The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for July 25-31 2016
Russian involvement in hacking the Democratic National Committee computer network in an apparent attempt to influence the American election has heightened concerns about vulnerabilities in voting technology. The Illinois’ Voter Registration System, IVRS, is still down after officials discovered a security breach earlier this month. A Shawnee County judge has ruled that 17,500 voters can have their votes counted in state and local races as well as federal ones in Tuesday’s Kansas primary election. Federal appellate judges on Friday struck down North Carolina’s law limiting voting options and requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, declaring in an unsparing opinion that the restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision,” and a federal judge struck down parts of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, limits on early voting and prohibitions on allowing people to vote early at multiple sites. After a similar ruling last week that Texas’ voter ID law was unconstitutional and that the state must develop new rules before the November election, election officials are unclear on what the replacement rules will look like. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe vowed to sign about 206,000 individual executive orders restoring voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences and are no longer on probation after the state Supreme Court struck down a sweeping executive order he signed in April. And Venezuela’s opposition has demanded authorities move forward on a referendum to force Nicolás Maduro from office, amid complaints that the government is digging in its heels to delay the process.