Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat now running for governor, is acknowledging that as many as 6,000 voters got a mail ballot with only federal races.
Hobbs, whose campaign is staked largely on defending the integrity of the 2020 elections, said Tuesday the mistake was the result of a database glitch.
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Pennsylvania’s Republican Party and its national counterpart filed a lawsuit this week to prevent the state’s Democrat-run executive branch from requiring counties to count undated absentee ballots.
A lawsuit that originated in 2021 to settle a dispute about whether such ballots should be tallied resulted in the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals answering in the affirmative this June. That ruling decided a race for Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas in favor of Democrat Zachary Cohen over Republican David Ritter.
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Voter rolls are the most important election integrity documents. They tell election officials who is eligible to vote. The voter rolls also tell election officials where to send mail ballots, so it is even more important that they are accurate in states that automatically send registered voters mail ballots.
It is essential that states have accurate and up to date voter rolls. This includes removing individuals who moved, have died, and duplicate registrants. Many states across the country are failing to do this essential voter list maintenance that is required by federal law.
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Arizonans for Voter ID filed a complaint Wednesday with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich against Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, alleging that he violated election law by posting a letter on his county website opposing their Proposition 309, which improves voter ID requirements. The complaint alleges violations of A.R.S. 11-410(A) and A.R.S. 16-192(A), which prohibit the use of government resources to influence an election.
Attorney Tim La Sota said in the letter, “I write today to bring to your attention apparent violations of two separate statutes that prohibit the use of public funds to influence an election. To wit, the violations involve a campaign that County Recorder Stephen Richer is waging against Proposition 309, which improves voter identification requirements. Unfortunately, Mr. Richer is using taxpayer money to wage this campaign.” La Sota went on, “This website is not at Mr. Richer’s disposal to use as a campaign website for his favored political causes.”
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With midterm elections a month away, an election integrity watchdog has filed multiple lawsuits in Minnesota over duplicate registered voters while also finding millions of voter registrations in New York missing personal identifying information.
Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative election law nonprofit, filed six lawsuits in Minnesota counties over 515 duplicate registrants. The lawsuits were filed in Nicollet, Dakota, Hennepin, Olmsted, Todd and Ramsey counties.
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The Democratic National Committee is looking to join the legal fight over incomplete absentee ballots in Wisconsin.
The DNC on Monday filed to join the lawsuit seeking to allow local election clerks to continue filling in missing information from ballots they receive this fall.
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The top candidates for Minnesota secretary of state squared off in their first debate Sunday night on WCCO Radio and the gloves came off almost immediately.
“My mission as secretary of state has been to protect the freedom to vote for every eligible Minnesotan. I’ve been proud to do that work with fairness, impartiality, and integrity, leading to results that we can all be really proud of,” said Secretary Steve Simon, a Democrat seeking a third term as Minnesota’s chief elections official.
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A federal judge ruled Friday that Georgia’s election integrity practices requiring voter ID and citizenship checks are legal and constitutional, rejecting arguments of racism and voter suppression from the state’s Democrat nominee for governor, Stacey Abrams, just weeks before Election Day.
U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones, an Obama appointee, issued the ruling, after a lengthy trial, handing a major victory to Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who aggressively defended the state’s election integrity laws from a legal assault by Abrams voter group Fair Fight Inc. and other liberals.
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The first debate between Trump-endorsed Republican Abraham Hamadeh and Democratic candidate Kris Mayes for Arizona Attorney General (AGO) took place Wednesday evening on Arizona PBS, sponsored by the Clean Elections Commission. The two candidates sparred for much of time over whether the other was qualified for the position. The moderators’ questions focused primarily on the candidates’ willingness to prosecute abortion laws and voter fraud from the 2020 presidential election, where there were stark differences.
In Mayes’ opening statement, she touted her seven and a half years serving on the Arizona Corporation Commission, and said she’d been a member of the Arizona State Bar for 15 years. She claimed she had experience prosecuting consumer fraud, and pledge to protect reproductive rights and democracy if elected.
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The Arizona Legislature was unable to get a bill passed this year clearly banning unmonitored absentee ballot drop boxes, so local activists are organizing schedules of volunteers to watch them, concerned after reports of unusual activity during the primary election this year. Existing law, A.R.S. 16-1005(E), prohibits absentee ballot drop boxes operated by entities other than the government, but legal disputes remain over how much the government is required to monitor them.
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Election officials around the country, including the Maricopa County Recorder, saw a flurry of public records requests at the end of August asking for the “cast vote record” (CVR) from the 2020 presidential election. The requests came after My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, who is actively investigating election discrepancies in 2020, urged attendees at his Moment of Truth Summit in August to request them. The CVR reveals the type of ballot used by each voter and how they cast their votes, without exposing their identity.
Walter C. Daugherity, who has a background in computers and engineering, two degrees from Harvard University, and experience in artificial intelligence and quantum computing, submitted a declaration about his analysis of CVRs in a lawsuit filed by Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Trump-endorsed candidate for State Representative Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley), who is running for Arizona Secretary of State. Their complaint aims to stop the use of electronic voting machine readers in the Nov. 8 election.
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A complaint filed to the Michigan Board of Elections claims Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated the federal Help America Vote Act by outsourcing the managing of voter rolls to the Electronic Registration Information Center.
The conservative Thomas More Society filed the complaint on behalf of nonprofit Pure Integrity Michigan Elections.
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For the last year and a half, three Arizona activists have been investigating the lack of accreditation of voting machine readers used in Arizona. Concerned that the machines are susceptible to fraud — not just fully electronic voting machines but also electronic voting machine readers that are used with paper ballots here in Arizona — the trio has made several unsuccessful attempts legally to halt their use in the elections this year, as well as calling upon elected officials in the state, executive, and legislative branches for assistance.
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Trump-endorsed State Representative Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley) faced off against Democratic former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes in a debate Thursday evening hosted by Clean Elections on KAET PBS. Most of the lively exchange focused on the candidates’ stark differences regarding voter fraud, with Fontes more dismissive and Finchem stating election integrity is a priority.
Finchem said in his opening statement that he is running due to what’s happened to the office under the current officeholder, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is running for governor. He said he wants to “restore honor, integrity, and security” to the position. “It’s not up to the secretary of state to make the law, they enforce the law that’s already laid down.” In addition to other controversies, Hobbs has been involved in a high-profile legal dispute with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich for making changes to the state’s Election Procedures Manual that Brnovich asserts are outside of her authority.
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As political-party attorneys and the state of Pennsylvania argued over “curing” election ballots on Thursday, the Democratic judge hearing the case suggested that differing county rules could undermine confidence in election integrity.
Judge Ellen Ceisler, one of two Democrats on the seven-member Commonwealth Court, conducted the hearing in which Republican Party lawyers pressed their case against Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman (D). Per litigation filed three weeks ago, the plaintiffs contended that the court should not permit the secretary to let counties notify absentee or mail-in voters that their ballots contain mistakes that can supposedly be corrected or “cured.”
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A new poll from The Trafalgar Group shows Trump-endorsed State Representative Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley), who is running for Arizona secretary of state, more than six points ahead of his opponent, Democratic former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes. Conducted between September 14 and 17, the survey of 1,080 likely voters by the Republican-aligned pollster found that 47.5 percent chose Finchem and 41.1 percent chose Fontes.
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Although the deadline for printing ballots for Arizona’s midterm election on Nov. 8 has passed, ending the time for litigation regarding items that must appear on the ballot, one lawsuit regarding the election continues to wind its way through the courts. After their lawsuit requesting the halting of electronic voting machines in the election was thrown out by an Obama-appointed trial court judge, U.S. District Judge John Tuchi, the attorneys for Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Trump-endorsed State Rep. Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley), who is running for Arizona Secretary of State, filed a notice of appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Tuchi stated in his order dismissing the case that “speculative allegations that voting machines may be hackable are insufficient to establish an injury in fact,” it was too close to the election to file, and the lawsuit should have been filed in state court, not federal court.
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Voters concerned about election fraud are increasing the pressure on public officials to take additional steps during elections this year to provide additional security, including counting ballots by hand instead of using electronic voting machines for tabulation. Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor sent all Arizona county election officials and sheriffs a letter on August 30 urging the change, and now grassroots organizations are following up with their own campaign.
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A trio of bills are working their way through the Legislature to enhance the security of election ballots and remove deceased residents from the voter rolls.
The House State Government Committee met on Monday to vote on House Bill 34, House Bill 143, and House Bill 2484, advancing all three of them past first consideration. The bills will need to get through three considerations before a final vote can be held.
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Imagine going for a physical and after checking your pulse, the doctor pronounces you in tip-top condition. No checking your blood pressure or respiration; no examination of your heart, vision, hearing or reflexes; no lab work, or x-rays, etc.
“Trust me, everything is fine,” the doctor says.
If you believe that having a strong pulse is all you need to ensure your entire body is healthy, you would leave the doctor’s office with a false sense of security that all is well, when, in reality, a serious disease may be lurking undetected.
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Georgia ranks second in the country for its election integrity measures, an analysis found.
According to the Election Integrity Scorecard from the Heritage Foundation, the Peach State ranked behind only its neighbor to the north, Tennessee. Hawaii ranked last on the list, just behind Nevada and California.
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Federal bureaucrats meddled in the last two presidential elections by promoting false Russia collusion claims and suppressing the Hunter Biden story, and more whistleblowers are needed to keep that from happening again in 2024, says Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).
“I think that started in 2016 when they tried to meddle in the election, and they did meddle in that election,” Johnson told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview. “They tried to get Hillary Clinton elected, and they failed. But in 2020, they succeeded by downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop by censoring, by suppressing that.”
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After over a year of “good faith attempts to work together,” Texas-based election integrity nonprofit True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and lead investigator Gregg Phillips of the OPSEC Group, an election intelligence company, say they no longer trust the intentions of the Arizona Attorney General Office’s Criminal Division.
The veteran grassroots organizer told The Arizona Sun Times the election integrity group turned over evidence to both the FBI and local law enforcement, including the Criminal Division of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (AGO), and has met with AGO criminal investigators numerous times since first contacting them in the summer of 2021 – all to no effect.
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Legislative District 10 Republicans and Michele Swinick of the Save My Freedom Movement put on an event Wednesday evening featuring the story of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, who says she believes she encountered programming discrepancies with the voting machines in her county in Colorado, and is now being prosecuted for election tampering.
The event included a screening of the documentary about her experience, “Selection Code,” and a Q & A session with both Peters and the documentary producers and directors, Matt and Joy Thayer. The title “Selection Code” refers to programming voting machines in order to choose certain candidates as winners.
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America First leaders and grassroots activists concerned about voter fraud in Arizona are taking steps to put as many security measures as possible for the November 8 election. Jim O’Connor, a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) and a leader in the grassroots community who brought patriots together to sign an “Arizona Election Integrity Declaration” demanding secure elections in May, is now taking his efforts a step further.
O’Connor sent a letter to all Arizona county supervisors, recorders, election directors and sheriffs on Aug. 30 requesting they refrain from using electronic voting machines to tabulate ballots. O’Conner alluded to his responsibilities on the ACC where the commissioners “find bad actors operating in our state causing harm to our state’s investors,” then “perform examinations and investigations, hold hearings, determine guilt,” and “refer criminal activity to our Attorney General’s office for prosecution. He urged, “I cite that judicial role as the basis for my strongest admonition and encouragement for all of our Counties to immediately cease use of all electronic voting machines for this November’s General Election and beyond.”
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation to the newsmaker line to discuss state-by-state election integrity ratings, standards and best practices, and the suggestion of the opti-scan hybrid voting system.
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A Gwinnett County woman who held an election integrity panel over the weekend to educate Georgians says men who she believes were impersonating police officers showed up at her home and detained her hours before the event began.
“The long and short of what occurred, is I had an encounter with the police right before I went to the event,” Surrea Ivey told The Georgia Star News. “Initially, I didn’t think anything about it. When somebody – I say somebody because I subsequently found out it was not the police – when these individuals knocked on my door, they were in police uniform and they said they had reason to believe I was in possession of government equipment.”
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The Heritage Foundation has ranked the state of Tennessee number one in the nation on its election integrity scorecard.
Tennessee received a score of 84 out of 100, beating out Georgia’s 83 out of 100 for the top rating by one point.
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A group of Georgians still fighting for election integrity after President Joe Biden was declared the winner by a tiny margin in the Peach State Monday filed a massive challenge to the Gwinnett County Board of Elections.
“A stunning total of 37,500 affidavits are delivered to the Gwinnett County Board of Elections office in challenge of the voter rolls and handling of the 2020 Election,” said a press release from what is described as a group “team of patriotic Georgia residents.” “These affidavits include 20,000 challenges to actual votes that were certified just after the 2020 election. The submitted affidavits only include Gwinnett County vote challenges. Still, the number far exceeds the Presidential spread for the entire state of Georgia and confirms the 2020 election should not have been certified!
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A former congressional candidate in Georgia will host a forum this weekend at St. Benedict’s Catholic Church in Duluth that will inform Georgia’s voters on how elections are conducted in the Peach State.
Surrea Ivey, who ran for Congress in Georgia’s 4th Congressional District, is hosting the event.
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This week the Ohio Ballot Board finalized the wording of a referendum on a proposed state constitutional amendment to prohibit noncitizens from participating in local and state elections.
A majority of Ohio voters will need to approve the measure during the November 8 election for the amendment to become law. The ballot question informs electors that the amendment would “require that only a citizen of the United States, who is at least 18 years of age and who has been a legal resident and registered voter for at least 30 days, can vote at any state or local election held in this state” and that the law would “prohibit local governments from allowing a person to vote in local elections if they are not legally qualified to vote in state elections.”
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Citizens United filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department and the Interior Department for records relating to President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting.”
The conservative nonprofit submitted a FOIA request to the agencies on June 16 but did not receive a response within 20 working days as required, Citizens United stated.
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Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court on Friday ordered three counties that declined to count undated absentee ballots to count them.
Republican Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer issued the ruling affecting Berks, Fayette and Lancaster counties. Last month, Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman (D) sued the three jurisdictions to compel them to include votes delivered in undated envelopes in their May 17 primary results.
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Afederal appeals court temporarily paused an order Sunday that required Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to testify in front of an Atlanta-area grand jury about attempts to illegally influence Georgia’s 2020 election results.
The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals instructed the district court judge to consider whether the Fulton County grand jury subpoena of Graham should be modified to follow the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, CNN reported.
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After the Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) censured Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, over election integrity failures including denying there was election fraud in 2020, the author of the censure has found himself in hot water. Member-at-large Brian Ference responded to an inquiry in a Telegram channel for Maricopa County precinct committeemen (PCs) asking who voted against the censure. He provided a list of names in the channel — but also included their email addresses and phone numbers, prompting a stern email from the MCRC’s attorney.
Ference issued an apology for including the contact information, but told The Arizona Sun Times he didn’t regret sharing the names, because it exposed “Entrenched establishment Republicans who have proved again and again they offer little to no opposition to Democrats, but instead fight like hellcats against America First MAGA Republicans.”
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by Jack Fitzhenry and Hans von Spakovsky With primaries underway and with midterms and other fall ballot contests looming, multiple states are demonstrating a commitment to ensuring that their elections remain worthy of public confidence. Since 2021, The Heritage Foundation has been tracking the content of every state’s laws (plus the District of Columbia since it casts three electoral college votes for president) governing the conduct of elections—local, state, and federal—and ranking them in its Election Integrity Scorecard. It does this by comparing them to a set of best practices criteria developed by Heritage. Now more than halfway through 2022, it’s time to take stock of the relevant laws enacted this year, and the resulting changes, both positive and negative, in election integrity. Through July 2022, state legislatures enacted roughly 190 new bills pertaining to elections. And the flurry of legislative activity has generally improved election security. In all, fourteen states have bettered their scores from 2021 while only two states reduced them. Tennessee now occupies the top spot in the rankings, earning a six-point improvement over last year and scoring 84 points of the available 100. Tennessee moved from third place to first overall when it enacted a bill that expanded…
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Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake filed a lawsuit along with Trump-endorsed State Rep. Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley), who is running for Arizona Secretary of State, in April to block the use of electronic voting machines to count ballots in the 2022 election. The Maricopa County Supervisors responded last week with a motion requesting sanctions against the pair and their attorneys, which include former Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz, asserting that the suit was “frivolous.”
Finchem tweeted, “The threatened action by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, is nothing more than the attempted weaponization of the judicial process against the political process. If they can’t stand up to scrutiny for elections, that’s their problem — not our problem. Elections must be secure and trustworthy, Maricopa County has demonstrated neither is the case in the last election. “
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Republicans in Arizona’s Legislative District 3, which is the largest legislative district in the state located in northern Maricopa County around north Scottsdale, issued two censures on August 12. The LD3 GOP censured the FBI for raiding former President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, and censured Republican Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates for denying election fraud and opposing Republican candidates for office who believe there was. They called for him to resign and for the Maricopa County Republican Party to encourage Republicans to vote him out of office.
The censure of Gates began, “Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates has made and continues to make disparaging public comments about Republican Arizona Representatives and Republican candidates during interviews, all while seeming to support Democrat candidates running against them.”
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A Republican National Committee (RNC) spokesman told The Georgia Star News that the RNC is “leading the way on ensuring that elections are free, fair, and transparent by building an unprecedented election integrity program” with a three-pronged approach.
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After an Arizona primary election last week full of anomalies, the Executive Guidance Committee of the Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) issued a resolution on August 4 censuring Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican. The resolution cited problems that arose during the election and Richer’s previous denials that election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election.
Member-at-large Brian Ference drafted the resolution, which passed 13-11 with two abstentions. It cited “irregularities” in the primary election, including “reports of printers and scanners not working,” “Pentel felt-tip pen smearing and not drying,” and “late counting and delayed results.”
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Gulbransen welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to discuss election integrity and the political posturing of China.
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This week’s decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upholding Act 77 which legalized no-excuse absentee voting in the Keystone State is spurring Republican lawmakers to renew their push for election reform.
A Republican-led legislature passed and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf signed Act 77 three years ago. Moderate Democratic Senator Lisa Boscola (D-Bethlehem) initially drafted the bill to get rid of straight-party voting, a policy on which Republican legislators largely agreed with her. More Democrats came around to support the measure once a section was added allowing voters to cast mail-in ballots without providing a reason they could not come to the polls (i.e., illness, injury or travel).
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While federal agencies under the Biden administration are seeking to increase voter registration and turnout, a group linked to left-wing megadonor George Soros is pushing for a constitutional amendment in the battleground state of Michigan that would allow Zuckerbucks to be used in election administration.
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U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino announced last week that Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Lokey was appointed as the district election officer for Arizona in connection with the approaching Tuesday primary election.
“Election Day is an opportunity for Arizona’s citizens to make their voices heard,” Restaino said. “The Department of Justice has strong partnerships with the highly professional and dedicated election officials throughout the state. Together we can do our very best to ensure that every eligible voter who chooses to vote can do so easily and efficiently, without interference or discrimination.”
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The Arizona Republican Party announced last week that it would reward anyone who provides evidence of vote buying in the 2022 election a $50,000 reward, with up to two rewards. The evidence must lead to an arrest and conviction.
The press release explains how vote buying occurs, usually with mail-in ballots since they are not secret from everyone. “Unfortunately,” the AZGOP said, “the movement towards mass mail-in voting completely undoes secret ballot reform. Mail-in ballots are not secret — once a person has a ballot in their home, they can easily show it to anyone, including bad actors.”
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Arizona Diamondbacks World Series hero Curt Schilling about former Vice President Michael R. Pence’s visit to Arizona to campaign against the GOP gubernatorial hopeful, endorsed by President Donald J. Trump, Kari Lake.
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The Arizona Republican Party’s Executive Committee formally censured Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers (R-Mesa) this week, calling on Republicans to vote him out of office during the primary election this year, and urging his Legislative District 10 and the Maricopa County Republican Party to issue their own censures.
The two-page censure contains a lengthy list of Bowers’ actions on bills in the Arizona Legislature, and declares he is “unfit to serve the platform of the Republican Party and will of the voter of the Republican Party of Arizona.” AZGOP Chair Kelli Ward tweeted, “he is no longer a Republican in good standing & we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary.”
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Pennsylvania House State Government Committee Chairman Seth Grove (R-York) released a report Tuesday detailing “a myriad of election issues” in the Keystone State.
Speaking to reporters at the Capitol Building, Grove reviewed his findings, including inconsistent vote-counting rules, ballot harvesting, fraud and administrative errors. The new report is the third he has issued concerning election problems since November 2020.
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Early ballots for Arizona’s primary election were mailed last week, prompting a flurry of last minute endorsements for candidates. Gov. Doug Ducey, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson in the gubernatorial race, and Ducey took it a step further, criticizing Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake during a CNN appearance, prompting a sharp response from Lake.
Lake, who is leading by a substantial amount in recent polls, has portrayed Robson and those endorsing her as RINOs. She told The Arizona Sun Times, “Doug Ducey, Chris Christie and Mike Pence are all herding around Karrin Taylor Robson. It turns out RINOs travel in packs.”
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Arizonans applying for poll worker positions in Cochise County during this fall’s election are being asked to answer some unusual questions, including regarding their motives. Cochise County Elections Director Lisa Marra added the questions this year to the application that applicants fill out, some believe in an effort to screen out those with concerns about election fraud, which Marra speaks derisively about frequently on Twitter.
Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward tweeted in May that she heard “Election Departments around Arizona are requiring illegal ‘ideological tests’ of poll workers & that they are actively discriminating against #AmericaFirst Republican applicants.”
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