There is now strong and urgent bipartisan support for new federal grants and oversight to safeguard vulnerable state voting infrastructure and promote voter verified paper ballots and non-partisan audits

• The letter from Republicans is notable as federal election standards and funding has traditionally been a Democratic issue

• Unfortunately, the battle for political advantage in coming elections have delayed these truly non-partisan issues and sidelined debate on balanced legislative proposals in the US Senate

Michigan’s "redistricting commission has pulled off something remarkable. Despite a flurry of legal action and very public disputes between members, it has produced some of the fairest maps in the US. How did it manage it – and will the maps survive?
...MICRC, and the approach it epitomizes, came about thanks to Katie Fahey, a Michigan resident and political novice who posted a message on Facebook two days after the 2016 presidential election. She said she wanted to take on gerrymandering and eventually recruited more than 14,000 volunteers to campaign for an amendment to the state’s constitution. It passed with 61% of the vote and created the commission, one of the most successful ways to unrig the redistricting process so far and a potential model for other states.”

BradBlog: “Lynn Bernstein ...went public last month on Twitter with some of the threats she began to face after she (a registered and active Democrat) found common ground with the state's Libertarian Party. She helped convince them to exercise their right, under state law, to seek an independent source code and security review of ES&S' unverifiable BMD voting and tabulation systems…. "North Carolina law says that a voter must be able to verify their ballot before casting it. With ES&S's barcode system, it doesn't actually allow the voter to verify their vote before casting it.”

COMMENT: This sounds familiar. New York has a law like that. But If New York doesn’t pass a law banning hybrid voting machines (S309A/A1115A Protect Our Vote Act), New York City Board of Elections has signaled its intent to purchase this type of voting machine.. Allegra Dengler

MSN: “Georgia voters face an extreme risk that [ballot marking device]-based attacks could manipulate their individual votes and alter election outcomes,” Halderman said of the secret report in a signed declaration last year,....”

Reuters: "We see what happened in the insurrection," said Manchin, who is leading the Democratic side of the bipartisan effort. "We're going to get a bunch of people together, Democrats and Republicans, and get a good piece of legislation that protects the counting of the vote….Manchin said he wants threatening or accosting an election official to be a federal crime….senators said there could be scope to meet the 60-vote threshold with more limited legislation aimed at curbing congressional intervention in presidential elections through ECA reform…. [Electoral Count Act]

"The people who tried to overturn the last election focused on using that act in a way that would have subverted the will of the people. And so there's interest in clarifying the act," Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a member of the Collins group, told reporters.”The Collins group is also considering proposals to protect elected officials from harassment and unwarranted removal from office, address election security and improve election management, according to a person familiar with the matter."

Times Union: “... we don’t agree with opening ballots weeks before election day, which could reduce public scrutiny of the process, and risks signaling prematurely how an election is going. Nor do we agree with making it easier for political operatives of any persuasion to manipulate the absentee ballot process. People put things in the mail, and order all sorts of things on line, with no assistance from anyone. What, we have to wonder, is so unusual about absentee ballots that they need the help of some party official or volunteer to request? In cases of a severe disability that makes filing a ballot request impossible, special procedures can surely be carved out.

Rick Hasen. Vox
“...The 2020 election showed numerous paths for trying to manipulate election outcomes,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California Irvine and the author of Election Meltdown and the forthcoming Cheap Speech. “And although the system barely held last time, because we had some heroic people, including heroic Republicans, there’s good reason to believe a lot of those people will no longer be in office at the time of the next election,” he said.
...I think this issue is the subversion issue, not voter suppression. The biggest impact of these false beliefs on the part of Republicans about a stolen election on 2022 is that they make it more likely that those who will be running elections in 2024 will be people who embrace the “big lie.”
...I think the most immediate threat — and this is the point I’ve been trying to drive home as an even greater risk than voter suppression, which is a real problem — is this risk of stolen elections or election subversion. This is something I never expected to have to worry about in the contemporary United States but here we are. It’s a risk that the true election winner will not get declared the winner.
...I’ve said before, I feel kind of like a climate scientist or an epidemiologist. This is what I do. I study this stuff all day every day and my warning lights are flashing red. You look at people who study the rise of authoritarianism and transitions from democracy in other countries — they’ve reached the same conclusion.
...I think people who try to minimize the risks are just in denial or not paying attention.
...And Democrats, it’s more of a mystery to me as to why they don’t see the house on fire like I do. You’ll have to ask them. There’s been a reluctance to separate out the question of subversion from voting rights.
...What the future holds is uncertain. A lot of the opportunities that may have been available in Congress seem to be closing. I think what we need to think about is what we as individuals can do to shore up our election system. I don’t know that any legislative solution is going to be forthcoming, and the danger to our election system is real. So it may take mass peaceful protests and organizing in order to assure that we have fair elections in the future.

New York Times: "Whatever happens in Washington, in the months and years to come, Americans of all stripes who value their self-government must mobilize at every level — not simply once every four years but today and tomorrow and the next day — to win elections and help protect the basic functions of democracy. If people who believe in conspiracy theories can win, so can those who live in the reality-based world….Above all, we should stop underestimating the threat facing the country. Countless times over the past six years, up to and including the events of Jan. 6, Mr. Trump and his allies openly projected their intent to do something outrageous or illegal or destructive. Every time, the common response was that they weren’t serious or that they would never succeed. How many times will we have to be proved wrong before we take it seriously? The sooner we do, the sooner we might hope to salvage a democracy that is in grave danger.”

Tennessee Star: "The most significant change the bill contains is the removal of certain types of voting machines. “A county election commission shall not use voting machines or ballot marking devices. Each county election commission shall use hand-marked paper ballots, which must be counted using an optical ballot scanner.”

Jennifer Cohn: "…unscrupulous Republican “fixers,” including Roger Stone, deflected by falsely accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election. In the years since, these same fixers have emerged again and again to deceive voters with faulty narratives that have helped empower right wing extremists, including the Religious Right. …Bush (2000) opposed any manual recount at all. His legal team included three future Supreme Court justices: John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett...A consortium of eight news agencies .. found that a manual recount of all machine-rejected ballots throughout the state ...would have produced a narrow Gore victory…. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which allocated $3 billion to replace punch card machines with new voting machines. HAVA allowed the new machines to be entirely paperless, making manual recounts impossible…..In 2004, Senator Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans might use paperless voting machines to steal elections...Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer were the only Senators who opposed HAVA…."

A communication from the Guardian requesting donations.
"This is an entirely new threat. This is not voting suppression or gerrymandering... What is now taking shape across America is the machinery necessary to steal an election….Last week, Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, said about Trumpists targeting official positions with electoral oversight: “This is a five-alarm fire. If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in 2024.... in Pennsylvania “Stop the Steal” supporters have triumphed in races to become judges of elections in their local precincts. Yes, a “Stop the Steal” supporter will be overseeing the 2024 election [in PA].””

The log4j bug is " the most serious vulnerability I have seen in my decades-long career” [Easterly]. This adds to the list of existing software vulnerabilities in voting machines that threaten our votes. An earlier story from cybersecurity firm Bishop Fox told about a serious vulnerability in BMDs (ballot marking devices that count votes) similar to those in the pipeline for New York State. Stop these vulnerable voting machines from being certified for New York by contacting your state legislators to pass S309, A1115 The Secure Voting Machines Act ("Ban the Hybrids”). Allegra Dengler

Trump Judge Allows Cases to Proceed Against GA Voter Suppression Law 'BradCast' 12/17/2021
Guest: Marilyn Marks of Coalition for Good Governance on that and MUCH more; Also: Stone takes the 5th; Judge allows Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation case to proceed against Fox 'News' …
It's been a rough close of the year for those of us fighting to preserve democracy in these United States against the rising authoritarian tide from the Right. But while it's has been a tough slog for passage of federal voting rights and election protection legislation in the U.S. Senate, there have been several critical victories for fans of democracy in federal court over this past week, as covered on today's BradCast.

Comment: The NYS Board of Elections is in the processing of certifying voting machines like these with barcodes New York City voters and others will be voting on them soon unless they are stopped now. Ask your legislators to support S309A/A1115A the "Secure Voting Machines Act” (Hybrid Ban). Ban voting systems that count votes hidden in bar codes that the voter cannot read or verify.

Comment: The extreme exposure of our election infrastructure to hacking requires immediate passage of the Freedom to Vote Act, which would patch some of the vulnerabilities. Allegra Dengler
Email your Senator to support election security.

WAPO "Civil rights groups.. are warning that the [Democratic] party needs to show a greater sense of urgency and stop letting congressional rules get in the way… NAACP President Derrick Johnson said ..“This is protecting our nation, our Constitution, so it would be unconscionable for members to leave before acting"

"Recently, Reuters' James Oliphant and Nathan Layne took a detailed look at the effect all of this is having on local elections officials in ... Georgia, where longtime, local election board officials --- specifically, Democratic election officials ... specifically black Democratic election officials (and frequently black Democratic women) --- are now being purged from County election boards across the state at an alarming rate….Butler describes today what is going on right now in Georgia, largely under the national media radar, as being part of the GOP's "insurrection plan nationally, that 'We are going to take over every aspect of controlling the outcome of elections, so if I don't like the results, I can put in the results that I want to have.'"

Intercept: "The document she leaked didn’t contain evidence of collusion between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia. It said that Russia had penetrated our election system but not that it had done anything to manipulate the voter rolls or the votes. The leak exposed flaws in the system while showing that Russia was keeping its options for meddling open — just as they’ve done in other countries, and just as we’ve done in almost every country on the planet.”

Tonight the Let NY Vote coalition chose a powerful voting rights platform that includes: equity, accessibility, better administration of elections, security, accuracy of the vote count and youth voting! It's really exciting! Full Let NY Vote 2022 priorities are listed below.
The hybrid-ban bill (A1115A / S309A) will be one of the Let NY Vote coalition's priorities. It was chosen along with 2 other new bills. Congratulations and sincere thanks to everyone who helped!!! We tied for 1st place in the voting for new priorities.

Truthout: "This is a five-alarm fire, yet right now no elected Democrat is consistently sounding the alarm — This is DEFCON for democracy, yet the president barely mentions it…..To be sure that democracy will survive in the United States, Democrats must take seriously the possibility of this nightmare scenario and take bold action to prevent it from happening.”