Sorting through the onslaught of election security news can be daunting, which is why I’m here to share some recent highlights you might have missed:
Election Officials Must Guard Their Systems — Including from Federal Overreach: My latest commentary for Democracy Docket emphasizes that state and local election officials are responsible for safeguarding election systems from all unauthorized access, including from the Executive Branch. Just yesterday we learned that the Justice Department requested access to voting equipment in Missouri—we must continue supporting election officials in preserving the integrity of the voting process by limiting access to voting systems to only trained, authorized, and accountable personnel. Read my piece for Democracy Docket here.
No, Trump Can’t Legally Federalize US Elections: In an interview with WIRED, we push back against attempted federal overreach, noting that it is “very difficult to unpack and disentangle the concerns the administration is raising from the inherently inappropriate use of the presidency as a vehicle for attempting to dictate election requirements.” Read the interview with WIRED here.
Trump Wants To Stop States From Voting By Mail and Using Voting Machines: NPR unpacks unfounded calls to eliminate mail voting and voting machines. Backed by Verified Voting’s data, Morning Edition reminds listeners that most voters already vote with paper ballots, and research has consistently found hand-counting all ballots on election night to be less accurate and more expensive than using machine tabulators. Read or listen to NPR here.
Voting by Mail Has Been Practiced in the US for 150 Years. Now, Trump Is Discrediting It With Four Falsehoods. Fact-checking claims about mail voting and voting machines for Univision’s elDetector, we debunk false context and claims about election night hand counts. Read the fact check here or here, and take a deeper dive in our resource: “Election Night Hand Counts: Realities and Risks.”
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