The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for September 12-18 2016

A young woman with a balloon walks through a sunny street right after a rain in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. Residents of the Russian capital are savoring the last days of warm weather before autumn's rain leads to a long dark Russian winter. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) While intelligence and law enforcement officials have assured Congress and the White House that it is unlikely Russian hackers would not be able to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, disrupting it – causing doubts in battleground states, prompting challenges to results and creating chaos could make Florida’s hanging chads seem like a quaint problem from the analog age. Computer scientists and security experts have warned that centralized database could be vulnerable to manipulation before – and after the vote. A coalition of voting advocates filed suit Wednesday accusing Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp of disenfranchising thousands of residents by blocking their access to vote. Missouri Republicans may have muscled through a voter ID law on Wednesday, but their veto session victory could be relatively short-lived, if court rulings in other states are any indication. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to restore a period of early voting in Ohio during which people could register and vote on the same day. Documents revealed by the Guardian show that Republican insiders discussed “ginning up concerns over voter fraud” in the days after then-Supreme Court Justice David Prosser narrowly defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg in April 2011. Austria’s rerun presidential election, scheduled for 2 October, will be postponed on technical grounds because of problems with glue on postal votes coming unstuck. The opposition has few options to challenge the re-election of President Ali Bongo and, with memories 2011 demonstrations still fresh, Russians vote today for new Parliament.

National: Polling places become battleground in U.S. voting rights fight | Reuters

Louis Brooks, 87, has walked to cast a vote at his neighborhood polling place in Georgia’s predominantly black Lincoln Park neighborhood for five decades. But not this year. Brooks says he will not vote in the presidential election for the first time he can remember after local officials moved the polling station more than 2 miles (3 km) away as part of a plan to cut the number of voting sites in Upson County. “I can’t get there. I can’t drive, and it’s too far to walk,” said Brooks, a black retired mill worker and long-time Democratic Party supporter. He said he does not know how to vote by mail and doesn’t know anyone who can give him a ride. A Reuters survey found local governments in nearly a dozen, mostly Republican-dominated counties in Georgia have adopted plans to reduce the number of voting stations, citing cost savings and efficiency.