Canvass and certification are familiar ground. What's different this year is the attention on election records retention: a federal executive order, preservation letters from the Justice Department, and states responding in different ways. Here's what's changed and what's worth confirming now. In brief In September, the Justice Department directed officials in 29 states and DC [...]
Most clerks running this November's midterms know election procedure cold. That's not what trips offices up. What tends to cause real disruption isn't unfamiliarity with the process; it's the handful of common problems that show up almost every cycle, somewhere, and catch a specific office off guard because it hadn't rehearsed that particular scenario recently. [...]
Looking ahead, September marks the start of real election crunch time. Clerks recruit poll workers and lock in training schedules. And this year, they should also build election worker safety planning into that prep. Local election officials report rising concern about safety heading into the 2026 midterms. Free, practical tools already exist to help. CISA [...]