As ELB readers are aware, President Donald Trump pardoned Rudy Giuliani and others accused of election misconduct in the 2020 presidential election, especially surrounding disputes about slates of “alternate” or “fake” electors. This mostly symbolic, because it can only extend to federal crimes, the Department of Justice has dropped any cases it has against them, and the statute of limitations will likely run on any such conduct by the next presidential administration (although a few defendants had entered into plea bargains).

But take a moment to read the text of the pardon: it extends to “. . . all conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors . . . .” The sentence is not a model of clarity–it is a list of verbs with occasional prepositions, and it does not appear to have been drafted by a licensed attorney.

This broad language was picked up in a motion to dismiss an indictment by attorneys for Matthew Laiss, a man accused of casting a vote by mail in Pennsylvania and casting a vote in person in Florida in the 2020 presidential election–double voting. Laiss’s counsel points out that Laiss’s conduct was “support, voting . . . or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors.” That is, a vote for a presidential candidate on the ballot is formally a vote for a slate of electors.

In effect, Trump’s pardon appears to sweep in any acts of alleged voter fraud committed in the 2020 election.

The prosecutors have asked for an extension to respond to the motion as they discuss with the Department of Justice its position as to the scope of the pardon. But it’s a case I’m now watching carefully.

N.Y. Times:

“We write to express our immense concern with recent reporting that the Department of Justice (D.O.J.) has shared voter data with the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.), and to seek clarity on whether D.O.J. and D.H.S. actively misled election officials regarding the uses of voter data,” the secretaries of state, who are all Democrats, write.

The letter from 10 Democratic election officials is the latest in the effort to resist and call attention to the Justice Department’s initiative “to compile the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected, to essentially establish a national voting database.” The urge to resist arises from a reasonable concern that the initiative is designed to bolster the administration’s unsubstantiated claims about rampant voter fraud.

Announcement via email on an exciting new tool for election law researchers, election administrators, and others:

Election statutes, regulations, and advisory opinions are now available in one place using the Election Law Navigator, a free, comprehensive online tool. Released by the Election Law Program (ELP), a joint project of William & Mary Law School and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), the tool is designed to help judges, lawyers, members of the media, elections officials and the public efficiently navigate complex state election statutes.

While the Navigator was developed as a nonpartisan resource for judges, this extensive, one-of-a-kind system is a valuable tool for anyone interested in election laws with more than 30,000 statutes, regulations, advisory opinions, and related material from all 50 states.

Powered by a human-checked AI model, the Navigator organizes legal documents by topic and features a custom election-focused search tool; state-to-state comparison capability; and 100+ election-specific topic tags for quick access to relevant content.

The Navigator is now available at www.electionlawnavigator.org. To learn more about the tool, watch our brief YouTube video or register online to attend a live demo and Q & A session on Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 2 p.m. ET.

Cleveland.com:

When Ohio’s local election officials have a question about how to handle a ballot issue or process a voter file, they no longer have to dig through manuals.

They can ask Eva.

Eva — short for Elections Virtual Assistant — is Ohio’s first artificial intelligence election administration aide.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced on Thursday that the new tool is now available around the clock to all 88 county boards of elections, offering quick answers pulled directly from the state’s official rulebook.

“She’s definitely a data nerd and a bit on the wonky side, but I’m not sure I’ve met someone who can answer a common question about election administration as quickly and effectively as Eva,” LaRose said in a statement.

Eva works a bit like ChatGPT or Gemini, but she’s only trained on two documents — the Ohio Election Official Manual and the annual elections calendar.

The idea is to give officials instant, accurate summaries without risking that the AI wanders off into the wider internet.

“This is a game-changer for our election officials,” LaRose said. “For decades, they’ve had to manually search a 524-page rulebook. Eva can provide those answers immediately with a simple search prompt.”

The system is still a beta project, meaning counties are encouraged to double-check anything that strays into legal territory. Boards of elections should also continue consulting their county prosecutors when seeking legal advice….

Daily Montanan:

Voters who did not follow a new Montana law requiring electors write their birth year on the envelope of an absentee ballot had the chance to fix the issue if they responded to a call, mailed notice or email from their local election department, but thousands of ballots still ended up in the rejected pile when all the counting was finalized. 

According to the Secretary of State’s office, “only one percent” of ballots were rejected due to a missing or mismatched birth year. However, some counties had rejection rates significantly higher than one percent, and almost all large counties saw higher rates than previous elections. 

The Secretary of State’s office did not provide any aggregate data showing the statewide rejection rate, and did not respond to several questions from the Daily Montanan about the new process, including specifics about cases of potential fraud the office said were prevented due the new law. 

In a press release, the office celebrated a successful election across the state, and the new law which allowed “election officials to efficiently and securely verify each voter.” 

In Yellowstone County, 31,563 ballots were accepted, and 1,400 total ballots were initially rejected, according to election administrator Dayna Causby, nearly 4.5%. 

Of the rejected ballots, roughly 1,100 were rejected due to a missing or incorrect birth year. 

While more than 800 ballots were resolved by voters notified about the error, the rejection rate after all resolutions was 2.03%….

Democracy Docket:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quietly formalized sweeping changes to a federal immigration database Friday, turning it into a national “voter verification” tool that appears to sidestep federal privacy protections and will make it easier to remove large numbers of voters from the rolls. 

The department cited President Donald Trump’s anti-voting executive orders as the spur for the move.

A Systems of Records Notice (SORN), published by DHS in the Federal Register in its final form Friday, redefines how the department and state officials can use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database — a program originally created to check the immigration status of noncitizens applying for public benefits. 

The change adds voter registration and verification to SAVE’s official purpose, vastly expanding who and what data can be entered and searched. It allows DHS to share the data with the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), which under Trump has embarked on a sweeping effort to pressure states to tighten voting rules and remove voters from the rolls.

And for the first time, DHS explicitly adds natural-born U.S. citizens to the system’s scope, allowing verification through Social Security numbers, passports and, soon, driver’s licenses.

The SORN comes months after the Trump administration expanded SAVE, even though federal law requires public notice in advance of such significant changes. The filing neglects to mention that SAVE was already modified and is currently being used by states to purge voter rolls….

Votebeat:

State election officials are raising legal and practical concerns about a new Trump administration plan to create a digital version of the existing federal voter registration form.

Under the proposal, the federal government would both verify voter identity and check citizenship against a system run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before making the applications available to states.

The proposal — discussed on recent calls between the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, federal officials working to design the new tool, and state officials — would for the first time allow the federal voter registration form to be filed online. Currently, voters must submit the form on paper. Most states are required to accept the federal registration form, just as they would their own state-specific forms.

Notes summarizing a Oct. 17 call for members of the National Association of State Election Directors said association members “representing states of both parties expressed serious concerns with this project not complying with state law” and also that “the developers do not seem to want to spend the time to understand election official concerns.”

A very small percentage of voters use this form to register, noted Leslie Reynolds, executive director of the National Association of Secretaries of State in an Oct. 23 call, something election officials confirmed. “We’re coming into a federal election year, and if this goes awry, that could be a big deal,” Reynolds said.

Among the concerns raised in the call, notes and recordings show, were how the proposal would align with federal and state laws, what information the federal government would retain about applicants, and whether people could be inadvertently disenfranchised….

Cal Matters:

California’s famously slow vote-counting process could see slight improvements next year after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that gives counties an earlier deadline to tally voters’ ballots.

The law, Assembly Bill 5, requires county election offices to count ballots no later than 13 days after election day, but does not change the 30-day deadline for local officials to certify results. Counties unable to meet the new deadline must give a reason for an extension to the secretary of state’s office.

“California has one of the most accessible and secure voting systems in the country,” said the bill’s author, Assemblymember Marc Berman, a Menlo Park Democrat, in a statement. “One opportunity for improvement was to speed up how quickly we count ballots and create a system that gave greater certainty to the public for when results would be available.”

Voter fraud is rare, typically occurs in isolated instances and is generally detected. However, local election officials have received greater scrutiny across the country after President Donald Trump and his allies disputed false claims of election fraud after the 2020 election. 

Local officials in California have since launched social media campaigns to explain and show voters how their ballots are processed. 

Lawmakers suggest the new law, which received bipartisan support in the state Legislature, will help clamp down on misinformation as some Republicans have grown increasingly distrustful of mail ballots. It takes effect on Jan. 1, 2026, so will not apply to November’s vote on Proposition 50.

Proponents such as the nonprofit California Voter Foundation have said it will increase the public’s trust in elections and avoid officials being sworn in before their races have been certified, which was the case for a number of state lawmakers last year.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office opposed the bill. …