We must rapidly scale up our volunteer training program to match this historic level of interest, sharing the lessons learned from the primaries this year while stepping up our recruitment efforts even further.
The result? With your help, we plan to field thousands more nonpartisan election protection volunteers at the highest-need polling places across the country.
Huffpo: “ Armed individuals dressed in tactical gear are surveilling ballot drop boxes in Arizona, raising concerns about intimidation during early voting in the midterm elections."
COMMENT: To help protect voters in New York or other states, volunteer with NYDLC or Common Cause. Links follow the article. Allegra Dengler
A state Supreme Court justice issued a split ruling Friday that found New York's absentee ballot laws are partially unconstitutional, a decision that will hurl an element of disorder into the midterm election in which mail-in voting is already underway.
State Supreme Court Justice Dianne L. Freestone's decision stopped short of overturning a change in Election Law that allows someone to vote by absentee ballot if they fear contracting COVID-19, a measure that she highly criticized but said could not be undone at this time.
Officials are prepared for aggressive challenges in midterm elections. “We’re going to adjudicate every battle,” Stephen K. Bannon said. ..."Their tactics in primary elections have officials braced for a range of new challenges, including disruptive poll watchers and workers, aggressive litigation strategies, voter and ballot challenges and vigilante searches for fraud.”
For the past two years, Americans have been overwhelmed by a deluge of headlines suggesting democracy in the United States is under threat: Voter suppression. A shortage of drop boxes. Election deniers seeking key state offices. It can be difficult to gauge what stories suggest a truly terrifying threat to democracy, and which are simply disheartening or even petty. The Opinion Video film above aims to unpack one of the most dire threats to democracy, which includes a sophisticated plot to control not only who can vote, but which votes get counted.
NYTimes: "The new tactic of flooding offices with challenges...weaponizes the process. Sorting through the piles of petitions is costly and time-consuming, increasing the chances that overburdened election officials could make mistakes that could disenfranchise voters. And while election officials say they’re confident in their procedures, they worry about the toll on trust in elections. The challenge process, as used by election deniers, has become another platform for spreading doubt about the security of elections.”
"…first time the UK prime minister will be chosen using online votes, and continued worries over hacking raise questions about whether online voting is a safe or wise choice when the stakes are so high….many nations run their own cyberattack teams .....Public distrust in electronic voting could further undermine faith in politics….
"Douglas Jones..says that making a vote public rather than secret is one way to guarantee safety, and that if people want to keep information on who voted for whom secret, then computers aren’t the way to go…. “I cannot see how to guarantee ballot secrecy without some form of physical ballot voted in the privacy of a voting booth.””
TIME “There is a loose brigade of unassuming civil servants on the front lines of the fight to protect America’s election system from the Trump allies out to disrupt it, writes @charlottealter.
They have little in common except a collective purpose: each of them ran this year for an election-oversight position against an opponent who embraces Trump’s “Big Lie.”
Authorities in Michigan are investigating how a missing voting machine from the state wound up for sale on eBay last month for $1,200.
The machine was purchased by a cybersecurity expert in Connecticut who alerted Michigan authorities and is now waiting for law enforcement to pick up the device. CNN determined the machine was dropped off at a Goodwill store in Northern Michigan, before being sold last month on eBay by a man in Ohio.
Below is a letter that is in the mail to the New York State Board of Elections.
In it, Citizens for Voting Integrity and others ask the Board of Elections not to certify the ES&S ExpressVote XL as it does not comply with current NYS law.
The Board of Elections must deny certification of a voting machine that would move New York backwards from our current verifiable system of hand-marked paper ballots. Any new or replacement voting machine or system must preserve all the rights and privileges thus far granted by law to New York's voters.
"The actions of Schofield, 42, surfaced in the federal criminal case involving former Troy Councilwoman Kimberly Ashe-McPherson….she pleaded guilty June 8 to a felony charge in U.S. District Court after admitting she had fraudulently submitted absentee ballots in last year's primary and general elections. ...Schofield was the unidentified board of elections official listed as "Individual-3." According to the document, Schofield had allegedly facilitated helping Ashe-McPherson obtain an absentee ballot through an online portal using the name and date of birth of a voter without "lawful authority.”
.. a near-daily torrent of threats, many violent and eerily “descriptive”. “Jena Griswold: "It is really hard to do your job when someone’s telling you over and over how they’re going to hang you" ..earlier this year, Tina Peters, a far-right county clerk in Colorado, was indicted on charges that she directed a breach of voting machines. The episode spurred Griswold to raise the alarm about “insider threats”.”
""It is clear the Zeldin campaign perpetrated a fraud," Myrie alleged. "Pages of valid signatures were photocopied. Thereafter, the original sheets were paginated, as were the photocopied pages. These sheets were assigned different page numbers in order to create the appearance that the pages contained separate, valid signatures. ... What is unknown and must be investigated by your office is who committed these criminal acts.””
"“Voters can’t read barcodes,” said Alex Halderman, professor of computer science and director of the Center for Computer Security and Society at the University of Michigan. “The problem is that you’re putting a potentially compromised computer in between the voter and the permanent and only record of their ballot.”...“ Will Adler, a senior technologist in election and democracy at the Center for Democracy and Technology,"All of those concerns about someone manipulating the software — to change the election or to even just create chaos and distrust — apply equally, or even more, to people who have had insider access,” he said. “
...At a time in which mistrust in elections has been stoked, the opaqueness of BMDs poses a problem even if the vote counting goes entirely by the book. ...“People who want to delegitimize the results of elections will go to the ballot marking devices and risks and point out that we don’t have a good way to know whether we had a malfunction or not,”
COMMENT: Since the NY Assembly failed to pass a bill banning them, the New York State Board of Elections is in the process of certifying the ES&S Expressvote XL, a voting machine like those raising alarms in this article. If this bothers you, contact the New York State Board of Elections and tell them to deny certification to ES&S Expressvote XL, since voting machines with barcodes violate your right to verify your vote before it is cast. They must not certify this voting machine. Allegra Dengler
Revelations of possible meddling have set off a political tsunami in a critical battleground state, as the attorney general seeks an independent inquiry into her likely rival on the ballot this fall.
The office of Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, said that Matthew DePerno and other people had persuaded local clerks in three counties to hand over election equipment.Credit...Max Ortiz/Detroit News, via Associated Press
BradBlog. “... we're joined today by MARILYN MARKS of the non-partisan, nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance for a bit of a rebuttal to Raffensperger and Sterling's testimony before the House J6 panel, and an update to a stunning and troubling story of corruption we initially reported here last month, which could have very serious ramifications for elections in both 2022 and 2024…."We have found nothing that would suggest that Biden should not have been declared the winner. However, there are massive problems with the audit, the recount, and probably the original count, as well," Marks describes.”
WAPO: “There are real deficiencies of security in our systems that can and need to be improved, but in many ways, the ‘big lie’ has tainted discussions or efforts,” Susan Greenhalgh, senior adviser on election security for the group Free Speech For People, told me. “There is fear any election security improvements could be twisted to validate the incredibly bogus claims from the Trump campaign.”