Electronic pollbook security raises concerns going into 2024
By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY
Yesterday
ATLANTA (AP) — They were blamed for long lines in Los Angeles during California’s 2020 presidential primary, triggered check-in delays in Columbus, Ohio, a few months later and were at the center of former President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to protest in Detroit during last November's midterms.
High-profile problems involving electronic pollbooks have opened the door for those peddling election conspiracies and underscore the critical role the technology plays in whether voting runs smoothly. Russia and Iran already have demonstrated interest in accessing the systems.
Despite their importance and potential vulnerabilities, national standards for the security and reliability of electronic pollbooks do not exist and efforts underway to develop them may not be ready or widely adopted in time for the 2024 presidential election.
“We have a trust issue in elections. The more we can say there are standards that equipment must be tested to, the better,” said Larry Norden, an election security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s like a seal of approval that really doesn’t exist right now.”
Poll workers use electronic pollbooks to check in voters. They typically are a tablet or laptop computer that accesses an electronic list of registered voters with names, addresses and precinct information, with some doing so through an internet connection.
Testing standards and a certification program for voting machines have been in effect for years, a process overseen by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. While compliance is voluntary, most states will use at least some aspect of the federal process to ensure their voting and ballot-counting machines are secure and functioning properly.
But there is a much wider system of technology that supports U.S. elections beyond the devices used to scan and tally votes — from electronic pollbooks to voter registration databases and systems used to report unofficial election results to the public. Their use has been expanding rapidly in recent years.
Nearly one-third of all voting jurisdictions in the U.S. used electronic pollbooks in 2020, compared with about 18% four years earlier, according to data collected by Election Assistance Commission.
The systems come with unique security challenges.
In 2016, Russian hackers scanned state voter registration systems looking for vulnerabilities and even accessed the voter registration database in Illinois, although an investigation later determined no voter data was manipulated. In 2020, Iranian hackers obtained confidential voter data and used it to send misleading emails to voters, seeking to spread misinformation and influence the election.
Experts say the systems could be prime targets again for those seeking to disrupt the voting process and sow chaos around U.S. elections. Gaining access to a voter registration database, for example, could allow someone to delete voters from the rolls. When people show up to vote, they are told they are not on the list.
Although those voters would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot that eventually could count, widespread problems with the voter registration database would trigger questions about a process that already has suffered a loss in public confidence following a sustained campaign by Trump and his allies to discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election. There is no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting equipment in 2020, backed up by exhaustive reviews in states lost by Trump.
In Detroit last November, a few polling locations had a brief issue checking in voters related to a data error that was quickly identified and resolved. Trump seized on the early reports, calling the situation in Detroit “REALLY BAD” in a social media post and urging people to “Protest, Protest, Protest!”
Unlike voting machines that are not directly connected to the internet, many electronic pollbook systems are connected by design. Some are quite sophisticated.
In counties that have put in place a vote center model, where registered voters can cast a ballot at any polling place, electronic pollbooks must be able to communicate with each other and with a central system. That's to ensure voters are not able to cast ballots at multiple locations or vote in-person after returning a mail ballot.
While that can present significant security challenges, scrutiny for the pollbook systems is not as consistent as with voting machines.
The lack of national standards has left state and local election officials on their own. For the 2020 election, 15 states, including Arizona, Florida and Nevada, did not require any type of electronic pollbook testing or certification, according to federal data.
States and even some counties are often testing their pollbook systems in isolation and results are not routinely shared — an information gap that could be addressed with a national testing program.
"Having that type of knowledge allows them to put compensating controls into place, but they are doing it on an individual basis — state by state, county by county,” said Ryan Macias, an election and security expert who advises federal, state and local officials.
Aware of the risks, many election officials require back-up measures, such as paper copies of voter lists at polling locations. Election officials and experts note that one advantage of national testing standards for voting machines is the ability to assure voters that they have been properly scrutinized.
Two efforts are underway that seek to address the lack of uniform testing standards for electronic pollbooks. The Election Assistance Commission partnered with the nonprofit Center for Internet Security to test pollbooks and other nonvoting machine technology. But the federal agency began working on its pilot testing program in late 2021, about the same time the center announced results of the first phase of its own project.
It’s not clear why the two groups went their separate ways and what will happen next. A spokesman for the center, Jay Billington, said the group is “close to concluding the pilot” and expects to provide an update soon.
Thomas Hicks, chair of the commission, said the agency is making progress on its own pilot program, but that it was unlikely testing standards could be in place before the 2024 election.
“But this is why we move forward," he said. "In 2026, there will be another federal election, and in 2028 another.”
Hicks said he welcomed the work done by the center and thought having more than one testing program could allow states to pick the best option for them.
Experts said having national testing standards would go a long way to reducing costs of the systems and lessen the burden on state and local election officials to navigate security on their own. Companies that make the equipment have expressed support for the effort.
During a November 2021 panel hosted by the commission to discuss its pilot project, representatives from testing laboratories said they had evaluated 76 different pollbooks by about a dozen manufacturers over the past three years. Agency officials noted the stakes were high.
“Real or perceived attacks on our voting systems can threaten voter confidence,” one commissioner, Don Palmer, said during the panel. “So that’s one reason why we think as much testing as possible is a good thing.”
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A Wisconsin election commissioner bragged about low turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods during last year’s elections. Weeks later, an audio recording surfaced that showed then-President Donald Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team laughing behind closed doors about efforts to reach Black voters in 2020.
Many people who voted this past week in the state's primary election said they had long felt targeted by Republicans. The difference now is the public display of strategies that at best ignore the priorities of Black voters and at worst actively look to keep them from voting.
“It’s a plan that they devised and carried out with quite a lot of precision,” said lifelong Milwaukee resident Dewayne Walls, 63. “It’s a repeatable pattern that’s going to continue to happen over and over as long as they have that plausible deniability and as long as they have the power in Madison” — the state capital.
Walls and other Black voters said they are tired of the countless hurdles that disproportionately try to keep them from being heard at the ballot box. Voters said their experiences with the GOP have been as voices to silence, not to win over.
“The Republican Party needs a lot of work. All of them need to actually step into our shoes, go in our neighborhoods, work our jobs, do the things that we’re doing on a daily basis and see how they feel about what’s going on once they experience it,” said Valeria Gray, 59.
She described the relationship between Milwaukee and much of the rest of the state as one divided by race.
"It doesn’t look like it’s gonna ever go anywhere,” she said.
Voting rights advocates for years have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Many such policies centered on the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, home to nearly 70% of Wisconsin’s Black population.
Spindell later said his email was meant to convey the steps Republicans took to counter Democratic messaging in the city.
The Associated Press then obtained an audio recording of a meeting in which the head of Trump’s 2020 Wisconsin campaign team talked with staff about their efforts to reach Black voters: "We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” the campaign official said to laughter.
Dwayne Morgan, 59, called it “the same old, same old” for the GOP in Milwaukee. “They’re trying to get us not to vote. They’re trying to wipe away the history,” he said.
Republican-drawn legislative maps adopted last year dilute Milwaukee’s influence and nearly guarantee a Republican majority in the Legislature. That's despite statewide races routinely being decided by narrow margins and Democrats winning the major statewide offices, including for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted strict voter ID laws in 2011 under then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Since his first term began in 2019, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed more than a dozen GOP-backed bills that would make it harder to vote. Those include ID requirements for older and disabled voters who are indefinitely confined, limits on when and where absentee ballots could be collected, and prohibiting election officials from filling out missing voter information.
Nonetheless, Republicans have prevailed in the courts, using lawsuits to outlaw ballot drop boxes and deny election clerks the ability to fill in missing information on the envelopes containing mail ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which is at stake in this year's election, has routinely ruled in favor of Republicans on consequential voting decisions.
That adds to a host of reasons Black voters in Milwaukee have increasingly felt as if their votes don’t matter. The city has some of the worst racial disparities nationwide in health care, education, wealth and incarceration.
Low-income residents, who are disproportionately Black, already struggle to meet basic needs. Confusion over new election rules or limited options for when and where they can vote further discourage voting, said the Rev. Greg Lewis, founder of Souls to the Polls Milwaukee.
“Suppression is not just a few things,” he said. “It’s not just, not being able to vote without IDs. It’s not just, not being able to take your ballots to the drop box. It’s not just language barriers. It’s all those things together.”
For Barbara Bryant, 76, “all the extra steps” were the biggest barrier to voting. But she wasn’t going to be deterred from participating in this month's primary. This past week, amid a snowstorm, a poll worker helped her from her car and into an early voting location.
Bryant said she has preferred voting early in recent years so poll workers have time to explain any new rules, but she has seen inaccessible voting sites and the removal of drop boxes discourage other older adults from voting.
Wisconsin Republicans told the AP they have been trying for a decade to make inroads with Black and Latino voters in Milwaukee.
The state party opened its first office in downtown Milwaukee in 2019, specifically with the goal of reaching out to Black voters. The focus is on engaging them in conversation, rather than meeting typical campaign metrics such as knocking on a certain number of doors, said Mark Jefferson, the state GOP executive director.
He said the party is not trying to suppress votes, but to chip away at the support for Democrats in those communities.
“People are listening when they haven’t before,” Jefferson said. “I think we’ve learned a lot. I think we are cutting into Democrats’ margins, albeit faster currently in the Latino community and the Hispanic communities. But we’re also cutting into margins on the north side of Milwaukee, as well. And that’s because we are more in touch than we were.”
Angela Lang, executive director of Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing Communities, wasn’t worried about Republicans gaining a foothold with Black voters. She said the GOP’s priorities are fundamentally at odds with what most Black voters in Milwaukee want.
But Lang said she was concerned about the precedent that could be set by Republicans so openly talking about strategies to lower turnout.
“It’s incredibly dangerous, because when one starts, then people just feel more emboldened,” she said.
Several Black votes interviewed at the polls said they had seen little activity from Republicans in the city and described the GOP outreach center as more of a showpiece for the party.
“I don’t think they ever come down here to try to reach us at all," said voter Damario Wright, 36. “I mean, you barely see a Republican in Milwaukee — come on, now.”
___
Associated Press writer Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
___
Associated Press coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
___
Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter.
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So earlier this past week, Knox went somewhere more hospitable to his project — nearly 200 miles south of his home in the Phoenix exurb of Queen Creek to Cochise County. During last year's elections, the county's conservative-majority Board of Supervisors tried to count all ballots by hand — until a judge blocked that — and then refused to certify the results until a judge ordered them to do so.
“Here, it's a little bit easier to be heard by the board,” Knox said before the latest supervisors' meeting, where members discussed replacing the respected elections director, who resigned after objecting to the board's decisions.
Trump last year backed a slate of candidates for top state election positions in Arizona and elsewhere who parroted his lie about losing the 2020 presidential election due to voter fraud. Every one of those candidates lost in the battleground states that typically decide the presidency. But the election conspiracy movement maintains a firm hold in beet-red rural spots such as Cochise County, a swath of the Sonoran Desert dotted with ranches, small towns and U.S.-Mexico border communities that encompasses an area larger than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined.
The county's respected, nonpartisan elections director, Lisa Marra, who had opposed the board's voting moves, recently resigned after five years in the job. The two Republicans on the three-member board are seeking to replace her with the elected county recorder, David Stevens, another Republican.
Stevens is a friend of former GOP state Rep. Mark Finchem, who attended Trump's rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the Capitol riot and who ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, Arizona's top election post. Finchem had said he would not have certified President Joe Biden's 2020 win in Arizona.
Stevens was prepared to oversee Cochise County's hand count when Marra objected last year, and only stopped once a judge ruled that it violated state law. Stevens has appealed that ruling and recently joined a nonprofit founded by Finchem to focus on election “integrity.”
In Arizona, elected recorders such as Stevens already play a part in elections. They register voters, distribute mail ballots and verify signatures on the ones sent back, while the nonpartisan election director handles the counting. Stevens said he has always been a fair broker in elections and that in 2020, he spoke more to Democratic groups about voting than Republican ones.
Still, many residents are furious at Stevens' new role.
“Recorder Stevens has proven he's part of the crazy conspiracy crowd,” said Jennifer Druckman, a retiree who was one of dozens who spoke out against Stevens getting expanded responsibilities to oversee elections in the county.
Cochise is staunchly conservative — Trump won the county by 20 percentage points in 2020 even as Biden took the state. But the backlash to the election chaos has been palpable.
Activists are circulating petitions to recall Supervisor Tom Crosby, one of the two Republicans who voted for the hand count in October. Crosby also refused to certify the county's vote tallies as a way to stop the state from finalizing election results in December after Democrat Katie Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake for governor.
In an interview after this past week's meeting, Crosby scoffed at speakers' claims that he represents a threat to democracy.
“The ‘Big Lie’ is that checking voting machines is subverting democracy,” Crosby said. “My constituents feel like, if we can't check ‘em, we don’t want 'em.”
Election officials, including in Cochise County, check the accuracy of their machines by comparing their tabulations with paper ballot receipts, but Crosby said he still had broader suspicions. Crosby also dismissed the recall effort.
“If it's leftists bashing me or patriots saying I'm wonderful, the message is the same,” he said.
But not everyone upset at Crosby is a leftist. Greg Lamberth, a retired engineer and lifelong Republican, is one of the people circulating petitions to recall the supervisor.
“I don't see Mr. Crosby as acting in a way that gives us a functional government in Cochise County,” Lamberth said in an interview, noting the county has already spent more than $100,000 in legal fees related to its election adventures.
A former Marine, Lamberth is also disappointed in Stevens, a onetime military information technology specialist.
“He knows damn well that a hand count is less accurate than a machine count,” Lamberth said.
That's why election officials decades ago largely turned away from hand counts and used tabulators to tally up ballots. Trump and his allies have attacked those devices, making unsupported allegations they were rigged against him in 2020, sometimes insinuating that foreign powers such as Venezuela were behind it. Those allegations triggered pushes for hand counts in a few rural counties in Nevada and New Mexico.
Stevens said in an interview that last October, a small group of conservative citizens approached him and asked whether the county could tally all ballots by hand rather than rely on machines. Stevens said he told them no — it was too close to the election to change procedure.
But Stevens suggested the county conduct a parallel hand count to check the machines' accuracy. Other election officials were alarmed, warning it could fan misinformation about the true tally in statewide races. A judge ruled the county didn't have discretion to pursue a full hand count; the county is appealing.
Stevens stressed that none of this was his idea or that of the supervisors.
“All this comes from the grassroots,” he said in an interview in his office in the county building, where a pockmarked target from a shooting range hung from the wall and assembled Lego Star Wars sets sat on his coffee table.
While Stevens knocked down some prominent Arizona election conspiracy theories, saying most were a product of people not understanding the complexity of the elections process, he said he didn't want to dismiss the value of a hand count.
“I try not to have preconceived notions — let's find out,” Stevens said.
Elisabeth Tyndall, the chairwoman of the county's Democratic Party, said the problem is that Cochise's Republican power structure simply cannot say “no” to its base.
“We have had Republican leadership pretty much forever,” Tyndall said. “They haven't held their fellow Republicans accountable for nonsense.”
Despite their overwhelming numerical advantages at the ballot box, many Cochise Republicans still see themselves as an aggrieved minority that needs to get more aggressive.
Bob McCormick, 82, a retired real estate agent, was a member of the small group that initially met with Stevens. He said their numbers are now more than 100.
Still, McCormick knew as he waited to enter the supervisors meeting that he was outnumbered by angry Democrats wanting to vent at the Republican supervisors and Stevens.
“For every 10 of them, one of us shows up,” McCormick said of Democrats. “We really don't fight. Until we change the whole system, we're going to be in trouble.”
___
Associated Press coverage of democracy receives support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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3 GOP states pull out of effort to thwart voter fraud
By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY and JIM SALTER
22 mins ago
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Three Republican-led states on Monday pulled out of a bipartisan effort among states to ensure accurate voter lists, undermining a system with a demonstrated record of combating voter fraud.
The moves, encouraged by former President Donald Trump, are the latest indication of how conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential outcome continue to ripple throughout the Republican Party and upend long-established traditions in how the country administers elections.
Chief election officials in Florida, Missouri and West Virginia notified the Electronic Registration Information Center, more commonly known as ERIC, that they would depart the voluntary program, which has long been comprised of both Republican-led and Democratic-led states. They join Louisiana, which left last year, and Alabama, which previously announced plans to withdraw this year.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, in a letter to member states Monday, also threatened to withdraw. That came just weeks after the Republican defended the system, telling reporters it was “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have.”
Florida and its 14.4 million registered voters pose a considerable loss for the data-sharing group, which relies heavily on member states to produce reports on voters who may have died or those who have moved to another state. Its reports also help states identify and ultimately prosecute people who vote in multiple states.
The system has been credited in Maryland with identifying some 66,000 potentially deceased voters and 778,000 people who may have moved out of state since 2013. In Georgia, officials said nearly 100,000 voters no longer eligible to vote in the state had been removed based on data provided by ERIC.
Yet the effort to improve election integrity and thwart voter fraud — which Republican lawmakers and local officials commonly cite as priorities — has become a target of suspicion after a series of online posts early last year questioning its funding and purpose. One conspiracy involves billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who has long been a target of conspiracy theories, and claims that he funded the voter data-sharing system.
While the system received initial funding from the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts, that money was separate from funding provided to Pew by a Soros-affiliated organization that went to an unrelated effort, said ERIC’s executive director, Shane Hamlin. The effort has since been funded through annual dues by member states.
On Monday, Hamlin said in a statement that ERIC will “continue our work on behalf of our remaining member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said in an interview that he decided to leave after concluding that changes he had been advocating for would not be made and that it was unlikely more states surrounding his would join the effort. Among the changes he sought was dropping a requirement for member states to send mailings to eligible but unregistered voters and removing what he described as partisan influences from the program.
“I’m not against working with other states, but it has to be done in a way that is well done and that the people in the state can trust in it,” Ashcroft said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I can’t imagine ERIC will get to that point.”
Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, said state officials had “lost confidence in ERIC." West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner expressed similar frustrations, adding he did not expect the departure from the program to affect his state’s ability to maintain accurate voter rolls.
Trump also weighed in Monday on his social media platform, calling on all Republican-led states to “immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up.”
With no national voter registration clearinghouse, ERIC is the only data-sharing program among states. It was started in 2012 by seven states and was bipartisan from the beginning, with four of the founding states led by Republicans. After the states officially depart, participation will drop to 28 states and the District of Columbia.
The departures have frustrated state election officials involved in the effort and have demonstrated how deeply election conspiracies have spread throughout the Republican Party.
“Election officials who pull out of ERIC are primarily harming their own state’s ability to keep their voter list accurate,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a statement Monday to the AP. “It’s odd and disturbing to me that any official would choose validating misinformation over being part of a collaborative that has the sole and well-established purpose of improving the integrity of our elections.”
Brad Ashwell, Florida director of the advocacy group All Voting is Local, said the governor was “caving to the interests of conspiracy theorists” with the decision to leave ERIC.
“This is supposed to be the party of election integrity, and this is the best tool that they have to do that,” Ashwell said.
Not all Republican-led states had been reevaluating their participation in the program. In a recent survey by the AP, election offices in 23 states and the District of Columbia said they had no intention of leaving, including eight led or controlled by Republicans. At the time, that included Ohio.
In response to the survey, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, called ERIC an “effective tool for ensuring the integrity” of his state's voter rolls. Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said he recently appealed to representatives from three other Republican-led states to join the system.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Texas have introduced legislation that, if passed and signed into law, would require the state to leave the system. In Oklahoma, proposed legislation would prohibit the state from joining.
In California, Kansas and New Hampshire, lawmakers have introduced bills that would enable their states to join it, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks voting legislation in the states. New York is another high-population state that is not currently a member.
___
Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this report.
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Nevada Republicans Challenge Law Protecting Election Officials From Harassment
July 5, 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday, June 29, Sigal Chattah — a prominent Nevada Republican with “significant ties” to the conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election — filed a lawsuit
on behalf of four Nevadans challenging the state’s recently enacted law
designed to protect election officials from intimidation, harassment
and election interference.
Enacted in late May, in response to alarmingly high rates of threats to election officials, Election Worker Protection Law, or Senate Bill 406, creates new offenses to protect election officials from intimidation and election interference.
The new law states that it is illegal for anyone to “use or threaten
or attempt to use any force, intimidation, coercion, violence, restraint
or undue influence with the intent to: (a) Interfere with the
performance of the duties of any elections official relating to an
election; or (b) Retaliate against any elections official for performing
duties relating to an election.” Additionally, S.B. 406 prohibits the
dissemination of “any personal identifying information or sensitive
information of an elections official without the consent of the
elections official.”
The lawsuit challenging the Election Worker Protection Law argues
that S.B. 406’s protections for election workers are overbroad and
therefore violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs also argue that
S.B. 406 violates their right to due process under the 14th Amendment
and assert that they are “entitled to engage in conduct without criminal
prosecution of basic First Amendment freedoms under a statute that
should avoid chilling the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
Additionally, the lawsuit argues that the S.B. 406’s “arbitrary
inclusion of the terms ‘intimidation’ and ‘undue influence’ interferes
with Plaintiffs’ rights and liberties” under the Nevada Constitution.
Finally, the plaintiffs allege that the term “election official” is “so
opaque and uncertain, that Plaintiffs and others similarly situat[ed]
cannot determine who an election official is and who is protected under
SB 406.” The plaintiffs request that the defendants be prohibited from
enforcing S.B. 406.
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ATLANTA (AP) — They were blamed for long lines in Los Angeles during California’s 2020 presidential primary, triggered check-in delays in Columbus, Ohio, a few months later and were at the center of former President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to protest in Detroit during last November's midterms.
High-profile problems involving electronic pollbooks have opened the door for those peddling election conspiracies and underscore the critical role the technology plays in whether voting runs smoothly. Russia and Iran already have demonstrated interest in accessing the systems.
Despite their importance and potential vulnerabilities, national standards for the security and reliability of electronic pollbooks do not exist and efforts underway to develop them may not be ready or widely adopted in time for the 2024 presidential election.
“We have a trust issue in elections. The more we can say there are standards that equipment must be tested to, the better,” said Larry Norden, an election security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s like a seal of approval that really doesn’t exist right now.”
Poll workers use electronic pollbooks to check in voters. They typically are a tablet or laptop computer that accesses an electronic list of registered voters with names, addresses and precinct information, with some doing so through an internet connection.
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Testing standards and a certification program for voting machines have been in effect for years, a process overseen by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. While compliance is voluntary, most states will use at least some aspect of the federal process to ensure their voting and ballot-counting machines are secure and functioning properly.
But there is a much wider system of technology that supports U.S. elections beyond the devices used to scan and tally votes — from electronic pollbooks to voter registration databases and systems used to report unofficial election results to the public. Their use has been expanding rapidly in recent years.
Nearly one-third of all voting jurisdictions in the U.S. used electronic pollbooks in 2020, compared with about 18% four years earlier, according to data collected by Election Assistance Commission.
The systems come with unique security challenges.
In 2016, Russian hackers scanned state voter registration systems looking for vulnerabilities and even accessed the voter registration database in Illinois, although an investigation later determined no voter data was manipulated. In 2020, Iranian hackers obtained confidential voter data and used it to send misleading emails to voters, seeking to spread misinformation and influence the election.
Experts say the systems could be prime targets again for those seeking to disrupt the voting process and sow chaos around U.S. elections. Gaining access to a voter registration database, for example, could allow someone to delete voters from the rolls. When people show up to vote, they are told they are not on the list.
Although those voters would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot that eventually could count, widespread problems with the voter registration database would trigger questions about a process that already has suffered a loss in public confidence following a sustained campaign by Trump and his allies to discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election. There is no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting equipment in 2020, backed up by exhaustive reviews in states lost by Trump.
In Detroit last November, a few polling locations had a brief issue checking in voters related to a data error that was quickly identified and resolved. Trump seized on the early reports, calling the situation in Detroit “REALLY BAD” in a social media post and urging people to “Protest, Protest, Protest!”
Unlike voting machines that are not directly connected to the internet, many electronic pollbook systems are connected by design. Some are quite sophisticated.
In counties that have put in place a vote center model, where registered voters can cast a ballot at any polling place, electronic pollbooks must be able to communicate with each other and with a central system. That's to ensure voters are not able to cast ballots at multiple locations or vote in-person after returning a mail ballot.
While that can present significant security challenges, scrutiny for the pollbook systems is not as consistent as with voting machines.
The lack of national standards has left state and local election officials on their own. For the 2020 election, 15 states, including Arizona, Florida and Nevada, did not require any type of electronic pollbook testing or certification, according to federal data.
States and even some counties are often testing their pollbook systems in isolation and results are not routinely shared — an information gap that could be addressed with a national testing program.
"Having that type of knowledge allows them to put compensating controls into place, but they are doing it on an individual basis — state by state, county by county,” said Ryan Macias, an election and security expert who advises federal, state and local officials.
Aware of the risks, many election officials require back-up measures, such as paper copies of voter lists at polling locations. Election officials and experts note that one advantage of national testing standards for voting machines is the ability to assure voters that they have been properly scrutinized.
Two efforts are underway that seek to address the lack of uniform testing standards for electronic pollbooks. The Election Assistance Commission partnered with the nonprofit Center for Internet Security to test pollbooks and other nonvoting machine technology. But the federal agency began working on its pilot testing program in late 2021, about the same time the center announced results of the first phase of its own project.
It’s not clear why the two groups went their separate ways and what will happen next. A spokesman for the center, Jay Billington, said the group is “close to concluding the pilot” and expects to provide an update soon.
Thomas Hicks, chair of the commission, said the agency is making progress on its own pilot program, but that it was unlikely testing standards could be in place before the 2024 election.
“But this is why we move forward," he said. "In 2026, there will be another federal election, and in 2028 another.”
Hicks said he welcomed the work done by the center and thought having more than one testing program could allow states to pick the best option for them.
Experts said having national testing standards would go a long way to reducing costs of the systems and lessen the burden on state and local election officials to navigate security on their own. Companies that make the equipment have expressed support for the effort.
During a November 2021 panel hosted by the commission to discuss its pilot project, representatives from testing laboratories said they had evaluated 76 different pollbooks by about a dozen manufacturers over the past three years. Agency officials noted the stakes were high.
“Real or perceived attacks on our voting systems can threaten voter confidence,” one commissioner, Don Palmer, said during the panel. “So that’s one reason why we think as much testing as possible is a good thing.”
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MILWAUKEE (AP) — Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin's biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters.
A Wisconsin election commissioner bragged about low turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods during last year’s elections. Weeks later, an audio recording surfaced that showed then-President Donald Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team laughing behind closed doors about efforts to reach Black voters in 2020.
Many people who voted this past week in the state's primary election said they had long felt targeted by Republicans. The difference now is the public display of strategies that at best ignore the priorities of Black voters and at worst actively look to keep them from voting.
“It’s a plan that they devised and carried out with quite a lot of precision,” said lifelong Milwaukee resident Dewayne Walls, 63. “It’s a repeatable pattern that’s going to continue to happen over and over as long as they have that plausible deniability and as long as they have the power in Madison” — the state capital.
Walls and other Black voters said they are tired of the countless hurdles that disproportionately try to keep them from being heard at the ballot box. Voters said their experiences with the GOP have been as voices to silence, not to win over.
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“The Republican Party needs a lot of work. All of them need to actually step into our shoes, go in our neighborhoods, work our jobs, do the things that we’re doing on a daily basis and see how they feel about what’s going on once they experience it,” said Valeria Gray, 59.
She described the relationship between Milwaukee and much of the rest of the state as one divided by race.
"It doesn’t look like it’s gonna ever go anywhere,” she said.
Voting rights advocates for years have accused Wisconsin Republicans of pushing policies to suppress voters of color and lower-income voters. Many such policies centered on the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, home to nearly 70% of Wisconsin’s Black population.
Those claims were reinforced by an email sent to about 1,700 people in December from Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Election Commission. He said Republicans “can be especially proud” of depressed midterm voter turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Milwaukee, a heavily Democratic city.
Spindell later said his email was meant to convey the steps Republicans took to counter Democratic messaging in the city.
The Associated Press then obtained an audio recording of a meeting in which the head of Trump’s 2020 Wisconsin campaign team talked with staff about their efforts to reach Black voters: "We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” the campaign official said to laughter.
Dwayne Morgan, 59, called it “the same old, same old” for the GOP in Milwaukee. “They’re trying to get us not to vote. They’re trying to wipe away the history,” he said.
Republican-drawn legislative maps adopted last year dilute Milwaukee’s influence and nearly guarantee a Republican majority in the Legislature. That's despite statewide races routinely being decided by narrow margins and Democrats winning the major statewide offices, including for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted strict voter ID laws in 2011 under then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Since his first term began in 2019, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed more than a dozen GOP-backed bills that would make it harder to vote. Those include ID requirements for older and disabled voters who are indefinitely confined, limits on when and where absentee ballots could be collected, and prohibiting election officials from filling out missing voter information.
Nonetheless, Republicans have prevailed in the courts, using lawsuits to outlaw ballot drop boxes and deny election clerks the ability to fill in missing information on the envelopes containing mail ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which is at stake in this year's election, has routinely ruled in favor of Republicans on consequential voting decisions.
That adds to a host of reasons Black voters in Milwaukee have increasingly felt as if their votes don’t matter. The city has some of the worst racial disparities nationwide in health care, education, wealth and incarceration.
Low-income residents, who are disproportionately Black, already struggle to meet basic needs. Confusion over new election rules or limited options for when and where they can vote further discourage voting, said the Rev. Greg Lewis, founder of Souls to the Polls Milwaukee.
“Suppression is not just a few things,” he said. “It’s not just, not being able to vote without IDs. It’s not just, not being able to take your ballots to the drop box. It’s not just language barriers. It’s all those things together.”
For Barbara Bryant, 76, “all the extra steps” were the biggest barrier to voting. But she wasn’t going to be deterred from participating in this month's primary. This past week, amid a snowstorm, a poll worker helped her from her car and into an early voting location.
Bryant said she has preferred voting early in recent years so poll workers have time to explain any new rules, but she has seen inaccessible voting sites and the removal of drop boxes discourage other older adults from voting.
Wisconsin Republicans told the AP they have been trying for a decade to make inroads with Black and Latino voters in Milwaukee.
The state party opened its first office in downtown Milwaukee in 2019, specifically with the goal of reaching out to Black voters. The focus is on engaging them in conversation, rather than meeting typical campaign metrics such as knocking on a certain number of doors, said Mark Jefferson, the state GOP executive director.
He said the party is not trying to suppress votes, but to chip away at the support for Democrats in those communities.
“People are listening when they haven’t before,” Jefferson said. “I think we’ve learned a lot. I think we are cutting into Democrats’ margins, albeit faster currently in the Latino community and the Hispanic communities. But we’re also cutting into margins on the north side of Milwaukee, as well. And that’s because we are more in touch than we were.”
Angela Lang, executive director of Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing Communities, wasn’t worried about Republicans gaining a foothold with Black voters. She said the GOP’s priorities are fundamentally at odds with what most Black voters in Milwaukee want.
But Lang said she was concerned about the precedent that could be set by Republicans so openly talking about strategies to lower turnout.
“It’s incredibly dangerous, because when one starts, then people just feel more emboldened,” she said.
Several Black votes interviewed at the polls said they had seen little activity from Republicans in the city and described the GOP outreach center as more of a showpiece for the party.
“I don’t think they ever come down here to try to reach us at all," said voter Damario Wright, 36. “I mean, you barely see a Republican in Milwaukee — come on, now.”
___
Associated Press writer Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
___
Associated Press coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
___
Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter.
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BISBEE, Ariz. (AP) — James Knox was glad to get out of the big city.
Part of a network of activists who believe U.S. elections are unreliable, Knox has unsuccessfully tried to convince supervisors in Maricopa County, Arizona's most populous county and home to Phoenix, that they should throw out elections that Republicans lost and get rid of voting machines.
So earlier this past week, Knox went somewhere more hospitable to his project — nearly 200 miles south of his home in the Phoenix exurb of Queen Creek to Cochise County. During last year's elections, the county's conservative-majority Board of Supervisors tried to count all ballots by hand — until a judge blocked that — and then refused to certify the results until a judge ordered them to do so.
“Here, it's a little bit easier to be heard by the board,” Knox said before the latest supervisors' meeting, where members discussed replacing the respected elections director, who resigned after objecting to the board's decisions.
Last year was a tough one for the election denial movement in Arizona. Its candidates for U.S. Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general all lost. But it's still thriving in rural Cochise County, a vivid example of how paranoia about elections fanned by former President Donald Trump maintains a stubborn grip in rural parts of the country.
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Trump last year backed a slate of candidates for top state election positions in Arizona and elsewhere who parroted his lie about losing the 2020 presidential election due to voter fraud. Every one of those candidates lost in the battleground states that typically decide the presidency. But the election conspiracy movement maintains a firm hold in beet-red rural spots such as Cochise County, a swath of the Sonoran Desert dotted with ranches, small towns and U.S.-Mexico border communities that encompasses an area larger than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined.
The county's respected, nonpartisan elections director, Lisa Marra, who had opposed the board's voting moves, recently resigned after five years in the job. The two Republicans on the three-member board are seeking to replace her with the elected county recorder, David Stevens, another Republican.
Stevens is a friend of former GOP state Rep. Mark Finchem, who attended Trump's rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the Capitol riot and who ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, Arizona's top election post. Finchem had said he would not have certified President Joe Biden's 2020 win in Arizona.
Stevens was prepared to oversee Cochise County's hand count when Marra objected last year, and only stopped once a judge ruled that it violated state law. Stevens has appealed that ruling and recently joined a nonprofit founded by Finchem to focus on election “integrity.”
In Arizona, elected recorders such as Stevens already play a part in elections. They register voters, distribute mail ballots and verify signatures on the ones sent back, while the nonpartisan election director handles the counting. Stevens said he has always been a fair broker in elections and that in 2020, he spoke more to Democratic groups about voting than Republican ones.
Still, many residents are furious at Stevens' new role.
“Recorder Stevens has proven he's part of the crazy conspiracy crowd,” said Jennifer Druckman, a retiree who was one of dozens who spoke out against Stevens getting expanded responsibilities to oversee elections in the county.
Cochise is staunchly conservative — Trump won the county by 20 percentage points in 2020 even as Biden took the state. But the backlash to the election chaos has been palpable.
Activists are circulating petitions to recall Supervisor Tom Crosby, one of the two Republicans who voted for the hand count in October. Crosby also refused to certify the county's vote tallies as a way to stop the state from finalizing election results in December after Democrat Katie Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake for governor.
After a judge ordered the Cochise County board to certify the election, Crosby skipped the next meeting, leaving fellow Republican Peggy Judd and Democrat Ann English to take the vote. It was a dramatic example of how the once-routine task of formalizing election results became charged with politics as Trump allies in scattered rural counties in the West targeted certification as a way to disrupt elections.
In an interview after this past week's meeting, Crosby scoffed at speakers' claims that he represents a threat to democracy.
“The ‘Big Lie’ is that checking voting machines is subverting democracy,” Crosby said. “My constituents feel like, if we can't check ‘em, we don’t want 'em.”
Election officials, including in Cochise County, check the accuracy of their machines by comparing their tabulations with paper ballot receipts, but Crosby said he still had broader suspicions. Crosby also dismissed the recall effort.
“If it's leftists bashing me or patriots saying I'm wonderful, the message is the same,” he said.
But not everyone upset at Crosby is a leftist. Greg Lamberth, a retired engineer and lifelong Republican, is one of the people circulating petitions to recall the supervisor.
“I don't see Mr. Crosby as acting in a way that gives us a functional government in Cochise County,” Lamberth said in an interview, noting the county has already spent more than $100,000 in legal fees related to its election adventures.
A former Marine, Lamberth is also disappointed in Stevens, a onetime military information technology specialist.
“He knows damn well that a hand count is less accurate than a machine count,” Lamberth said.
That's why election officials decades ago largely turned away from hand counts and used tabulators to tally up ballots. Trump and his allies have attacked those devices, making unsupported allegations they were rigged against him in 2020, sometimes insinuating that foreign powers such as Venezuela were behind it. Those allegations triggered pushes for hand counts in a few rural counties in Nevada and New Mexico.
Stevens said in an interview that last October, a small group of conservative citizens approached him and asked whether the county could tally all ballots by hand rather than rely on machines. Stevens said he told them no — it was too close to the election to change procedure.
But Stevens suggested the county conduct a parallel hand count to check the machines' accuracy. Other election officials were alarmed, warning it could fan misinformation about the true tally in statewide races. A judge ruled the county didn't have discretion to pursue a full hand count; the county is appealing.
Stevens stressed that none of this was his idea or that of the supervisors.
“All this comes from the grassroots,” he said in an interview in his office in the county building, where a pockmarked target from a shooting range hung from the wall and assembled Lego Star Wars sets sat on his coffee table.
While Stevens knocked down some prominent Arizona election conspiracy theories, saying most were a product of people not understanding the complexity of the elections process, he said he didn't want to dismiss the value of a hand count.
“I try not to have preconceived notions — let's find out,” Stevens said.
Elisabeth Tyndall, the chairwoman of the county's Democratic Party, said the problem is that Cochise's Republican power structure simply cannot say “no” to its base.
“We have had Republican leadership pretty much forever,” Tyndall said. “They haven't held their fellow Republicans accountable for nonsense.”
Despite their overwhelming numerical advantages at the ballot box, many Cochise Republicans still see themselves as an aggrieved minority that needs to get more aggressive.
Bob McCormick, 82, a retired real estate agent, was a member of the small group that initially met with Stevens. He said their numbers are now more than 100.
Still, McCormick knew as he waited to enter the supervisors meeting that he was outnumbered by angry Democrats wanting to vent at the Republican supervisors and Stevens.
“For every 10 of them, one of us shows up,” McCormick said of Democrats. “We really don't fight. Until we change the whole system, we're going to be in trouble.”
___
Associated Press coverage of democracy receives support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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ST. LOUIS (AP) — Three Republican-led states on Monday pulled out of a bipartisan effort among states to ensure accurate voter lists, undermining a system with a demonstrated record of combating voter fraud.
The moves, encouraged by former President Donald Trump, are the latest indication of how conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential outcome continue to ripple throughout the Republican Party and upend long-established traditions in how the country administers elections.
Chief election officials in Florida, Missouri and West Virginia notified the Electronic Registration Information Center, more commonly known as ERIC, that they would depart the voluntary program, which has long been comprised of both Republican-led and Democratic-led states. They join Louisiana, which left last year, and Alabama, which previously announced plans to withdraw this year.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, in a letter to member states Monday, also threatened to withdraw. That came just weeks after the Republican defended the system, telling reporters it was “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have.”
Florida and its 14.4 million registered voters pose a considerable loss for the data-sharing group, which relies heavily on member states to produce reports on voters who may have died or those who have moved to another state. Its reports also help states identify and ultimately prosecute people who vote in multiple states.
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The system has been credited in Maryland with identifying some 66,000 potentially deceased voters and 778,000 people who may have moved out of state since 2013. In Georgia, officials said nearly 100,000 voters no longer eligible to vote in the state had been removed based on data provided by ERIC.
Yet the effort to improve election integrity and thwart voter fraud — which Republican lawmakers and local officials commonly cite as priorities — has become a target of suspicion after a series of online posts early last year questioning its funding and purpose. One conspiracy involves billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who has long been a target of conspiracy theories, and claims that he funded the voter data-sharing system.
While the system received initial funding from the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts, that money was separate from funding provided to Pew by a Soros-affiliated organization that went to an unrelated effort, said ERIC’s executive director, Shane Hamlin. The effort has since been funded through annual dues by member states.
On Monday, Hamlin said in a statement that ERIC will “continue our work on behalf of our remaining member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said in an interview that he decided to leave after concluding that changes he had been advocating for would not be made and that it was unlikely more states surrounding his would join the effort. Among the changes he sought was dropping a requirement for member states to send mailings to eligible but unregistered voters and removing what he described as partisan influences from the program.
“I’m not against working with other states, but it has to be done in a way that is well done and that the people in the state can trust in it,” Ashcroft said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I can’t imagine ERIC will get to that point.”
Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, said state officials had “lost confidence in ERIC." West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner expressed similar frustrations, adding he did not expect the departure from the program to affect his state’s ability to maintain accurate voter rolls.
Trump also weighed in Monday on his social media platform, calling on all Republican-led states to “immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up.”
With no national voter registration clearinghouse, ERIC is the only data-sharing program among states. It was started in 2012 by seven states and was bipartisan from the beginning, with four of the founding states led by Republicans. After the states officially depart, participation will drop to 28 states and the District of Columbia.
The departures have frustrated state election officials involved in the effort and have demonstrated how deeply election conspiracies have spread throughout the Republican Party.
“Election officials who pull out of ERIC are primarily harming their own state’s ability to keep their voter list accurate,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a statement Monday to the AP. “It’s odd and disturbing to me that any official would choose validating misinformation over being part of a collaborative that has the sole and well-established purpose of improving the integrity of our elections.”
Brad Ashwell, Florida director of the advocacy group All Voting is Local, said the governor was “caving to the interests of conspiracy theorists” with the decision to leave ERIC.
“This is supposed to be the party of election integrity, and this is the best tool that they have to do that,” Ashwell said.
Not all Republican-led states had been reevaluating their participation in the program. In a recent survey by the AP, election offices in 23 states and the District of Columbia said they had no intention of leaving, including eight led or controlled by Republicans. At the time, that included Ohio.
In response to the survey, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, called ERIC an “effective tool for ensuring the integrity” of his state's voter rolls. Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said he recently appealed to representatives from three other Republican-led states to join the system.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Texas have introduced legislation that, if passed and signed into law, would require the state to leave the system. In Oklahoma, proposed legislation would prohibit the state from joining.
In California, Kansas and New Hampshire, lawmakers have introduced bills that would enable their states to join it, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks voting legislation in the states. New York is another high-population state that is not currently a member.
___
Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this report.
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Nevada Republicans Challenge Law Protecting Election Officials From Harassment
July 5, 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday, June 29, Sigal Chattah — a prominent Nevada Republican with “significant ties” to the conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election — filed a lawsuit on behalf of four Nevadans challenging the state’s recently enacted law designed to protect election officials from intimidation, harassment and election interference.
Enacted in late May, in response to alarmingly high rates of threats to election officials, Election Worker Protection Law, or Senate Bill 406, creates new offenses to protect election officials from intimidation and election interference.
The new law states that it is illegal for anyone to “use or threaten or attempt to use any force, intimidation, coercion, violence, restraint or undue influence with the intent to: (a) Interfere with the performance of the duties of any elections official relating to an election; or (b) Retaliate against any elections official for performing duties relating to an election.” Additionally, S.B. 406 prohibits the dissemination of “any personal identifying information or sensitive information of an elections official without the consent of the elections official.”
The lawsuit challenging the Election Worker Protection Law argues that S.B. 406’s protections for election workers are overbroad and therefore violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs also argue that S.B. 406 violates their right to due process under the 14th Amendment and assert that they are “entitled to engage in conduct without criminal prosecution of basic First Amendment freedoms under a statute that should avoid chilling the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
Additionally, the lawsuit argues that the S.B. 406’s “arbitrary inclusion of the terms ‘intimidation’ and ‘undue influence’ interferes with Plaintiffs’ rights and liberties” under the Nevada Constitution. Finally, the plaintiffs allege that the term “election official” is “so opaque and uncertain, that Plaintiffs and others similarly situat[ed] cannot determine who an election official is and who is protected under SB 406.” The plaintiffs request that the defendants be prohibited from enforcing S.B. 406.
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it already did. scotus ruled them unconstitutional and to redraw including a 2nd black district. it was a surprise ruling.....
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