The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for December 28 2015 – January 3 2016

car_260A database containing this information from 191 million voter records was mysteriously published over the last week, the latest example of personal voter data becoming freely available, alarming privacy experts who say the information can be used for phishing attacks, identity theft and extortion. In his review of recall elections in 2015, Joshua Spivak reports that 108 recalls got on the ballot or led to a resignation and in those 108, 65 officials were ousted, and 15 resigned, while only 28 survived the voters’ wrath. Colorado’s choice of Dominion Voting Systems as the statewide voting technology vendor has generated negative reactions from some counties. In a setback for the Republican-led legislature, a state judge on Wednesday approved an entirely new map of Florida’s 40 Senate districts that was recommended by a coalition of voting rights groups. Both Republican and Democratic party leaders in Iowa are hoping that a new app developed by Microsoft and its partner Interknowlogy will help avoid reporting errors that have marred the state’s presidential caucus in the past. Virginia’s strict voter-identification law will go on trial in a federal court in Richmond in February, part of a national strategy by Democrats to remove what they say are barriers to voting by African American, Latino and poor voters. Despite calls from both the left and right that any changes to how Canadians elect their government require the direct input of the people, Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc ruled a national referendum on election reform and voters in the Central African Republic cast ballots in long-delayed elections that follow three years of sectarian violence that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.