Two right-wing provocateurs have been charged with voting-fraud felonies in Minnesota.

James O'Keefe and Cam Higby are charged with attempting to obtain ballots for the state's 2026 primary by presenting themselves to poll workers as different people - including a dead person and someone who already had voted.

Plan was to mock a Minnesota voting law

O'Keefe and Higby said they were trying to demonstrate that it's easy to fraudulently get a ballot in Minnesota because the state allows another registered voter to vouch for them..

The vouching, however, is not for the voter's identity. It merely is for the voter's address - useful for someone who recently moved or may be living in a nursing home where they might not bother to get a new driver's license..

The person vouching must sign an oath and can be charged with perjury if they misrepresent the prospective voter.

Did not actually vote

Minnesota officials have said they recognize that O'Keefe and Higby were doing this as a publicity stunt, and they had no intent of actually voting.

They would not have succeeded anyway, as poll workers prevented them from obtaining ballots. They still were charged with unlawful voting, which is defined by Minnesota law as attempting to obtain a ballot by falsely claiming to be a registered voter and identity theft.

Had they actually voted, or vouched for each other's false identity, they could have been charged with additional felonies including perjury.

For more, read the Minnesota Public Radio article.

A former county clerk in Colorado has been convicted of tampering with her county's voting machines in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in which Joe Biden defeated then-president Donald Trump.

While Tina Peters was the Mesa County clerk, she provided illegally acquired credentials to a man, who used them to gain access to the machines. He then copied the machine's proprietary software and passwords.

Peters arranged to have the security cameras turned off while this was taking place.

Three months later, the stolen information showed up at an event for election deniers hosted by Trump ally Mike Lindell.

For more, read the Associated Press article.
Click here to read the Colorado indictment against Peters.

Two people have pleaded guilty to orchestrating a false robocall scam in Ohio in an attempt to influence the 2020 presidential election.

Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl were charged with targeting minority voters with the calls - threatening that if they voted by mail they would be tracked by law enforcement or that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would use their information to forcibly vaccinate them.

Minority voters tend to favor Democrats.

As part of their sentence they must spend 500 hours helping to register voters.

Burkman and Wohl also pleaded no contest to similar charges in Michigan and were sentenced to a year of probation.

They also settled a lawsuit over the robocalls for $50,000 and were fined $5 million by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Other fraud by Burkman and Wohl

Burkman and Wohl have a history of fraudulently influencing elections. They...

For more, read the Axios article.

A Colorado judge has barred two county election officials from involvement in the state's 2021 elections after compromising voting machines in their county.

According to the ruling, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley coordinated an effort to illegally copy secure voting machine software and publish passwords on right-wing forums.

The ruling lays out how the voting machines were compromised....

Colorado election officials said the breach destroyed the chain of custody for the machines, and they must be replaced at taxpayer expense.

The FBI is investigating the case, as is Colorado.

No other evidence of election fraud

While Peters did not dispute her role in attempting to compromise the voting machines, she previously had complained that the machines can be manipulated.

Other than Peters' own attempt, there is no evidence of any other breach of Colorado's voting system.

In a seemingly related incident, Knisley was arrested for allegedly entering the Clerk and Recorder’s office and trying to use Peters’ credentials to print documents. Knisley had been barred from returning to the office.

Peters and Knisley both are Republicans. Peters has participated in attempts to discredit the 2020 presidential election.

For more, read this Washington Post article and this Ars Technica article.

Click here to read the ruling.

On a phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, President Donald Trump demanded that he "find" an additional 11,780 votes for him.

Trump lost Georgia to President-Elect Joe Biden by 11,779 votes.

In the phone call Trump repeated claims about possible fraud that resulted in Biden's victory. There has yet to be any evidence presented to support any of the claims.

At one point, Trump threatened Raffensperger with criminal liability if he did not add enough votes to Trump's total overcome Biden's. He did not say what any actual offense might be.

Raffensperger rejected Trump's allegations in a similar way to his rejection of Trump's claim of an inaccurate vote count.

"Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is, the data you have is wrong"


Recording obtained by the Washington Post

For more, read the Washington Post story.

Click here for a transcript of the phone call.

President Donald Trump has fired the person in charge of election security who reported that the 2020 presidential election was correct and secure. Trump lost the election to Joe Biden.

Christopher Krebs was the director of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

A statement by the cybersecurity agency called the 2020 election "the most secure in American history."

Hand counts of paper ballots in close states confirmed results reported by voting machines. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," the statement said.

Click here to read the CISA statement regarding the security of the election.

For more, read the USA Today article.

California has more places to drop off ballots than the state anticipated. Problem is, they're unofficial.

They have been placed by the state's Republican Party. Though many are labeled "Official", they are illegal.

The Republican Party has been advertising the boxes on social media. They claim it is merely a use of ballot harvesting, which is legal in California.

California law, however, requires "harvested" ballots to be collected by a designated person, and there is no such person at these boxes. The boxes also don't comply with the state's security requirements to prevent ballots from being tampered with.

For more, read the Washington Post story.

Racist "magical Negro" robo-call from "Oprah" targets Stacey Abrams in Georgia governor's race.

Rep. Lee Zeldin has told his constituents to return their ballots a day late.

He did the same thing in 2016.

Zeldin's campaign sent a mailer telling voters to postmark their absentee ballots by Nov. 6. The actual deadline is Nov. 5. His opponent said the mailer targeted likely Democratic voters, such as college students.

This comes amid other complaints from voting rights groups regarding voter-suppression tactics by Republicans around the country.

Click here to read an analysis of voter-suppression laws this election cycle by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Republican pair apparently pose as communists to make Democratic donation.

In Georgia, 53,000 voter applications have been blocked because the the voter's name didn't exactly match the name on their ID.

The ballots were placed on hold by the office of the Georgia Secretary of State, which oversees elections. Brian Kemp, the Secretary of State, also is the Republican candidate for governor.

The mismatch could be a simple as a hyphen in a last name, and could be caused by a data-entry error. Many might not be aware that their registration was not processed.

Black voters are mostly affected

Nearly 70 percent of the applications were from black voters, who make up only 30 percent of Georgia's population.

Black voters overwhelmingly tend to vote for Democrats.

Update 2018-Nov-2: A federal judge has ruled that Georgia must make it easier for people who have had their registrations blocked to vote.

Update 2018-Nov-16: Kemp defeated Stacey Abrams in the gubernatorial election.

For more, read the Time story.

President Trump has been claiming that people voted illegally in the presidential election that he won. He now apparently has found someone.

Jeffrey Gerrish - Trump's nominee for deputy U.S. Trade Representative - "almost certainly" voted illegally, the New York Times reported.

Gerrish voted in November's presidential election in Virginia. Yet he had sold his Virginia home and bought one in Maryland in July - well outside the 30-day grace period Virginia provides.

Maryland was considered to be a sure win for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The vote in Virginia was expected to be much closer.

For more, read the New York Times story.