Election Integrity

The disciplinary trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark wrapped up on Thursday with the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary panel making a nonbinding preliminary determination that Clark was culpable on at least one of the two counts against him.

The second and final week of the disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, began to wind down on Wednesday with more testimony from operations security expert Harry Haury.

Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Chairwoman Gina Swoboda secured a favorable court ruling for her election integrity group, the Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), and will gain access to New Mexico voter roll data. U.S. District Court Judge James Browning in New Mexico made a ruling on Friday in the case brought against that state by the VRF that was largely favorable to Swoboda's group, with reports indicating VRF was given permission to post voter rolls online and was given access to voter information previously withheld by the New Mexico Secretary of State.

Georgia Republican Party (GAGOP) Chair Josh McKoon on Wednesday confirmed rumors he requested the resignation of the party's 1st vice chairman, Brian Pritchard, following the revelation he violated the state's election laws by illegally voting despite being on probation for forgery. McKoon wrote in a post to the social media platform X that he requested Pritchard's resignation before making the request public.

The disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, continued into its second and final week on Tuesday, featuring testimony from three witnesses for him. Clark, a defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ RICO prosecution, is being disciplined for drafting a letter never sent to Georgia officials after the 2020 election advising them of their options for dealing with the election illegalities.

Garland Favorito, who leads the election integrity group VoterGA, said the recent series of election integrity bills passed by the Georgia General Assembly create "landmark features" and will serve as an example to states looking to secure their voting procedures. A press release by VoterGA highlights legislation, passed by lawmakers, which bans "unverifiable QR-coded voting and improve election transparency by making physical ballots public record."

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer wants a private contractor to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to optimize his office, according to an online advertisement seeking contractors. The web listing, made on behalf of the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, reveals Richer "is seeking a contractor to provide a solution to improve processes around document identification, data extraction, and comparing handwritten signature images with on-file signature images by way of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)."

The second week of the disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, resumed its second week on Monday. Clark, who is also a defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ RICO prosecution, is being disciplined for drafting a letter that was never sent to Georgia officials after the 2020 election advising them of their options for dealing with the election illegalities.

Georgia's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) declared on Friday it will sue the state if Governor Brian Kemp signs a bill, already approved by lawmakers, to strengthen election integrity in the state. The legislation, SB 189, removes the Secretary of State from the Georgia Board of Elections, creates new conflict of interest provisions for election officials and private individuals involved with the election process, revises the process for challenging presidential electors and creates new chain of custody requirements for mail-in ballots.

The disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark began last week, featuring testimony from several prominent statisticians. Clark, who is also a defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s RICO prosecution, is being disciplined for drafting a letter that was never sent to Georgia officials after the 2020 election advising them of their options for dealing with the election illegalities. The trial is expected to last two weeks, into this coming week. Hamilton Fox, the D.C. Bar’s attorney who has aggressively gone after other Trump attorneys, attempted to keep most of Clark’s witnesses from testifying. He described them as “sketchy witnesses” who want to talk about “supposed irregularities.” However, one of the witnesses who ultimately testified on Thursday had been allowed to testify in the similar disbarment trial of Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman last year. 

State Senator Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) held a press conference on March 24 denouncing Attorney General Kris Mayes convening a grand jury to indict Arizona’s alternate slate of electors for Donald Trump from 2020. Reports circulated earlier in March that Mayes issued grand jury subpoenas to people connected to Trump’s attempt to find fraud in the 2020 election. Kern, who is running for Congress in Arizona’s Congressional District 8 to replace outgoing Representative Debbie Lesko amidst a competitive field of primary candidates, began, “What's so wrong about standing up for the rule of law and our Arizona constitutional principles, and when did that become a crime?”

Maricopa County executive director Zach Schira claimed on Tuesday that recent changes to the state's elections as a result of a "landmark" election integrity bill that enjoyed overwhelming support in the Arizona Legislature. Schira told The Arizona Republic that complying with a provision in HB 2785 which requires election workers to count the number of early ballots at each polling location required an average of 30 to 45 minutes at polling locations across the state for the March 19 presidential preference election.

Ohio State Representatives Beth Lear (R-Galena) and Brian Lorenz (R-Powell) are championing legislation that would close primary elections in the Buckeye State, requiring voters to cast ballots to nominate candidates corresponding to their registered political party. Lear and Lorenz filed HB 437 in early March to require voters be registered as a member of a political party for 90 days in order to cast primary election ballots to select that party's candidates. The legislation would prevent voters registered to the Democratic and Republican parties from casting primary election ballots in the other party's contests.

Attorneys for Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed additional pleadings last week with their Petition for Certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court, providing new evidence to their plea to the court to reconsider the lower courts’ rulings against their lawsuit to stop the use of voting machine tabulators. The new filings include a Motion to Expedite and declarations from top cybersecurity experts, who provided evidence that “overwhelmingly demonstrates” that the election results in 2020 and 2022 from Maricopa County contained “artificial control over the tabulation of ballots and the election results for the November 2020 election.” Additionally, they asserted that the county thwarted efforts to obtain the new data, which is a crime punishable by up to a year of incarceration. The appendix to the Petitioners’ Motion to Expedite included 176 pages of new affidavits from Clay Parikh, Benjamin Cotton, and Walter Daugherity. Daugherity, who taught computer science and engineering at both the undergraduate and graduate levels for 37 years and served as a computer consultant to major firms and government agencies, including classified work, said this was his second declaration filed in the case, based on the new information from Maricopa County. That information included system log files from Maricopa County’s electronic voting tabulators in the 2020 election, and according to Parikh, “a copy of Maricopa County’s election systems database and the forensic images of the vote center tabulator memory cards used in the 2020 General Election.” 

State Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu) and State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) held a press conference on Wednesday revealing that a cybersecurity expert discovered that voting machine software used in Maricopa County’s elections in 2020 and 2022 was compromised. Borrelli said “there is probable cause” of a crime, and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has been notified. Borrelli said, “A few days ago I received documentation and a sworn declaration by a cybersecurity expert that examined the data from the 2020 and 2022 elections, where it has been determined that the data and the equipment had been altered. The Election Assistance Commission never approved this altered software. In Maricopa County's previous representation that the election software is EAC certified, including to the Arizona Senate, [that was] false [testimony].”