A recent Orange County Grand Jury report that found no evidence of voter fraud did little to dissuade a false claim of election tampering from exploding on social media soon after.
On Jan. 16, Joe Hoff, a far-right television and radio host, posted a video clip on his website of an Orange County Registrar of Voters worker scanning a batch of ballots three times after the November 2024 elections.
“We don’t know if there is a legitimate reason for the worker’s actions,” Hoff wrote.
Building on suspicion, the video was reposted by “End Wokeness,” an X account that commented Democrats “outperformed” on the ballot in O.C., as a poll worker was “caught” triple-scanning ballots.
The post has since amassed more than 2 million views.
In response, the Orange County Registrar of Voters issued a statement the following day and contended that the security camera footage only shows the worker properly doing her job.
“The employee scanned the batch of ballots twice and then cleaned the scanner before scanning the batch of ballots a third time because during the first two scans some of the ballots were rejected by the scanner,” the statement read. “Given the large number of vote-by-mail ballots we scan during an election, Registrar of Voters employees must regularly clean the scanners.”…
Category Archives: election administration
Pennsylvania Supreme Court to (Finally) Decide Constitutionality of Rule Barring the Counting of Undated or Misdated but Timely Mail-In Ballots
The PA Supreme Court repeatedly refused to consider this issue during the runup to the 2024 elections (which was probably wise, given the uncertainty that such a ruling, going up to SCOTUS, likely would have engendered).
It has now agreed to hear the case.
Two justices agree the case should be heard, but partially dissent because want the court to go back to the statutory interpretation question already decided about whether the requirement of dating such ballots is a mandatory one.
(h/t Adam Bonin.)
“Training for Election Officials: A 50-State Analysis”
Election officials learn to carry out their duties by participating in training at the national, state, and local levels. State-level training is a particularly valuable source for best practices and information on the state laws, policies, and procedures that election officials must follow – especially because election administration is largely run, funded, and managed at the state level. This report examines state-level training across the country and offers five recommendations and six considerations for states and officials looking to build or improve their training.
Election officials have access to state-level training in 43 states: 42 of those states offer training to both chief local election officials and their staff, while 22 offer specific training to new election officials.
State-level training is offered in different modalities, on different schedules, and under different legal and logistical frameworks. There is no singular best practice; trainers should make strategic decisions about the location, modality, and design of training offerings to best meet the needs of election officials in their states.
This is the first report endorsed by the Election Workforce Advisory Council, a joint project of the Bipartisan Policy Center and The Elections Group.
Announcing the Winter/Spring Lineup of Safeguarding Democracy Project Events
We’ve got a great lineup of in person, online, and hybrid events!
 Tuesday, January 28 Fair Elections and Voting Rights: What’s Ahead in the Next Four Years?  Register for the webinar here. In-person registration here. Lunch will be provided. Tuesday, January 28, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT Room 1327 at UCLA Law and online Amy Gardner, The Washington Post, Pamela Karlan, Stanford Law School, and Stephen Richer, former Recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona. Moderated by Richard L. Hasen (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project) Thursday, February 13 Finding Common Ground on Modernizing Voter Registration  Register for the webinar here. Thursday, February 13, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT, Webinar Christina Adkins, Director of Elections, Texas Secretary of State’s Office, Judd Choate, Director of Elections in Colorado, and Charles H. Stewart III, MIT. Richard L. Hasen, moderator (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA) Tuesday, March 4 What do Documentary Proof of Citizenship Requirements for Voter Registration Accomplish?  Register for the webinar here. In-person registration here. Lunch will be provided.Tuesday, March 4, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT at UCLA Law School Room 1327 and online Adrian Fontes, Arizona Secretary of State, Walter Olson, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, and Nina Perales, Vice President of Litigation, MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) Richard L. Hasen, moderator (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA) Monday, March 31 Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future  Register for the webinar here. Monday, March 31, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT, Webinar Alice Marwick, Director of Research, Data & Society, UNC Chapel Hill, Kate Starbird, University of Washington, and Joshua Tucker, NYU. Richard L. Hasen, moderator (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA) Thursday, April 10 Partisan Primaries, Polarization, and the Risks of Extremism  Register for the webinar here.Thursday, April 10, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT, Webinar Julia Azari, Marquette University, Ned Foley, Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law, Seth Masket, Denver University, and Rick Pildes, NYU Law School Richard L. Hasen, moderator (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA) |
Remembering Jimmy Carter and His Legacy for Election Law
President Jimmy Carter died at 100. He was a moral, decent man, committed to the cause of justice. One of his passions was for democracy. His work with the Carter Center helped to ensure fair elections around the world.
He was involved in two commissions in the United States to improve American elections following the disputed 2000 elections that revealed serious flaws with American election administration, the Carter-Ford Commission after 2000 and the Carter-Baker commission after 2004. I had the privilege to testify before the Carter-Baker commission.
The Carter-Baker Commission report had many sound recommendations for reforms; its endorsement of voter identification laws proved controversial, and my friend Spencer Overton and others dissented in part from the recommendations (see page 89 of the report). The recommendation itself only supported voter id if if could be done in ways that did not overly burden voters and was coupled with efforts to get voters registered, a sensible basis for some bipartisan compromise.
After the attempted election subversion of the 2000 election, President Carter wrote an essay in the New York Times, I Fear for Our Democracy. His steps forward also seemed quite sensible:
First, while citizens can disagree on policies, people of all political stripes must agree on fundamental constitutional principles and norms of fairness, civility and respect for the rule of law. Citizens should be able to participate easily in transparent, safe and secure electoral processes. Claims of election irregularities should be submitted in good faith for adjudication by the courts, with all participants agreeing to accept the findings. And the election process should be conducted peacefully, free of intimidation and violence.
Second, we must push for reforms that ensure the security and accessibility of our elections and ensure public confidence in the accuracy of results. Phony claims of illegal voting and pointless multiple audits only detract from democratic ideals.
Third, we must resist the polarization that is reshaping our identities around politics. We must focus on a few core truths: that we are all human, we are all Americans and we have common hopes for our communities and our country to thrive. We must find ways to re-engage across the divide, respectfully and constructively, by holding civil conversations with family, friends and co-workers and standing up collectively to the forces dividing us.
Fourth, violence has no place in our politics, and we must act urgently to pass or strengthen laws to reverse the trends of character assassination, intimidation and the presence of armed militias at events. We must protect our election officials — who are trusted friends and neighbors of many of us — from threats to their safety. Law enforcement must have the power to address these issues and engage in a national effort to come to terms with the past and present of racial injustice.
Lastly, the spread of disinformation, especially on social media, must be addressed. We must reform these platforms and get in the habit of seeking out accurate information. Corporate America and religious communities should encourage respect for democratic norms, participation in elections and efforts to counter disinformation.
He was a wise man with a great love for the United States and for the people of the world, committed to democracy and fair voting. Condolences to his family and friends.
“Kansas once required voters to prove citizenship. That didn’t work out so well”
Republicans made claims about illegal voting by noncitizens a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign messaging and plan to push legislation in the new Congress requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Yet there’s one place with a GOP supermajority where linking voting to citizenship appears to be a nonstarter: Kansas.
That’s because the state has been there, done that, and all but a few Republicans would prefer not to go there again. Kansas imposed a proof-of-citizenship requirement over a decade ago that grew into one of the biggest political fiascos in the state in recent memory.
The law, passed by the state Legislature in 2011 and implemented two years later, ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote. That was 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn’t been enforced since 2018.
Kansas provides a cautionary tale about how pursuing an election concern that in fact is extremely rare risks disenfranchising a far greater number of people who are legally entitled to vote. The state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, championed the idea as a legislator and now says states and the federal government shouldn’t touch it.
“Kansas did that 10 years ago,” said Schwab, a Republican. “It didn’t work out so well.”…
To be clear, voters already must attest to being U.S. citizens when they register to vote and noncitizens can face fines, prison and deportation if they lie and are caught.
fter Kansas residents challenged their state’s law, both a federal judge and federal appeals court concluded that it violated a law limiting states to collecting only the minimum information needed to determine whether someone is eligible to vote. That’s an issue Congress could resolve.The courts ruled that with “scant” evidence of an actual problem, Kansas couldn’t justify a law that kept hundreds of eligible citizens from registering for every noncitizen who was improperly registered. A federal judge concluded that the state’s evidence showed that only 39 noncitizens had registered to vote from 1999 through 2012 — an average of just three a year.
In 2013, then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican who had built a national reputation advocating tough immigration laws, described the possibility of voting by immigrants living in the U.S. illegally as a serious threat. He was elected attorney general in 2022 and still strongly backs the idea, arguing that federal court rulings in the Kansas case “almost certainly got it wrong.”
Kobach also said a key issue in the legal challenge — people being unable to fix problems with their registrations within a 90-day window — has probably been solved.
“The technological challenge of how quickly can you verify someone’s citizenship is getting easier,” Kobach said. “As time goes on, it will get even easier.”…
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Kansas case in 2020. But in August, it split 5-4 in allowing Arizona to continue enforcing its law for voting in state and local elections while a legal challenge goes forward.
Seeing the possibility of a different Supreme Court decision in the future, U.S. Rep.-elect Derek Schmidt says states and Congress should pursue proof-of-citizenship requirements. Schmidt was the Kansas attorney general when his state’s law was challenged.
“If the same matter arose now and was litigated, the facts would be different,” he said in an interview.
But voting rights advocates dismiss the idea that a legal challenge would turn out differently. Mark Johnson, one of the attorneys who fought the Kansas law, said opponents now have a template for a successful court fight.
“We know the people we can call,” Johnson said. “We know that we’ve got the expert witnesses. We know how to try things like this.” He predicted “a flurry — a landslide — of litigation against this.”…
“Trump has pressed for new voting requirements. Republicans in Congress will try to make that happen”
Republicans plan to move quickly in their effort to overhaul the nation’s voting procedures, seeing an opportunity with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to push through long-sought changes that include voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements.
They say the measures are needed to restore public confidence in elections, an erosion of trust that Democrats note has been fueled by false claims from President-elect Donald Trump and his allies of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In the new year, Republicans will be under pressure to address Trump’s desires to change how elections are run in the U.S., something he continues to promote despite his win in November.
The main legislation that Republicans expect to push will be versions of the American Confidence in Elections Act and the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, said GOP Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chair of the Committee on House Administration, which handles election-related legislation. The proposals are known as the ACE and SAVE acts, respectively.
“As we look to the new year with unified Republican government, we have a real opportunity to move these pieces of legislation not only out of committee, but across the House floor and into law,” Steil said in an interview. “We need to improve Americans’ confidence in elections.”
Republicans are likely to face opposition from Democrats and have little wiggle room with their narrow majorities in both the House and Senate. Steil said he expects there will be “some reforms and tweaks” to the original proposals and hopes Democrats will work with Republicans to refine and ultimately support them….
Pennsylvania: “Delaware County prosecutors allege paid canvasser tried to register dead people to vote in the 2024 election”
Delaware County prosecutors announced charges Thursday against a Collingdale woman who they say repeatedly tried to submit voter registration forms for dead people and against an elderly man who cast ballots in both Florida and Pennsylvania last month.
The charges are the first to come from the county’s investigations into alleged voter fraud and irregularities in the 2024 election.Despite President-elect Donald Trump’s loud and persistent claims of Philadelphia-area voter fraud before the election, few charges have been filed more than a month after ballots were counted.
Delaware County officials said that the election was safe and secure, and that Thursday’s charges should be viewed as evidence that election fraud will be investigated and prosecuted.
The two cases resulted in just one fraudulently cast ballot— that of the man who double-voted — out of more than 330,000 cast in the county, officials stressed….
Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said his department had filed 40 counts, including four felony charges of forgery, against Jennifer Hill, a Collingdale resident who was a paid canvasser for the New Pennsylvania Project, a nonpartisancivic engagement group focused on reaching immigrants, youth, and voters of color.
Hill, prosecutors said, filed more than 300 voter registration forms using an app provided by the Pennsylvania Department of State, but 129 of those were rejected as invalid. Election officials and prosecutors found that she had unsuccessfullysought to register three deceased individuals, including her father and a man who died in her home, they said. Additionally, prosecutors said, she successfully registered a fake person to vote using her grandmother’s name but an incorrect date of birth. No ballot was cast in association with that registration….
“States Must Take the Lead on Election Security”
Derek Tisler Brennan Center brief:
American elections face increasingly complex cyber and physical security threats from foreign adversaries, emerging technology, and escalating risks of political violence. Fortifying election systems against these threats is essential.
Historically, state and local governments have been responsible for ensuring the integrity of our electoral system, and that remains true. Decentralized election administration has been a significant source of strength for election security.
But over the past decade, federal support has increased as Congress and federal agencies provided state and local officials with funding and expertise and facilitated information sharing on the threat landscape. As security threats continue to evolve and with election officials now operating as frontline national security figures, that support has helped make U.S. election systems more resilient than ever.
However, the incoming Trump administration may roll back federal support for election security, as outlined in Project 2025. Therefore, it is critical that states step up and reclaim additional responsibilities to ensure our electoral system is protected against threats that experts agree are likely to grow in the coming years….
“Top Arizona election official accuses predecessors of ignoring proof-of-citizenship problem”
The failure by Arizona officials to document the citizenship of thousands of voters was identified as “a problem” seven years ago — and again during the 2020 presidential election — before it was made public this fall, according to records unearthed by lawyers looking into the matter forArizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) and obtained by The Washington Post.
Arizona law requires voters to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, to register to vote in state and local races. Weeks before this year’s general election, county and state election officials realized the state didn’t have documentation of such proof fortens of thousands of longtime voters. A court ruled that the voters could still cast their ballots, but the issue highlighted a major flaw in state systems and fed into false narratives about widespread voting by noncitizens, which is rare.
Fontes and his lawyer now suggest that there were opportunities to fixthe problem years ago.
Records show that staff working in previous Democratic and Republican administrations struggled to understand why noncitizens were classified in a motor vehicle database as eligible to vote when they should not have been. Arizonans can register to vote while getting a driver’s license, so that’s often the place where they provide their proof of citizenship.“This needs to be discussed further,” one secretary of state employee wrote to a colleague in 2017 when the issue cropped up. Three years later, employees of then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) found that a noncitizen who had been mailed a ballot was inaccurately classified in one state database as a citizen.
The emails are among the thousands of documents reviewed by a team tasked by Fontes to determine who was aware of the problem, when it was discovered and what had been done — if anything — to fix it. That review, which is limited to the secretary of state’s records, is ongoing. An attorney involved wrote last week that “there are no documents located as of yet reflecting anything was done to remedy or even mitigate the [Motor Vehicle Division] Issue or to formally document it for future administrations so they would be aware of the situation and could take any necessary corrective or mitigating action.”…
Jan. 28 Safeguarding Democracy Project Live and Online Event with Amy Gardner, Pam Karlan, and Stephen Richer: “Fair Elections and Voting Rights: What’s Ahead in the Next Four Years?”
The UCLA Law Safeguarding Democracy Project will be announcing its spring speaker series in January, but here’s our first event for you to put on your calendars:
| Tuesday, January 28 |
| Fair Elections and Voting Rights: What’s Ahead in the Next Four Years? |
 |
| Register for the webinar here. In-person registration will open in January.Tuesday, January 28, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT Room 1327 at UCLA Law and online Amy Gardner, The Washington Post, Pamela Karlan, Stanford Law School, and Stephen Richer, Recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona (until Jan.1, 2025). Moderated by Richard L. Hasen (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project) |
“After Trump’s Victory, Republicans Trust the Election System Again”
Americans are more confident in the country’s election system than they have been at any time since the 2020 election, according to a new study — a shift owed to a sea change in Republican sentiment since Donald J. Trump’s election.
The findings, which echo other post-election polling, underscore the role Mr. Trump played in encouraging Republican suspicion of unwelcome results, and reveal stark differences in how Republican and Democratic voters have handled recent losses.
“The increase is heartening,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College and a director of Bright Line Watch, which commissioned the survey from YouGov. The group is a consortium of political scientists that has conducted regular polls on democracy issues since 2017. “But there’s also bad news, which is we now have to wonder if Republicans will only trust the system if they win,” Mr. Nyhan said.
Eighty-nine percent of all respondents recognize Mr. Trump’s victory in last month’s election as legitimate, according to the Bright Line Watch survey. Only 65 percent said the same of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in 2020 in the group’s survey that November….
The shift highlights the two parties’ differing response to losses. Eighty-three percent of Democrats view the outcome of the 2024 election as legitimate, according to the survey of 2,750 Americans, which was conducted in mid- to late November and has a margin of error of about 2 points. By contrast, only 27 percent of Republicans viewed the outcome of the 2020 election as legitimate at the time.
A Pew Research Center post-election poll released this month found similar results. Eighty-four percent of Democratic respondents polled last month said they believed the 2024 election had been run “very” or “somewhat” well, a decline of only 10 percent from 2020. But the share of Republicans saying the same jumped to 93 percent from 21 percent in November 2020….
“The GOP stoked fears of noncitizens voting. Cases in Ohio show how rhetoric and reality diverge”
Before the November presidential election, Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general announced investigations into potential voter fraud that included people suspected of casting ballots even though they were not U.S. citizens.
It coincided with a national Republican messaging strategy warning that potentially thousands of ineligible voters would be voting.
“The right to vote is sacred,” Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said in a statement at the time. “If you’re not a U.S. citizen, it’s illegal to vote -– whether you thought you were allowed to or not. You will be held accountable.”
In the end, their efforts led to just a handful of cases. Of the 621 criminal referrals for voter fraud that Secretary of State Frank LaRose sent to the attorney general, prosecutors have secured indictments against nine people for voting as noncitizens over the span of 10 years — and one was later found to have died. That total is a tiny fraction of Ohio’s 8 million registered voters and the tens of millions of ballots cast during that period.
The outcome and the stories of some of those now facing charges illustrate the gap — both in Ohio and across the United States — between the rhetoric about noncitizen voting and the reality: It’s rare, is caught and prosecuted when it does happen and does not occur as part of a coordinated scheme to throw elections….
“Who are the Arizona voters without proof of citizenship? They may surprise you.”
As lawmakers across the country consider requiring documented proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, Arizona’s voter roll provides clues as to which voters will struggle to provide it.
Voters living on Native land, on college campuses, and at the state’s main homeless campus are all disproportionately represented among voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship, according to a Votebeat analysis of the list of eligible voters who hadn’t provided proof of citizenship for the presidential election. Such voters also were three times less likely to vote this past November than voters who had provided proof of citizenship, the analysis found.
The data shows that, while GOP lawmakers pushing for a documentation requirement say they are attempting to prevent noncitizens from voting — a rare occurrence, according to all available evidence — the requirement in Arizona appears to be disenfranchising some Americans.
Arizona is the only state in the country currently limiting voting for those who don’t prove citizenship by providing a birth certificate or another qualifying document. Such voters can cast ballots in federal elections, but not state and local elections.
The voters who don’t provide such documents are marked as a “federal-only” voter and receive a ballot with just presidential and congressional contests. This applied to less than 1% of the state’s voter roll, or 34,933 out of around 4.4 million active voters eligible for this past November election….
In all other states, voters simply attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. They don’t have to provide documents proving it.
Voters living on tribal land, college campuses, and at the state’s largest homeless campus frequently tell advocacy organizations that they aren’t able to provide documents proving their citizenship because they don’t have easy or immediate access to them when registering. And many college students and Native voters first register to vote at third-party registration drives away from home when they hadn’t necessarily planned to do so, and don’t follow up later to provide additional documentation….