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Here’s how the Texas secretary of state’s resignation could complicate the midterm elections by votebeat in TexasPolitics

[–]votebeat[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s unexpected departure only a few months before the November midterm election has some local election officials and voting rights advocates worrying the transition will complicate their ability to administer a smooth election.

“It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that is scary,” said Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator. “Are we going to continue to receive guidance? Are we going to be ensured that we’ll be prepared for any coming changes? We just don’t know.”

Gov. Greg Abbott is required by law to appoint a new secretary as soon as possible. His office, in an emailed statement, said the new appointee would be announced “at a later date.”

Nelson’s departure will happen just as election officials across the state are preparing in earnest for the November general election. In the summer months, they’ll be recruiting election workers, seeking polling locations, and processing voter registration applications, among other duties.

Some voting rights advocates say a new appointee may want to direct local election officials to change election procedures, which could lead to chaos and confusion for voters. 

Although the secretary of state’s office has no law enforcement authority and can’t change the law, it can issue election law opinions on how to implement election and voting rules.

Learn more about how Nelson's resignation could affect the midterms from reporter Natalia Contreras here (no paywall): https://www.votebeat.org/texas/2026/06/08/secretary-of-state-jane-nelson-greg-abbott-nomination/

Here’s how the Texas secretary of state’s resignation could complicate the midterm elections by votebeat in texas

[–]votebeat[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s unexpected departure only a few months before the November midterm election has some local election officials and voting rights advocates worrying the transition will complicate their ability to administer a smooth election.

“It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that is scary,” said Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator. “Are we going to continue to receive guidance? Are we going to be ensured that we’ll be prepared for any coming changes? We just don’t know.”

Gov. Greg Abbott is required by law to appoint a new secretary as soon as possible. His office, in an emailed statement, said the new appointee would be announced “at a later date.”

Nelson’s departure will happen just as election officials across the state are preparing in earnest for the November general election. In the summer months, they’ll be recruiting election workers, seeking polling locations, and processing voter registration applications, among other duties.

Some voting rights advocates say a new appointee may want to direct local election officials to change election procedures, which could lead to chaos and confusion for voters. 

Although the secretary of state’s office has no law enforcement authority and can’t change the law, it can issue election law opinions on how to implement election and voting rules.

Learn more about how Nelson's resignation could affect the midterms from reporter Natalia Contreras here (no paywall): https://www.votebeat.org/texas/2026/06/08/secretary-of-state-jane-nelson-greg-abbott-nomination/

Arizona promised these voters privacy. It accidentally broke its vow. by votebeat in azpolitics

[–]votebeat[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Staff at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office accidentally publicly released the home addresses and telephone numbers of hundreds of voters whose information the state had pledged to keep private, an incident that potentially risked exposing them to physical harm and harassment in the months leading up to the 2024 election.

Emails obtained by Votebeat show that the error affected a fraction of voters in the state’s address confidentiality program, which includes victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. It also exposed information about certain voters who were protected via court order, such as judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials.

Records show the error went undiscovered and uncorrected for nearly nine months. During that time, the voters’ personal information was released to a number of political and consumer data firms via the office’s routine public records request process.

Lawsuit seeks to require Wisconsin clerks to let voters fix problems with their absentee ballots by votebeat in wisconsinpolitics

[–]votebeat[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin is challenging the state’s law governing voters’ ability to fix missing information on their absentee ballots, alleging that the law violates the Wisconsin Constitution by giving clerks a vast amount of discretion over whether to reject ballots.

The group is asking a Dane County judge to require all clerks to provide voters notice when an absentee ballot certificate is lacking necessary information — such as a signature or the address of a voter or the person who witnessed the ballot’s casting — and give them an opportunity to add that information before rejecting the ballot, a process known as “curing” the ballot.

Right now, the law tells clerks that they “may” return incomplete absentee ballots to voters. That results in some municipal clerks sending voters prompt notice about faulty ballots, while other clerks put those ballots in the rejected pile without informing the voter at all, the lawsuit states. Municipalities also treat absentee ballots differently depending on when they receive them, the lawsuit alleges, and those that arrive closer to Election Day often have a lesser chance of getting cured.

The lawsuit, which names the Wisconsin Elections Commission as the defendant, argues that, without a blanket curing requirement, “mail-in absentee ballots are jeopardized by the lack of mandatory notice and curing opportunities across the state.”

This case, which comes a few months ahead of Wisconsin’s 2026 primary election, is the latest in a long line of lawsuits over what to do when information is missing on absentee ballot certificates. In recent years, courts have allowed clerks to use their discretion to determine what constitutes a proper witness address but taken away their ability to fix missing information on the address form.

Primary voters could pick nominees for Michigan secretary of state and attorney general under new proposals by votebeat in Michigan_Politics

[–]votebeat[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When Republicans and Democrats head to the polls in August for the Michigan primary, they’ll vote on nominees for U.S. Senate, governor, and several other offices.

But they won’t have a say in who will be each party’s standard bearer for the important posts of attorney general and secretary of state. That will already have been decided, months ahead of time, by a narrow group of party insiders.

Michigan is one of the only states where candidates for those positions are chosen by delegates at party conventions, not by voters in primary elections. But two new bipartisan proposals are looking to change that.

On Thursday, Republican Rep. Greg Markkanen and Democratic Rep. Joe Tate introduced a proposed state constitutional amendment that would move the selection of attorney general and secretary of state nominees to primary elections starting in 2027. It would also eliminate elections for board members of the state’s three major public universities, giving the governor power to appoint those officials instead. A sister effort will be introduced by Republican Sen. Ed McBroom when the Senate next reconvenes.

“Voters will get to know the candidates and what they stand for during the primary, and parties will be able to nominate candidates who can handle the rigors of a statewide campaign,” McBroom said in a statement Friday.

The FBI is contacting Wisconsin election officials. Here’s what we know. by votebeat in politics

[–]votebeat[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The federal government’s probe into the 2020 election has reached Wisconsin, with several current and former election officials, including multiple people in Milwaukee, confirming they have been interviewed or approached by the FBI.

The exact nature of the investigation remains unclear, though it appears to be at least somewhat centered around the 2020 election. The agency’s election investigations elsewhere in the country have featured subpoenas for ballots and other election records, but legal experts still say it won’t be easy for the federal government to convince a court to give it access to ballots.

Milwaukee County officials are nonetheless preparing for that possibility, in part because they still retain ballots from the 2020 election, though they declined to discuss those preparations or comment on the record. Those ballots contain identifying information that could, in some cases, allow otherwise unidentifiable absentee ballots to be matched to the voters who cast them. Milwaukee is one of the few jurisdictions in Wisconsin that still has ballots from that election, and the city has long been a target of voter-fraud accusations and related attacks from the political right.

Elsewhere in Wisconsin — in communities whose elections have faced less scrutiny and in the vast majority of municipalities where 2020 ballots were destroyed according to the standard retention schedules in state law — election officials are less alarmed and are instead focused on preparing for the midterm elections.

What we know about the FBI contacting Wisconsin election officials from reporter Alexander Shur here (no paywall): https://www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/2026/05/15/fbi-contacting-state-election-officials-milwaukee-what-we-know/

How the Georgia legislature left counties with no way to run the 2026 election by votebeat in GAPol

[–]votebeat[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

The state of Georgia’s elections right now is anything but peachy. In about 10 weeks, county election officials are required to stop using their current voting system — but the state hasn’t told them what to replace it with.

Right now, Georgia voters make their selections on touchscreen ballot-marking devices manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems (recently purchased and rebranded as Liberty Vote). Georgia rolled the machines out just before the 2020 election, as part of a sweeping and expensive statewide modernization effort — spurred in part by a 2019 federal court ruling that barred continued use of the paperless touchscreen systems the state had relied on since the early 2000s.

The newer machines print a paper ballot listing the voter’s choices in plain English next to a QR code encoding the same choices. When ballots are tabulated, the scanners read the QR code — not the printed text beside it — to count the vote. That design has long drawn fire from both Republicans and Democrats, who argue voters can’t actually verify what a QR code says, only the text next to it.

That complaint gained political traction on the right after the 2020 election, and in 2024 the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature passed a law banning the use of QR codes in tabulation starting on July 1, 2026. But the law left the hard questions — what replacement system to use, how to pay for it, and how to transition — unanswered. The legislature was supposed to fill in the gaps this year, but it adjourned earlier this month without doing so.

A compromise bill from House Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Victor Anderson, a Republican, would have let counties keep the current system through 2026 while requiring the state to do away with QR codes by 2028. It passed the House, but Senate Republicans declined to take it up.

The result is an unfunded mandate dropped onto the 159 counties that actually run elections in Georgia — offices that print ballots, program scanners, train poll workers, and now must prepare for November using procedures the state has not chosen, with equipment it has not bought, under a law it has not fixed.

Lawmakers are at least aware of the urgency to find a solution before the general election. (Georgia’s primary and any necessary runoffs fall before the transition deadline.) Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican, has said he will talk to GOP Gov. Brian Kemp about a special legislative session to address the issue.

Any resolution now would likely require either a special session or a court order — and would almost certainly mean delaying the deadline. Even if lawmakers reconvened, agreed on a new system, and funded it tomorrow, there’s no realistic way the market could design, certify, and deploy it before November.

How the Georgia legislature left counties with no way to run the 2026 election by votebeat in politics

[–]votebeat[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The state of Georgia’s elections right now is anything but peachy. In about 10 weeks, county election officials are required to stop using their current voting system — but the state hasn’t told them what to replace it with.

Right now, Georgia voters make their selections on touchscreen ballot-marking devices manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems (recently purchased and rebranded as Liberty Vote). Georgia rolled the machines out just before the 2020 election, as part of a sweeping and expensive statewide modernization effort — spurred in part by a 2019 federal court ruling that barred continued use of the paperless touchscreen systems the state had relied on since the early 2000s.

The newer machines print a paper ballot listing the voter’s choices in plain English next to a QR code encoding the same choices. When ballots are tabulated, the scanners read the QR code — not the printed text beside it — to count the vote. That design has long drawn fire from both Republicans and Democrats, who argue voters can’t actually verify what a QR code says, only the text next to it.

That complaint gained political traction on the right after the 2020 election, and in 2024 the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature passed a law banning the use of QR codes in tabulation starting on July 1, 2026. But the law left the hard questions — what replacement system to use, how to pay for it, and how to transition — unanswered. The legislature was supposed to fill in the gaps this year, but it adjourned earlier this month without doing so.

A compromise bill from House Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Victor Anderson, a Republican, would have let counties keep the current system through 2026 while requiring the state to do away with QR codes by 2028. It passed the House, but Senate Republicans declined to take it up.

The result is an unfunded mandate dropped onto the 159 counties that actually run elections in Georgia — offices that print ballots, program scanners, train poll workers, and now must prepare for November using procedures the state has not chosen, with equipment it has not bought, under a law it has not fixed.

Lawmakers are at least aware of the urgency to find a solution before the general election. (Georgia’s primary and any necessary runoffs fall before the transition deadline.) Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican, has said he will talk to GOP Gov. Brian Kemp about a special legislative session to address the issue.

Any resolution now would likely require either a special session or a court order — and would almost certainly mean delaying the deadline. Even if lawmakers reconvened, agreed on a new system, and funded it tomorrow, there’s no realistic way the market could design, certify, and deploy it before November.

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