When the new Arizona attorney general took office last month, she repurposed a unit once exclusively devoted to rooting outelection fraud to focus on voting rights and ballot access.
In North Carolina on Tuesday, the State Board of Elections began proceedings that could end with the removal of a county election officer who had refused to certify the 2022 results even as he acknowledged the lack of evidence of irregularities.
And later this week, a group of secretaries of state will showcase a “Democracy Playbook” that includes stronger protections for election workers and penalties for those who spread misinformation.
These actions and others reflect a growing effort among state election officials, lawmakers and private-sector advocates to push back against the wave of misinformation and mistrust of elections that sprang from former president Donald Trump’s false claim that his 2020 defeat was rigged.
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Since that vote more than two years ago, election administrators have regularly found themselves fending off false accusations, baseless lawsuits and violent threats. They have fielded demands that go beyond their official powers — to stop using electronic voting equipment, to hand-count all ballots, to end mail voting or to refuse to certify results. Hundreds have resigned or retired as a result of the pressure and abuse, with some states, including Colorado, reporting that a majority of their county election clerks have turned over since 2018.
Election...
Patricia White, 70, of Old Greenwich, received a nine-month prison sentence for submitting false claims for unclaimed properties to around 30 state treasuries. HARRISBURG, Pa. — Months after her br...