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A News Service of the Verified Voting Foundation
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Picketed at work, confronted at church: Why election workers have left the job | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop
June 21, 2024
Over the course of 20 years as an election administrator in Shasta County, Calif., Cathy Darling Allen oversaw nearly a dozen national election cycles and countless local races. In February, she decided she’d had enough. Allen announced she would be retiring, citing the negative impact that the job was having on her health, especially in recent years. In a public letter, she wrote that she had been diagnosed with heart failure and her chances for recovery relied on substantial stress reduction, something that was “a tough ask to balance with election administration in the current environment.” In an interview with CyberScoop, Allen was more blunt about what triggered her decision to leave: “Being concerned on a daily basis about your own physical safety and the safety of the folks who work for us and the voters who come in to cast their ballots takes a toll.” Allen is not alone in choosing to step down as an election administrator. Across the United States election officials are leaving their posts in droves, citing threats, harassment and acts of violence at levels not seen in decades — a development that experts caution poses a far greater threat to U.S. elections than malicious hackers or AI-enabled deepfakes. Read Article
National: States struggle with unreliable federal funding for making sure elections are secure | Jennifer Shutt/Stateline
June 21, 2024
The federal government has sought to bolster election security for years through a popular grant program, but the wildly fluctuating funding levels have made it difficult for state officials to plan their budgets and their projects. Rising misinformation and disinformation about elections, often fueled by conspiracy theories, as well as threats against election workers, make the grants especially important, according to elections officials. But U.S. House Republicans are seeking to eliminate funding for election security grants — known as Help America Vote Act, or HAVA grants — in this year’s appropriations process, a move they also unsuccessfully attempted last year. “We continue to unnecessarily risk the very integrity of our elections and American democracy,” Georgia Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop said last week during committee debate on the funding bill. Bishop, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was “concerned about the outdated and the insecure voting systems around the country that pose a very, very serious threat to our national security and to our democratic system.” Read Article
National: Rage against the voting machine | Joseph Gedeon/Politico
June 21, 2024
Elon Musk set the Xverse ablaze this weekend with a viral post calling to “eliminate electronic voting machines” due to hacking risks, racking up over 75,000 reposts. It came after independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seized on voting irregularities in Puerto Rico’s recent primary to demand a return to hand-marked paper ballots nationwide. “Flip the claim that there’s ‘no evidence of widespread fraud.’ We have evidence of sound elections,” said Pamela Smith, president of the nonpartisan Verified Voting, which promotes the responsible use of technology in elections.Smith argues that while tiny jurisdictions can feasibly hand count ballots, moving to full manual counts in larger locales would be a logistical nightmare — delaying results for weeks or months and costing counties millions to hire enough workers. Not to mention studies showing machinestend to tally votes more accuratelythan humans do. Read Article
National: 334 public officials in 5 swing states who cast doubt on elections are now influencing them |Erin Mansfield/USA Today
June 21, 2024
Hundreds of public officials in five key swing states have denied election outcomes, tried to overturn an election or made statements to undermine an election, a new study says. The study identified 334 of these public officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin running the gamut from a state’s second-highest elected official to local boards that certify election results. Those closely divided states are likely to decide the 2024 presidential election. The study by Public Wise, a left-leaning nonprofit group that advocates for representative democracy, is the most comprehensive study to date of state and local public officials who have power over elections but whose commitment to election fairness has been questioned. Most officials Public Wise identified are state lawmakers, and many signed on to letters asking various state and federal officials to stand in the way of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Others include elected county commissioners, elected county sheriffs, elected town officials, and people appointed to run day-to-day election administration or perform routine signoffs on vote certification. Read Article
National: The RNC is launching a massive effort to monitor voting. Critics say it threatens to undermine trust | Joey Cappelletti and Ali Swenson/Associated Press
June 21, 2024
The Republican National Committee on Friday launched a swing state initiative to mobilize thousands of polling place monitors, poll workers and attorneys to serve as “election integrity” watchdogs in November — an effort that immediately drew concerns that it could lead to harassment of election workers and undermine trust in the vote. The RNC says its plan will help voters have faith in the electoral process and ensure their votes matter. Yet, as former President Donald Trump and his allies continue to spreadfalse claimsthat the 2020 election wasmarred by widespread fraud, the effort also sets the stage for a repeat of Trump’s efforts to undermine the results — a gambit that ultimately led to theJan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump allies already have signaled that they might not accept the results if he loses to President Joe Biden. Read Article
National: The Biden administration has no firm plan to call out domestic disinformation in the 2024 election |Dan De Luce and Ken Dilanian/NBC
June 21, 2024
The Biden administration has nofirm plans to alert the public about deepfakes or other false information during the 2024 electionunless it is clearly coming from a foreign actor and poses a sufficiently grave threat, according to current and former officials. Although cyber experts in and outside of government expectan onslaught of disinformation and deepfakes during this year’s election campaign, officials in the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security remain worried that if they weigh in, they will face accusations that they are attempting to tilt the election in favor of President Joe Biden’s re-election. Lawmakers from both partieshave urged the Biden administration to take a more assertive stance. “I’m worried that you may be overly concerned with appearing partisan and that that will freeze you in terms of taking the actions that are necessary,” Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, told cybersecurity and intelligence officials at a hearing last month. Read Article
National: U.S. election official: ‘Whack-a-mole’ strategies less effective to combat disinfo | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop
June 21, 2024
Disinformation continues to be a top focus for policymakers concerned with the integrity of elections, but changes in how the public utilizes social media over the past decade have made it harder for defenders — and attackers — to repeat the same playbooks, a top U.S. cybersecurity official said Tuesday. Speaking at a Semafor cybersecurity event in Washington D.C Cait Conley, a senior adviser at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that foreign influence operations, disinformation and artificial intelligence remain an area of concern for election officials. But traditional efforts around content moderation and takedowns of online networks are becoming more challenging and less impactful as social media use becomes more fragmented among different audiences. “The whack-a-mole strategies that have been employed in the past when it comes to disinformation, it’s not going to be effective given today’s information environment,” Conley said. “There’s more platforms, there’s more methods of distribution, we see migrations not just of social media platforms but of chat channels.” Read Article
National: How Climate Change Threatens Democracy | Karen Florini and Alice C. Hill/Foreign Affairs
June 21, 2024
This year, at least 68 countries will hold elections, with billions of voters heading to the polls. Voting will be subject to many of the usual electoral risks, including disinformation campaigns, foreign interference, and rigging by incumbents. In some states, both incumbents and challengers could even use violence to keep certain people at home. But there will be another factor, one not yet widely considered, that could skew results: the physical forces unleashed by climate change. They present a unique and novel challenge. Although all electoral threats are serious, the ones brought by climate change have the potential to disenfranchise voters even in the absence of malevolent intent. The disenfranchisem*nt of even a few voters can make a profound difference in election outcomes, as in the case of the 537 votes in Florida that determined the U.S. presidential election in 2000. As extreme weather events become more frequent, the risk to voters will grow. Read Article
Arizona: Documents detail Republican push to force hand counts | Rachel Leingang/The Guardian
June 21, 2024
Republican elected officials in a smallArizona county talked with state lawmakers and activists about hand-counting ballots there in 2022 and urged their counterparts in other counties to push for hand counts as well, newly released public records show. The records from Cochise county, a Republican stronghold along the US-Mexico border, only came to light after a lawsuit from a watchdog group, American Oversight, and took well over a year to be released. The original records request from American Oversight was filed in November 2022. They show how Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, two of the three-member board of supervisors, were bothadvocatingfor hand-counting ballots as election denialism and skepticismgripped the county. The two supervisors alsodelayedcertification of the county’s election results in 2022, which resulted in criminal charges in a case that isstill ongoing. Read Article
Alaska: U.S. Justice Department finds state discriminates against disabled voters | Iris Samuels/Anchorage Daily News
June 21, 2024
The Alaska Division of Elections has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by making voting inaccessible to disabled Alaskans, the U.S. Department of Justice found in a recent investigation. The DOJfound that “Alaska discriminates on the basis of disability” in an investigation initiated in response to complaints that alleged that “accessible voting machines that would allow persons with disabilities to vote privately and independently, were either unavailable at voting sites, or if available, they did not work.” The investigation examined statewide elections held in 2022 and 2023. The investigation detailed several problems that hinder disabled voters’ ability to participate in elections. For state and federal elections, the state did not provide accessible voting machines during early voting and on Election Day, despite claiming that it provides such machines. In some locations where the machines were present, they were not operational, the investigation found. In at least one polling place, the machine was “unassembled in its shipping box.” In other locations, poll workers reported that they “could not operate” the accessible machines. Read Article
California: Shasta County supervisors hire lawyer to lead county elections office |Damon Arthur/Redding Record Searchlight
June 21, 2024
The Shasta County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday appointed as its next registrar of voters a semi-retired former prosecutor with no experience in managing an elections department, a job he described as a “critical” position with a presidential election looming in November. Thomas Toller, 62, said during his public job interview with the supervisors Tuesday and Wednesday that he could quickly get up to speed on learning California election laws and get to know the staff at the county clerk and registrar of voters office. “I look forward to the opportunity to serve the people of Shasta County. And my greatest hope is that I can bring some transparency to the office and increase people’s confidence in how we process votes here in Shasta County,” Toller said after the board’s 3-2 vote to hire him. Read Article
Georgia becomes first state to require election law training for police | George Chidi/The Guardian
June 21, 2024
Georgia is the first state to mandate training in election law in order for police to become state certified, a reflection of lessons learned in the aftermath of the state’s 2020 race. The new requirement for police trainees to take a one-hour course on election laws is meant to keep officers from trying to guess at how to enforce the law on election day, said Chris Harvey, deputy executive director for the Georgia peace officer standards and training council. “Cops just really need to know what are some of the basic ground rules around elections and voting, because they’re very specific,” he said. “In my opinion, the worst thing that can happen is if you have a partisan person or partisan force trying to manipulate the police, and have the police not have any idea what they’re supposed to be doing.” Read Article
Michigan Supreme Court weighs legality of Secretary of State’s guidance on election challengers | Beth LeBlanc/The Detroit News
June 21, 2024
Michigan Supreme Court justices will decide in the coming weeks whether guidelines issued by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to govern the handling of challengers at polling places can withstand the scrutiny of Republican opponents. Justices heard about an hour of argument Tuesday over Zoom on a case that challenges a manual issued by Benson to clerks in 2022 that set out instructions for election challengers, including a uniform credential form for challengers, limits on when their challenges should be recorded and bans on electronic device possession in closed-door absentee voting counting rooms while polling precincts are open. Several election challengers and the state and national Republican parties filed suit soon after the guidelines were issued, arguing they conflict with state election law and constituted rules that should have gone through the rulemaking process. Read Article
Nevada: Judge tosses initial GOP lawsuit alleging voter rolls insufficiently maintained | Eric Neugeboren/The Nevada Independent
June 21, 2024
A federal judge on Tuesday approved a motion to dismiss a GOP-led lawsuit alleging that Nevada had insufficiently maintained its voter rolls, but will allow for an amended complaint addressing standing issues to be re-filed with the court. After a two hour hearing in Las Vegas, U.S. District Court Judge Cristina Silva ruled that the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Nevada GOP lacked standing to file the lawsuit. She also ruled that there was no way for the state to resolve the alleged issues when the lawsuit was filed, owing to federal guidelines on the timing of amending voting roll programs to remove ineligible voters. The groups have 14 days to amend their complaint. Read Article
Ohio elections officials group opposes bill to change laws on voting machines, counting ballots | Karen Kasler/The Statehouse News Bureau
June 21, 2024
The Republican sponsor of a bill that makes a lot of changes to voting laws says it’s about stopping hackers and blocking cybersecurity threats. But the group that represents the people who would have to put those changes into place is solidly against the bill. House Bill 472 would make changes in the name of improving election security in Ohio, in a system that even the sponsors call the “gold standard” for elections. But they’ve so concerned elections officials that the trustees for the bipartisan Ohio Association of Elections Officials voted unanimously to oppose it. “We agree with the sponsors that we want to have safe and secure elections in Ohio,” said Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials. “But unfortunately, we also recognize that many of the provisions that are contained in the bill actually move us in the wrong direction.” Read Article
Pennsylvania: Partisan gridlock prevents fixes to voting laws as presidential election looms | Marc Levy/Associated Press
June 21, 2024
Pennsylvania is seeing lots of action targeting gaps in its vote-by-mail laws. The problem is that it’s in the courtroom and not the legislature. That could make the most populous presidential swing state a hotbed of challenges and conspiracy theories if the November election is close, as expected. The state also has a U.S. Senate contest between Democratic incumbentBob Caseyand Republican challengerDavid McCormick that will help determine control of the chamber, increasing scrutiny on election offices if lawmakers can’t break a partisan stalemate and vote-counting is slowed by mailed ballots. “Everyone just really feels how high the stakes are in Pennsylvania, being the largest swing state in the country,” said Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based good-government group. Read Article
South Dakota: Minnehaha County auditor plans recount of two elections; commissioner calls timing ‘irresponsible’ | Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight
June 21, 2024
The top election official in South Dakota’s most-populated county continued to cast doubt Tuesday on past election results reported by the county, while explaining plans to recount the results of two elections by hand and saying 132 ballots rejected during the June 4 primary will remain omitted from the official count. Dozens of people crowded into a Minnehaha County Commission meeting in downtown Sioux Falls to hear County Auditor Leah Anderson’s comments.Anderson, a Republican elected in 2022, has associated with people who refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election. Last week, Anderson appeared inan online interviewwith election conspiracy theoristMike Lindell, the CEO of the MyPillow company. Read Article
Texas:Voter advocacy groups ask DOJ to step in after Texas allowed some voters’ ballots to be identified | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat
June 21, 2024
A coalition of watchdog and voter advocacy groupsasked the U.S. Department of Justiceon Thursday to use “all available legal authorities” to protect the secrecy of ballotsafter Votebeat and The Texas Tribune confirmed that the private choices some voters make in the voting booth can in some instances be identified using public, legally available records. The two news organizations reported on the limited ability to identify how some people vote after an independent news site published what it said was the image of the ballot a former state GOP chair cast in the March 5 Republican primary. The League of Women Voters of Texas, American Oversight, the Campaign Legal Center, and Southern Coalition for Social Justice cited the investigation by Votebeat and The Tribune that replicated a series of steps that could identify a specific person’s ballot choices using public records. The outlets did not detail the precise information or process needed to do so. The advocacy groups said the ability to identify how people vote could lead to voter intimidation. Read Article
Do Wisconsin elections have enough funding with one source cut off? | Government | Andrew Bahl/The Cap Times
June 21, 2024
Wisconsinites voted in April to ban election officials from accepting private grant money, a nod to controversy stemming from the 2020 election.Some are wondering if this should signal big changes to how Wisconsin funds voting, including more state dollars being pushed out to clerks. When voters approved the constitutional amendments, there was no requirement that any lost private grant funding would be replaced by public money.Local officials from both parties say increased state funding is a good idea, but it remains unclear if the state Legislature will be moved by their requests.“I’m very nervous because we’re looking forward to a presidential election,” said Rep. Lee Snodgrass, D-Appleton, the top Democrat on the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections. “We know it’s going to be contentious. It’s the same people who were on the ballot last time. We know what happened the last time. Why wouldn’t we want these municipalities to have every single thing that they might possibly need for every circ*mstance that might come up?” Read Article
