Utah: Vote-by-mail is a winner in primary election | Deseret News

As primary election results were handed down Tuesday night, one clear winner in Salt Lake County was voter turnout thanks to a vote-by-mail campaign. “This is just unprecedented,” Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said Tuesday. “What it says is the vote-by-mail process absolutely worked in increasing voter turnout.” The county recorded a 32 percent voter turnout across all cities, which doubles numbers seen in previous primary elections and even beats the 26 percent showing in the November 2013 municipal election, Swensen said.

Virginia: House leaders release agenda for redistricting session | The Virginian-Pilot

State House leaders on Wednesday released their agenda for Monday’s special session of the General Assembly to redraw U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott’s 3rd congressional district. Matt Moran, a spokesman for House Speaker Bill Howell, said House Republicans don’t yet have a redistricting plan. “We haven’t done the preliminary work necessary to craft a plan,” he said in an email. A federal court found the district, which stretches from Richmond to Norfolk, to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and ordered state lawmakers to redraw it. The court rulings came in a lawsuit filed by a Democratic group that alleged too many black voters were packed into the district, diluting their influence.

Virginia: State elections official asks for further study of voter registration forms | The News & Advance

The state Department of Elections will look further into how to best address the integrity of Virginia elections. In an email to general registrars and the electoral board this week, State Board of Elections Chairman James Alcorn announced he would pull the decision to pass proposed changes to voter registration forms from the board’s September agenda. In a July public hearing, registrars from throughout the state as well as other residents spoke against a proposal that no longer would require voters to check boxes verifying their legal, felon or competency statuses before their registration is approved. The proposal, which included changes to the form’s spacing, font and order, was an election board initiative to increase voting access and eliminate barriers, proponents said at the meeting.

Virginia: Taxpayer costs mount in Virginia voting lawsuits | Daily Press

Attorneys have billed Virginia taxpayers more than $1 million so far in just one of the three lawsuits still pending over the state’s election districts and voting laws. The bulk of that hasn’t been paid yet, because it stems from an unfinished battle over the state’s 3rd Congressional District lines. A federal court has awarded nearly $790,000 in attorneys fees and other costs to the plaintiffs in that case, but congressional leaders defending the lines hope the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the underlying decision on appeal. The high court has already sent this case back down once, though, and the three-judge panel assigned to the case has twice ruled the lines unconstitutional. The Virginia General Assembly is set to go into special session Monday with a court-imposed Sept. 1 deadline to redraw the state’s congressional map.

Bulgaria: Bulgaria’s Edgy Relationship With the Vox Populi | Transitions Online

Rare – and to be handled with care. That is the briefest way to describe how the European East sees referendums and direct democracy in general. Maybe that’s why the Bulgarian parliament was so wary. In the last week of July, parliamentary deputies dumped two out of three referendum questions, though supported by 570,000 signatures gathered through a petition drive and put forward by President Rosen Plevneliev. Three questions were supposed to be on the ballot for the fall local elections. They concerned the electoral code: whether a majority voting system should be merged with the existing proportional one; whether casting a ballot should be made obligatory; and whether electronic voting should be allowed. In the end, only the last survive

China: Electoral Affairs Commission admits to some unusual addresses in voter registrations | EJInsight

The Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) has rejected reports of irregularities in the voter lists that were released at end-July, but admitted that some people had been registered with unconventional addresses. Barnabas Fung, the commission’s chairman, said some voters needed to be registered with unusual addresses because of housing issues, RTHK reported. Fung cited a UN Human Rights Convention which says that no person should be stripped of his voting rights because of his address, or lack of one, the report said.

United Kingdom: Labour leadership: voter registration extended after website crash | The Guardian

Labour has extended the deadline for people to sign up to vote for its new leader after its website crashed and dozens of supporters of Jeremy Corbyn began to raise concerns about being excluded. The party issued an apology on Twitter after its online registration form for supporters suffered technical difficulties on Wednesday morning, with just hours to go before the midday cut-off point. The deadline was then extended until 3pm as people continued to experience problems signing up. The glitch happened as the party struggled to cope with almost 250,000 new members and supporters, each of whom is being checked to make sure they are not “entryists” from other parties trying to influence the result. Around 88,000 have still not been vetted.

Verified Voting Blog: How not to measure security

This article was originally posted at Freedom to Tinker on August 10, 2015. It is reposted here with permission of the author.

A recent paper published by Smartmatic, a vendor of voting systems, caught my attention. The first thing is that it’s published by Springer, which typically publishes peer-reviewed articles – which this is not. This is a marketing piece. It’s disturbing that a respected imprint like Springer would get into the business of publishing vendor white papers. There’s no disclaimer that it’s not a peer-reviewed piece, or any other indication that it doesn’t follow Springer’s historical standards. The second, and more important issue, is that the article could not possibly have passed peer review, given some of its claims. I won’t go into the controversies around voting systems (a nice summary of some of those issues can be found on the OSET blog), but rather focus on some of the security metrics claims.

The article states, “Well-designed, special-purpose [voting] systems reduce the possibility of results tampering and eliminate fraud. Security is increased by 10-1,000 times, depending on the level of automation.”

That would be nice. However, we have no agreed-upon way of measuring security of systems (other than cryptographic algorithms, within limits). So the only way this is meaningful is if it’s qualified and explained – which it isn’t. Other studies, such as one I participated in (Applying a Reusable Election Threat Model at the County Level), have tried to quantify the risk to voting systems – our study measured risk in terms of the number of people required to carry out the attack. So is Smartmatic’s study claiming that they can make an attack require 10 to 1000 more people, 10 to 1000 times more money, 10 to 1000 times more expertise (however that would be measured!), or something entirely different?

Florida: As redistricting heats up, Central Florida at heart of battle | Orlando Sentinel

Central Florida’s congressional districts are essentially caught in a virtual tug-of-war between state lawmakers and the Florida Supreme Court. That was clear from the deliberations of lawmakers in a special redistricting session Tuesday, as several legislators bashed the court’s decision to throw out the previous maps and mandate the current Congressional District 5 running from Jacksonville to Orlando instead run horizontally from Jacksonville to Tallahassee. Republican legislators took particular issue with the court ordering the east-west district, which was favored by Democratic groups and the League of Women Voters, which brought the redistricting lawsuit. “If the Florida Supreme Court is basically drawng a map and they know that the map is drawn by partisan Democratic operatives . . how are the justices who do that complying with the constitution?” said Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island.

Maryland: Hogan announces redistricting committee | Southern Maryland News

Gov. Larry Hogan announced Thursday that he has issued an executive order to create a commission to study redistricting reform in Maryland. “Maryland is home to some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country, a distinction that we should not be proud of,” Hogan (R) said. According to the governor’s office, the commission will look at fully reforming Maryland’s redistricting process and giving the authority to an independent, nonpartisan commission. It also will give recommendations for congressional district reform. Maryland last redistricted in 2010, with the maps taking effect in 2012, according to the Maryland Department of Planning. Like all states, Maryland redistricts every 10 years.

Minnesota: Ranked Choice Voting to Appear on November Ballot | KQDS

An organization, called Fair Vote Minnesota, has petitioned throughout Duluth and received more than 1,600 signatures, which was the magic number, and now puts the question of ranked choice voting on the ballot this November. Councilor Joel Sipress believes the term ‘ranked choice voting’ encompasses two different voting systems. The first is called ‘instant runoff voting’ and is the method used in races electing one person, like the Mayor or district councilors. The second, is called ‘single transferable voting,’ a system designed for races electing multiple people at the same time, like the at–large city councilors.

New Hampshire: A federal judge just struck down New Hampshire’s ban on ballot selfies | Boston Globe

New Hampshire primary voters rejoice! You may once again take “ballot selfies.” A federal judge Monday repealed the Granite State’s law banning photos of filled-out election ballots, ruling that it violated the First Amendment. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro said the law was unconstitutional, because it did not meet the standards necessary for the state to restrict political free speech. “Here, the law at issue is a content-based restriction on speech that deprives voters of one of their most powerful means of letting the world know how they voted,” Barbadoro wrote in his decision.

Ohio: Ohio voting laws discriminate, lawsuit says | Associated Press

Recently passed Ohio voting laws create hurdles for minority voters casting absentee and provisional ballots, advocates argued in an updated federal lawsuit filed on Monday. The laws and similar orders by the secretary of state unconstitutionally permit absentee votes to be thrown out for ID errors, according to the lawsuit. Those mistakes could include putting down the wrong birth month on the absentee envelope even when a voter supplied the correct information when requesting the ballot, the lawsuit said. The laws also removed protection for voters casting provisional ballots by failing to provide the chance for voters to be notified of errors that could cause the ballot to be rejected, according to the lawsuit.

Virginia: Democrats target Virginia as they push to break down voting restrictions | The Washington Post

After Tracey Bell tried to register to vote in Virginia last year, she got a letter in the mail saying her citizenship was in doubt and she would have to pay $10 to prove it. Confused and annoyed, Bell ranted on Facebook. It was the rare Facebook rant that actually led to government action. A friend put her in touch with the Virginia Democratic Party, which connected her to a lawyer who explained that she had forgotten to check a box confirming her citizenship. She fixed it — and a year later, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) is pushing to have the box requirement eliminated.

Washington: Yakima Urges High Court to Overturn Election District Makeup | Spokane Public Radio

The City of Yakima has latched onto the coat tails of a Texas lawsuit before the nation’s highest court seeking to limit the principle of “one person – one vote.” Last February, a Spokane federal judge ordered the city to elect council representatives by district, rather than at large, reasoning that Latino candidates could not gain a political foothold under the at-large system.

Wisconsin: As John Doe probe is halted, legal maneuvering continues | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

The investigation into conservative groups and Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign may be halted, but the legal machinations surrounding it appear far from over. In the latest development, attorneys who beat back the probe are seeking to have a third party oversee prosecutors as they return evidence they gathered during the investigation. Their request to the state Supreme Court would also affect the treatment of material gathered in an earlier investigation that resulted in six convictions, according to the judge who oversaw that first investigation. Details are sketchy because the high court has sealed the filings until it determines whether they can be released. But the flurry of court activity shows that a fight over the investigation will continue as Walker pursues the Republican nomination for president.

Canada: Why B.C. candidate’s campaign video is bursting with dragons, robots, lasers: ‘People don’t have attention spans’ | National Post

It’s easily the 2015 campaign’s most computer graphics-filled video: Dragons, a giant Canada goose and a towering space robot. And according to independent candidate Wyatt Scott, it all started with a solemn vow to defy the alleged “shenanigans” of the local Liberal Party. “Obviously, people don’t have attention spans nowadays, so we figured what can we do to draw attention?” said Scott, who put together the video for less than $1,000 after recruiting student filmmakers through Craigslist. The one-minute video entitled “I’m running for Parliament!” features the B.C. candidate riding a Canada goose and stabbing a dragon in the head with a broadsword. “University is too damn expensive!” he says, while catching a man in drag falling from the sky.

Editorials: Direct Elections Won’t Help Russia’s Opposition | Vladimir Ryzhkov/The Moscow Times

One of the few things the mass protests in the winter of 2011-12 achieved was the return of direct elections for State Duma deputies representing single-member districts. They will be held in September 2016, and half of the parliamentary deputies (225) will, for the first time in 13 years, be elected by specific cities and regions. The winners in each of these 225 districts will be the candidates who receive more votes than any of their opponents. Parliamentary parties, non-parliamentary opposition groups and the Kremlin are already hard at work in preparation for these elections. A foundation with ties to the Kremlin, the Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Research (ISEPR), recently released its forecast for the elections, working from the current composition of the Duma. This ISEPR report (“Acting State Duma Deputies in their Districts — 2016”) is important and noteworthy, not only as an expert study, but as a formative one.

United Kingdom: Labour leadership contest: campaign teams summoned over ballot concerns | The Guardian

Labour has hauled in its four leadership campaign teams for a meeting at party headquarters in an attempt to put a stop to complaints from some of the camps about the credibility of the contest. The party called in representatives of Jeremy Corbyn, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall on Tuesday, as it sought to clear up confusion about the process and reassure them that no “entryists” from other parties would successfully infiltrate the competition. At the meeting, called by Iain McNicol, the party secretary, and attended by chief whip Rosie Winterton, the campaign teams were told that at least 1,200 members or supporters of other parties have now been excluded and at least another 800 are under investigation. But despite the party’s attempts to stress the robustness of its verification process, the Guardian has been told by sources present that the meeting raised more questions than it answered, and at least three of the camps are in touch with each other to discuss their concerns about the running of the contest.

National: Inside John Roberts’ Decades-Long Crusade Against the Voting Rights Act | Politico

John Glover Roberts, a 25-year-old graduate of Harvard Law School, arrived in Washington in early 1980. Harvard Law professor Morton Horwitz described Roberts as “a conservative looking for a conservative ideology in American history,” and he found that ideology in the nation’s capital, first as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist and then as an influential aide in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department. At the time, Rehnquist and the Reagan administration were at the vanguard of a new conservative counterrevolution in the law—a legal backlash against the historic and liberal-leaning civil rights laws of the 1960s.

Arizona: 9th Circuit Endorses Arizona Ballot Form | Courthouse News Service

Arizona may continue to use a ballot registration form that lists only the two largest political parties in the state, the Ninth Circuit ruled Friday. The Arizona Libertarian and Green parties, and three of their members, sued then-Secretary of State Ken Bennett in 2011 after the state legislature decided that only the two largest political parties would be listed by name on voter registration forms. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in Tucson Federal Court claimed the statute discriminated against Green and Libertarian voters, who now had to write out their party affiliation in a small box, forcing them to “abbreviate, and run the risk that their abbreviation is illegible or misread.”

Florida: Lawmakers reluctantly convene for another redistricting session | Tampa Bay Times

It was 101 degrees in the shade Monday afternoon when Florida legislators gaveled open a two-week special session to redraw — for the third time — the state’s congressional districts and, within minutes, it became apparent that hardly anyone wanted to be there. The governor and his family had jetted off to Paris for a vacation. The Florida Supreme Court, which ordered lawmakers to redraw the map that forced the special session, was on its summer break. At least 10 of the state’s 40 senators and 17 of the 120 House members received permission to skip out for the session. House and Senate leaders announced that they disagreed with the court ruling that said the Republican-led redistricting process was “tainted” by illegal partisan intent but vowed to fix it as part of the “remedial” process laid out by the court. “We continue to believe that we drew a constitutional map in 2012 and again in 2014,” said House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, addressing the chamber in a 20-minute opening session. “Unfortunately, we are here today because the Supreme Court disagreed and ordered that eight districts be redrawn.”

Florida: Randolph Calls on DOJ Probe into Florida’s Voter Registration System | WMFE

Susanna Randolph, one of the candidates running for Alan Grayson’s 9th district congressional seat, sent a letter today asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch to launch a Department of Justice probe into the state’s voter system. The request comes less than one month after an independent report by the state auditor general found flaws with the nine-year-old registration database. The audit found the system at risk of a security breach, citing unauthorized access to voter data by Department of State employees. It also labeled the system overdue for upgrades and a disaster recovery plan evaluation

Kansas: Lawmakers question Kobach’s effort to purge ‘suspense’ voter list | Lawrence Journal World

Four Kansas Lawmakers went on record Monday opposing Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s proposal to cancel voter registration applications after 90 days if those voters do not submit proof of citizenship or other required information. Those statements came during a meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules and Regulations, which reviews proposed regulations, but which does not have authority to veto them. “I want to record my opposition to this arbitrary and capricious 90-day rule,” said Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, who also raised new questions about whether the state’s proof-of-citizenship requirement is constitutional, in light of a recent federal appeals court opinion.

Kentucky: Online Voter Registration Could Be Coming to Kentucky | WKMS

If a legislative committee signs off on a new regulation later this month, Kentuckians will soon be able to register to vote online. Twenty-one states allow voters to register online, which Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes has advocated for during her tenure. Kentucky already allows members of the military and overseas voters to register on the web. In a statement, Grimes said that program has been a “tremendous success,” and she hopes expanding online registration to all Kentuckians would lead to greater participation.

Louisiana: Baldone seeks to be a Democrat and Republican on fall ballot | Daily Comet

A Houma attorney seeking to return to the state House wants to be listed as both Democrat and Republican on the ballot this fall. Damon Baldone filed a petition today in state court seeking to force the Terrebonne Parish Registrar of Voters to allow the dual registration. “By working with both parties you have a voice,” he said. “By going independent, you just kind of lose that voice and I believe my political beliefs fall within the spectrum of both the Democrat and Republican parties. That hasn’t changed and won’t change.”

Ohio: Election rights advocates allege new voter ID violations | Associated Press

Recently passed Ohio voting laws create new hurdles for minority voters casting absentee and provisional ballots, election rights advocates argued in an updated federal lawsuit filed Monday. The laws and similar orders by the state’s elections chief unconstitutionally permit absentee votes to be thrown out for ID errors, according to the lawsuit. Those mistakes could include putting down the wrong birth month on the absentee envelope even when a voter supplied the correct information when requesting the ballot, the lawsuit said. The laws also removed protection for voters casting provisional ballots by failing to provide the chance for voters to be notified of errors that could cause the ballot to be rejected, according to the lawsuit.

Utah: New by-mail voting could mean election night mystery: Who won? | The Salt Lake Tribune

Waiting up late to see who wins on election night may be frustrating Tuesday. More municipal primary races than usual may remain undecided — for up to two weeks — because many ballots will still be in the mail. Most major Utah cities switched this year to voting primarily by mail, including seven of the eight Salt Lake County cities holding primaries Tuesday. Fourteen of the 16 cities in Utah’s largest county will also vote by mail in the Nov. 3 general election — all but Taylorsville and West Valley City. By-mail ballots must be postmarked by Monday, the day before the election. So they may trickle in over several days. State law prohibits updating vote counts publicly between election night and the final official vote canvasses by city councils — which must be held between seven and 14 days after the election.

Canada: Is it fair to ban expats from voting? | BBC

Canada’s election to choose a new government has begun but new rules will restrict the right of ex-pats to vote. Is that fair? William Affleck-Asch-Lowe moved to the US 22 years ago, but the Canadian expatriate says he never lost touch with his roots. The University of Washington student keeps on top of news from home and is regularly in touch with Canadian friends online. Affleck-Asch-Lowe grew up in British Columbia and went on to serve in the Canadian army for seven years. When he finishes his PhD programme, he plans to come home and teach engineering. “Once a Canadian, always a Canadian,” he told the BBC. And yet, living outside his country has cost William Affleck-Asch-Lowe his right to vote.