The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for June 23 -29 2014
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on proposed legislation to resuscitate a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court a year ago. Some advocates want to translate Bitcoin’s technology into online voting but cyber security experts warn that total security and anonymity online is impossible and both are absolutely crucial to a fair and reliable election. A federal trial began this week in a voting rights lawsuit filed by several Alaska villages, alleging the state has failed to provide accurate, complete translations of voting materials into Native languages. Several right-wing groups formed a “voter integrity project’ in response to the news that Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran had courted black Democratic voters in his runoff with the Tea partier Chris McDaniel. Activists have gathered petitions to place a “Voter’s Bill of Rights” on the ballot in Ohio this November. The Virginia Board of Elections plans to re-evaluate its definition of a valid identification under the state’s new voter ID law after a state lawmaker raised concerns about the rule. Thousands of angry protesters marched on the Afghan president’s palace on Friday in support of candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s allegations that mass fraud had been committed during the presidential election by organizers and state officials. Details of the cyberattack on a recent online referendum on voting rights in Hong Kong reveal that the system was attacked by at least 300 gigabits of data per second – and perhaps as high as 600, a level not before reached in a publicly disclosed hacking attack.