Mark Elias  "We will not win the battle for democracy if those in the pro-democracy movement prize caution over taking risks. We cannot permit ourselves to be deterred by the inevitable defeats and public criticism that are inevitable along the long path of restoring democracy. Now is the time for fearless leadership and bold action.

 "The fight for democracy is the fight of our generation. It may not be the battle we wanted, but it is the one we face. The state of our democracy and the future of our country depends on our willingness to take risks, ignore the naysayers, weather setbacks and fight fiercely for democracy and free and fair elections."

COMMENT : It’s no secret that Trump is shutting down avenues to fair and secure elections going forward. Today in his disdain of law and fair elections, he is moving to get Tina Peters out of jail.  She is " a key supporter who was behind one of the most significant election security breaches in years.”  The Trump administration has swept away nearly all of the government’s election-related cyber defenses so further reports such as 2024 US Federal Elections: The Insider Threat (download available) are not to be expected.

Just 100 days into his second term, President Donald Trump has launched near-daily efforts to expand his power and has threatened fundamental principles like due process and the separation of powers. One political scientist Democracy Docket spoke with called it “an all-out assault on democracy.”

Now is the time to stand up and safeguard New York State elections against the security breaches that have occurred at ES&S and Dominion and the vulnerability of computerized vote counts. Insist that your New York State assembly members and senators support and pass legislation to protect our right to vote on paper ballots, with audits adequate to detect machine breakdown or fraud. Here’s what you can do.

It is essential that New York defend our current system of hand marked paper ballots counted on scanners.

   
Trump and Musk are dismantling major climate research and moving ahead aggressively with more oil and gas drilling - and even coal. With thousands of EPA scientists laid off, Trump and Musk seek to cripple climate action at a particularly critical moment to avoid catastrophic climate change. At the same time, they are advancing a relentless attack on democracy, including our election infrastructure.

Brennan Center. "What can states do to protect elections amid reduced federal support?...Regardless of what happens next, states — which actually run our elections — and civil society will need to step up to fill the gaps the federal government has left. “

Comment:  In the current  environment of security threats without the protections that the federal government previously provided, it is even more urgent that New York legislators pass the Voting Integrity and Verification Act of NY (VIVANY A6287/S7116) to protect our existing system of hand marked paper ballots and scanners.  With hand marked paper ballots we have something to audit and verify the vote count if the voting computers break down or are hacked.  ALLEGRA DENGLER

Zetter: "The security of the nation's election systems has long been in question – a number of security investigations and reports going back two decades have found significant and numerous security flaws with voting machines used by jurisdictions around the country. But many of the claims made during the 2020 presidential campaign went beyond facts about security risks to state categorically without evidence that the systems had been subverted to give Biden the election. Trump and his followers had also asserted that massive voter fraud had helped Biden win the election, but the claims were not supported by evidence."

New York Times: "Federal programs that monitored foreign influence and disinformation have been eliminated. Key elements of the warning systems intended to flag possible intrusions into voting software have also been degraded... And contractors who worked with local election officials to perform cybersecurity testing, usually with federal funding, have found the deals canceled....“It’s like somebody lowered the drawbridge, and there’s no guards,” said Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona.... “This is incredibly bad.”

APNews: "Forcing states to change, the suit says, would violate the broad authority the Constitution gives states to set their own election rules. It says they decide the “times, places and manner” of how elections are run.”

“This decision effectively treats the right to vote as merely the right to cast a ballot, not the right to know what vote is being cast and counted,” said Marks. “That cannot be the law. A system where a voter has no way to know whether their ballot reflects their true selections is fundamentally incompatible with the constitutional right to vote… Despite the dismissal, the Court credited Plaintiffs’ advocacy with prompting recent legislative reforms, including Georgia’s enactment of a new law to eliminate QR code-based vote tabulation by 2026.”

While you are writing your lawmakers, add that you support the Voting Integrity and Verification Act of NY (VIVANY)  A6287 / S7116 and the Count Every Vote Act of NY (CEVA)  S471)/A4307.

The Voting Integrity and Verification Act of NY (VIVANY)  A6287 / S7116  protects our right to vote on hand marked paper ballots which is under threat

The Count Every Vote Act of NY (CEVA):   S471)/A4307 precisely defines the margin of victory for the purpose of triggering a hand recount of ballots.

Lawsuit filed by Coalition for Good Governance, an organization that bills itself as supporting “election integrity and election security,” against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) challenging the use of electronic voting machines in Georgia. The plaintiff alleges that the use of Direct Recording Equipment (DRE) voting equipment violates the fundamental right to vote by failing to protect against the threat of intrusion and manipulation by failing to “provide a reasonable and adequate method for voting by which Georgia electors’ votes would be accurately counted” because DRE ballots are “counted electronically and cannot reliably prevent or detect errors.” The plaintiff requests a judgment stating that the use of electronic voting machines violates the Georgia Constitution, 14th Amendment and Georgia election law and requests the prohibition of the DRE system. 

The greatest threat to Donald Trump’s authoritarian dream is not the courts — it is free and fair elections. While the courts can stand in the way of his twisted vision for America, they can never completely halt it. Trump knows this. Trump operates on the assumption that there will be no political check on his power. His plan to subvert democracy depends on the subservience of a Republican-controlled Congress. His worst nightmare is a scenario in which Democrats flip one or both chambers in 2026.

No joke. On Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump issued an extraordinary Executive Order that would give “the DOGE Administrator,” that is, Elon Musk, access to the voter files of every state for the purpose of purging millions of Americans from voter rolls as suspected “non-citizens.”

Billionaire Elon Musk's unprecedented efforts to bolster the conservative candidate in next week's hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race ran into legal hot water Friday amid accusations that he had broken state election law.

The Trump administration continues to push us toward a constitutional crisis, leaving our democracy at a breaking point. President Donald Trump signed an executive order attempting to tighten rules for U.S. elections and threatened funding cuts to states that do not comply. The order will be challenged in court by voting rights groups.

From Ray Lutz:

I have a number of new data analyses to present in upcoming editions on this channel, but first, I want to build a foundation of the full range of scams that are possible, which ones are truly illegal, and which ones are not illegal but bad nevertheless.

"The changes at CISA unravel a long-established partnership between the federal government and the states, which have long relied on the agency to help secure their electronic and physical infrastructure.
Election officials say the EI-ISAC, which was established in 2018 during Trump’s first term following an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, will not be easy to replace..”

Slate:  “...the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software."

The Republican plan is to win next year’s election this year. Yes, the voting will be bent, jacked and hammered this year, 2025, one year before the official voting. Because this is the year of The Great Purge.

And if The Great Purge doesn’t do the trick, Republicans are ramping up other vote suppression tactics they rolled out to win 2024, including a private army of MAGA-nauts who challenged over a million voters’ ballots in 2024 and plan on way more by the 2026 midterm.