September 16, 2026

TLP:CLEAR

In This Issue:

• Situation Room: A look back at the final primaries of 2026 highlights the vital role of preparedness in strengthening election integrity and resilience.  
• Resource Library: The most recent Exchange webinar, “Building a Durable Emergency Plan: Continuity and Operational Readiness for Elections,” presents a framework for building relationships, plans, and preparedness. 
• Planning Desk: There’s still time to jumpstart your emergency response planning with five simple forms! 
  
• Reminder - New Exchange Webinar September 22 at 3:00 PM ET! Register here to join us for the Exchange-hosted webinar: You’re the Authority on Elections. Does AI Know That? 

Security Review of Final Statewide Primaries 

The primary season has come to an end. Since our last roundup, voters in 20 states decided the final line-ups for the fall contests, and two additional states completed their run-offs.

This final round of primaries was somewhat quieter, with nothing like the physical assaults by campaigners mentioned in our July look-back, nor the “flash-bang” device we reported on in our May look-back. Still, a few security and preparedness issues arose that are worth considering as you finalize preparations for November.

Election Night Reporting Issues

A significant omission in reported results can confuse voters and raise questions about the integrity of the outcome. Several jurisdictions encountered this issue over the summer, underscoring the importance of thorough, end-to-end verification before releasing results.

In all these cases, election officials discovered and corrected either on or shortly after election night. No outcomes changed, and public reaction was muted. In Milwaukee, a memory stick mistake echoed an unfortunate issue six years ago during the 2020 Presidential Election. This time, officials mistakenly downloaded audit logs - rather than results files - from five of nine absentee ballot tabulators. They noticed the issue when they reached the results server and immediately returned to download the correct files from tabulators. No incomplete results were published.

Several affected jurisdictions told reporters they are developing or updating comprehensive checklists for generating and reporting election night results.

Emergency Preparedness and Lost Voting Sites

Election offices suffered last-minute loss of voting sites for part or all of election day due to fires in Stephens County, WA, power outages in Maricopa County, AZ, flooding in Virginia, and illness in Providence, RI, where seven sites opened late after 15% of poll workers called in sick on election morning. In every case, offices were prepared with back-up plans that they executed quickly and effectively.

Voters outside Piñon, AZ may have faced the greatest difficulty. Monsoon storms in mountainous terrain created extremely hazardous road conditions that prevented poll workers from opening an election day vote center. Voters were redirected to other vote centers but had to brave those same hazardous roads to reach one.

Connectivity and Server Issues

With many jurisdictions processing significant streams of mail ballots on Election Day, server performance and connectivity can be critical to ensure only one ballot per voter is counted. In Michigan, the inability to connect to the Qualified Voter File delayed same-day registrations and absentee ballot check-ins for a short period on Election Day. In Maricopa County, AZ, a connectivity issue affected e-pollbooks at a handful of vote centers, impacting only a handful of voters. Still, Maricopa County Supervisor Mark Stewart offered a lament with which many election officials will sympathize: “The microscope is on Maricopa County. It has been for years.” Every glitch, no matter how small, will be noticed and magnified.

U.S. DOJ Monitoring

Some election offices faced election day wondering what role monitors sent by the U.S. Department of Justice would play. In many jurisdictions, federal monitors were relatively unobtrusive, formally requesting access to polling places and honoring the decision when it was declined. However, requests by two DOJ monitors in Wyoming went beyond traditional observer patterns: they asked questions about contracts, sought to examine tabulators, and told the Laramie County Clerk they intended to interview voters in a polling place, building on what some state and local officials have raised as concerns about the scope of federal requests this year.

Closing the Primary Season on a High Note

Every election can bring minor problems. But in most jurisdictions, this year’s primaries proceeded as American elections generally do, without issue, complaint, or post-election finger-pointing, and with the results ‒ the choices of the voters ‒ accepted by consensus. In that spirit, we leave you with a story from a precinct in Greene County, MO of a poll worker who loves her job.

The Situation Room focuses on real security incidents and threats in the news relevant to election security. To review previous issues, see the newsletter archive.

Continuity and Operational Readiness Webinar

This week’s review of the final round of primaries once again exemplifies a truth well-known to election officials: planning and preparation can ensure the security and integrity of elections. More than ever, election officials must be prepared by having the necessary plans in place and building the relationships they need with the partners who will help them respond.

Last month, in partnership with PEER (Partnership for Elections & Emergency Response), the Exchange hosted the webinar “Building a Durable Emergency Plan: Continuity and Operational Readiness for Elections”. The webinar discussed the release of PEER’s new resource, The CORE Playbook: Continuity and Operational Readiness for Elections, which offers a framework for building relationships, plans, and preparedness.

The webinar covered how to:

• Build a coordinated incident response structure with clear roles and responsibilities.
• Map who calls who, for what and when, and how information moves between partners.
• Set a planning calendar tied to your election cycle.
• Stress-test your plan through exercises.
• Start with five simple suggestions to kick-start your own planning.

The offices that handle an emergency well are not improvising in that moment. They built the relationships and the response plan long before they needed them. If you missed the webinar in August, you can view it on your schedule and choose from the simple steps that you can still take to have a meaningful impact on your preparedness this November.

The Resource Library section of the newsletter spotlights election security resources. All highlighted resources are available online in the Resource Library.

Week E-7: Emergency Planning in 60 Minutes

Some election offices have been planning for emergencies for years or decades. But if you haven’t yet started emergency planning, the 60-Minute Toolkit for Emergency Preparedness may be the resource that finally gets you going.

The Toolkit and its companion Emergency Readiness Guide rest on three key pillars:

1. Devoting an hour to emergency planning can make a meaningful difference. The Guide provides bite-sized planning tasks. At the end of the first hour, you’ll have used the tools to create two critical resources for your plan.
2. The cause of the crisis – whether it’s a natural disaster, civil disturbance, cyber attack, or other critical disruption – is less important for your office than the operational impact (which functions of your office are threatened or disrupted).
3. The difference between a small incident and a major crisis is mostly that crises disrupt multiple areas and functions. This can lead to panic, shutdown, or spinning your wheels. These tools help you sort the chaos into manageable chunks of work.

A Comprehensive Plan Built on Fives

The Toolkit includes five editable forms to build a comprehensive written emergency plan:

1. The Incident Assessment Checklist breaks out functional areas of your office (e.g., polling places, voting systems, poll workers, central facilities, IT, and emergency communications infrastructure) and has you assess the incident on the basis of how each of those functions was affected. This gives you confidence you’ve considered all potential impacts.
2. The Core Team Contact Sheet is where you list your go-to people – those who you need close because they’re effective, as well as those outside partners, like vendors, law enforcement, or emergency response whose advice and assistance are indispensable. 
3. The Restoration of Operations Checklists are a set of forms, one for each of the functional divisions of your office, based on the Incident Assessment Checklist. You prefill each one, listing vulnerabilities, key staff, and outside contacts for that function along with backup resources and methods. 
4. The Support Team Contact List puts incident notification and assistance contact details at your fingertips so you can reach partners immediately when needed.
5. The Back-up Resources List identifies your emergency resources, supplies, and systems, where they are, and who manages them.

The Guide outlines five steps of effective incident response:

1. Assess the impact quickly and comprehensively.
   The Incident Assessment Checklist helps you complete this step.
2. Assemble your core team to determine incident response.
   Your Core Team Contact Sheet contains the contact information you need.
3. Assign responsibility for each affected function.
   Use the Restoration of Operations Checklists to talk through each area with the person designated to oversee it.
4. Restore function in each area of the office.
   The assigned staffer will track and manage mitigation and restoration efforts using the Restoration Checklist, which should be prefilled with contact names from the Support Team Contact List and providers on the Back-up Resources List who can help restore systems or implement backups.
5. Review progress with the Core Team.
   Schedule progress reviews at appropriate intervals to ensure restoration is on track.

The Guide also provides exercises to help you understand the forms that will make up your comprehensive plan and fill them in with the relevant information for your jurisdiction.

The Planning Desk is a running timeline of key election security tasks. You can find prior editions in the newsletter archive.

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• Milwaukee Audit Logs Show No Evidence of Election Fraud, Experts Say | VoteBeat Wisconsin (September 11, 2026) // Wisconsin
• Suspicious Voter Registration Texts Raise Concerns in Susquehanna Valley | WGAL News 8 (September 14, 2026) // Pennsylvania
• Fontes Wants Arizona Voters Prepared For Election Misinformation | Arizona Capitol Times (September 8, 2026) // Arizona
• Florida Confirms DMV Database Breached Via Stolen Police Account | BleepingComputer (September 11, 2026) // Florida
• Elon Musk is Running a Fake Voter Registration Site Designed to Steal and Sell Data | Meidas News (September 10, 2026) // National
• Inside the Unprecedented Threats Election Officials Are Facing Ahead of Midterms | National Public Radio (September 14, 2026) // National