A new Brennan Center report by Ian Vandewalker examines what implications, if any, the rise of small-donor contributions has on political polarization and fragmentation. The report evaluates the criticism that small donors may be contributing to those phenomena and concludes that “[s]mall donors are not a driving force behind political dysfunction in the United States, and the benefits of amplifying their voices far outweigh any drawbacks.” The report also argues that far from amplifying polarization and fragmentation, well-designed, publicly financed matching programs—which have the effect of broadening the donor pool—actually have the opposite effect.

From the report:

There is little evidence that the risks posed by small donors outweigh the benefits of lifting their voices. Critics have overstated their role in increasing political polarization and fragmentation. American politics has many problems. The rise of small donors is not one of them.

All donors, regardless of how much they give, tend to be more partisan and ideological than the average voter. Many small donors give in patterns indistinguishable from those of other classes of donors. And while small donor giving has increased significantly in recent years, big-money spending has grown faster. The few wealthy donors who give the largest amounts have a much greater impact on American politics and prop up more than their share of extreme, norm-breaking candidates.

Most important, whatever the role of small donors in fueling dysfunctional politics, well-designed matching programs do not make it worse. Matching programs do not simply amplify existing small donors but transform fundraising incentives to change who gives in ways that may mitigate polarization and fragmentation.

The Brennan Center has published a new guide on AI threats to election administration, authored by David Evan Harris, Lawrence Norden, Noah Praetz, and Elizabeth Howard. The guide provides an overview of the major risks AI poses to elections—including voice, text, and video impersonation and novel malware—and lays out how officials can prepare for and respond to a wide range of scenarios in which those risks might present themselves. The report also recommends steps elections officials can take more generally to prevent bad actors from impersonating government offices online, facilitate rapid-response communication, and improve cyber and physical security. The findings are based on a table-top exercise the Brennan Center, along with several other groups, conducted with Arizona elections officials.

From the report:

As the scenarios in this planner show, most of the current threats to elections posed by AI are not entirely novel. For the 2024 U.S. election, the real challenge is that AI provides  agitators new tools to increase the scale of such attacks at little cost and in more sophisticated form than we have previously seen.

For years, experts have been warning about the threats that AI poses to elections — even before recent advancements — including those from misinformation directed at the public, phishing attacks against election offices, and denial-of-service attacks against election infrastructure. Many election offices have already implemented significant and successful steps to protect their infrastructure and staff from these threats. Our hope is that this scenario planner will help election officials build on their preexisting security plans to prepare for the more sophisticated and widespread attacks that AI may bring.

Washington Post:

The Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy group, and the Elections Group, which consults with election officials across the country, helped develop parts of the tabletop exercise for Arizona after studying and writing about the impact of AI on elections and hearing from election officials that they didn’t feel they had enough direction about how to deal with the threats from this new technology, said Larry Norden, senior director for elections and government at the Brennan Center. . . .

In December, 10 teams of roughly eight to 10 employees from 14 of the 15 Arizona counties — representing the secretary of state, law enforcement, private vendors, as well as some federal employees — came together. To start, organizers assigned each group a fictitious county and a limited budget, one that could not possibly pay for all the offered security measures. The constraints were meant to mimic the real-life restrictions facing election workers today. A team could purchase anti-phishing training, for example, and then, as a result, would not face a simulated phishing attack but also might not have the budget to purchase a backup communications system.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has signed three election-related bills that proponents say are designed to increase election security. The bills restrict the number of voting machines available on election days, mandate more frequent audits of elections procedures, and require digital ballot images to be published online for the public to review, among other reforms. The ACLU of Georgia has indicated that it plans to challenge these laws in court.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The new laws solidify the ability of conservative activists to challenge the eligibility of voters who appear to have moved, a priority among Republicans who say outdated registrations could be used for fraud unless they’re more quickly removed. Few cases of illegal voting have been confirmed by State Election Board inquiries, and voting rights advocates say legitimate voters have been targeted by challenges.

Activists have contested more than 100,000 voter registrations since Georgia’s 2021 election law allowed any resident to challenge unlimited registrations within their counties. County election boards have rejected most of those challenges, often because they lack enough evidence to prove that a voter is no longer eligible to vote in Georgia.

The laws also satisfy conservative demands for more access for partisan election observers, visible watermarks printed on ballots and an eventual move to stop counting ballots based on computer QR codes, which are unreadable by the human eye.

In addition, digital ballot images will be available online for public review, fewer voting machines will be required in election day polling places, and third-party presidential candidates will automatically appear on Georgia ballots if they also are on the ballot in at least 20 other states and territories.

The Colorado legislature recently passed a bill that would require all county jails and detention facilities to provide in-person polling stations and facilitate mail-in ballots for eligible voters. If signed by Governor Jared Polis, the legislation would make Colorado the only state in the country to require jails to provide in-person voting opportunities. In Denver, which adopted similar reforms for its jails, turnout among individuals in custody actually exceeds turnout of the rest of the voting population.

Bolts:

It would require that sheriffs establish polling stations within local jails across Colorado each general election to operate for at least one six-hour period. It would also require every jail to designate a ballot drop-off location, for those who want to vote by mail.

Colorado would be the first state to enact a mandate of this sort. Nevada, Massachusetts, and Washington state have recently passed initiatives meant to make jail voting easier, but none feature the central requirement of Colorado’s: turning local jails into in-person polling places. . . .

The reform does not affect who is already eligible to vote. Colorado, like nearly every other state, bars people from voting while they are incarcerated if they’ve been convicted of a felony, and SB 72 keeps it that way. Rather, the bill seeks to improve ballot access for a group of people who already have the right to vote but face major barriers to actually using it.

Should Polis sign SB 72 into law, it’ll go into effect in time for this November’s election. (A spokesperson for the governor’s office declined to tell Bolts whether Polis, a Democrat, would sign the bill. Several people who’ve worked closely on it said they expect he will.) This bill would not apply to primary elections; its proponents say they hope to expand it in the future.

The full text of Senate Bill 72 is available here.

Civil rights groups representing Black voters in the Louisiana congressional redistricting case have asked the Supreme Court to stay a three-judge panel’s ruling that the state’s latest map, which creates an additional minority opportunity district, is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The application argues that compliance with Section 2 inevitably requires some consideration of race, but that consideration did not—and does not—constitute impermissible racial discrimination. The application also invokes the principle that stays should generally be granted when an injunction is issued in the period leading up to an election, a principle the Supreme Court has routinely deployed in recent years to block injunctions won by voting rights plaintiffs.

Roll Call:

The State Legislature drew that map in January with a second Black-opportunity district following years of litigation over the Voting Rights Act. Wednesday’s application asked the justices to let the state use that January map this fall.

The applicants, who include some of the original plaintiffs in the case, said last month’s ruling left the state without a map at all, and state officials said they must have one in place by May 15 to conduct the state’s elections.

According to court records, the three-judge panel set a June timeline for the court to approve a new map for the state. But the application said that would be too late, as well as an injustice to Black voters in the state after the Supreme Court itself had prevented the drawing of a new map before the 2022 election.

The full emergency stay application is available here.

Louisiana has given notice that it will appeal a three-judge panel’s recent preliminary injunction against use of the state’s latest congressional maps. The panel found that the new district lines, drawn after a district court found the state needed to create a second minority opportunity district to comply with the Voting Rights Act, violated the Equal Protection Clause. The notice of appeal comes just hours after the panel gave the state a June 3 deadline for passing an interim remedial map.

The full amended notice of appeal:

Notice is hereby given that the State of Louisiana, by and through Elizabeth Murrill, the Attorney General of Louisiana, and Nancy Landry, in her official capacity as Louisiana Secretary of State, hereby appeal this Court’s April 30, 2024 order granting a preliminary injunction, ECF No. 198, as well as orders relating to that injunction (including ECF No. 219), to the United States Supreme Court. This appeal is taken pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1253.

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