Yearly Archives: 2015

The NSW Electoral Commission has responded to reports of a flaw in its iVote online voting portal, saying that although the risk of its website being compromised was low, it has taken action to fix the flaw. The Commission has also raised questions about the authors of the findings, noting that the two academics behind the research are also board members for a group that lobbies against online and electronic voting in the United States. According to the Chief Information Officer and Director of IT for the NSW Electoral Commission, Ian Brightwell, the flaw discovered in the iVote system required three or four preconditions in order to be exploited. While Brightwell said a hack was “unlikely,” he said the Commission moved swiftly to respond to the problem.

Israel: An Insider Tells All on Voter Fraud | Arutz Sheva

Multiple incidents of voter fraud were reported during elections day last week – including several arrests in Arab communities. Arutz Sheva spoke to Yisrael Zelkovitz, a volunteer who served as a member of a volunteer task force funded by the Samaria Residents’ Committee at polling stations tasked with uncovering and preventing voter fraud, to find out more about what really happened on elections day. The project was funded with Likud, Jewish Home, and Yisrael Beytenu support. Zelkovitz stated that he did see incidents of voter fraud, and even caught some suspicious activity on tape – including buying votes and extortion.

Nigeria: Braced for tense election countdown | Deutsche Welle

Africa’s biggest economy and oil producer – stepped up security in its capital Abuja on Monday, deploying soldiers and putting up barricades before Saturday’s election. DW’s correspondent in Abuja, Ben Shemang, said soldiers, police and even plainclothes security operatives were to be seen at the barricades. “Sometimes they do stop-and-search,” he said. A spokesman for President Goodluck Jonathan’s ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said the government “needs to give citizens a sense of protection.” But political analyst Anselm Okolo told the German news agency dpa there was no reason for the deployment of soldiers “other than intimidation of opponents of President Jonathan.”

Uzbekistan: Why Islam Karimov will win Uzbekistan’s elections | BBC

In a bright and spacious room Uzbek President Islam Karimov is talking to his voters. Like every other meeting broadcast on state TV, it all looks very orderly. Men in suits and ties, women in smart dresses occupy the entire hall leaving no empty seats. They all have a pen and a notebook but nobody is taking any notes. When the speech is over, everyone jumps from their seats and applauds. President Karimov has been in power since 1989 when he was selected as the Communist Party leader of Soviet Uzbekistan. Today this Central Asian state is seen as one of the most repressive countries in the world, international organisations describe its human rights record as “abysmal” and Uzbek citizens often call their leader “podishoh”, the king.

National: New report ranks voter turnout in all 50 states | The Pampa News

As the nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Nonprofit VOTE releases its biennial voter turnout report, America Goes to the Polls 2014, based on final data certified by state election offices. The report ranks voter turnout in all 50 states to look at major factors underlying voter participation in this historically low-turnout election. While just 36.6% of eligible citizens voted, the lowest in a midterm since World War II, turnout varied widely across states by as much as 30 percentage points. Maine led the nation with 58.5 percent turnout among eligible voters, follow by Wisconsin at 56.8 percent, and Colorado at 54.5%. Nevada, Tennessee, New York, Texas and Indiana made up the bottom five all with less than 30 percent of their eligible voters participating. “Clearly there’s much work to do to foster a healthy democracy when well below half the electorate votes in a national election,” states Brian Miller, executive director of Nonprofit VOTE. “The good news is that higher turnout states show us how we can increase voter turnout across the nation.”

The America Goes to the Polls 2014 report is available at http://www.nonprofitvote.org/americagoestothepolls2014.

Editorials: 50 Years After Selma and the Voting Rights Act, Americans Have Become Apathetic About Democracy | Eric Liu/The Atlantic

In this 50th anniversary year of Selma and the Voting Rights Act, there’s been a lot of talk about the right to vote: how it was secured for black citizens in the South, and how it is being compromised anew by legislatures and a see-no-evil Supreme Court. But for the most part, the public has ignored the talk. The whittling away of the VRA plays as a technical matter, the concern of partisan insiders. Which, increasingly, is how voting itself is seen by the large pluralities of eligible voters who sit out most presidential contests, and the outright majorities who skip other elections. The sources of this apathy are familiar: people are too busy, the money game seems rigged, campaigns have become an ugly, unsatisfying spectator sport. The net effect is that the act of voting feels severed from personal purpose or collective identity. But it’s possible to change that. A playbook exists. There was a time when voting meant much more than just voting. In fact, that was true for most of this nation’s history. From the Revolution through the Civil Rights era, as historians like Mark Brewin and David Waldstreicher describe, the United States had a robust participatory culture of voting: parades, yes, but also raucous street theater, open-air debates, broadsheets and pamphleteering, committees of correspondence, rituals of toasting and fasting and even fighting, festivals and bonfires, and outrageous wagers.

Editorials: The Supreme Court’s History on Voting Rights: An ‘Injustices’ Excerpt | Ian Millhiser/The New Republic

Chief Justice John Roberts’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder may be the most politically naïve decision of our era. Rooted in the notion that there simply isn’t enough racism left in the United States to justify a full-functioning Voting Rights Act, Shelby County struck down the law’s preclearance provision—which required new election rules in states with a history of voter suppression to be reviewed by federal officials before they took effect—and left voters to the mercy of a judiciary that is increasingly skeptical of voting rights. Yet, even if the Roberts Court were champions of the franchise, the history of voting rights in the United States reveals that a vigorous judiciary is simply not enough to protect these rights. Politicians determined to keep certain Americans from voting are too creative and too nimble for a judiciary that, by its very nature, must take months or even years to consider cases. And that’s exactly what happened for decades in the South before the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Editorials: Concerns grow over voting rights for the South’s language minorities | Facing South

Amid concerns over the rollback of the Voting Rights Act and introduction of voter ID laws, election watchdogs worry about another critical voting rights issue: language barriers faced by limited English proficient (LEP) voters. For people who don’t speak English as their first language, language barriers can be a significant hurdle to voting. Difficulty understanding registration forms, ballots and other voting materials for LEP voters such as recently-naturalized citizens may discourage them from turning out to the polls. In 1975, Congress acknowledged the barriers an English-only voting process created and amended the Voting Rights Act to require certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual materials and translation support to voters. Under Section 203, jurisdictions — usually counties — where a certain level of a language minority are LEP and have an illiteracy rate higher than the national average must provide translated voting materials and an interpreter at the polls.

Arizona: Proposal would make it illegal to collect early ballots | Associated Press

An effort to revive a major piece of a repealed 2013 election law by making it a felony for anyone but a family member or candidate to collect early ballots from voters failed in a House committee Thursday. The proposal was tacked on to a bill during a special meeting of the House elections committee, but it went down on a 3-3 vote. Rep. Heather Carter, R-Cave Creek, joined two Democrats in opposition. The so-called ‘strike-everything” amendment backed by Secretary of State Michele Reagan revived a part of a major election overhaul that angered Democrats, some conservative Republicans and third-party candidates. After a successful signature-gathering effort to block the 2013 law, pending a statewide election, the Legislature repealed House Bill 2305.

Illinois: Special election for Schock seat has election officials worried | The Southern

A new law allowing voters to register and vote on election day has county clerks in western and central Illinois on edge. With a special election to replace scandal-plagued U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock expected to occur in June or July, the clerks say they don’t have enough time or money to get the new system up and running. “There’s no way we can be ready for that,” McLean County Clerk Kathy Michael said Friday. At issue is a pending special election in the 18th Congressional District, which had been held by Schock for eight years.

Iowa: Absentee ballot change would affect Democrats’ practices | Chronicle Bulletin

Democrats and older Iowans would have to adjust their early voting habits the most if a bill that needs absentee ballots to be in county auditors’ hands by the time polls close on Election Day becomes law. Republicans would see an effect too, legislators say, but they vote in particular person on Election Day with much more frequency than Democrats or those registered for no celebration, and also Iowans 65 and older, an IowaWatch analysis of voting data in common elections more than the final 20 years shows. Regardless of who feels the impact, Republican and Democratic state legislators trying to amend Iowa’s absentee voter registration law agree that modifications are crucial since ballots are not being counted when they possibly really should be. The explanation: U.S. post offices are not putting time-stamped postmarks on lots of of the absentee ballots. “So we are throwing ballots out, and we don’t want to do that,” state Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls, stated.

Louisiana: Bobby Jindal’s budget won’t fund presidential primaries in 2016 | The Washington Post

This is a story about the $1.6 billion hole in Louisiana’s budget. This is also a story about how Louisiana is so poor that — despite his White House ambitions — Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) didn’t budget anything for presidential primaries in 2016. Last year, Jindal even signed a law to move up the primaries by two weeks to attract more national attention to Louisiana. But the money for those elections was nowhere to be found in the governor’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year, as legislators discovered Wednesday. “I have no funding for elections past the fall elections,” Secretary of State Tom Schedler said during a review of the governor’s budget before the state House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. Whose oversight was this? It’s something of a mystery how this item, which everybody agrees is vital, got left out.

New Hampshire: House asks court to review bill requiring voters to abide by motor vehicle requirements | Associated Press

The New Hampshire House of Representatives is asking the state Supreme Court to weigh in on a bill requiring people registering to vote — including out-of-state students or military personnel — to also register their cars and obtain drivers’ licenses in New Hampshire. The request for an advisory opinion was made in writing Wednesday and made public by the court Thursday.

Australia: Online voting system may have FREAK bug | The Register

Next weekend, voters in the Australian State of New South Wales go to the polls to elect a new government. Some have already cast their votes online, with a system that may be running the FREAK bug. So say Vanessa Teague and J. Alex Halderman, respectively a research fellow in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at at the University of Melbourne and an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan and director of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society. The system in question is called iVote system and was launched in 2011 to assist voters who live 20 kilometres or more from a polling station, or those will be overseas or interstate on election day. But Teague and Halderman say their proof-of-concept probe on a “practice” system showed it is possible to “… intercepts and manipulate votes … though the same attack would also have succeeded against the real voting server,” the pair wrote in analysis.

Australia: NSW Electoral Commission scrambles to patch iVote flaw | ZDNet

The analytics service used by the New South Wales electronic voting system, iVote, left voters vulnerable to having their ballots changed, according to security researchers. The iVote system was originally implemented ahead of the 2011 state election for vision-impaired voters and those living in rural areas who have difficulty reaching polling places, but the government is expanding the use of the iVote system as part of the election on March 28, and has taken approximately 66,000 votes since early polling opened last week. Researchers Vanessa Teague from the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, and J Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan Centre for Computer Security, found that while the voting website uses a safe SSL configuration, it includes JavaScript from an external server that is used to track site visitors. This, they said, would leave the iVote site open to a range of attacks, including FREAK.

Australia: iVote flaw ‘allowed vote to be changed’; electoral commission fixes vulnerability | ABC

A “major security hole” that could allow an attacker to read or change someone’s vote has been discovered in the New South Wales online iVote platform, security experts say. The iVote system allows people to lodge their votes for Saturday’s state election online, instead of visiting a physical polling station. It aims to make voting easier for the disabled or for people who live long distances from polling booths. However computer security researchers said they found a critical issue and alerted the NSW Electoral Commission on Friday afternoon. University of Melbourne research fellow Vanessa Teague, who found the security vulnerability, said it was a difficult hack to pull off, but could potentially affect ballots en masse. “We’ve been told repeatedly that votes are perfectly secret and the whole system is secure and it can’t be tampered with and so on, and we’ve shown very clearly than that’s not true – that these votes are not secret and they can be tampered with,” Ms Teague said.

Australia: Security flaw in New South Wales puts thousands of online votes at risk | Freedom to Tinker

New South Wales, Australia, is holding state elections this month, and they’re offering a new Internet voting system developed by e-voting vendor Scytl and the NSW Electoral Commission. The iVote system, which its creators describe as private, secure and verifiable, is predicted to see record turnout for online voting. Voting has been happening for six days, and already iVote has received more than 66,000 votes. Up to a quarter million voters (about 5% of the total) are expected to use the system by the time voting closes next Saturday. Since we’ve both done extensive research on the design and analysis of Internet voting systems, we decided to perform an independent security review of iVote. We’ll prepare a more extensive technical report after the election, but we’re writing today to share news about critical vulnerabilities we found that have put tens of thousands of votes at risk. We discovered a major security hole allowing a man-in-the middle attacker to read and manipulate votes. We also believe there are ways to circumvent the verification mechanism.

France: Vote blunts rise of France’s far-right National Front | Associated Press

France’s governing Socialists never expected to do well in Sunday’s first-round elections, and their strategy worked just as planned: Their conservative rivals took first place. Before the elections for 2,000 local councils, the Socialists urged people to vote, hoping that turnout would blunt the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far right National Front, even if it meant Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP would be the victor. Initial projections gave the UMP party 31 percent of the vote compared with 24.5 percent for the National Front and 19.7 percent for the Socialists and their allies. Turnout was 51 percent, compared with about 45 percent in the same elections in 2011. With little air of a man in third place, Prime Minister Manuel Valls was the first to praise the far right party’s defeat. “This evening, the extreme right, even it is too high, is not at the forefront of French politics,” Valls said. “When we mobilize the French, it works.”

Philippines: Comelec willing to shelve Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) technology | The Manila Times

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) may abandon a planned pilot-testing of a touchscreen voting system or Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) technology in Pateros, Metro Manila for the 2016 elections as some lawmakers and information technology experts criticize the system for being expensive and less transparent. If it will do away with the DRE testing, the poll body will have no choice but to use the existing Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines. Acting Comelec Chairman Christian Robert Lim, during a recent hearing of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the Automated Elections System (JCOC-AES), said the poll body can still cancel the pilot-testing of the DRE technology since the contract for the supply of DRE machines has not been awarded. Sen. Aquilino Pimentel 3rd, chairman of the joint panel, asked Lim about the possibility of shelving the touchscreen voting in 2016 and use PCOS or the transparent and credible election system (TCrES), which is being pushed by various election watch groups and Filipino IT experts.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for March 16-22 2015

March 22, 2015

Voter Registration Reflecting a movement is growing around the country to dismantle felon disenfranchisement laws that keep nearly 6 million Americans from the polls, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced legislation that would restore voting rights for federal elections to Americans with past criminal convictions upon their release from incarceration. Russell Berman at The Atlantic considered the ramifications an automatic voter registration bill, signed into law this week by Oregon’s Governor (and former Secretary of State Kate Brown. Electionline Weekly noted the increase in special elections and the toll on the budgets and resources of election administrators. San Francisco is considering a proposal that would make it the first major city in the US to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in municipal elections. Legislation that would return Nebraska to a winner-take-all presidential electoral vote system was blocked from further consideration this session by a successful filibuster. A proposed Voter ID requirement drew contentious debate in the Nevada Assembly. A online ballot error in an election in Australia could lead to litigation and the Guinean opposition withdrew its lawmakers from parliament Wednesday and said it would no longer recognize the election commission in protest over the timetable for presidential elections.

National: Push to restore voting rights for felons gathers momentum | MSNBC

“It would be transformative if everybody voted,” President Obama told a crowd in Cleveland Wednesday. He even mused about the idea of making voting mandatory. That’s not going to happen any time soon. But in the wake of record low voter turnout in last fall’s midterm elections, a movement is growing in Washington and around the country to dismantle a set of restrictions that keep nearly 6 million Americans from the polls: felon disenfranchisement laws. Many state restrictions on felon voting were imposed in the wake of Reconstruction, as the South looked for ways to suppress black political power. But now, the falling crime rates of the last two decades have prompted a broader reassessment of tough-on-crime policies. Meanwhile, the ongoing Republican-led assault on voting has triggered a backlash that aims to expand, rather than contract, voting rights. On Wednesday, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), backed by an array of civil- and voting-rights groups, introduced a bill that would restore voting rights for federal elections to Americans with past criminal convictions upon their release from incarceration. That came on the heels of a similar but more limited bill introduced last month by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would apply only to non-violent offenders. Neither measure is likely to get much traction in the Republican-controlled Congress. But in the states, there has been plenty of movement lately.

Editorials: Is Oregon’s Automatic Voter Registration Law A Step Toward Universal Voting? | Russell Berman/The Atlantic

“I forgot to register.” It’s one of the frequently cited reasons that people give every year for not voting in America, as well as a convenient excuse that the state of Oregon this week took it away from its citizens. Under a law signed Monday by new Governor Kate Brown, any eligible Oregonian with a driver’s license will be automatically registered to vote and will receive a ballot by mail weeks before Election Day. The measure is the first of its kind in the nation, and state officials project it will add 300,000 people to a voter roll that now numbers about 2.2 million. Oregon has long been an early adopter of new voting methods, having shifted to an entirely vote-by-mail system in 1998. Passage of the law, which was supported by Democrats, marks a rare recent win for proponents of expanded access to the ballot box at a time when states are moving toward more restrictive measures. The U.S. has an embarrassingly low rate of voter participation, setting it apart from other democracies in the developed world; just over one-third of eligible voters showed up in 2014, and even in the relatively high turnout election of 2008, the participation rate was only 64 percent. Yet the debate over the Oregon “motor voter” law was contentious, and it hinged on a key question: How far should the government go to encourage citizens to register and vote?

Voting Blogs: Special elections continue to pile up: Some states and localities are looking for ways to decrease the numbers | electionlineWeekly

Mid-Tuesday afternoon while much of America was either enjoying St. Patrick’s Day, Twitter suddenly blew up with the news that Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock (R-18th District) announced his resignation. While the journalists and political gadfly’s on social media made light of the resignation or talked about its impact on politics, all electionline could think was of those poor elections administrators and volunteers in Illinois. Now some of those elections officials are going to have conduct a special election to replace Schock on top of previously planned spring elections and for some, on top of other special elections. “In a year when state revenues are almost certain to decrease, the increased cost of an unanticipated and unbudgeted election is particularly difficult,” Peoria County Administrator Lori Curtis Luther told the Peoria Journal Star. This will be the third special Congressional election in Illinois in the last years. For Peoria elections officials, the special election creates a whole different set of issues in addition to funding. Last year, voters approved a measure to create a countywide election commission, which was supposed to have almost a full year to get up and running before its first election, now they need to scramble. Last year, voters approved a measure to create a countywide election commission, which was supposed to have almost a full year to get up and running before its first election, now they need to scramble.

California: Voting at 16 in S.F.? Supervisor says the time has come | San Francisco Chronicle

Sixteen-year-olds can drive, work, pay taxes and be sentenced to life in prison. Now, some want the right to vote, too. On Tuesday, San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos will attempt to make that happen by introducing a measure that would extend the right to vote to 16- and 17-year-olds. Avalos and other supporters say it will encourage civic engagement among youths and instill in them lifelong voting habits at a time when turnout is low. Detractors call the measure foolhardy at best and at worst a political ploy by progressives to try and win more votes from young people, who tend to lean liberal in their voting. “I have seen the power of young people to be able to make changes and positive contributions to their community, and it makes sense to give them the right to vote,” Avalos said.

Nebraska: Winner-take-all bill blocked and likely done for the year | Lincoln Journal Star

The legislative proposal to return Nebraska to a winner-take-all presidential electoral vote system was trapped Tuesday by a successful filibuster and essentially blocked from further consideration this session. A motion to break the filibuster fell two senators short of acquiring the 33 votes required to break the filibuster, failing on a 31-18 vote. Four senators who are Republicans joined all 13 senators who are Democrats and Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, the sole registered independent, in voting against the cloture vote to end debate.

Editorials: Oregon’s Example for Voters Everywhere | Cass R. Sunstein/Bloomberg

This week, Oregon became the first state to adopt automatic voter registration. If you’re an Oregonian over 18, and if you’ve dealt with the state’s Driver and Motor Vehicles Division since 2013, you’ll get a notice in the mail letting you know you’re registered to vote. Then, unless you opt out within three weeks, you’ll automatically receive a ballot 20 days before every election. (Oregon has all-mail voting.) Almost immediately, 300,000 more voters — a big chunk of the estimated 800,000 state residents who are eligible but still unregistered — are likely to be signed up. It’s fitting that Oregon passed its law just after the 50th anniversary of the Selma, Alabama, voting rights march. Too often people assume that the U.S. has solved its voting-rights problem, and see Selma as no more than an occasion for pride and celebration. The truth is that voting rights remain a work in progress. Oregon’s new law points to a simple, inexpensive and promising way forward.

Editorials: The Supreme Court’s Identity Crisis on Voting Rights | Linda Greenhouse/New York Times

A thought experiment: Suppose the 50th anniversary of the march for voting rights in Selma, Ala. — Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge — had fallen on March 7, 2013 rather than the week before last. Eight days before my imaginary anniversary, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Shelby County v. Holder. Four months later, the 5-to-4 decision in that case cut the heart out of the very victory that the Selma marchers had sacrificed to achieve, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Would the court really have had the nerve to do it, with the memories of the march’s veterans still echoing for the world to hear and with President Obama making perhaps the best speech of his presidency? In the full glare of that public spotlight, would there really have been no member of the Shelby County majority who might have found his way (yes, the five were all men) to a different result?

Voting Blogs: Voting Laws Are Disabling The Disabled: Easy Nationwide Fixes To Re-Enfranchise Voters With Disabilities | State of Elections

Laws affecting voter participation are a current hot topic in the news. Voter identification, early voting, or redistricting laws are all working their way through the legal system almost certainly on their way to the Supreme Court (if they have not reached the high court already). There are mixed opinions on what these laws do. Supporters insist that the laws protect the integrity of elections by preventing voter fraud. Opponents vehemently argue that the laws are simply pretense for stopping poor and minority voters from exercising their rights at the polls. However, one group of minority voters, voters with disabilities, are severely impacted by election administration laws regarding the accessibility of elections. Their story has been largely ignored in the sound-byte thrusts and parries of the politicos and pundits.

Colorado: Overseas voting bill advances | The Pueblo Chieftain

A new state law that would extend to cities the absentee voter system currently in place for military overseas who want to vote in state and federal elections, passed committee on Wednesday. State Sen. Leroy Garcia, D-Pueblo, said the bill passed through the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee unanimously and will go to the Senate floor next. There’s no fiscal impact to the state and Garcia said he isn’t sure when the Senate will take up the bill. Garcia said the bill will help extend some deadlines for municipal elections so ballots can be mailed to military personnel and state department employees overseas who want to participate in local elections.

Nevada: Voter ID proposal brings contentious debate | Las Vegas Review-Journal