Sunday Signal — Issue 3 · October 26, 2025
This week we map the quiet capture of election security, share tools you can use tomorrow, celebrate archives doing the work, and practice “slow heat” in a fast feed.
📣 Signal Dispatch — Signals from the field
Issue 3 · October 269, 2025
THE FRONT MATTER
The Quiet Capture of Election Security
First in a regular series
The wiring changed before the headlines did. A timeline of how federal election security was quietly rerouted in 2025.
Nine months into Trump 2.0, America’s elections look familiar from a distance. We see the same polling places, the same county offices, and the same ritual of counting. But the wiring beneath the surface has been rerouted. The shifts are administrative rather than theatrical: staffing choices, mission rewrites, data policies, and budget levers that shape how elections are secured, funded, and explained long before ballots are cast.
This new Front Matter column will track those shifts as they unfold. We’ll stick to what’s verified, flag what’s interpretive, and clearly label any speculation. If you’re seeing changes where you live or work (policies, pressure, purges) send documentation and accounts to submissions@torchandtinder.org.
What actually happened (January–October 2025)
01/20/2025 — First signals
Donald J. Trump is inaugurated; Pam Bondi confirmed as Attorney General. Day‑one pardons/commutations for Jan. 6 defendants and a review ordered in the Tina Peters case. The message: prioritize “election integrity,” reward allies, punish resistors.
02/21/2025 — DOJ/FBI realignment
Kash Patel sworn in as FBI Director; Harmeet Dhillon confirmed to lead DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. New Voting Section language pivots away from traditional voting‑rights enforcement toward finding non‑citizen voting and “fraud.”
03/14–03/19/2025 — Retaliatory posture.
At DOJ, the president says those who defended 2020’s results “should go to jail,” then signs an EO directing “accountability” for lawyers who opposed his subversion attempts.
03/25/2025 — Executive Order + data push.
A sweeping “election integrity” EO (parts later enjoined) directs DHS/DOJ to build citizenship verification pipelines and prosecute alleged non‑citizen voting. DOJ demands full voter files from dozens of states; DHS/USCIS advances a SAVE database upgrade linking immigration/SSA data for roll checks.
04/2025 — CISA purge begins.
A presidential memo targets former CISA Director Chris Krebs; clearances revoked and a review ordered. CISA begins large workforce reductions and program cuts, including mis/disinformation and election‑infrastructure teams. In D.C., interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin opens an “election crimes” unit.
05/2025 — Leadership swaps at DHS/CISA.
Marci McCarthy named CISA Public Affairs Director (sworn in 06/09). Madhu Gottumukkala moves into senior leadership and later serves as Acting Director. Public line: “back to basics” as departures mount.
07/2025 — Funding as a lever; oversight fights.
DHS/FEMA conditions ~$28M in grants on compliance with new federal priorities; some states refuse funds. Hill letters press CISA on cuts, EI‑ISAC changes, and transparency. Budget proposals slash EAC/CISA election programs.
08/18–08/26/2025 — New DHS ‘election integrity’ czar.
Heather Honey appears on DHS org chart as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity—a new role. Experts and state officials warn of politicization and eroded trust. The same month, the White House touts plans to curtail mail voting and voting machines.
09/2025 — Emergency‑powers talk.
Outside adviser Cleta Mitchell speculates about a national emergency to exert federal control over elections. Governors and courts push back on related domestic deployments and rhetoric.
10/2025 — Collisions and constraints.
State election directors press DHS’s Honey on DOJ data‑sharing and CISA cuts; contradictions emerge. Courts block parts of the March 25 EO as intruding on state authority; injunctions limit domestic troop deployments.
10/19 to 10/2025 — This Past Week
Federal election monitors for California’s Prop 50 and Passaic County, NJ (Oct. 24–25). DOJ announced it will deploy election monitors to polling places in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Kern, and Fresno counties—and to Passaic County, New Jersey—for voting on Nov. 4. The department frames this as routine VRA oversight; California officials (including Gov. Gavin Newsom) call it political theater that risks chilling voters, especially with no federal races on the CA ballot. The ballot’s centerpiece is Proposition 50, a legislatively referred measure temporarily adopting new congressional maps through 2030 and resetting the state’s redistricting process thereafter. The presence of federal observers in an off‑year, at GOP request, is a test case for how “oversight” can also serve narrative staging.
The Tactic
The pattern here is not a single, dramatic takeover. It’s institutional capture reflected in a steady repurposing of the federal posture on elections. The focus moves from helping states secure infrastructure (the CISA model developed after 2016) to policing voters and validating a predetermined narrative of widespread fraud. When DHS elevates an activist whose brand was built on debunked claims, and when CISA’s collaborative programs are cut back, trust erodes between federal partners and the state and local officials who actually run elections. Less trust means less information-sharing, slower incident response, and wider openings for confusion. Even steps like DOJ monitors take on outsized meaning when the federal posture has shifted; selection of sites and timing can either build trust or script a controversy in advance.
The data lever is especially consequential. A verification tool used carefully can be useful; the same tool used broadly can become a machine for error-ridden purge lists. Process design matters: What’s the match criteria? What’s the error rate? Who gets notified and how do they fix mistakes? Without transparent standards, “integrity” can quietly translate to disenfranchisement.
The resistance ecosystem (who’s pushing back, and how)
State and local election officials declining conditional federal grants or refusing expansive data demands they see as unlawful or impractical—taking short-term pain to preserve state authority and voter confidence.
Legal watchdogs and civil-rights groups building the record: filing FOIAs, publishing plain-English explainers on federal limits, and preparing litigation to block illegal deployments or intimidation at polling locations.
Cyber policy veterans and professional associations warning that pared-back federal capacity leaves real gaps. Their advocacy matters because it focuses on operational risk, not partisan frame.
If this resonates, share it someone you trust. Small signals add up.
Cultural-resistance practices
1. Treat every claim as a paper trail.
Ask for the statute, the guidance number, the grant notice, the procurement page. If it’s real, it’s written down somewhere, and it probably has a document number.
2. Map your state’s decision points.
Learn who actually controls rules and resources in your state—secretary of state, state election board, county board—and how meetings are noticed. Show up before the crisis headline.
3. FOIA with intent.
Prioritize records on (1) any adoption of federal database checks, (2) communications with DHS/DOJ about voter-file access, (3) changes to poll-worker eligibility tied to federal “conditions.”
4. Protect the line workers.
Track and report retaliatory threats against election staff. Connect them with state AG civil-rights units and pro bono counsel.
5. Defend language.
Don’t let “integrity” become a euphemism for exclusion or fear. Precision in words creates precision in law and practice.
What to watch for next
Scaled-up “verification.” Watch for broad, automated screening of voter files using federal databases without robust error safeguards. That’s where accidental disenfranchisement happens fastest.
Narrative-first incident response. Thinner federal capacity may mean cyber or logistics hiccups get framed as proof of fraud instead of solved as technical problems.
Emergency-rhetoric creep. Even if courts block overreach, persistent talk of emergencies primes agencies and the public to see routine disputes as existential threats.
Share This Post & Tell your story
Share: Restack this post or send it to someone you trust.
Add your voice: What changed in your community this year? Let talk about it in the comments.
Tell us what you’re seeing. If this is affecting your community, tell us what you’re seeing. Send: public notices, emails, grant conditions, policy memos, meeting agendas, screenshots, audio/video, and a brief timeline (what/when/who/where). Email everything to submissions@torchandtinder.org with the subject line “Election Watch”.
Don’t stop with us. Share your story with the people who can act: neighbors and mutual‑aid groups; congregations and civic clubs; local watchdogs and election‑protection hotlines; journalists and editors; librarians, school boards, county commissioners, and trusted election officials. Put the facts where decisions are made.
Send what you see.
Share what you learn.
Stand with the people doing the work where it counts: county offices, state boards, and community rooms that never make national news until it’s too late.
THE IMPRINT
The Right to Be Boring: Dull Work That Saves Democracies
Poll books, chain-of-custody logs, and the unglamorous labor that keeps freedom ordinary.
There’s nothing cinematic about a reconciliation sheet. No swelling score attends the moment a precinct manager double-signs a seal or a warehouse clerk initials a ballot transfer form. Democracy’s most reliable work is quiet, repetitive, and (if we’re honest) boring. And that is exactly why it works. Boredom, in elections, is not apathy; it’s design. It is how ordinary people make extraordinary trust possible, one checklist at a time.
As the Front Matter column documents this week, the federal posture around elections is shifting. It’s becoming less collaborative cybersecurity help, more “integrity” rhetoric, more pressure placed on voters and local officials. In that environment, the mundane work of election administration matters more than ever. If we lose the boring stuff, we lose the backbone.
The dignity of dull
Every control that’s worth a headline later is a routine first. Logic & Accuracy (L&A) testing happens weeks before a single ballot is cast; the public almost never shows up. Poll books are reconciled at closing, when everyone is tired and no one is filming. Chain-of-custody logs travel with ballot containers through the night, witnessed by two humans at minimum, witnessed by no cameras at all.
This is not secrecy; it is stewardship. The point is not to impress you. The point is to be auditable when the shouting starts.
“Democracy’s most reliable work is quiet, repetitive, and (if we’re honest) boring.”
Checklists beat vibes
Elections don’t run on vibes; they run on written procedures. A good checklist turns human fallibility into collective reliability. It sets the order of operations when adrenaline or fatigue would otherwise invite shortcuts. It also makes training scalable: a first-time poll worker can perform like a veteran because the checklist remembers for them.
Where institutions are thinned or politicized, checklists become cultural artifacts—evidence of a standard that existed before any one administration’s preferences. That’s why you can visit three counties and recognize the same skeleton of tasks even if the brands of equipment differ: secure storage, seal logs, pre-election tests, poll-opening procedures, incident reports, ballot accounting, precinct reconciliation, transport, canvass, audit.
Chain of custody, not chain of takes
A transfer is a promise written down. When one set of hands gives ballots to another set, the log—container number, seal number, time, names—prevents memory from being edited by the news cycle. The paper remembers. If a conspiracy theory later claims “mystery ballots” appeared in the night, the chain says who moved what, when, and why—and who witnessed it.
That’s the difference between an accusation and an audit: accusations perform; audits prove.
Boredom defeats panic
Panic spreads when information thins. The antidote is not a better press release; it is a thicker procedure. When poll workers have scripts, when county sites have uptime dashboards, when canvass schedules are posted with addresses and agendas, the public has something more durable than rumor to hold onto. Precision in process short-circuits improvisation in crises.
This is why election administrators get nervous when agencies that used to offer nonpartisan support—shared playbooks, incident response, EI-ISAC feeds—are scaled back. The fewer reliable partners there are, the more local routines have to carry. The good news is: routines can carry a lot. If communities value them.
What you can do (small actions)
Ask for the checklist. Call or email your county elections office and ask:
“Can you share your poll-opening, closing, and chain-of-custody checklists? Do you publish your L&A testing schedule?”
You’re not interrogating; you’re normalizing transparency.Show up early. Attend one public L&A test or a canvass meeting. Observe what normal looks like before rumors define it for you.
Adopt a form. Pick one document (incident log, seal record, reconciliation sheet) and learn how it works so you can explain it to neighbors when a clip goes viral.
Back up the line workers. If you see harassment or pressure on election staff, record details and report them. Connect workers to legal support if needed.
Practice boring language. When someone says “They added ballots in the night,” try: “Let’s check the chain-of-custody log and the reconciliation sheet.” Patience is part of the procedure.
Why does it matter?
When the national conversation rewards drama, local systems have to reward discipline. We are living through a period where “election integrity” is being used to justify policies that make elections less secure (by shrinking capacity) and voting less accessible (by expanding suspicion). The best response is not a louder performance; it is a steadier practice: a poll room that opens on time, a printer that just works, a form filled out with care. If that sounds boring, that’s because it is. It’s also how democracies avoid the kind of excitement that breaks them.
Keep the bar low and the standards high. Make the work repeatable. Make it auditable. Make it so dull that the only story left to tell is that it worked.
ECHOES FROM THE ECOSYSTEM
The Torch & Tinder cultural resistance ecosystem is a constellation of allied projects, each building freedom through its own craft. Together they form part of the living network of cultural resistance that surrounds the press, connecting practice to purpose and imagination to action. Here, we share glimpses and insights from our ecosystem partners.
A quiet week close to home
No updates from our ecosystem partners Ember Commons, the Happy Medium Sustainability Collective, or Refuge Bonne Foi this week. Check back soon for more.
Archives doing the work (and opening the doors)
The University of Nebraska Omaha’s Criss Library just marked one year of its NHPRC-funded project with the Great Plains Black History Museum—over 100 boxes arranged and described so far, with materials now available to the public in Archives & Special Collections (Mon–Fri, 9–5). It’s American Archives Month in action: patient, meticulous work that strengthens the public record.
The two-year NHPRC grant (2024–26, $150,000) supports arranging and describing 115 cubic feet of records (1870–2015) documenting Black life in Omaha and the Great Plains; the collection remains the Museum’s property and was built under founder Bertha Calloway.
What should we celebrate next?
If a library, archive, newsroom, or civic group near you just earned a grant, launched an new project, or hit a milestone, send a short note and link: submissions@torchandtinder.org (subject: “Celebration”). We’ll share the good news.
KINDLING & COMPASS
Each week, we spotlight organizations keeping the tools of resistance sharp and accessible.
National Archives (NARA) — Catalog & Citizen Archivist
When truth needs paperwork, start where the paper lives. NARA’s Catalog lets you search millions of primary records and the Citizen Archivist program invites you to transcribe and tag so others can find them. Access and contribution in one place; perfect for turning “claims” into citations during American Archives Month and beyond.
Society of American Archivists — Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research
Good records work is teachable. SAA’s Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research walks you through finding aids, request procedures, and reading-room norms so anyone can navigate repositories—from city clerks’ files to university special collections. Use it to plan a “records walk,” brief a community group, or prep for a FOIA follow-up with the actual box and folder.
These are not endorsements; they’re signals. Lights in the same constellation of freedom.
THE ADVANCE SHEET
What’s rising from the press this week.
Guest Series — Finale: Balancing Busyness & Boredom by Amber Hammargren
Amber closes the series with a meditation on the discipline of going slow to go fast; why mastery comes from unhurried practice, not haste. From classrooms to kitchens, she argues that giving minds time to sift and connect ideas is a quiet rebellion in an age of rush.
Catch up: Read Issue 1 (Oct 16) and Issue 2 (Oct 23).
Torchlight Praxis — Four Domains of Cultural Resistance (Part 3): Community Resistance
Part 3 centers on how communities rebuild trust across differences—by grounding conflict in shared facts, practicing steady public participation, and choosing routines that make cooperation possible.
Catch up: Revisit Issue 1 (Oct 15) and Issue 2 (Oct 22).
Subscribe to get these features and more in your inbox.
MARGINS & MARKUP
Press News and Calls for Action
Now Accepting Year‑Round, Rolling Submissions
Submissions are open across all lanes and for stand‑alone works!
Read the full details here: Submissions & Contributor Guidelines.
What we’re looking for: submissions to Signal Dispatch, Torchlight Praxis, Embers, and stand‑alone works.
How to submit: Read the Submissions & Contributor Guidelines and email your work to submissions@torchandtinder.org.
Cultural Signal — October is American Archives Month
In the final days of American Archives Month, team up with your city/county or state archives to strengthen records literacy where you live: request retention schedules, learn how to read meeting minutes and ledgers, and ask about public tours or volunteer projects. Mark recurring observances like #AskAnArchivist Day and Electronic Records Day (#ERecsDay) on your 2026 calendar so you can plan joint events with libraries, congregations, and PTAs.
COMMENT & SHARE
Want to weigh in? Subscribe for free and add your voice in the comments. If this issue helps, pass it on.
SHARED HEAT
A Reflection from the Founder
Slow heat in a fast feed
I was reminded this week that the internet rewards speed even when I don’t. A fellow resistance publisher posted something I cared about, I read it quickly, and I reacted even faster. The OP noticed. Defensive attention followed. None of that moved the work forward.
I apologized publicly. I named what I’d done, clarified my actual concern, and tried to center the shared ground. I’m glad I did that. But the honest part is this: I let my better intent get clouded by a personal—and reactive—response. It doesn’t matter that I used my personal account. It doesn’t matter that my motives were “good.” If the move pulls oxygen away from coalition work, it’s most likely the wrong move.
Our project is cultural resistance, which means tending the culture inside our work as much as we critique the culture outside it. The “boring” practices we celebrate this week—the checklists, ledgers, and chain-of-custody logs of election life—have a social counterpart online: patience, curiosity, and repair. The same discipline that reconciles a poll book can reconcile a conversation.
To the fellow publisher I engaged too quickly: thanks for reading my apology and for the work you’re doing. To the readers who may have noticed: thanks for the grace. And to everyone who has joined TTPress in recent weeks, welcome. I hope what we publish helps you do your work with more calm, more clarity, and more company.
A small thing I’m proud of this week
Even as I corrected course online, I noticed a personal milestone in our little corner of the world. Features across lanes are starting to tick past one hundred views. I know that isn’t “viral.” That’s the point. It feels good because it’s steady; and it’s a hopeful a sign that readers are finding the work. If you’ve shared a link, commented, or emailed a feature: thank you. The attention you bring is how small presses become sturdy ones.
If you’re building in this space you will trip. I will, again. The test isn’t whether we’re flawless; it’s whether we can correct in daylight without burning each other down. A culture of repair is a competitive advantage.
We will keep building. We will keep showing our math. And on the days when the feed runs hot, we will choose slow heat instead.
You are the signal. Keep your torchlight burning.
—Robert Daniel, Founder, Torch & Tinder Press
You are the signal.
Keep your torchlight burning.
Explore more from Torch & Tinder Press
📣 Signal Dispatch — Signals from the field (you’re here)
🔧 Torchlight Praxis — Tools you can carry
🔥 Embers — Warmth for the long winter
Stay connected: Instagram · Bluesky · Facebook
One-Time Support & community editions: Ko-fi
Support the work:
Subscribe free on Substack to receive every post.
Become a Paid Subscriber ($8/month or $80/year) to help fund print releases and join Refuge Bonne Foi.
Join as a Torchbearer ($240/year) for early access to Core Collections and digital issues.
Group discounts: 20% per seat (min. 3).
Prefer a one-time gift? Support us on Ko-fi.