"If  anything, she suspects that the internet is becoming less resilient. Recently, the Trump administration decided to dismantle the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which ran programmes that monitor foreign attempts to break into critical infrastructure like voting systems and electrical grids."

COMMENT: Many on this list have expertise in cybersecurity and tech issues in relation to elections.  Help wanted:  efforts in Westchester  and New York to plan for disruption of the grid during elections.  One of many bills sitting on desks in Albany would require automatic extension of voting hours in case of delays due to poll site closures. One of the less likely possible causes of disruption on a large scale is  a "powerful solar storm on the scale of the Carrington event.” Solar flares can disrupt GPS, cellphones, satellites and power grids. Coincidentally,, it turns out there was a major CME (Coronal Mass  Ejection) this week.  Look for Northern Lights tonight in 18 states, including New York.

The Guardian: "A year out from the 2026 midterms, with Republicans feeling the blows from a string of losses in this week’s elections, Donald Trump and his allies are mounting a multipronged attack on almost every aspect of voting in the United States and raising what experts say are troubling questions about the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies….The Department of Homeland Security has slashed funding and cut staff at an agency dedicated to protecting elections from physical and cybersecurity threats.”

On Thursday, November 6, 2025, the Election Truth Alliance filed its first lawsuit in Pennsylvania seeking to compel a hand-count audit of the 2024 General Election. 

The complaint asserts that late-stage software changes, documented testing failures, ballot-handling irregularities, and statistically anomalous voting patterns in Cambria, Erie, and Allegheny Counties collectively deprived voters of their constitutional right to cast a ballot and have it counted accurately.

Marly Hornik, the recently ousted co-founder of the anti-voting group Unite4Freedom, posted on X that her other group, NY Citizens Audit (NYCA), sued New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York State Board of Elections (NYSBE) alleging discrepancies in the state’s voter rolls. They’re asking a federal court to order an audit of the 2022 general election.

Sunday, October 19, NYCD16/15-Indivisible holds our October general meeting. Join us at the Yonkers Riverfront Library to hear NY Sen. Gustavo Rivera speak about the Trump actions against AG James, the MaskBillhe has introduced in the state senate, how to protect our immigrant neighbors, his fight for health care and much more. We'll also tackle critical election integrity issues, with Allegra Dengler of Citizens for Voter Integrity, NY.

Dominion Voting Systems, the company that makes widely used voting equipment in the United States that became synonymous with election conspiracies and Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, has been sold.

In this heightened atmosphere of threats against our elections and election workers, is New York ready to defend the vote count in 2026?  The short answer is no. Inaction by the NYS Assembly Election Law Committee puts our elections at risk.  

The  E-Voter Education Project has an analysis of what laws we need. It’s up to you and any organization you are a part of to push for the Assembly to pass these essential bills,  Our vote count is not protected.

President Donald Trump has never seen an election that he didn’t think was fixed. In each of his three runs for the presidency, he falsely claimed widespread fraud. In 2020, he tried to overturn his loss, first through the courts and then in the streets. Now back in power, and with federal troops deployed to multiple cities run by Democrats, there are mounting concerns that he could use his power as commander in chief to deploy the military during elections.

Mark Elias:   "But if I’m being honest, I’m not only furious at Trump and his sycophants. I am equally — if not more — furious at how little is being done in response to his destruction.

"Every day, I am furious at the people and institutions that loudly claimed to stand for democracy when President Joe Biden was in office but have now gone silent in their complicity and collaboration. I am furious at those who have so much yet are willing to risk nothing.

"I now understand Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning that the greatest tragedy is “not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” Except I don’t see them as good people — and instead of offering Christian forgiveness, I am filled with the fury of Ezekiel.

 "As the head of a law firm fighting for free and fair elections, I know the risks of standing up to Trump and his election-denying supporters in court….."

I recommend subscribing to Democracy Docket that sends out this newsletter with "the day’s most important voting and democracy news.”   Here is the latest issue.

Allegra Dengler

A comprehensive assessment of the post-election audits in seven swing states in 2024 found that most don’t meet baseline conditions to provide evidence-based election results, nor are they sufficient to act as safeguard against possible errors or tampering.

Appellate Division accepts arguments from Common Cause/NY et al to continue its lawsuit deciding if the State's Board of Elections decision to approve ExpressVote XL was legal; The plaintiffs argue that there is a real threat to voters because local BOEs have plans to use these machinesNEW YORK, NY (08/14/2025) (readMedia)-- Today, Common Cause/NY, The Black Institute and 5 individuals won a decision by the Third Appellate Division that their lawsuit against ExpressVote XL can continue. 

Guardian: "Trump also claimed states are “merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government” and must follow presidential orders on elections. That’s wrong: the constitution gives states control over how they conduct elections.”

In 2020, 2022, and 2024, our nation held federal elections. Despite the pandemic, threats of violence, denial of results, and extraordinary pressure, these were secure and accurate. Election officials worked together across party lines. The system held.

This year, however, a new threat to free and fair elections has emerged: the federal government itself.

Snopes Snopes’ fact-checking and original investigative reporting lights the way to evidence-based and contextualized analysis. 

JUL 31, 2025

“In December 2024, I was personally involved in an NSA‑authorized forensic audit of the 2024 election. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz won—by a wide margin. Trump lost dramatically. There are multiple layers of complexity to this cover‑up, including transnational organized crime syndicates that extend far beyond the United States and our elections. To that point, I work in the human trafficking sector, which intersects with the stolen election(s) and has ties to Trump and Epstein—not to President Biden, Vice President Harris, or Governor Walz, but to the Democrats and other allied interests responsible for burying the audit.” — Adam Zarnowski, ex-CIA agent and author of Jörmungandr

With a combination of executive orders, legal maneuvers and staffing decisions, President Donald Trump has already put in motion his next effort to subvert upcoming federal elections in 2026 and 2028.

Since taking office, Trump has installed loyalists who follow his orders into key positions at the Department of Justice, issued executive orders centralizing decision-making within the White House, attempted to unilaterally change state and local election laws, demanded unprecedented access to voter data, dismantled election security protections, threatened elections officials and workers, law firms and others who have historically stood up to protect elections and defended, hired or pardoned those involved in previous efforts to subvert elections.

A seminal case questioning the accuracy of the 2024 Presidential and Senate election results in Rockland County, New York, is moving forward. In open court last Thurs- day, Judge Rachel Tanguay of the New York Supreme Court, ruled that discovery must proceed, pushing the lawsuit brought by SMART Legislation into the evidence- gathering stage. The lawsuit seeks a full hand recount of the Presidential and U.S. Senate races in Rockland County.

The Brennan Center: “...major cuts to the federal support and partnership that local election offices have long depended on to fund and protect elections have raised alarms….Local election officials are working to protect elections, the cornerstone of a healthy democracy, in an increasingly politicized and turbulent environment. The loss of federal support for elections further strains these local offices that are often understaffed. States and civil society need to act to fill the gaps left by the federal government. With the midterm elections coming up in 2026, this work must begin now."

The United States remains one of the few major democracies in the world that continue to allow computerized vote counting—not observable by the public—to determine the results of its elections [1]. Countries such as Germany [2] Norway [3], Netherlands [4], France [5, 6],  Canada [7] , Denmark [8, 9], Italy [10], United Kingdom [11], Ireland [11], Spain [11], Portugal [11], Sweden [11], Finland [11], and most other countries [11], protect the integrity and trust of their elections with publicly observable hand-counting of paper ballots.