Electionline Weekly October-24-2024

Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking

Arkansas: This week, the Joint Performance Review Committee agreed that state authorities should investigate potentially illegal alterations of petitions collected for a ballot measure proposing elections be conducted with hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots. After questioning witnesses for three hours about redacted and changed addresses on signature collection sheets from Conway, Faulkner and Saline counties, the Committee voted to refer the matter to the Arkansas attorney general, the state ethics commission and a prosecuting attorney. State law requires canvassers for ballot measures to be residents of the state and to provide the address of their current residence on the pages in which they collect signatures. Eighteen canvassers from other states collected signatures for the Hand Marked, Hand Counted Paper Ballot Ordinance of 2024, and 14 blacked out their current residence addresses and substituted the address of the Home2 Suites hotel in Conway, according to documents provided to the Joint Performance Review Committee. County clerks in nine counties have faced recent lawsuits seeking to put the proposed measure on countywide ballots after they rejected the efforts.

Independence County, Arkansas: The Hand Marked, Hand Counted Paper Ballot Ordinance would require all elections in Independence County to use paper ballots. The ordinance was petitioned by resident Bryan Norris. He said voting machines in Arkansas are susceptible to outside influence, namely the company that makes them since he says the public has no access to how the machines count those votes. “We are not allowed to know that source code, so we cannot say that there’s nefarious activity or there isn’t nefarious activity. We just don’t know, and we don’t think that that’s proper or fair, and we think Arkansans deserve better,” Norris said. The ordinance would also require workers to count votes and verify them by hand. Norris said the paper ballots would return integrity to the voting process. But not everyone is on the same page. County Attorney Daniel Haney said the change isn’t needed and voter integrity isn’t an issue in the county. “We have a Secretary of State who oversees elections, and we have quite a few individuals who have their hands in this. And again, if it was a problem, we’d be seeing our legislature take care of it,” Haney said. Haney said if the ordinance is passed, it could cause concerns from how it will adhere to state legislation to the time it will take for the ballots to be counted. It could also be a financial concern. “One is nobody sure really knows what the cost is,” Haney said. “If the county is supposed to appropriate funds to ensure that we have a hand count verification process. But we don’t know the cost. The county is now in trouble with possibly operating in the red, and nobody wants to do that.”

Michigan: Clerks are speaking up about the Michigan Voting Rights Act, a package of four bills moving through the Legislature. The bills aim to prevent voter suppression, expand ballot access to more language communities, create a statewide voting data clearinghouse, and clarify protections for voters who need help casting their ballot.. Clerks told Votebeat they have a lot of concerns about the MVRA, though some are not prepared to think about about laws that wouldn’t come into play until next year at the soonest as they prepare for a general election that’s already underway. “I’m not really excited about this as it stands,” said Michael Siegrist, Canton Township clerk and second vice president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks. He and other clerks say they’re nervous about the potential costs that would largely be passed on to municipalities as well as the proposed consequences for what could be simple human errors in the course of running an election. The state municipal clerks association is officially neutral on the package of bills, as is its county-level counterpart, the Michigan Association of County Clerks. Both groups had a hand in shaping the legislation, but say there’s still room for improvement.

Luzerne County, Pennsylvania: The County Council approved an election safety resolution this week. Council voted 6-5 to approve the resolution proposed by council Vice Chairman Brian Thornton, which discourages the use of ballot drop boxes “because of safety and security concerns associated with them.” The resolution does not have the force of law and does not compel the county election board or administration to take any action. It does demonstrate that council supports the safety of voters, poll workers, election officials and the public, Thornton has said since the resolution appeared on the agenda for council’s Tuesday voting session. The resolution states that council is “dedicated to the democratic process of fair, free and secure elections,” and supports the right of election workers “to perform their duties free of harassment, intimidation and threats against their physical safety.”

Litigation This Week

Arizona: Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd who refused to certify the county’s 2022 midterm election on time has accepted a plea agreement. Judd was initially charged with two felony counts of conspiracy and interference with an elections officer, and had pleaded not guilty. On Monday, though, she pleaded guilty to a separate misdemeanor charge of failure or refusal to perform duty by an election officer and “acknowledged that she failed to canvass the election as required by law,” according to a news release from Attorney General Kris Mayes. Judd will be sentenced to at least 90 days’ unsupervised probation, and will pay a maximum $500 fine, according to the release. A copy of the plea agreement was not yet available Monday morning. “Any attempt to interfere with elections in Arizona will not be tolerated,” Mayes said in a statement announcing the plea deal. “Today’s plea agreement and sentencing should serve as a strong reminder that I will not hesitate to use every tool available to uphold the rule of law and protect the integrity of Arizona’s elections,” Mayes said.

Brian Ogstad, 60 of Cullman, Alabama was sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to sending threats to a social media account managed by the Maricopa County Elections Department. The U.S. Department of Justice announced that a federal judge sentenced Ogstad to the two-and-a-half year prison stint along with three years of supervised release. Ogstad pleaded guilty to one count of making a threatening interstate communication on July 25, 2024. He will also have to pay a $1,000 fine. “In this election season we honor and respect those public servants who enable Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote,” U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino said in a statement. “And we seek to protect all election workers from intimidation and harassment. Threats of violence, whether conveyed by words or deeds or pictures, will be met in this District with robust prosecution.”

Arkansas: On October 17, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that early voting must occur at two West Memphis churches. The decision comes four days before early voting begins in Arkansas and after a few weeks of fast-paced legal filings and a ruling from Crittenden County Circuit Judge Chris Thyer, who ordered local election officials to conduct early voting at the Seventh Street Church of Christ in West Memphis — one of three contested sites. Attorney Joe Rogers appealed Thyer’s order on behalf of the members of the Crittenden County Board of Election Commissioners on Oct. 4. The commissioners, and later Attorney General Tim Griffin through an amicus brief, argued that County Clerk Paula Brown inappropriately designated the Seventh Street Church as an early polling site and called on the commissioners to staff it. Earlier in the day, the court granted Griffin permission to file his “friend-of-the-court” brief, despite an attempt to disallow it by the attorney for the plaintiffs in the original case. Hours later, in a decision authored by Justice Courtney Rae Hudson, the high court sided with Thyer’s ruling in that Brown appropriately designated the Seventh Street Church of Christ as an early voting location, but found Brown should conduct the voting, not the county election commissioners. The high court also reversed part of Thyer’s ruling, in which he said election commissioners were not required to conduct early voting at the First Baptist Church in West Memphis — which had been used as an early voting site in 2022 — because the commissioners did not establish it as a polling site this year. Hudson said sites outside of the county seat established by the county board of election commissioners.

Colorado: Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, of Cortez pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting interstate threats. According to the plea agreement, Brockbank made a series of online threats toward elections officials in Colorado and Arizona, a Colorado state judge, and federal law enforcement agents between September 2021 and July 2024. In the plea agreement, Brockbank also admitted that, during that time, he used two social media accounts to post messages threatening Colorado and Arizona election officials. Brockbank admitted to other threats as well. United States District Judge S. Kato Crews presided over the change of plea hearing. The FBI Denver Field Office investigated the case. Sentencing will be held on February 3, 2025.

Connecticut: Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton granted state prosecutors more time to investigate the case against a city councilman and three city campaign workers facing absentee ballot fraud charges. As the four defendants and their lawyers stood before Dayton, Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Lawlor asked the judge to continue the case.“There is a further investigation and I am having ongoing discussion with counsel,” Lawlor told the judge. Lawlor later declined comment on what that investigation entails. The judge agreed to continue the case to Dec. 11. Wanda Geter-Pataky, 67, deputy head of the city’s Democratic Town Committee, City Councilman Alfredo Castillo, 52, and two workers on the 2019 mayoral campaigns, Nilsa Heredia, 61 a supporter of Mayor Joe Ganim’s re-election for mayor and Josephine Edmonds, 62 , a supporter for state Sen. Marilyn Moore, who primaried Ganim, are charged with multiple counts of election fraud in connection with absentee ballots for the 2019 mayoral primary.

Florida: The Republican National Committee (RNC) and Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) have filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit over a state law requiring that a voter’s name and Social Security number match the info on their government ID. Civil rights groups, collectively represented by nonprofit plaintiff Florida Rising Together, sued Secretary of State Cord Byrd, Attorney General Ashley Moody and Supervisors of Elections in Broward, Duval, Miami-Dade and Orange counties last month. In their suit, they alleged that more than 43,000 people in Florida have been denied their right to vote since 2018 because the identifying information they used to register was not an exact match for information on a state or federal database. But according to the RNC and RPOF’s motion, upending the rule “will result in more ineligible voters being added to and remaining on Florida’s voter rolls, which impairs … accurate registration lists.” “The voter registration matching law is a commonsense election safeguard that protects against fraud,” RNC Chair Michael Whatley said in a statement.

Georgia: The Georgia Supreme Court declined the Republican National Committee’s request to pause a trial court’s decision to block new Georgia State Election Board rules from taking effect for the Nov. 5 general election. The state Supreme Court issued the order rejecting the emergency motion filed by the Georgia Republican Party and Republican National Committee requesting that the court fast-track the reinstatement of several State Election Board requirements that were ruled to be illegal and unconstitutional by a lower court judge last week. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas A. Cox Jr. issued a ruling last week invalidating new statewide procedures for hand counting paper ballots, poll watcher access and other election rules that were pushed through by three right-wing state election officials. The Republican National Committee filed an emergency appeal directly with the Georgia Supreme Court last week to expedite the appellate process in order to have the rules enforced for the Nov. 5 election. Typically, the Georgia Court of Appeals is a necessary interim step before superior court rulings are considered by the state’s high court. Concurring in the unanimous state Supreme Court decision were a combined eight appointees of Republican Georgia governors Brian Kemp and his predecessor Nathan Deal. Justice John J. Ellington was first elected in 2018 in a nonpartisan statewide election.

National and state Republicans appealed a judge’s ruling that said seven election rules recently passed by Georgia’s State Election Board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void.” The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party are appealing a ruling from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox, who ruled Wednesday that the State Election Board did not have the authority to pass the rules and ordered it to immediately inform all state and local election officials that the rules are void and not to be followed. The rules that Cox invalidated include three that had gotten a lot of attention — one that requires that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results. In a statement announcing the appeal. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley accused Cox of “the very worst of judicial activism.” “By overturning the Georgia State Election Board’s commonsense rules passed to safeguard Georgia’s elections, the judge sided with the Democrats in their attacks on transparency, accountability, and the integrity of our elections,” Whatley said. “We have immediately appealed this egregious order to ensure commonsense rules are in place for the election — we will not let this stand.” Alex Kaufman, a lawyer for the state Republican Party, said that the party filed an emergency notice of appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court.

A man was recently arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after allegedly yelling outside of a polling center in Evans. While working the early voting polling center on Ronald Reagan Drive on October 15, a Columbia County Sheriff’s Office deputy noted a man was reading [Bible] verses “loudly” and singing hymns for hours, according to an incident report. Unprovoked, the man “began yelling ‘Trump is a murderer and Kamala is a murderer! Who are you going to vote for now,'” according to the report. The deputy immediately approached the man in an attempt to discuss acceptable behavior at a voting precinct, but the man kept talking over him, according to the report. The man was escorted to the 150-foot line from the precinct and the deputy explained he was violating the campaigning distance. The man continued to “preach” from a distance, but later started walking back across the road toward voters who were standing in line, yelling and being disruptive again, according to the report. The deputy intercepted him before he made it back to the precinct and arrested him.

Illinois: DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek is suing the DuPage County Board, Auditor Bill White and county board Chair Deborah Conroy in a move to assert her right to control how she runs the clerk’s office. The lawsuit was filed earlier this month in response to a lawsuit filed in September by DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin, who is seeking a judge’s order to compel Kaczmarek to comply with county regulations regarding the payment of bills. In her countersuit, attorneys for Kaczmarek note that the Illinois attorney general’s office has issued “multiple opinions” regarding the clerk’s authority to manage internal operations of her office. They also highlight opinions from the state’s attorney general that the county board’s budgetary authority is limited to the appropriation of lump sums for three categories of expenses — equipment, material and services — and does not allow for line-item limitations. “This lawsuit repeats the same points of law my office has been raising for over two years,” Kaczmarek said in a press release. “Despite plain and unambiguous language backing us up, the state’s attorney chooses to ignore it.”

Michigan: Michigan Court of Claims Judge Sima Patel rejected a Republican challenge to the eligibility of a small number of military and overseas voters to register for the Nov. 5 presidential election. Patel said in a written opinion that the Oct. 8 lawsuit was filed too close to Election Day. While that alone would bar the lawsuit, the election practices the GOP are challenging are “consistent with federal and state law, and the Michigan Constitution,” the judge said. The Michigan GOP, the Republican National Committee, and Chesterfield Township Clerk Cindy Berry sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and her elections director, alleging they are unlawfully allowing voting by overseas residents who have never been Michigan residents. Though numbers are not available from state officials, the concern mainly relates to a small number of voting-age children and spouses of overseas residents. The Federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act supersedes state law in allowing citizens who are not currently residents of the state to vote. But the lawsuit argued that the federal law does not eliminate residency requirements entirely, and allowing voting in Michigan elections by those who have never lived in Michigan violates the state constitution. The suit argued this is especially harmful to Republican candidates, since overseas voters skew Democratic.

Stacey Kramer, 56, of St. Clair Shores, was ordered to stand trial on one count each of voting absentee and in-person, punishable by up to five years in prison, and offering to vote more than once, punishable by up to four years in prison. “Although cases of double voting are extremely rare, my office remains committed to prosecuting voter fraud,” said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in a statement. “Through the preliminary examination process, our prosecutors were able to exhibit sufficient evidence of the alleged offenses to advance this case toward a trial, and we are pleased to see this case proceed through the judicial process.” Kramer allegedly appeared at her local polling place in St. Clair Shores on Aug. 6 despite having already returned an absentee ballot for the same election, Nessel’s office said. Both votes were counted.

Nevada: Judge Cristina Silva has dismissed a Republican-led lawsuit that accused Nevada officials of improperly maintaining the state’s voter rolls, adding to the litany of GOP defeats in court this cycle. In a ruling issued October 19, Silva determined that the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Nevada Republican Party had again failed to establish standing while arguing that high voter registration rates in five Nevada counties had harmed their overall mission and campaign activities. She will, however, allow the GOP to file an amended lawsuit, as she did in her June dismissal of the first iteration of the lawsuit. The lawsuit is the latest legal defeat for the RNC and Nevada GOP, which have filed a slew of lawsuits in Nevada this year related to voter rolls and mail ballot procedures. Republicans have not succeeded in any of their Nevada lawsuits this year, but some of the cases are in various stages of appeal. In a statement, an RNC spokesperson said the group plans to amend the lawsuit.

North Carolina: U.S. District Court Judge Richard E. Myers II dismissed part of the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) legal bid to remove up to 225,000 North Carolinians from the state’s voter rolls based on allegations of faulty voter registrations. Meyers dismissed the GOP plaintiffs’ claim under a federal law known as the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), but sent a separate state constitutional claim back down to a North Carolina court. The order noted that the case will return to state court on Oct. 22 barring an appeal of today’s ruling by the RNC and North Carolina GOP. In an Aug. 23 complaint, the RNC and state Republican Party alleged the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) unlawfully registered large sums of “ineligible” voters — “including possible non-citizens” — prior to December 2023 using a form that failed to collect necessary identification information. The RNC originally filed its complaint in state court, the case ended up before a federal court after the NCSBE sought to move the legal proceedings to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Per last week’s decision, the case will return to a state court for consideration of the plaintiffs’ remaining claim brought under a clause of the North Carolina Constitution that guarantees the fundamental right to vote.

Superior Court Judge John Smith denied the Republican National Committee’s request to disenfranchise certain military and overseas voters. The state court rejected the RNC’s bid for a preliminary injunction, court records show. This means that individuals born overseas to parents or guardians who were last North Carolina residents will be allowed to vote in the November election. Smith determined that the RNC failed to present substantial evidence “of any instance where the harm that plaintiffs seek to prevent has ever ‘fraudulently’ occurred,” the decision said. “…This court should not be invoked to treat an entire group of citizens differently based upon unsupported and speculative allegations for which there is not even a scintilla of substantive evidence.” The RNC and its co-plaintiffs appealed the denial of their motion for a preliminary injunction to the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

Oklahoma: U.S. Magistrate Judge Suzanne Mitchell ordered Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City to remain in custody as officials disclosed that he had previously worked as a security guard for an American military installation in Afghanistan. Mitchell issued her ruling after hearing testimony from an FBI special agent that Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City, and his brother-in-law, a juvenile, took steps to obtain AK-47 rifles and ammunition and planned to carry out an attack targeting large crowds on Election Day next month. Mitchell also determined there was probable cause to bind Tawhedi over for trial. FBI agent Derek Wiley testified that Tawhedi also is linked to an investigation in France that led to the arrests this month of three people, including two of Tawhedi’s brothers, who authorities say were plotting a terrorist attack in that country. One of those arrested in France, a 22-year-old Afghan who had residency papers in France, was being investigated for a suspected plan to attack people in a soccer stadium or shopping center.

Pennsylvania: In a 4-3 decision the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvanians must be given a chance to vote on Election Day if their mail ballots have been rejected because of a disqualifying mistake. That means voters who fail to correctly sign or date the return envelope or fail to use a secrecy envelope are entitled to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day at a polling place and have it counted, as long as that ballot wouldn’t be rejected for some other disqualifying issue. The court said that provisional voting was meant to assure access to the right to vote, while simultaneously preventing double voting. Justice Christine Donohue, writing for the majority, noted that the Republican litigants argued that in order to maintain election integrity, provisional ballots should not be counted, but said the majority was “at a loss to identify what honest voting principle is violated by recognizing the validity of one ballot cast by one voter.” “If appellants presume that the general assembly intended to disqualify the provisional ballot of a voter who failed to effectively vote by mail in order to punish that voter, we caution that such a construction is not reconcilable with the right of franchise,” she wrote.

Richard Lack, 63, has been charged for attempting to secure a mail-in ballot for his dead mother, Indiana County District Attorney Robert Manzi announced. The Indiana County Voter’s Registration Office received an application for a mail-in ballot for a woman with an address on Nibert Road. The application was flagged by the office staff and an investigation was opened. According to the DA’s office, Lack completed the application in order to get a mail-in ballot for his dead mother. Lack is accused of using his own phone number, e-mail address and other information directly related to him and forging his mother’s signature on the application. Lack has been a registered voter in Indiana County previously but is currently registered to vote in New Jersey. Lack is charged with violations of provisions relating to absentee and mail-in ballots, a misdemeanor of the third degree, forgery, a misdemeanor of the first degree and unsworn falsification, a misdemeanor of the second degree.

John Pollard, 62, of Philadelphia was indicted this week on charges he threatened a state party official who was recruiting poll watchers by texting he would “skin you alive” and kill the person, the Justice Department announced. Because he used Apple’s iMessage platform, Pollard was charged federally with transmitting interstate threats, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Pollard’s alleged victim, an employee of a state political party who lives in western Pennsylvania, wasn’t named in court records. But Pollard allegedly sent threatening text messages to the person on Sept. 6 at about 10 p.m. because the person was recruiting volunteers to serve as poll observers on Election Day. Neither Pollard’s party affiliation nor the victim’s was mentioned in his court records. Pollard was indicted Oct. 16 and the charges were unsealed Monday after his arrest. He has not yet made a formal court appearance and his lawyer was not listed in court records. The case is part of a federal Election Threats Task Force, which features federal, state and local authorities cooperating to enforce laws against threatening election workers.

South Carolina: The state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union is suing to add potentially thousands of young South Carolina residents to the voter roll two weeks before the election. The ACLU filed a lawsuit October 22 alleging that the state Department of Motor Vehicles’ system made it impossible for some 17,000 eligible teenagers to register to vote while obtaining a driver’s license or other identification. The lawsuit also names the State Election Commission. Voter registration has been closed for a week already. But Paul Bowers, an ACLU spokesperson, said the organization did not hear about the issue until Oct. 12, when a social media post by state Rep. Spencer Wetmore, D-Folly Beach, brought it to the group’s attention. The 17-year-old son of a friend, Wetmore said, thought he’d registered to vote while applying for a driver’s license at the DMV. State law allows teenagers who will turn 18 by Election Day to register to vote up to 13 months in advance. Normally citizens can check a box saying “yes, I wish to register to vote” at the DMV and be added to the voter roll with almost no additional steps. But the state DMV system was programmed to ignore requests from teens who were not already 18 when they attempted to register, even if they would turn 18 by Election Day, according to the lawsuit. The system did not necessarily notify these teenagers that their attempt to register was unsuccessful, according to the lawsuit. Over the past week, the ACLU worked with the SCDMV to identify 17,564 people who fell into this category over the last 13 months. The ACLU then checked with the State Election Commission and found that 6,240 of these teenagers had registered successfully to vote some other way, leaving over 10,000 potentially unregistered. “I had no idea it was going to snowball into this,” Wetmore told the SC Daily Gazette. “I just didn’t have any concept it would be so many kids.” The lawsuit, filed in Richland County, includes a request for an emergency order for the DMV to identify any 17-year-olds who checked the box to register to vote but were not processed, and add them to the voter roll.

Texas: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security October 22, claiming the Biden administration is unlawfully withholding information on the citizenship status of registered voters. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Paxton, joined by the Texas Secretary of State, claims U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not adequately comply with the attorney general’s request to verify the citizenship status of Texans who have registered to vote without a state-issued driver’s license or identification card. There are over 450,000 such voters registered in Texas, Paxton says in the complaint. He is asking the court to issue a writ of mandamus ordering the defendants to provide information on their citizenship. In his complaint, Paxton bemoans Congress’ failure to pass the SAVE Act, saying: “Texans are increasingly concerned about the possibility of non-citizen voting, and the Attorney General of Texas and the Secretary of State of Texas have the responsibility to uphold the integrity of Texas’s elections.”

U.S. Virgin Islands: Supervisor of Elections Caroline Fawkes has officially filed suit against the V.I. Board of Elections, challenging its decision to reinstate disqualified candidate Ida Smith on the ballot for delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. The legal action not only questions the board’s authority but also highlights a longstanding issue in the territory: the lack of clarity around residency terms like “inhabitant” and “resident.” Fawkes’ lawsuit, filed on Oct. 17 in the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands, seeks a temporary restraining order and an injunction to block Smith’s inclusion on the ballot. According to Fawkes, Smith was disqualified in June for failing to meet residency requirements, specifically for not submitting a tax return transcript by the June 10 deadline. Fawkes cited 18 V.I.C. §411, which grants the supervisor of Elections sole authority to determine a candidate’s qualifications. She argued that Smith’s failure to provide the necessary documentation was sufficient to remove her from the race. Despite this, the Board of Elections, led by members Raymond J. Williams and Epiphane Joseph, voted on Sept. 4 to reinstate Smith, reversing Fawkes’ decision. In her lawsuit, Fawkes contends that this move was beyond the board’s legal authority, as determining whether a candidate meets the legal requirements falls solely under the supervisor of Elections’ jurisdiction. Fawkes is asking the court to declare the board’s actions illegal and reaffirm the power of her office in deciding candidate eligibility.

Virginia: Five Waynesboro voters have filed a lawsuit to prevent the majority of the Waynesboro Board of Elections from following through on their controversial pledge to refuse certification of the November 2024 election results, a move they argue would violate Virginia state law. The lawsuit, filed in Waynesboro Circuit Court on Oct. 21, comes after two GOP officials from Waynesboro filed their own lawsuit challenging Virginia’s voting system ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election while threatening to not certify the results. In their complaint, Curtis Lilly, the chairman of the Waynesboro Electoral Board, and Scott Mares, the board’s vice chair, expressed their concerns over the reliability of electronic voting systems, which they argue are prone to inaccuracies. Instead, they demanded that all ballots be counted by hand. In their counter-suit, the five Waynesboro voters ask the court to require the election officials to certify the election results unless they prevail in their own suit. The plaintiffs further argue that the election officials’ stance violates the Virginia Constitution, which mandates that election results be certified in accordance with established procedures, including the use of legally authorized voting equipment.

Michele White, the former Prince William County general registrar sued Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares claiming the Republican prosecuted her in order to appease election deniers. White says her reputation as a dedicated election official was tarnished in 2022 when Miyares prosecuted her for election fraud relating to the 2020 election. The commonwealth dropped the charges in 2023. “As an election official, I worked every day for nearly twenty years to ensure that Virginia elections ran smoothly and according to law,” White said in a press release. “None of that mattered to the defendants, who showed no interest in the truth. Instead, they treated my career and well-being as collateral damage in their effort to promote false claims of widespread election fraud.” White says Miyares used her prosecution to legitimize the launch of the state’s election integrity unit, a group of 20 lawyers, many of whom lack election backgrounds, to investigate election fraud. Since its founding, two days after White’s 2022 indictment, White is the only official to have been charged.

Wisconsin: The Public Interest Legal Foundation is suing the Wisconsin Elections Commission for records tied to guidance the firm claims doesn’t state law on verifying addresses of people who register to vote on Election Day. In the lawsuit, filed October 17 in Dane County Circuit Court, the organization claims the commission has withheld communications between the commission, clerks and district attorneys for more than a year. The guidance at the heart of the lawsuit advises clerks on what to do if “Election Day Registration” or EDR postcards are returned to their offices and marked undeliverable. The postcards are used to verify the address a voter gives at the polls when registering the day of an election. Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams said Wisconsin law is clear that if an EDR postcard is returned to a clerk, they’re supposed to suspend that person’s voter registration and refer them to the local district attorney for potential criminal charges. He claims the commission’s guidance “advised clerks not to follow that law.” “We just want to get a better understanding of why Wisconsin Elections Commission officials would have been doing that,” Adams said. “And so, we asked for the records, they didn’t turn them over, and a lot of time has gone by.” A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the guidance and lawsuit.

Attorneys involved in efforts to reverse President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Wisconsin are asking a judge to create a new system for checking people’s citizenship for voting. The lawsuit, which comes just weeks before Election Day, asks Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Maxwell to order the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the Wisconsin Elections Commission to cross-reference data for millions of residents on Wisconsin’s voter registration list before the Nov. 5 election. If any noncitizens are found on the voter rolls, the suit wants them removed. The lawsuit claims around one-half of 1 percent of people who applied for voter ID cards over the last decade were denied because of fraud or ineligibility. Dean and Scott contend that given that rejection rate, there could be around 10,000 illegally registered active voters statewide, and Dean suggested during a lengthy court hearing Thursday that the number could be higher.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker