The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for September 26 – October 2 2016
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, FBI Director James B. Comey said that the bureau had detected scanning activities — essentially hackers scoping out a potential attack — as well as some actual attempted intrusions into voter registration databases in as many as 20 states. Bloomberg has posted an extensive article surveying the state of computerized voting in the Unites States. A U.S. appeals court panel that barred Kansas, Alabama and Georgia from adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to a federal voter registration form wrote that federal law leaves it to the Election Assistance Commission — not the states — to determine whether such a change is necessary. A lawsuit was filed in federal court in Alabama, claiming that the state law stripping the vote from any person “convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude” — a law that has left more than 250,000 adults in the state ineligible to vote — is racially discriminatory, indefensibly vague and flagrantly unconstitutional. Georgia has agreed to temporarily suspend a requirement that has prevented tens of thousands of residents from registering to vote as it works toward a possible settlement in a federal lawsuit that accused Secretary of State Brian Kemp of disenfranchising minorities ahead of the presidential election. Thousands of prospective voters in Kansas who did not provide citizenship documents will be able to vote in the November election under a federal appeals court ruling late Friday that upheld a judge’s order. Cybersecurity experts are warning that Maryland’s online absentee-ballot system is dangerously vulnerable to tampering and privacy invasions, both growing concerns in a year when hackers have breached the Democratic National Committee and attempted to access boards of elections in at least two states. An emergency motion was filed asking a federal judge to require the N.C. State Board of Elections to comply with a previous decision addressing early voting in North Carolina. Advocates for the homeless and the Ohio Democratic Party are appealing a federal court ruling that upheld rules for handling thousands of absentee and provisional ballots in the presidential battleground state. A federal judge ordered the state of Wisconsin to investigate reports that Division of Motor Vehicles employees gave incorrect information to a person seeking a voter identification card before the Nov. 8 election. Hungarians vote today in a referendum over quotas for the settlement of refugees and British Prime Minister Theresa May has confirmed she will restore the right to vote to long-term expatriate citizens in time for the expected 2020 poll.