed orders “would set a troubling precedent.”

The city did submit its proposals, but the commission rejected them as overly broad, and finalized orders that were largely similar to the ones it proposed in July, with some minor revisions, including citations of the legal basis for each order.

The orders require Madison officials to create an internal plan detailing which election task is assigned to which employee; print pollbooks no earlier than the Tuesday before each election; develop a detailed record to track absentee ballots; and search through election materials for missing ballots before the city’s election canvassing board meets to finalize results.

The WEC action responds to lapses by the Madison clerk’s office, then headed by Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, after the November 2024 presidential election, when staffers lost track of 193 ballots and did not report finding them until well past the state deadline for counting. The commission launched its investigation into the matter in January.

Clerk’s cookie baking factored into commissioners’ discussion

During discussions ahead of the vote, Commissioner Don Millis, a Republican, cited Votebeat’s reporting that Witzel-Behl spent a long post-election vacation at home — not on an out-of-state trip, as he had believed — baking thousands of cookies, when some lost ballots were discovered. That, he said, factored into his vote for stricter orders.

“She couldn’t be bothered to turn off the oven, to come to the office to figure out if the Ward 65 ballots could be counted,” he said. “The failure to mention that the clerk was readily available to address this issue, along with the fact that none of the city officials we depose felt it was their job to get the ballots counted, makes me even more determined that the Commission must impose the directions in our order.”

Similarly, commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said it was “peculiar” that clerk’s office staff never told commissioners during their monthslong investigation that they rented cars on city time to deliver cookies after the ballot discovery.

Those deposed “were all part of the cookie crew,” she said ahead of her vote. “Why didn’t they tell us about that? Why didn’t the city of Madison ever mention this? Why did nobody bring this up?”

In a memo circulated ahead of the meeting, commission staff said the scope of the error “warrants a detailed order from the Commission correcting (Witzel-Behl’s) office’s policies and procedures, and ensuring those issues are actually fixed before the next statewide election.”

Haas, who was formerly the commission administrator, disagreed with the original proposed orders. He said the commission’s authority “does not extend to requiring the future implementation of specific procedures in excess of those required in the statutes.”

But commission staff pushed back, calling it “unreasonable and absurd” to read state law as barring the commission from ordering specific remedies.

In some cases, the commissioners made the requirements more stringent than what Madison proposed, but more lenient than the commission’s originally proposed orders.

For example, one order the commission initially proposed would have required Madison to print pollbooks no sooner than the Thursday before Election Day, despite state law calling on officials only to have the “most current official registration list.” Haas requested an order more in line with what state law outlines, printing the ballots as close to Election Day as possible.

The final order sets the deadline for printing pollbooks on the Tuesday before Election Day — two days earlier than first proposed — and requires that they be delivered no later than the Friday before the election.

Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two wards that lost ballots on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day. The commission said printing that early made it harder for officials to track absentee ballots returned before Election Day, and harder for poll workers to see how many ballots went uncounted.

Interim clerk’s objections to the commission’s order

Haas, who took over as interim clerk after Witzel-Behl was suspended in March, told Votebeat on the Tuesday ahead of the meeting that it was “way too early” to think about whether Madison would appeal the commission’s orders in court. In a statement after Friday’s vote, he said he was grateful that the commission altered some orders after the city’s feedback.

“The question is which level of government is best suited and authorized to determine specific procedures that work for the municipality in going above and beyond what the statutes require,” he told Votebeat. “We look forward to working with the Commission to ensure compliance with state law.”

Mark Thomsen, a Democratic commissioner, said he wasn’t comfortable with the agency beating up on Madison over mistakes made under a former clerk when a new permanent clerk hasn’t yet been hired.

At the meeting, Thomsen said he was uncomfortable imposing burdens on a new clerk that “no one else has to follow.”

“This order seems spiteful, and I don’t want to go there,” he said, before casting the lone dissent. Republicans Millis, Bob Spindell, and Marge Bostelmann joined Democrats Carrie Riepl and Jacobs in approving the orders.

State law allows the commission to “require any election official to conform his or her conduct to the law, restrain an official from taking any action inconsistent with the law or require an official to correct any action or decision inconsistent with the law.”

Many of the orders, such as assigning specific staff to each election task, are not explicitly mentioned in statute.

Addressing claims that the orders were too detailed, commission staff attorney Angela O’Brien Sharpe said, “If the legislature intended for the commission to only be able to issue general orders, they would have written a law to say just that.”

In a statement following the vote, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the city is reorganizing the office to improve efficiency and accountability.

“We appreciate the Wisconsin Elections Commission considering our input and amending its orders to reflect that feedback,” she said. “I hope the WEC’s investigation can help inform best practices for election clerks around the state.” 

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

Matt DePerno, facing felony charges, is running for Michigan attorney general again

2025-08-14T18:37:33+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.

Matt DePerno, the Michigan lawyer facing felony charges for allegedly tampering with voting machines in a hotel room in 2020, is taking another shot at becoming the state’s top law enforcement officer.

DePerno on Wednesday filed paperwork with the state run for attorney general, kickstarting a second potential campaign for the office he lost to Dana Nessel in 2022 by about 8 percentage points.

In 2023, a special prosecutor — appointed at Nessel’s request in 2022, when the two were rival candidates for office — charged DePerno with undue possession of a voting machine, willfully damaging a voting machine, and two counts of conspiracy.

According to The Detroit News, DePerno boasted about the effort on a 2021 podcast. Court documents have since said he was regularly present for “testing” on voting equipment in hotel rooms where the machines were allegedly being examined outside the legal chain of custody. His case, alongside former Republican state Rep. Daire Rendon’s, have been remanded to lower courts for preliminary exams. Attorney Stephanie Lambert is heading to trial for her alleged role.

DePerno has been a popular conservative source for false or misleading claims on elections since 2020. His campaign to become attorney general in 2022 while being investigated by that office — and promising to put Nessel in prison if he won — were unprecedented in the history of Michigan politics.

While the case continues, DePerno has sought other offices. He ran for chair of the Michigan GOP in 2023, endorsed by President Donald Trump and Mike Lindell. He lost that race to Kristina Karamo, who ran for secretary of state as a Republican alongside DePerno in 2022. DePerno also briefly ran for a seat on the Michigan Supreme Court last year before dropping out.

DePerno did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat on Thursday.

He has a few hurdles ahead to become the Republican nominee. While voters choose gubernatorial candidates for both major parties in primary elections, candidates for attorney general and secretary of state are chosen at their respective party conventions, which won’t happen until next summer.

Other Republicans running for attorney general include Kevin Kijewski, a lawyer from Birmingham who is defending one of the 15 people facing felony charges for allegedly signing a certificate falsely claiming Trump won Michigan in the 2020 election; and Doug Lloyd, Eaton County prosecutor. Democrats seeking the office include Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit, and former U.S. Attorney Mark Totten.

DePerno, who was admitted to the Michigan bar in 1995, may face disbarment for alleged professional misconduct in a different case, in which he was representing a former state representative who was accused of trying to cover up an affair.

Attorneys general in Michigan can only serve two four-year terms. Nessel’s second term ends Jan. 1, 2027.

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

Heider Garcia resigns as Dallas County elections chief

2025-08-08T21:31:40+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.

Dallas County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia is leaving his post to work for one of the state’s certified voting machine companies. He submitted his letter of resignation on Thursday.

His last day with the county will be Aug. 29. Garcia’s resignation comes only months before a statewide constitutional-amendment election and the 2026 primary election. Planning for both elections is already underway.

The Dallas County Elections Commission — made up of a bipartisan group of county leaders — will choose the next elections administrator. If a new administrator is not appointed before Garcia’s last day, his deputy, Malissa Kouba, will carry out the duties until one is chosen, County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins’ office said in a statement to Votebeat.

Garcia did not respond to a request for comment Friday. He was hired by Austin-based Hart Intercivic and is set to become the company’s vice president of customer success, replacing Peter Lichtenheld, who is retiring. Nearly 90 counties across the state use Hart Intercivic’s voting systems,

In his resignation letter, Garcia thanked Jenkins for his support and encouragement.

“Your confidence in my leadership and the resources you provided allowed me to effectively deliver results,” he wrote. “I am grateful for our candid discussions, the valuable advice you always offered, and your commitment to prioritizing voters.”

Garcia was appointed elections administrator in Dallas County in the fall of 2023 after leading elections in Tarrant County since 2018. Garcia resigned from the role in Tarrant, citing political pressure from Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare. Garcia also worked for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, where he helped develop best practices for election officials across the country as an expert on election administration and election technology.

Garcia became one of the most respected elections directors in the state and was lauded by other election officials across the country for the way he dealt with misinformation and mistrust of elections during his time in Tarrant.

Garcia, who previously worked as a software engineer for the voting machine company Smartmatic, had also become the target of claims from some activists and allies of President Trump that he’d “rigged” the 2020 election in Tarrant County. He faced harassment and racist death threats. His efforts to engage with the activists and implement policies to increase transparency were later replicated by election officials around the state.

“Heider Garcia came to Dallas County with a proven track record of running excellent elections and he lived up to that reputation during his time here,” Jenkins said in the statement. “We appreciate his dedication and demonstrated leadership of this essential department.”

The Dallas County Election Commission is made up of Jenkins, a Democrat; the chairs of both county political parties, Republican Allen West and Democrat Kardal Coleman; the county’s tax assessor; and the county clerk.

Correction Aug. 15, 2025: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported Garcia’s title with Hart Intercivic. He’s set to become the company’s vice president of customer success.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Texas redistricting standoff complicates preparations for March 2026 primary

2025-08-08T09:55:00+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.

With Texas legislators locked in a standoff over Republicans’ push to redraw the state’s congressional districts mid-decade, time is running out for election officials to prepare for next year’s primary without major disruption.

Planning for the March primary election is already underway, but election officials say they can’t move forward without finalized maps — and the first key deadline, mandated by the state, is coming Sept. 9.

Democratic lawmakers have pledged to remain out of the state in protest of the Republicans’ proposed congressional map, making an agreement unlikely by the end of the special session Aug. 19. The proposed map could still change, and if Gov. Greg Abbott calls another special session, the debate could extend well into the fall.

Without knowing where the boundaries will be drawn, election officials won’t be able to finalize decisions about polling locations or the number of election workers needed. Voters whose polling location changes will also need to be informed, and candidates who want a spot on the primary ballot also need the new boundary lines well in advance in order to familiarize themselves with the district and campaign. Candidates have to be residents of the district they seek to represent.

In a typical redistricting cycle year, the process of adapting to new maps is labor-intensive for election officials and takes months.

“Who knows if we’ll have enough time?” said Chris Davis, the voter registration director in Travis County. He said the Sept. 9 deadline is when county precinct chairs — who represent their political party in a precinct within their neighborhood — can begin filing to run in the primary. A new map could shift precinct boundaries entirely.

Candidates “need to know now which precinct they’re filing for,” Davis said. “If we have to split a precinct into two, they may end up being the chair of a new precinct.”

All other primary candidates can begin filing for a spot on the ballot Nov. 8. The filing deadline is one month later.

Election officials across the state have for months been updating precinct boundary lines to account for population growth, as required by state law in odd-numbered years. But that work is now on hold due to the redistricting battle, multiple election officials told Votebeat. If and when new maps get approved, they’ll have to start over.

Redistricting delayed a past Texas election

The push to redraw Texas’ congressional maps outside the normal 10-year cycle follows a push by President Donald Trump’s advisers to help Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House in the 2026 midterms. Historically, the party in control loses seats in midterm elections, and Republicans currently have a slim majority.

The Republican-proposed map targets Democratic districts in the Austin, Dallas, and Houston metro areas as well as in South Texas.

Texas election administrators have faced redistricting-related election delays before.

In 2012, the Texas primary election was delayed until the summer due to months of disagreement and litigation over the state’s congressional maps. The date was changed twice, filing periods for candidates were pushed back, and campaigns were left in limbo without maps.

Election officials worry the same thing could happen now — and say they may lose access to polling locations and workers they’ve already secured for April and March if delays persist.

“We secure polling locations at least six months in advance,” said Jennifer Doinoff, Hays County election administrator. “We are making sure workers have enough time to plan for the dates of the election. If the dates change, those workers may not show up. The work for us is going to have to start all over again.”

Differing impact for vote centers vs. precinct-based polling sites

In some counties, it’s more urgent now to know the exact number of polling locations they’ll need.

Nearly 100 of Texas’ 254 counties use vote centers, which allow voters to cast their ballot anywhere in their county on Election Day. Vote centers reduce the number of locations officials have to staff and equip on Election Day.

The rest of the state’s counties assign voters to specific precincts. The number of precincts determines how many polling locations they’ll be required to have and whether they’ll need more workers. The new maps are key to figuring out that step of the process.

Denton County, in North Texas, has precinct-based voting, and must make sure voters know well ahead of Election Day which location they’re assigned to.

Frank Phillips, the county’s elections administrator, said he needs the final map soon to assess whether voters need to be reassigned or if more polling sites are required. Without that information, both voters and candidates will be in the dark about their districts — and what races will appear on their ballots.

“They may show up at the polls expecting to vote for District 33 and now they’re voting for District 26,” he said. “That’ll create confusion like something’s not right on their ballot.”

Phillips and other election officials are also watching key deadlines for sending absentee ballots to overseas and military voters, which has to be done more than a month ahead of the election. They must also program and test the voting equipment — a process that hinges on knowing which precincts and races are in play.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.