Washington Post: “Nine months after President Trump was forced to dissolve a panel charged with investigating voter fraud, GOP officials across the country are cracking down on what they describe as threats to voting integrity — moves that critics see as attempts to keep some Americans from casting ballots in November’s elections.”

“Voting rights advocates said Republicans are seizing on sporadic voting problems in an effort to disenfranchise voters of color.”

“West Virginia is about to take a leap of faith in voting technology — but it could put people’s ballots at risk,” Politico reports.

“Next month, it will become the first state to deploy a smartphone app in a general election, allowing hundreds of overseas residents and members of the military stationed abroad to cast their ballots remotely. And the app will rely on blockchain, the same buzzy technology that underpins Bitcoin, in yet another Election Day first.”

“The Georgia NAACP is preparing to sue Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican nominee for governor, in response to a report that Kemp’s office has put on hold tens of thousands of voter registration applications, most of them from African-Americans, ahead of the election,” Politico reports.

“The injunction would seek to reopen voter registration in Georgia to ensure that 53,000 registrants on hold in Kemp’s office… would be allowed to register for the upcoming election.”

CNN: “Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’ campaign is calling on Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp to resign following a report his office is using a controversial verification law to effectively suppress the minority vote in their race to become the state’s next governor.”

“A Fairfax County focus group this summer found many college students who have gotten an absentee ballot simply fail to send it back because a U.S. Postal Service stamp seems to be a foreign concept to them,” WTOP reports.

Said Fairfax County official Lisa Connors: “One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don’t know where to get stamps.”

“A national group with close ties to the Koch Brothers, Freedom Partners, has thrown its support behind Amendment 4 on the Florida ballot — the proposal to restore voting rights to most convicted felons without hearings or delays,” the Tampa Bay Times reports.

From a statement: “We believe that when individuals have served their sentences and paid their debts to society as ordered by a judge, they should be eligible to vote.”

President Trump’s top national security adviser “said the president signed an executive order this week on election meddling to show he has ‘taken command’ of the matter. But this time, the White House broke from its practice of using such directives to make a public splash, instead keeping the event from the public and press,” Roll Call reports.

Said one former Obama White House official: “We’d frequently sign executive orders, but the ones we wanted attention for, we always would sign them publicly. That’s press 101. If you sign one quietly, you are sending the opposite message: Please don’t pay attention to this.”

“A bill that would have significantly bolstered the nation’s defenses against electoral interference has been held up in the Senate at the behest of the White House, which opposed the proposed legislation,” Yahoo News reports.

“As it currently stands, the legislation would grant every state’s top election official security clearance to receive threat information. It would also formalize the practice of information-sharing between the federal government—in particular, the Department of Homeland Security—and states regarding threats to electoral infrastructure. A technical advisory board would establish best practices related to election cybersecurity.”

“Perhaps most significantly, the law would mandate that every state conduct a statistically significant audit following a federal election. It would also incentivize the purchase of voting machines that leave a paper record of votes cast, as opposed to some all-electronic models that do not. This would signify a marked shift away from all-electronic voting, which was encouraged with the passage of the Help Americans Vote Act in 2002.”

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) “has reaped the political whirlwind in the 10 days since he proclaimed that Russian hackers had ‘penetrated’ some of his state’s county voting systems,” NBC News reports.

“The Republican governor of Florida, who happens to be running against Nelson for his U.S. Senate seat this fall, has blasted his claim as irresponsible. The top Florida elections official, also a Republican, said he had seen no indication it’s true. And the Washington Post weighed in Friday with a 2,717-word fact check that all but accused Nelson — without evidence — of making it up.”

“However, three people familiar with the intelligence tell NBC News that there is a classified basis for Nelson’s assertion, which he made at a public event after being given information from the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The extent and seriousness of the threat remains unclear, shrouded for reasons of national security.”

Boston Globe: “Hundreds of thousands of new voters could join the state’s rolls in the coming years after Gov. Charlie Baker (R) signed legislation that adopts automatic voter registration — one in a flurry of bills that became law Thursday with a few flicks of the Republican’s pen.”

“The voting measure, which registers eligible residents when they get their driver’s licenses or health insurance through the state, was one of more than 50 pieces of legislation Baker signed that touch on everything from the state’s opioid crisis and animal abuse to climate change and renewable energy.”