Carson Kessler, ProPublica

Former Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat, has been accused “of misusing her office for personal and political purposes” in an order filed by the state’s Executive Branch Ethics Commission.

“The news comes nearly three years after ProPublica and the Lexington Herald-Leader investigated many of the same issues in a three-part series, extensively detailing Grimes’ “questionable” and “unprecedented” use of the state’s voter registration system as well as the “power grab” that gave her unusual sway over the State Board of Elections.” 

Fredreka Schouten for CNN:

Richard Barron, who oversees elections in Georgia’s biggest Democratic county, is announcing his resignation Wednesday — following a tumultuous year that has included death threats against him and his staff and the potential takeover of election operations in the county by state officials.His announcement comes one day after municipal elections that he and other Fulton County, Georgia, officials said ran relatively smoothly.

Barron’s departure underscores the precarious position of election officials, who have faced unprecedented personal attacks in the last year and punishing new laws that threaten to sideline professional supervisors and install partisan actors in their stead.

Election observers have warned for months that the country could face a mass exodus of experienced election supervisors if the onslaught of threats continues, driven by relentless falsehoods that election fraud contributed to former President Donald Trump’s loss a year ago.

“I think we have a lot of cowardly elected officials who won’t let go of the ‘Big Lie’ because they are scared of their constituents,” Barron told CNN in an interview. “If they could have stood up, they could have put an end to this a long time ago.”

Barron said he’s faced a threat to “serve him lead,” and another that talked about “taking me out by hanging or a firing squad.” He previously told CNN that he had spoken with the FBI as part of an investigation into the threats.

Votebeat:

Months after Democratic leaders in Congress backed away from providing billions of badly needed dollars to support local election improvements, we now learn that the Senate plans to add the very same amount of money to the Defense Department’s $715 billion budget — even though the Pentagon didn’t ask for it.

You read that right: Congress gave an extra $10 billion to the Pentagon but zero to elections, ignoring multiple warnings and research the past three years emphasizing that America’s crumbling, underfunded election infrastructure presents a national security risk.

It’s not as if the threats to elections are subtle. The last six years have brought us stunning misinformation circulated by hostile foreign nations; direct attacks by those countries on our election infrastructure; a violent insurrection at the Capitol spurred by a former president convinced he is the rightful leader of the country; and continued violent threats to election administrators. Meanwhile, election administrators have been screaming into the wind, trying to convince Congress that Windows 7 is not a sustainable operating system for elections. Anemic election budgets are also to blame for the paperless voting machine problem. Despite a recent push for paper-backed voting, several counties are stuck with paperless systems. That makes them frequent targets of election skeptics, especially amid the intense new attention on audits and claims of hacked machines.

Election security is a war in which America is losing ground. Our generals are our representatives, and county workers are the soldiers, being sent into battle against hostile nation states with broken guns and body armor made of cardboard. The combatants are not the U.S. government versus Russia, or the U.S. government versus China. It is your county clerk versus those massive, well-resourced countries, and our representatives have told them to figure it out on their own.

Texas Tribune:

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday appointed John Scott — a Fort Worth attorney who briefly represented former President Donald Trump in a lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania — as Texas’ new secretary of state.

As secretary of state, Scott would oversee election administration in Texas — a task complicated in recent years by baseless claims of election fraud from the highest levels of government fueled by Trump. The former president has filed a flurry of lawsuits nationwide and called for audits in Texas and elsewhere to review the results of the 2020 presidential elections. Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud nationwide, and in Texas, an official with the secretary of state’s office said the 2020 election was “smooth and secure.”

On Nov. 13, Scott signed on as counsel to a lawsuit filed by Trump attempting to block the certification of Pennsylvania’s election. A few days later, Scott filed a motion to withdraw as an attorney for the plaintiffs. Scott’s motion also asked to withdraw Bryan Hughes, a Texas state senator from Mineola who works for Scott’s law firm, as an attorney for the case.

Scott will eventually have to be confirmed by the Legislature which is not scheduled to meet until 2023.

Abbott’s announcement of Scott’s appointment did not mention his work for Trump — even has he has endured mounting pressure from Trump supporters to call for audit elections.

Rebecca Green has written this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Fordham Law Review). Here is the abstract:

The United States is in the midst of a crisis in confidence in elections, despite the many process protections baked into every stage of election administration. Part of the problem is that few Americans know just how rigorous the protections in place are, and most Americans have no concept of how modern elections are run. Election observation statutes are intended to provide a window for members of the public to learn about and oversee the process and to satisfy themselves that elections are fair and that outcomes are reliable. Yet in 2020, in part due to unforeseen pandemic conditions, election observation fell short. This Essay examines the shortcomings of modern election observation in the United States, looks at reform proposals on the table, and suggests several principles that should inform efforts to address the most worrisome shortfalls.

This is a really good piece that’s worth reading!