This is, IMO, going to be a big topic in the coming year. Republicans have stated their aim to make voting more restrictive in just about every state where they have the means to do so. Democrats would like to pass the Voting Rights Bill named after John Lewis. I’m going to go look up the map of all the states which have pending legislation to restrict voting. Now that we have the election in the rear view, I thought we could try to make this a general discussion thread, where people who have concerns about voting abuses can post as well and we can discuss it from both sides. Please keep memes out of this thread and put them in the boards where we go to talk about the other side, lol.
Voting Law Proposals and Voting Rights Efforts (1 Viewer)
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Optimus Prime
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Georgia’s state board of elections adopted new rules for local election boards that permit them to withhold the certification of a vote in the face of unspecified discrepancies – a Republican-led move that could cause uncertainty and confusion after future election days.
The five-person board passed the measure in a 3-2 vote. The three board members who voted for it – Dr Janice Johnson, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King – were praised by name three days ago by Donald Trump at an Atlanta campaign rally.
The rule was proposed by Michael Heekin, a Republican appointee to the Fulton election board who refused to certify the presidential primary earlier this year. The rule requires local boards to initiate a “reasonable inquiry” when discrepancies emerge at a poll, and gives the power to withhold certification until that inquiry was completed. It does not define the term “reasonable inquiry”, nor does it establish strict limitations on the breadth of an inquiry.
The new rule essentially makes the certification of election results discretionary, said Democratic state representative Sam Park at a press conference outside of the hearing room at the Georgia capitol.
“These are Maga certification rules, and they’re in direct conflict with Georgia law, which states in multiple places that local elections board officials shall perform their duties, meaning their duties are mandatory, not discretionary,” Park said.……
www.theguardian.com
The five-person board passed the measure in a 3-2 vote. The three board members who voted for it – Dr Janice Johnson, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King – were praised by name three days ago by Donald Trump at an Atlanta campaign rally.
The rule was proposed by Michael Heekin, a Republican appointee to the Fulton election board who refused to certify the presidential primary earlier this year. The rule requires local boards to initiate a “reasonable inquiry” when discrepancies emerge at a poll, and gives the power to withhold certification until that inquiry was completed. It does not define the term “reasonable inquiry”, nor does it establish strict limitations on the breadth of an inquiry.
The new rule essentially makes the certification of election results discretionary, said Democratic state representative Sam Park at a press conference outside of the hearing room at the Georgia capitol.
“These are Maga certification rules, and they’re in direct conflict with Georgia law, which states in multiple places that local elections board officials shall perform their duties, meaning their duties are mandatory, not discretionary,” Park said.……
New Georgia rules let local boards withhold election certification
State board of elections passes measure proposed by Fulton board appointee who refused to certify presidential primary
Optimus Prime
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PHOENIX (AP) — A Republican activist who signed a document falsely claiming Donald Trump had won Arizona in 2020 became the first person to be convicted in the state’s fake elector case.
Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of the group Ahwatukee Republican Women, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document, Arizona Attorney General’s Office spokesperson Richie Taylor said Tuesday, declining to comment further.
Records documenting her guilty plea haven’t yet been posted by the court. Still, court records show Pellegrino was sentenced to unsupervised probation. Before the plea, she faced nine felony charges.
Seventeen other people had been charged in the case, including 10 other Republicans who had signed a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried Arizona in the 2020 election.
President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. Joshua Kolsrud, an attorney representing Pellegrino, said in a statement that his client has accepted responsibility for her actions.
“Loraine Pellegrino’s decision to accept a plea to a lesser charge reflects her desire to move forward and put this matter behind her,” Kolsrud said.…….
apnews.com
Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of the group Ahwatukee Republican Women, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document, Arizona Attorney General’s Office spokesperson Richie Taylor said Tuesday, declining to comment further.
Records documenting her guilty plea haven’t yet been posted by the court. Still, court records show Pellegrino was sentenced to unsupervised probation. Before the plea, she faced nine felony charges.
Seventeen other people had been charged in the case, including 10 other Republicans who had signed a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried Arizona in the 2020 election.
President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. Joshua Kolsrud, an attorney representing Pellegrino, said in a statement that his client has accepted responsibility for her actions.
“Loraine Pellegrino’s decision to accept a plea to a lesser charge reflects her desire to move forward and put this matter behind her,” Kolsrud said.…….
Republican activist becomes first person to be convicted in Arizona’s fake elector case
A Republican activist who signed a document falsely claiming Donald Trump had won Arizona in 2020 became the first person to be convicted in the state’s fake elector case.
apnews.com
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On Friday, four days after Georgia Democrats began warning that bad actors could abuse the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such attempts — including unsuccessful efforts to cancel the registrations of two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The confirmation of the attempts to misuse the portal follows separate discoveries by The Associated Press and The Current that the portal suffered at least two security glitches that briefly exposed voters’ dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their full driver’s license numbers — the exact information needed to cancel others’ voter registrations.
Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for Georgia’s Secretary of State’s Office, said the state had been monitoring cancellation requests for abuse and that’s how it spotted the ones targeting Greene’s and Raffensperger’s registrations.
He said that additional protections for less high-profile voters include warnings on the portal that abusing it could be a felony, features built into the website to prevent a single user from submitting multiple cancellations, reviews of requests by county election workers and a postcard that alerts voters whose registration is canceled. He said those safeguards make it extremely difficult to successfully cancel someone else’s voter registration.
“Can this site be used to cancel a legitimate voter’s registration?” Hassinger said. “Yes, in the same sense that it is possible to win a lottery without buying a ticket. The wind could blow the winning ticket into your pocket. Not likely, but theoretically possible.”.
Hassinger said that Raffensperger was unavailable for comment. Greene’s congressional office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Instead of apologizing and working to fix the problem, Brad Raffensperger is denying it exists,” said Max Flugrath, director of communications for Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization. “If the secretary of state won’t do what it takes to protect Georgians and their voting access, advocates will do everything we can to ensure voters have the information needed to register, cast a ballot and have their vote count.”
The official X account for Georgia Senate Democrats posted that the voter registration cancellation portal “empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote.” In response, one commenter replied with the birthdays of Republican officials, including Greene and Raffensperger, noting: “Lots of people have their birthday in the public domain.” One user posted, “Overwhelm them with cancelled well-known Republican's registrations!”
To start the cancellation process on the portal, all users need is a voter’s name, date of birth and county of residence. To finalize the cancellation request, they also must provide the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number or their full driver’s license number. There’s also an option to fill out a form with that information and print and send it to the voter’s county election office or the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Hassinger said that election workers would not approve any paper request that lacked a Social Security number or driver’s license number...............
www.propublica.org
The confirmation of the attempts to misuse the portal follows separate discoveries by The Associated Press and The Current that the portal suffered at least two security glitches that briefly exposed voters’ dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their full driver’s license numbers — the exact information needed to cancel others’ voter registrations.
Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for Georgia’s Secretary of State’s Office, said the state had been monitoring cancellation requests for abuse and that’s how it spotted the ones targeting Greene’s and Raffensperger’s registrations.
He said that additional protections for less high-profile voters include warnings on the portal that abusing it could be a felony, features built into the website to prevent a single user from submitting multiple cancellations, reviews of requests by county election workers and a postcard that alerts voters whose registration is canceled. He said those safeguards make it extremely difficult to successfully cancel someone else’s voter registration.
“Can this site be used to cancel a legitimate voter’s registration?” Hassinger said. “Yes, in the same sense that it is possible to win a lottery without buying a ticket. The wind could blow the winning ticket into your pocket. Not likely, but theoretically possible.”.
Hassinger said that Raffensperger was unavailable for comment. Greene’s congressional office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Instead of apologizing and working to fix the problem, Brad Raffensperger is denying it exists,” said Max Flugrath, director of communications for Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization. “If the secretary of state won’t do what it takes to protect Georgians and their voting access, advocates will do everything we can to ensure voters have the information needed to register, cast a ballot and have their vote count.”
The official X account for Georgia Senate Democrats posted that the voter registration cancellation portal “empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote.” In response, one commenter replied with the birthdays of Republican officials, including Greene and Raffensperger, noting: “Lots of people have their birthday in the public domain.” One user posted, “Overwhelm them with cancelled well-known Republican's registrations!”
To start the cancellation process on the portal, all users need is a voter’s name, date of birth and county of residence. To finalize the cancellation request, they also must provide the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number or their full driver’s license number. There’s also an option to fill out a form with that information and print and send it to the voter’s county election office or the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Hassinger said that election workers would not approve any paper request that lacked a Social Security number or driver’s license number...............
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and Brad Raffensperger’s Voter Registrations Targeted in Georgia’s New Online Portal
Days after Georgia Democrats warned that the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations could be abused, officials have confirmed misuse attempts — including efforts to cancel the registrations of prominent Republicans.
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They are completely ignoring the fact that millions of people have had their ss number compromised in previous data breaches. They want to cancel voters out, and they want it to be easy to do so. If they don’t implement further safeguards - other than a postcard - it tells me they don’t care if people have their registration maliciously cancelled.On Friday, four days after Georgia Democrats began warning that bad actors could abuse the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such attempts — including unsuccessful efforts to cancel the registrations of two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The confirmation of the attempts to misuse the portal follows separate discoveries by The Associated Press and The Current that the portal suffered at least two security glitches that briefly exposed voters’ dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their full driver’s license numbers — the exact information needed to cancel others’ voter registrations.
Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for Georgia’s Secretary of State’s Office, said the state had been monitoring cancellation requests for abuse and that’s how it spotted the ones targeting Greene’s and Raffensperger’s registrations.
He said that additional protections for less high-profile voters include warnings on the portal that abusing it could be a felony, features built into the website to prevent a single user from submitting multiple cancellations, reviews of requests by county election workers and a postcard that alerts voters whose registration is canceled. He said those safeguards make it extremely difficult to successfully cancel someone else’s voter registration.
“Can this site be used to cancel a legitimate voter’s registration?” Hassinger said. “Yes, in the same sense that it is possible to win a lottery without buying a ticket. The wind could blow the winning ticket into your pocket. Not likely, but theoretically possible.”.
Hassinger said that Raffensperger was unavailable for comment. Greene’s congressional office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Instead of apologizing and working to fix the problem, Brad Raffensperger is denying it exists,” said Max Flugrath, director of communications for Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization. “If the secretary of state won’t do what it takes to protect Georgians and their voting access, advocates will do everything we can to ensure voters have the information needed to register, cast a ballot and have their vote count.”
The official X account for Georgia Senate Democrats posted that the voter registration cancellation portal “empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote.” In response, one commenter replied with the birthdays of Republican officials, including Greene and Raffensperger, noting: “Lots of people have their birthday in the public domain.” One user posted, “Overwhelm them with cancelled well-known Republican's registrations!”
To start the cancellation process on the portal, all users need is a voter’s name, date of birth and county of residence. To finalize the cancellation request, they also must provide the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number or their full driver’s license number. There’s also an option to fill out a form with that information and print and send it to the voter’s county election office or the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Hassinger said that election workers would not approve any paper request that lacked a Social Security number or driver’s license number...............
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and Brad Raffensperger’s Voter Registrations Targeted in Georgia’s New Online Portal
Days after Georgia Democrats warned that the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations could be abused, officials have confirmed misuse attempts — including efforts to cancel the registrations of prominent Republicans.
Optimus Prime
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In Florida & Texas too
==========
In his 34 years working in elections, Wesley Wilcox had never experienced what happened to him just a couple of weeks ago. A woman who said she was involved with the conspiracy theory group True the Vote came to his office with a list of names about 2,500 entries long, spanning about 800 printed pages.
She was challenging thousands of her neighbors’ eligibility to vote, and was urging Wilcox, the supervisor of elections in Marion County, Florida, to investigate them, and potentially, remove them from voter rolls altogether.
“This is by far the largest set of ‘challenges’ that have ever been delivered to this office,” Wilcox told HuffPost. “Exponentially so.”
And Wilcox isn’t alone. Since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and falsely blamed widespread voter fraud, right-wing activists have sought to “clean” the election system by deleting tens of thousands of their neighbors from voter rolls.
They’ve been aided in their work by groups like True the Vote and the Election Integrity Network, which have promoted software that makes it easy to challenge the eligibility of thousands of voters at a time, simply by comparing U.S. Post Office change-of-address data to voter rolls and other lists. Across the country, activists are taking these lists to their local election officials, urging them to purge voters.
As Wilcox looked through a sample of the 2,500 names that were challenged in Marion County, he told HuffPost, he couldn’t find a single valid challenge. Instead, the challenges had been filed against a mix of legitimate, eligible voters; voters who simply shared common names like “David Martin” or “Rebecca Bennet”; and names that Wilcox had already removed from the voter rolls himself ages ago, either because the voter had died or moved out of the county. In short, he said, the underlying data was inaccurate and unreliable.
“I have yet to find one of them that I felt was credible enough for me to actually file documentation for that voter,” he said. “So as a good steward for voter registration, which is what I’m charged with doing, I should not act upon stuff that is proven to be not credible.”
This year, election officials like Wilcox have spent valuable time sorting through pages of these mass voter challenges. And voting rights advocates worry that the trend could result in eligible voters being removed from the rolls, or from accommodations like being on lists to automatically receive ballots in the mail.
Last month, the Texas secretary of state’s office sent a memo to election officials throughout the state reiterating Texas’ legal requirements for registration challenges, and state officials in Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada have sent out similar memos, according to documents reviewed by HuffPost.
But experts and election officials who spoke to HuffPost said voters should confirm their registration status now — before the November election season heats up — just to be safe.
“Voter challenges have been sold to citizens as a means of civic engagement — and I think what gets lost in the picture is that there are real voters on the other side of the screen,” Alice Clapman, senior counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s voting rights program, told HuffPost. “This activity, which seems to some people like a constructive way to help election officials, is actually making their jobs harder, and risking disenfranchising their neighbors and people in their community.”...........
In Travis County, Texas — home to around 900,000 registered voters — election officials have seen an unprecedented number of challenges, somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 this year alone, Chris Davis, the county’s voter registration director, told HuffPost. More than half of those challenges came from one woman, he said, though the majority of challenges rely on U.S. Postal Service change-of-address data, with many challengers saying they were volunteering with True the Vote.......
True the Vote is not alone. Multiple right-wing groups have developed their own technology to empower volunteers to file mass voter challenges, all of which depend in some form or another on publicly available data like Postal Service change-of-address information and voter rolls — meaning they’re extremely susceptible to producing out-of-date or even harmful challenges.
One program, EagleAI — pronounced “Eagle Eye” — has been promoted by Cleta Mitchell, the conservative attorney who infamously participated in the 2020 telephone call in which Trump demanded Georgia’s secretary of state “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the state.
Mitchell leads the Election Integrity Network — which itself is part of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a home base for former Trump administration officials and allies — and in that capacity, she has built a network of volunteers across the country.
“The left will hate this — hate this. But we love it,” Mitchell said of EagleAI during one presentation reported on by The Associated Press and NBC News. The elite Christian conservative fundraising group Ziklag announced plans to invest $800,000 in EagleAI, according to ProPublica and Documented, an investigative watchdog that has worked to keep track of registration purges.
At least one Georgia county has signed a contract to use the software, and in May, the director of the Florida Division of Elections sent county officials a list of 10,000 names to review that a local “concerned citizen” had generated with EagleAI............
www.huffpost.com
==========
In his 34 years working in elections, Wesley Wilcox had never experienced what happened to him just a couple of weeks ago. A woman who said she was involved with the conspiracy theory group True the Vote came to his office with a list of names about 2,500 entries long, spanning about 800 printed pages.
She was challenging thousands of her neighbors’ eligibility to vote, and was urging Wilcox, the supervisor of elections in Marion County, Florida, to investigate them, and potentially, remove them from voter rolls altogether.
“This is by far the largest set of ‘challenges’ that have ever been delivered to this office,” Wilcox told HuffPost. “Exponentially so.”
And Wilcox isn’t alone. Since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and falsely blamed widespread voter fraud, right-wing activists have sought to “clean” the election system by deleting tens of thousands of their neighbors from voter rolls.
They’ve been aided in their work by groups like True the Vote and the Election Integrity Network, which have promoted software that makes it easy to challenge the eligibility of thousands of voters at a time, simply by comparing U.S. Post Office change-of-address data to voter rolls and other lists. Across the country, activists are taking these lists to their local election officials, urging them to purge voters.
As Wilcox looked through a sample of the 2,500 names that were challenged in Marion County, he told HuffPost, he couldn’t find a single valid challenge. Instead, the challenges had been filed against a mix of legitimate, eligible voters; voters who simply shared common names like “David Martin” or “Rebecca Bennet”; and names that Wilcox had already removed from the voter rolls himself ages ago, either because the voter had died or moved out of the county. In short, he said, the underlying data was inaccurate and unreliable.
“I have yet to find one of them that I felt was credible enough for me to actually file documentation for that voter,” he said. “So as a good steward for voter registration, which is what I’m charged with doing, I should not act upon stuff that is proven to be not credible.”
This year, election officials like Wilcox have spent valuable time sorting through pages of these mass voter challenges. And voting rights advocates worry that the trend could result in eligible voters being removed from the rolls, or from accommodations like being on lists to automatically receive ballots in the mail.
Last month, the Texas secretary of state’s office sent a memo to election officials throughout the state reiterating Texas’ legal requirements for registration challenges, and state officials in Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada have sent out similar memos, according to documents reviewed by HuffPost.
But experts and election officials who spoke to HuffPost said voters should confirm their registration status now — before the November election season heats up — just to be safe.
“Voter challenges have been sold to citizens as a means of civic engagement — and I think what gets lost in the picture is that there are real voters on the other side of the screen,” Alice Clapman, senior counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s voting rights program, told HuffPost. “This activity, which seems to some people like a constructive way to help election officials, is actually making their jobs harder, and risking disenfranchising their neighbors and people in their community.”...........
In Travis County, Texas — home to around 900,000 registered voters — election officials have seen an unprecedented number of challenges, somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 this year alone, Chris Davis, the county’s voter registration director, told HuffPost. More than half of those challenges came from one woman, he said, though the majority of challenges rely on U.S. Postal Service change-of-address data, with many challengers saying they were volunteering with True the Vote.......
True the Vote is not alone. Multiple right-wing groups have developed their own technology to empower volunteers to file mass voter challenges, all of which depend in some form or another on publicly available data like Postal Service change-of-address information and voter rolls — meaning they’re extremely susceptible to producing out-of-date or even harmful challenges.
One program, EagleAI — pronounced “Eagle Eye” — has been promoted by Cleta Mitchell, the conservative attorney who infamously participated in the 2020 telephone call in which Trump demanded Georgia’s secretary of state “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the state.
Mitchell leads the Election Integrity Network — which itself is part of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a home base for former Trump administration officials and allies — and in that capacity, she has built a network of volunteers across the country.
“The left will hate this — hate this. But we love it,” Mitchell said of EagleAI during one presentation reported on by The Associated Press and NBC News. The elite Christian conservative fundraising group Ziklag announced plans to invest $800,000 in EagleAI, according to ProPublica and Documented, an investigative watchdog that has worked to keep track of registration purges.
At least one Georgia county has signed a contract to use the software, and in May, the director of the Florida Division of Elections sent county officials a list of 10,000 names to review that a local “concerned citizen” had generated with EagleAI............
Right-Wing Activists Have A Big Target This Year— And It Could Impact The Elections
Election officials and voting rights experts are worried about the impact on 2024.
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The president and two executives of the voting machine company Smartmatic are facing federal charges tied to allegations of bribing the former top election official in the Philippines.
Federal prosecutors in Miami allege that between 2015 to 2018, Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, 49, a Venezuelan citizen, Florida resident and co-founder and president of Smartmatic and Jorge Miguel Vasquez, 62, a Smartmatic executive based in Florida, paid Juan Andres Donato Bautista, 60, at least $1 million in bribes during his time as chairman of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) from 2015 to 2017.
The alleged goal to bribe Bautista was to win business tied to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 elections in the Philippines, prosecutors said. They allege the men over-invoiced the cost per voting machine for the 2016 Philippine elections and used slush funds and coded language to hide payments.
The men then allegedly laundered the money from the bribery scheme through bank accounts around the world including in Asia, Europe and in Florida.
Federal prosecutors in Miami allege that between 2015 to 2018, Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, 49, a Venezuelan citizen, Florida resident and co-founder and president of Smartmatic and Jorge Miguel Vasquez, 62, a Smartmatic executive based in Florida, paid Juan Andres Donato Bautista, 60, at least $1 million in bribes during his time as chairman of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) from 2015 to 2017.
The alleged goal to bribe Bautista was to win business tied to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 elections in the Philippines, prosecutors said. They allege the men over-invoiced the cost per voting machine for the 2016 Philippine elections and used slush funds and coded language to hide payments.
The men then allegedly laundered the money from the bribery scheme through bank accounts around the world including in Asia, Europe and in Florida.
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/09/nx-s1-5069756/smartmatic-alleged-bribery-scheme-elections-philippines
Which is irrelevant to the attack on democracy as well as the attacks on Dominion and Smartmatic by Trump and his idiot worshippers.
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oooh. can i use MAGA logic?
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DENVER (AP) — Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges Monday.
Peters, a one-time hero to election deniers, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.
Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Donald Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial and sending out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and including statements from her.
Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.…….
apnews.com
Peters, a one-time hero to election deniers, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.
Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Donald Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial and sending out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and including statements from her.
Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.…….
Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, one-time hero to election deniers, convicted in computer breach
Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election amid unfounded conspiracy theories, has been found guilty by a jury on most of the charges she faced.
apnews.com
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I think there might also be a case going on against a local clerk in GA as well. If so, I hope it gets resolved before the election to give MAGA folks a second thought about interfering.
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did you type that with a straight face? i know it had to be hard to do...lol
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Democrats are rightly euphoric about what is happening in the 2024 presidential campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) have changed the vibe for the upcoming election and tapped into a hunger for the politics of joy.
That is all for the good. But it shouldn’t distract them — or the rest of us — from what is likely to unfold if Democrats prevail on Nov. 5.
If we needed a wake-up call, Donald Trump gave it to us in a rally in Atlanta on Aug. 3. The Republican nominee echoed a familiar refrain when he told his audience, “Now there’s two things we have to do. We have to vote, and we have to stop them (Democrats) from cheating.”
But he didn’t stop there.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” the former president said, “but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way … they are on fire. They are doing a great job.”
Trump singled out three Republican members of the board, Janice Johnston, Janelle King and Rick Jeffares, whom he called “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”
Victory? How odd to put a partisan spotlight on three obscure election officials.
Odd, but revealing — Trump’s use of the word “victory” signals that the post-election work of the election board in Georgia and elsewhere is a key part of his campaign strategy.
The strategy is designed to sow chaos and confusion if he loses the popular vote. But out of that chaos and confusion, Trump hopes that state election officials will either declare him the winner or create a situation in which the House of Representatives, where Republicans are in control, gets to decide who should take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Democrats and everyone who cares about the survival of American democracy need to prepare now for what will unfold after the votes have been counted in November. A lot of work must be done to ensure that the people’s will is reflected in how those votes are certified.
We saw a hopeful sign earlier this month when the American Bar Association’s Task Force For American Democracy sounded the alarm about threats to election integrity. It urged lawyers and state bar associations to “Follow local election board proceedings, understand any proposed rules changes and how they support or possibly don’t support election integrity…[and] learn how elections are administered…and then use that knowledge to defend the process and refute false information.”
In addition, Axios reports that the Democratic National Committee already has built “a robust voter-protection operation, investing tens of millions of dollars to protect against MAGA Republicans’ assault on our voting rights.” Other groups, such as the Election Reformers Network, are working to ensure “transparency across the election phases, the recounts, audits, and other procedures used to check results, and the principles that govern how courts judge election challenges.”
The rest of us must steel ourselves for the coming battle and lend our support, financial and otherwise, to those and other efforts.
Certification of elections is supposed to be a dull bureaucratic process, not an occasion for partisan warfare. As The Bulwark’s A.B. Stoddard observed last week, “Across the country, the November election results will have to be certified in more than 3,000 counties, and all state results must be final by the time electors meet in each state on December 17. Members of county election boards are not tasked with resolving election issues; certification is mandatory and ‘ministerial,’ not discretionary. Disputes over ballot issues are separate from the certification process.”...............
That is all for the good. But it shouldn’t distract them — or the rest of us — from what is likely to unfold if Democrats prevail on Nov. 5.
If we needed a wake-up call, Donald Trump gave it to us in a rally in Atlanta on Aug. 3. The Republican nominee echoed a familiar refrain when he told his audience, “Now there’s two things we have to do. We have to vote, and we have to stop them (Democrats) from cheating.”
But he didn’t stop there.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” the former president said, “but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way … they are on fire. They are doing a great job.”
Trump singled out three Republican members of the board, Janice Johnston, Janelle King and Rick Jeffares, whom he called “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”
Victory? How odd to put a partisan spotlight on three obscure election officials.
Odd, but revealing — Trump’s use of the word “victory” signals that the post-election work of the election board in Georgia and elsewhere is a key part of his campaign strategy.
The strategy is designed to sow chaos and confusion if he loses the popular vote. But out of that chaos and confusion, Trump hopes that state election officials will either declare him the winner or create a situation in which the House of Representatives, where Republicans are in control, gets to decide who should take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Democrats and everyone who cares about the survival of American democracy need to prepare now for what will unfold after the votes have been counted in November. A lot of work must be done to ensure that the people’s will is reflected in how those votes are certified.
We saw a hopeful sign earlier this month when the American Bar Association’s Task Force For American Democracy sounded the alarm about threats to election integrity. It urged lawyers and state bar associations to “Follow local election board proceedings, understand any proposed rules changes and how they support or possibly don’t support election integrity…[and] learn how elections are administered…and then use that knowledge to defend the process and refute false information.”
In addition, Axios reports that the Democratic National Committee already has built “a robust voter-protection operation, investing tens of millions of dollars to protect against MAGA Republicans’ assault on our voting rights.” Other groups, such as the Election Reformers Network, are working to ensure “transparency across the election phases, the recounts, audits, and other procedures used to check results, and the principles that govern how courts judge election challenges.”
The rest of us must steel ourselves for the coming battle and lend our support, financial and otherwise, to those and other efforts.
Certification of elections is supposed to be a dull bureaucratic process, not an occasion for partisan warfare. As The Bulwark’s A.B. Stoddard observed last week, “Across the country, the November election results will have to be certified in more than 3,000 counties, and all state results must be final by the time electors meet in each state on December 17. Members of county election boards are not tasked with resolving election issues; certification is mandatory and ‘ministerial,’ not discretionary. Disputes over ballot issues are separate from the certification process.”...............
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Optimus Prime
Well-known member
Online
LAS VEGAS — Some of the best hackers in the world gathered in Las Vegas over the weekend to try to break into voting machines that will be used in this year’s election — all with an eye to helping officials identify and fix vulnerabilities.
The problem? Their findings will likely come too late to make any fixes before Nov. 5.
In one sense, it’s the normal course of events: Every August, hackers at the DEF CON conference find security gaps in voting equipment, and every year the long and complex process of fixing them means nothing is implemented until the next electoral cycle.
But Election Day security is under particular scrutiny in 2024. That’s both because of increasing worries that foreign adversaries will figure out how to breach machines, and because President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud in 2020 undermined confidence in the vote among his supporters.
As a result, many in the election security community are bemoaning the fact that no system has been developed to roll out fixes faster and worrying that the security gaps that get identified this year will provide fodder for those who may want to question the results.
“As far as time goes, it is hard to make any real, major, systemic changes, but especially 90 days out from the election,” said Catherine Terranova, one of the organizers of the DEF CON “Voting Village” hacking event. She argued that’s particularly troubling during “an election year like this.”…….
The problem? Their findings will likely come too late to make any fixes before Nov. 5.
In one sense, it’s the normal course of events: Every August, hackers at the DEF CON conference find security gaps in voting equipment, and every year the long and complex process of fixing them means nothing is implemented until the next electoral cycle.
But Election Day security is under particular scrutiny in 2024. That’s both because of increasing worries that foreign adversaries will figure out how to breach machines, and because President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud in 2020 undermined confidence in the vote among his supporters.
As a result, many in the election security community are bemoaning the fact that no system has been developed to roll out fixes faster and worrying that the security gaps that get identified this year will provide fodder for those who may want to question the results.
“As far as time goes, it is hard to make any real, major, systemic changes, but especially 90 days out from the election,” said Catherine Terranova, one of the organizers of the DEF CON “Voting Village” hacking event. She argued that’s particularly troubling during “an election year like this.”…….
Optimus Prime
Well-known member
Online
The Republican National Committee is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in an Arizona election dispute this week and block up to 40,000 of the state's registered voters from casting ballots in the presidential race.
Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from from voting in person or by mail.
Although Congress made it easier for Americans to register to vote, those federal rules cannot override "the Arizona Legislature’s sovereign authority to determine the qualifications of voters and structure participation in its elections," they said in an emergency appeal filed Aug. 9.
The fast-track appeal may signal whether the conservative court is ready to intervene in partisan election disputes. The Arizona Republicans asked for a decision by Thursday because counties will soon begin to print ballots.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the appeal should be rejected.
"There is no evidence of fraud and undocumented voting. The 2024 election is weeks away and acting now to restrict the voting rights of a large group of Arizona's voters is undemocratic," he said in a statement.
Many of the affected voters are "service members, students and Native Americans who did not have birth certificates while registering," Fontes added.
On Friday, Biden administration lawyers also urged the court to turn down the appeal. "Thousands of voters have already registered to vote by filing the federal form without accompanying documentary proof of citizenship," said Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. "Judicial intervention at this stage would produce unnecessary confusion and chaos on the cusp of an election."
Arizona is one of the handful of battleground states that could decide who wins the White House. In 2020, President Biden won the state by 10,457 votes.
Last week, the secretary of state's office said 41,128 registered voters in Arizona could be affected by the court's ruling, although some of them are considered "inactive" because they did not vote in the most recent elections.
At issue is a long-running dispute in Arizona over whether voters must furnish proof of their citizenship when they register to vote............
www.latimes.com
Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from from voting in person or by mail.
Although Congress made it easier for Americans to register to vote, those federal rules cannot override "the Arizona Legislature’s sovereign authority to determine the qualifications of voters and structure participation in its elections," they said in an emergency appeal filed Aug. 9.
The fast-track appeal may signal whether the conservative court is ready to intervene in partisan election disputes. The Arizona Republicans asked for a decision by Thursday because counties will soon begin to print ballots.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the appeal should be rejected.
"There is no evidence of fraud and undocumented voting. The 2024 election is weeks away and acting now to restrict the voting rights of a large group of Arizona's voters is undemocratic," he said in a statement.
Many of the affected voters are "service members, students and Native Americans who did not have birth certificates while registering," Fontes added.
On Friday, Biden administration lawyers also urged the court to turn down the appeal. "Thousands of voters have already registered to vote by filing the federal form without accompanying documentary proof of citizenship," said Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. "Judicial intervention at this stage would produce unnecessary confusion and chaos on the cusp of an election."
Arizona is one of the handful of battleground states that could decide who wins the White House. In 2020, President Biden won the state by 10,457 votes.
Last week, the secretary of state's office said 41,128 registered voters in Arizona could be affected by the court's ruling, although some of them are considered "inactive" because they did not vote in the most recent elections.
At issue is a long-running dispute in Arizona over whether voters must furnish proof of their citizenship when they register to vote............
Republicans ask Supreme Court to block 40,000 Arizonans from voting in November
Republicans hope the conservative U.S. Supreme Court will intervene in an Arizona state election dispute.
www.latimes.com
DJ1BigTymer
F-22A 1st Confirmed A/A Kill 4 Feb 23
Online
I'll just put this here to illustrate how radical the Republican Party has become. These are the words from "the most radical, far left socialist to ever be called POTUS".
Optimus Prime
Well-known member
Online
Texas officials have been forced to debunk a voter fraud conspiracy theory after it was shared on social media by Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo.
On Sunday, the news personality suggested on X that Democrats were registering immigrants to vote at several locations in Fort Worth and Weatherford, Texas……
The story attracted the attention of the Texas Department of Public Safety, who said it was “simply false,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The Star-Telegram pointed out that there’s no DMV office in Weatherford. However, there is a Texas Department of Public Safety Driver License office - but it had no tent or registration site set up last week.
“None of it is true,” DPS spokesperson Sgt William Lockridge told the newspaper, noting that suggesting non-white Texas residents who were in line to get their licenses would be immigrants or illegal was “kind of racist.”
Lockridge added: “Just because these people aren’t white, that doesn’t mean they’re illegal.”……
www.independent.co.uk
On Sunday, the news personality suggested on X that Democrats were registering immigrants to vote at several locations in Fort Worth and Weatherford, Texas……
The story attracted the attention of the Texas Department of Public Safety, who said it was “simply false,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The Star-Telegram pointed out that there’s no DMV office in Weatherford. However, there is a Texas Department of Public Safety Driver License office - but it had no tent or registration site set up last week.
“None of it is true,” DPS spokesperson Sgt William Lockridge told the newspaper, noting that suggesting non-white Texas residents who were in line to get their licenses would be immigrants or illegal was “kind of racist.”
Lockridge added: “Just because these people aren’t white, that doesn’t mean they’re illegal.”……
Texas officials totally debunk Fox News host’s voter fraud conspiracy theory
‘Just because these people aren’t white, that doesn’t mean they’re illegal,’ says Texas Department of Public Safety
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