In Texas, Michigan, North Carolina and elsewhere, federal courts in recent months have struck down one discriminatory voting law after another in a series of major victories for voting-rights advocates. Millions of voters, especially minorities who might have otherwise been obstructed by voter-identification requirements or shortened early voting times, will now be able to cast…
A federal appeals court rejected efforts by Michigan officials to preserve a ban on straight-party voting through the coming elections. The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined on Wednesday to stand in the way of a July ruling by a federal trial judge, who pronounced the Republican-backed ban, passed in 2015, an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, particularly those of African-Americans. The ruling means that straight-party voting — which allows people to vote for candidates of their desired political party by making a single mark rather than voting for each candidate individually — almost certainly will be an option on ballots come November.
Governor Christie on Thursday vetoed a pair of bills that sponsors said would make it easier to register to vote — for years a Democratic mission that has been rejected by the Republican governor over and over again. But this time Christie’s rejection of one of those bills featured a denouncement that echoes pronouncements by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Christie’s personal friend. Rather than sign a bill that would automatically register voters as part of the driver’s license application and renewal process, Christie conditionally vetoed it and said it should be renamed “The Voter Fraud Enhancement and Permission Act.” He vetoed a similar measure last November, when it was included in a package of proposals dubbed the “Democracy Act.” At that time, Christie was running for president and wrote that the state “must ensure that every eligible citizen’s vote counts and is not stolen by fraud.” And in 2013, Christie vetoed a Democratic bill to expand early voting.
The N.C. Republican Party encouraged GOP appointees to county elections boards to “make party line changes to early voting” by limiting the number of hours and keeping polling sites closed on Sundays. NCGOP executive director Dallas Woodhouse emailed the request to Republican county board members and other party members on Sunday. The News & Observer obtained copies of the emails through a public records request. County elections boards are developing new early voting schedules in response to a federal court ruling that threw out the state’s voter ID law. In addition to revoking North Carolina’s photo ID requirement, the ruling requires counties to offer 17 days of early voting. The voter ID law limited early voting to a 10-day period, but counties were required to offer at least the same number of voting hours as they did during the 2012 election. The court ruling eliminates that floor on hours – meaning that counties can legally provide fewer hours and fewer early voting sites than they did in the last presidential election. Early voting schedules must be approved by the three-member Board of Elections in each county. Because the state has a Republican governor, two of three members on each board are Republicans, while one is a Democrat – generally appointees recommended by their party’s leadership. “Our Republican Board members should feel empowered to make legal changes to early voting plans, that are supported by Republicans,” Woodhouse wrote in his email to board members. “Republicans can and should make party line changes to early voting.”
A more than four-year legal challenge to overturn Oklahoma’s voter identification law was rejected this week by a state district court judge, who upheld the constitutionality of the measure. Oklahoma County District Court Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons dismissed the case Monday after hearing arguments from lawyers representing the Oklahoma State Election Board and Tulsa resident Delilah Christine Gentges. Gentges’ attorney said he plans to appeal the decision. Gentges sued after 74 percent of voters approved a state question in 2010 that requires every voter, before casting a ballot, to show proof of identity issued by the U.S. government, Oklahoma state government or an Oklahoma tribal government. Like in many other states that have passed similar laws, voter-rights advocates here argued the requirement is unconstitutional because it interferes with residents’ right to vote.
Russian opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov said on Thursday parliamentary elections next month were being rigged against his party, meaning it would have to win up to three times more votes than legally necessary to get into parliament. Starved of air time, vilified by Kremlin-backed media, and physically attacked on the stump, Kasyanov and his allies in the People’s Freedom party or PARNAS face an uphill struggle to break into the 450-seat lower house of parliament on Sept. 18. Despite an economic crisis, the main pro-Kremlin United Russia party is expected to comfortably win the elections, which are seen as a dry run for Vladimir Putin’s presidential re-election campaign in 2018. The crisis means United Russia’s margin of victory may be slimmer than recent years however, giving PARNAS, which currently has no seats in parliament, a glimmer of hope.
Zambia’s opposition leader, the declared loser of last week’s disputed presidential elections, waged a last-ditch effort in the country’s constitutional court to have the vote results overturned, citing widespread irregularities, officials said Saturday. Hakainde Hichilema, head of the opposition United Party for National Development, said a “deliberate collusion” between Zambia’s Electoral Commission and the ruling Patriotic Front party to steal his votes during the counting process cost him victory. The Electoral Commission of Zambia said Monday that President Edgar Lungu narrowly won the election with 50.3% of the vote against the 48% garnered by Mr. Hichilema—a 54-year-old wealthy businessman—which was sufficient to avoid a runoff. More than 150 people have since been arrested in protests against the results, which has threatened to unsettle one of Africa’s most stable democracies. But the suit could take the dispute into a courtroom and off the streets, allaying fears of widespread violence.
If the risk of hackers meddling with election results is not enough, here’s another reason voting shouldn’t happen on the Internet: the ballots can’t be kept secret. That’s according to a new report from Verified Voting, a group that advocates for transparency and accuracy in elections. A cornerstone of democracy, the secret ballot guards against voter coercion. But “because of current technical challenges and the unique challenge of running public elections, it is impossible to maintain the separation of voters’ identities from their votes when Internet voting is used,” concludes the report, which was written in collaboration with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the anticorruption advocacy group Common Cause. When votes are returned via the Internet, it’s technically difficult to separate the voter’s identity from the vote, says Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, since the server has to know that identity in order to authenticate the voter and record the vote. In the systems that states are using now, “the authentication typically happens at the same time as the voting process,” she says. That’s problematic. A previous experiment tested giving voters PIN codes, but hackers working with the researchers were able to find those numbers and associate them with voters, says Smith.
Online voting—currently a limited option in 32 states and Washington, D.C.—usually forces voters to give up their legal right to a guaranteed private ballot, a new study shows. The study, a joint effort by nonprofit advocacy groups including the Verified Voting Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, notes that a right to a guaranteed private ballot is the law in every state in the U.S., and that in all but six, it’s protected by a state constitution—specifically because the integrity of a vote is predicated on the voter’s trust that they’re making their decision in private. Alabama’s Constitution reads, for instance, that “The right of individuals to vote by secret ballot is fundamental.”
Someone — the Russian military, say many cyber experts — broke into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, releasing emails and sensitive documents. Sounds bad, and is. But a worse danger looms: the possibility that hackers (whether Russians or others) will manipulate our voting machines, casting doubt on the election’s outcome. Imagine. It’s the day after the election. Either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump has “won.” But the victor’s triumph rests on close results in five or six states, where the winner had a few thousand more votes. Assume also that each of these states used — at least partially — electronic voting. Assume then that the loser alleges that cyber tampering stole the election. The resulting furor would be unavoidable. It would raise partisan anger still further. It would subvert faith in our basic democratic institutions and, probably, excite all manner of conspiracy theories. It would make the combat of the Bush-Gore election in 2000 — the disputes over which of Florida’s “hanging chads” should be counted — look like child’s play. It would be a disaster.
This article was originally posted at Freedom to Tinker on August 18, 2016.
State and county election officials across the country employ thousands of computers in election administration, most of them are connected (from time to time) to the internet (or exchange data cartridges with machines that are connected). In my previous post I explained how we must audit elections independently of the computers, so we can trust the results even if the computers are hacked.
Still, if state and county election computers were hacked, it would be an enormous headache and it would certainly cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the election. So, should the DHS designate election computers as “critical cyber infrastructure?”
This question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how computer security really works. You as an individual buy your computers and operating systems from reputable vendors (Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google/Samsung, HP, Dell, etc.). Businesses and banks (and the Democratic National Committee, and the Republican National Committee) buy their computers and software from the same vendors. Your security, and the security of all the businesses you deal with, is improved when these hardware and software vendors build products without security bugs in them. Election administrators use computers that run Windows (or MacOS, or Linux) bought from the same vendors.
What’s all this we hear now about partisan poll watchers? Amid the heat of this election, candidates have already begun encouraging more partisan poll watchers to participate on Election Day. If this worries you, it shouldn’t. Poll watchers aren’t watching anyone actually cast a ballot. Most likely, they’re watching people check in to vote, and reporting back to their local political party headquarters about who has voted, and who still needs a rousing “get out the vote” call. Sometimes, in some states, poll watchers are authorized to question, or “challenge,” a person’s ability to vote at that location, based on information that indicates he or she doesn’t live in the jurisdiction or for some other concern. What they aren’t authorized to do is to campaign, to interfere with the voting process, or to talk directly to the voters. Instead, they can observe and report to the administrators if they see a procedural hitch. Traditionally, allowing representatives from major parties observe elections was intended as an integrity check. They still serve this function.
Bill Brian Jr. already sounded weary, and the meeting hadn’t even started. It was 5 p.m. Wednesday at the county office-building, and a typically sleepy meeting of the county board of elections had turned into a marquee event. Around 100 people had shown up to hear the three-person commission decide how early voting would work, and the board had already been forced to move the meeting to a much larger space. Brian, the board’s chair, mentioned the “flood of emails” he’d received, and announced that he’d allow citizens to speak briefly. “Please try to be civil,” he said with a sigh. Over the next 40 minutes, a long line of county residents—including veteran activists, operatives, and assorted gadflies—stood up and delivered their thoughts on early voting. There were students who wanted polling locations on campus. One man wanted a location nearer to the bus terminal. Another railed against opponents of voter ID rules, describing them as “racist” for believing that blacks would be less able or willing to navigate them. The chair of the county Republican Party rose to say he didn’t care how much early voting there was, but pleaded for an end to Sunday voting, which he saw as an affront to God. Several others were just as insistent about the need for polls to be open on the Sabbath; others pointed out that some denominations kept different Sabbaths.
Gov. Pat McCrory has every right to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision regarding the legislature’s discriminatory election law, as he did Monday, But he should drop his unwise request. The Fourth Circuit has already spoken loudly and clearly on this. But McCrory wants provisions of the legislature’s rejected law to be reinstated for the coming November election as lawyers for him, legislative leaders and other state officials craft an appeal. The key provisions they want reinstated are requiring the legislature’s chosen forms of ID to vote and reducing early voting to 10 days rather than 17.
In a move that some say affirms the Voting Rights Act (VRA), a Federal judge in Texas has agreed with Asian-American activists who claimed existing Texas election code unfairly kept voters with language needs from choosing the help they want. In a summary decision issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ordered Texas officials to refrain from engaging in practices that deny voting rights secured by the VRA and gave the plantiffs seven days to offer remedies to the situation. “The judge agreed with us that this Texas election law was an arbitrary restriction on voting rights,” Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) told NBC News. “If a voter walked into the poll site and asked for an ‘assistor,’ anyone (except an employer or union rep) could help. But if the voter didn’t say the magic word and asked for an ‘interpreter,’ that interpreter would have to be a registered voter in the same county where he or she was assisting the voter. It just doesn’t make sense, unless one is trying to disenfranchise a certain group of voters.”
Voters in the state’s liberal strongholds will be able to start early voting a month before what would have been allowed under a law that was recently struck down. Voters in Milwaukee and Madison may also be able to participate in early voting at multiple sites — a practice that hasn’t been allowed in the past. That would give local officials a chance to set up voting stations on college campuses, rather than requiring people to come to clerks’ offices to cast ballots early. The early voting plans could change, however, because an appeals court is now reviewing a federal judge’s decision that struck down a host of election laws. Madison will begin early voting Sept. 26, the city clerk’s office announced Thursday. The presidential election and other races will be decided Nov. 8. Before the judge’s ruling, early voting was slated to begin around the state Oct. 24, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
As Cambodian officials rolled out a new voter registration system on Thursday, questions were raised about the nation’s ability to conduct free and fair elections. While Cambodian authorities announced a three-month registration process that will run from Sept. 1 to Nov. 29, the U.N. ambassador to Cambodia expressed concern that the country’s current political situation could poison the process. “The European Union has expressed concerns over certain actions of the authorities in implementing legal procedures against the opposition party’s officials, civil society’s representatives, and the National Election Commission (NEC) deputy general secretary,” said Ambassador George Edgar. “Cambodia’s authorities must ensure an atmosphere that all political parties and nongovernmental agencies are able to do their jobs without obstacles,” he added during a ceremony announcing the launch of the registration system.
The run-up to the Sept. 4 election for Legislative Council is getting tense, and the governments of both Hong Kong and Beijing are watching with keen interest. For the first time, a crop of fresh-faced candidates who cut their political teeth during the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in 2014 are hoping to bring to the lawmaking body their battle to emancipate Hong Kong from Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian control. The activists, most of whom are in their 20s, no longer believe in the promises of the “one country, two systems” principle set out in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution since Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997.
As recently as 2014, you could drive into the parking lot at certain Virginia polling places, connect to the voting machines inside by Wi-Fi and have your way with the vote tallies. That gaping hole in election security has been plugged. Virginia dropped these machines last year. But with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggesting the November election may be rigged, and security officials blaming Russia for a politically sensitive hack of the Democratic National Committee, election cybersecurity is getting a closer look. The risks are real, experts say, though it’s another question how likely they are to happen. “It’s possible for a sophisticated attacker to hack the machines and start stealing votes,” says University of California at Berkeley computer science professor David Wagner. Wagner worked on a 2007 statewide review of California’s voting system. “Every voting machine that’s been studied is susceptible,” he says. “It would be challenging,” he adds. “It would require considerable technical sophistication. And it would require someone to be physically present in each county, tampering with at least one machine.
Today, we celebrate the anniversary of the 19th Amendment (ratified on August 18, 1920).
Full Text of the 19th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The Constitution has never prohibited women from voting and for many years before the adoption of this amendment women did vote in several states. The 19th amendment established a uniform rule for all states to follow in guaranteeing women this right. The states ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920 after a long campaign by advocates, who achieved limited success changing state laws. The women’s suffrage movement started in the era of the Andrew Jackson administration.
More Native Americans are participating in the 2016 election than ever before. Eight indigenous candidates are running for Congress, up from two in 2014. Over 90 are running for state legislatures, again exceeding previous years. Hillary Clinton ran campaign ads in Navajo and met with tribal leaders in Iowa, Washington, Arizona and California during the presidential primaries. Bernie Sanders met with 90 leaders in total, a political record. “This is the best campaign ever in Indian Country,” says Nicole Willis, member of the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla and former advisor to Bernie Sanders. “There’s no question about that.” Native Americans, who make up approximately 1.7% of the US population, are unlikely to determine a presidential election. But they do play an important role in shaping local politics and swinging votes for seats in Congress. But why is 2016 proving to be such a vibrant year for indigenous politics?
Voters with disabilities outnumber minority groups and could prove a powerful voting bloc — if they’re ever given easy access to polling places on Election Day. According to a new report from the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, about 35.4 million disabled people will be eligible to vote in the November 2016 election, a larger group than African American or Hispanic voters. It represents an increase of nearly 11 percent since 2008, a higher rate of growth than among voters without disabilities. The trick is turning those eligible voters into likely voters, Rutgers professor Douglas Kruse said. According to the report, only 46 percent of eligible disabled voters are projected to actually cast a vote.
We have less than 90 days to go until Election Day 2016. Citizens across the United States will go to the polls to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—or possibly one of the alternative candidates, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or Evan McMullin. There is a lot at stake in any general election, but this one feels more important than most—especially as it relates to cybersecurity. Security itself is certainly not new—I’ve worked in computer and network security for years. In May of 2013, however, a lot changed. The revelations of the NSA leaks from Edward Snowden shook the foundations of computer security and the mechanics of data intelligence. It seems there are corporate, government, and military data breaches on a regular basis. We have entered into a sort of Cold War of cyber espionage, and the stakes and consequences continue to escalate.
This article was originally posted to Freedom to Tinker on August 17, 2016.
There’s been a lot of discussion of whether the November 2016 U.S. election can be hacked. Should the U.S. Government designate all the states’ and counties’ election computers as “critical cyber infrastructure” and prioritize the “cyberdefense” of these systems? Will it make any difference to activate those buzzwords with less than 3 months until the election? First, let me explain what can and can’t be hacked. Election administrators use computers in (at least) three ways:
Any of these computers could be hacked. What defenses do we have? Could we seal off the internet so the Russians can’t hack us? Clearly not; and anyway, maybe the hacker isn’t the Russians—what if it’s someone in your opponent’s political party? What if it’s a rogue election administrator?
To maintain voter registration databases and to prepare the “pollbooks” used at every polling place to list who’s a registered voter (for that precinct); to prepare the “ballot definitions” telling the voting machines who are the candidates in each race.
Inside the voting machines themselves, the optical-scan counters or touch-screen machines that the voter interacts with directly.
When the polls close, the vote totals from all the different precincts are gathered (this is called “canvassing”) and aggregated together to make statewide totals for each candidate (or district-wide totals for congressional candidates).
Any of these computers could be hacked. What defenses do we have? Could we seal off the internet so the Russians can’t hack us? Clearly not; and anyway, maybe the hacker isn’t the Russians—what if it’s someone in your opponent’s political party? What if it’s a rogue election administrator?
Earlier this month, the EAC released two videos from experts in the field about how to visualize elections data and how visualizing these data can be used in policy and budget discussions. And last week the Pew Charitable Trusts released its most recent iteration of the Elections Performance Index (EPI) with data from the 2014 elections, using 17 indicators to examine how states administer elections. What do these videos and the EPI have in common? Both highlight or use data from the EAC’s very own Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) – for example more than half of the EPI’s indicators use data from the EAVS. This survey is the only effort to gather in-depth election administration data from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. And of course it is hardworking state and local election officials who supply these data to the EAC, responding to this massive survey every two years.
Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler said his staff is already making preparations to set up mobile voting precincts where needed as well as processes to reach displaced voters even though the fall election is months away. Schedler and his communications director Meg Casper said they are beginning assessments of polling places and their viability following devastating flooding in southern Louisiana. Early voting for the Nov. 8 election begins Oct. 25. “The good news is we’ve done this before,” said Schedler, referring to elections following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The Election Board of Commissioners has referred allegations of voter fraud in the race for the 78th District state representative to the city’s top prosecutor and the U.S. attorney’s office. “The written complaint received this morning contained the serious allegation that evidence exists of illegal activity regarding the absentee ballot process,” the commissioners wrote in a news release Wednesday afternoon, in explaining its action. The action was taken after a large group of residents walked into the downtown Election Board offices Wednesday morning, asking to talk with Democratic Director Mary Wheeler-Jones. Each person had in hand a signed form letter, alleging that absentee ballots cast in the Aug. 2 primary race between newcomer Bruce Franks and incumbent Penny Hubbard were “obtained illegally, were tampered with, or both.”
Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, an ex-CIA officer and congressional policy wonk who launched his campaign last week to offer “Never Trump” Republicans a conservative option, faces a steep political challenge gaining enough support to affect the November election. And by jumping into the race so late, McMullin will need to clear significant legal hurdles, as well. Filing deadlines for independent candidates in more than half of the states have already passed, and several more deadlines are fast approaching. That will mean going to court — including in Texas, where an independent had to gather nearly 80,000 signatures by May. “Our intention in Texas is to file a legal challenge, and we think that the great people of Texas will agree with us that there shouldn’t be artificial boundaries on the kinds of people that can run for president,” said Joel Searby, the campaign’s chief strategist.
Gabon’s main opposition parties chose former foreign minister Jean Ping as their candidate in an election on Aug. 27 against President Ali Bongo, who is standing for a second term. Ping, aged 74, is considered one of Africa’s foremost diplomats. He has served as chairman of the African Union commission and as president of the U.N. General Assembly. “I understand the gravity of the task I have been given,” Ping told thousands of cheering supporters in Libreville. “I won’t disappoint you.” Ping has an unusual history for an African politician. His father was a Chinese businessman who came to Gabon in the 1930s, married the daughter of a traditional chief and grew rich trading goods including timber and seafood. Ping came to wealth and prominence as an ally and protege of Omar Bongo, the father of Ali Bongo. But he fell out with the son and resigned from the ruling party in 2014 to become a vehement government critic.
Kenya will replace its top electoral officials, a cross-party parliamentary committee said on Tuesday, granting victory to the opposition which had branded them biased and led protests for them to be sacked. Nine new commissioners will take over the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission well before next August’s general election, a key demand of Raila Odinga’s opposition CORD coalition which said it had feared a rigged vote. At least four people died in protests that CORD had been staging weekly, raising concerns of a return to ethnic violence that killed 1,200 people after a disputed election in 2007.