Sort of. The Newsweek headline should really read “Donald Trump Announces Policy Goals” for elections, since all of what he’s proposing would require legislation: “We’re gonna do things that have been really needed for a long time,” he said. “And we are gonna look at elections. We want to have paper ballots, one day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship.”
Category Archives: voting technology
“US Postal Service touts timely delivery of mail ballots despite concerns from election officials”
Here’s the AP report on a 99.88% rate for delivery within one week of 99.22 million ballots. Along with the USPS press release and more detailed report.
“Audit of Georgia ballots proves that Dominion Voting Machine conspiracy theories are false”
USA Today out with a Monday report on Georgia’s audit of the 2024 elections, completed last week. The full ballot image audit report is here.
New Paper–“An Internet Voting System Fatally Flawed in Creative New Ways”
Andrew W. Appel (Princeton, Computer Science) and Philip B. Stark (UC Berkeley, Statistics) have a new paper cautioning about a new software designed to accelerate the count for overseas votes by relying on the internet.
. . . . The enunciated motivation for the [“MERGE”] protocol is to allow (electronic) votes from overseas military voters to be included in preliminary results before a (paper) ballot is received from the voter. MERGE contains interesting ideas that are not inherently unsound; but to make the system trustworthy–to apply the MERGE protocol–would require major changes to the laws, practices, and technical and logistical abilities of U.S. election jurisdictions. The gap between theory and practice is large and unbridgeable for the foreseeable future. . . .
“Trump’s Allies Revive Debunked Voting Machine Theories”
It has been nearly four years since a parade of judges dismissed wild claims from Donald J. Trump and his associates about hacked election machines and a year and a half since a leading machine company obtained a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News over the debunked conspiracy theories.
But Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and his closest allies are again trotting out the theories as part of a late-campaign strategy to assert that this year’s election is rigged — although this time Mr. Trump’s campaign appears to be largely acting behind the scenes.
The theories are rampant on social media and widely embraced by activists. They have frequently shown up in the blitz of lawsuits that Republicans have filed in the run-up to the election, including a Georgia lawsuit that a judge dismissed this month, calling the security concerns about voting machines raised in the suit “purely hypothetical.”
Mr. Trump’s name was not on the suit, nor was the Republican National Committee’s. But text messages reviewed by The New York Times suggest that the former president’s top aides were behind it.
The lawsuit was filed by a county Republican Party only after the state Republican Party in Georgia refused, despite requests from “Trump inner circle/high up in RNC,” Alex B. Kaufman, the state party’s general counsel, wrote in a text to another Republican official last month.
“We had immense pressure from above and below to bring this, and said absolutely not,” he added in another message.
Josh McKoon, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, denied that the Republican National Committee or the Trump team had asked the state party to file the lawsuit.
“I, at no time, was under any pressure from anyone,” he said.
The Trump campaign and Mr. Kaufman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Theories about voting machines were some of the most far-fetched and easily debunked of the claims that Mr. Trump tossed out in his attempt to hold on to power after his defeat in 2020. Mr. Kaufman, in his texts, said the state party’s priority was “protecting sensible” election rules. While the machines are not without potential vulnerabilities, there has been no evidence to support the conspiracy theories that have proliferated — the most prominent being that the machines are programmed to flip votes away from Mr. Trump…
“U.S. cybersecurity chief says election systems have ‘never been more secure'”
Amid widespread concerns of outside interference influencing the results this year’s presidential election, the head of the country’s cybersecurity agency says election infrastructure is more secure than ever.
State and local election officials across the country have made big improvements to strengthen both physical and cyber security at polling and voting locations to preserve election integrity, said Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in an interview with Weekend Edition.
After Russia’s attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election in 2016, CISA was created to work with state and local officials to make sure voting machines aren’t vulnerable to hacks.
“I can say with confidence based on all the work that we’ve done together since 2016, that election infrastructure has never been more secure,” Easterly said. “There are cyber threats, there are physical threats to election officials, but we’re at a point now with our election infrastructure secure and the election community prepared to meet the moment on the 5th of November.”
Her confidence in election integrity comes as intelligence officials warn that foreign adversaries — mainly Russia, Iran and China — are stepping up efforts to undermine voter trust in the democratic process, sway voters and inflame partisan divisions…..
“Georgia Republicans sow doubt about Dominion voting machines in 2020 throwback”
Just weeks before early voting begins in Georgia, Republican Party officials and Donald Trump allies are trying to preemptively sow doubt about the viability of Dominion systems used across the key swing state, arguing in court that the machines should not be used because they are not safe or secure.
In a replay of 2020 tactics, Republicans have continued to claim without proof that Dominion voting systems are susceptible to mass manipulation and vote-flipping by a nefarious actor. And GOP officials in DeKalb County in Georgia, aided by a familiar cast of pro-Trump lawyers, have signaled they are planning to once again question the 2024 election results if Trump loses.
They have sued in state court, arguing the Dominion voting machines are not in compliance with Georgia law and want the Secretary of State’s office to make voting records and ballot images available for public inspection within 24 hours of the election. But the lawsuit is also raising concerns that the DeKalb County GOP officials are attempting to mislead voters so they can explain away a potential loss in November….
The GOP officials who filed the lawsuit say they have obtained new evidence about the vulnerabilities of the Dominion systems, a claim that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and state election officers say is false. The lawsuit also theorizes that the systems may have already been compromised, despite offering no proof to support that claim.
The plaintiffs are using the “same tired claims that have been rejected by courts again and again,” Elizabeth Young, who is representing Raffensperger’s office, told Judge Scott McAfee at a court hearing this week to determine whether the lawsuit will move forward and additional evidence can be presented. “There is not much credibility in the claim.”
Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a nonprofit voting rights organization that has raised concerns about vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting systems as part of a separate lawsuit against state election officials, told CNN she is skeptical about the true intention of the DeKalb County complaint.
“I fear they are just attempting to lay the groundwork for challenging the election based on further exposing the serious weaknesses of the system, demonstrating that the results can be manipulated,” said Marks, who is pushing for Georgia to use hand-marked paper ballots.
Voting Machine Conspiracies Persist
NYT:
Nearly four years later, zealous supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged its machines to rob him of the 2020 election are still at it.
Even though Dominion has aggressively defended itself in court, a network of pro-Trump activists has continued to push false claims against the company, often by seeking to use information gleaned from the very defamation lawsuits the firm has filed against them.
The network includes wealthy business executives like Patrick Byrne, who once ran Overstock.com, and Mike Lindell, the founder of the bedding company MyPillow. Both have sought without credible evidence to put Dominion at the heart of a vast conspiracy to deny Mr. Trump a victory.
“Inside the private pressure campaign to force hand-counting of Arizona ballots”
Republican lawmakers in Arizona privately pressured county leaders across the state to count ballots by hand instead of using machines, according to previously unreported text messages.
The messages, obtained by Votebeat through public record requests, are a window into how state lawmakers are trying to leverage relationships with Republican county supervisors — who decide how to count ballots in their counties — to promote a practice that state officials have repeatedly said would be illegal.
And it highlights how lawmakers have turned to counties to try to change how ballots are counted, after failing to change state laws.
“A billionaire is boosting a major defamation lawsuit against Fox News”
WaPo:
Smartmatic, the voting technology company enmeshed in complex defamation lawsuits against Fox News and Newsmax, has a powerful new financial ally: billionaire tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman.
Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, has made a multimillion-dollar investment intended in part to help the company sustain its costly litigation. Smartmatic has said the two news outlets smeared it by airing bogus claims of rigged vote counting in the 2020 election.
In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Hoffman alluded to the toll taken on Smartmatic, which has spent tens of millions on legal costs related to the suits. “Smartmatic built a global business by using technology to better engage citizens, regardless of party or ideology, by making voting simple and trustworthy,” Hoffman said. “After Donald Trump lost in 2020, however, Smartmatic became a target of the defamatory campaign to overturn his defeat.”
Update: Fox News Media’s response: “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims against FOX News are highly implausible, disconnected from reality and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms, so their alliance with a high profile Democratic donor and longtime supporter of President Biden to fund their lawsuit is entirely predictable. We remain ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial next year.”
“Wisconsin judge to weigh letting people with disabilities vote electronically from home in November”
A Wisconsin judge on Monday is expected to consider whether to allow people with disabilities to vote electronically from home in the swing state this fall.
Disability Rights Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters and four disabled people filed a lawsuit in April demanding disabled people be allowed to cast absentee ballots electronically from home.
They asked Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell to issue a temporary injunction before the lawsuit is resolved granting the accommodation in the state’s Aug. 13 primary and November presidential election. Mitchell scheduled a Monday hearing on the injunction.
Questions over who can cast absentee ballots and where they can do it have become a political flashpoint in Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point….
They also point out that military and overseas voters are permitted to cast absentee ballots electronically in Wisconsin elections. People with disabilities must be afforded the same opportunity under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the federal Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits all organizations that receive financial assistance from discriminating on the basis of disability, they argue.
“Documents detail Republican push to force hand counts in Arizona election”
A Guardian report about the press for hand counts, the product of election denialism that led to criminal charges when supervisors refused to certify results.
I’m old enough to remember when it was the hand counting that was causing the dispute.
“Texas election laws allow certain ballots to be traced back to voters, official says”
CBS report noting what purport to be decoded ballots of some prominent Texas officials, though I’m not sure whether the culprit is Texas “election laws” or the outer limits of the scope of public records responses. The controversy seems to be related to the ballot number generated at check-in for voters who vote in-person in certain Texas counties (and doesn’t affect mail-in votes at all), and is related (of course) to an ongoing lawsuit.
And now the public records requests have themselves become the subject of a letter from a coalition of nonprofits to the DOJ, asking the DOJ to step in to protect the chain of custody to ensure that election officials can comply with federal records retention laws, and to ensure that records requests don’t amount to intimidation or a conspiracy against the right to a secret ballot.
“Voting machine contract under scrutiny following discrepancies in Puerto Rico’s primaries”
And also, this is a pretty good and exceedingly timely reminder to wait for the real analysis to figure out what happened and why, before jumping to conclusions.