Editorials: Ballot Measures Need to Be Written in Plain Language | Whitney Quesenbery & Dana Chisnell/New York Times

The biggest complaint we hear in our research with voters is that ballot questions seem written to purposely confuse them. They’re not wrong. Weighing in at 75 words, the Florida amendment on solar energy that has so upset voters this year doesn’t look too bad. But it took us almost an hour to work out what the amendment actually says — and we are experts used to reading legal texts. What about voters like the 43 percent of American adults who read at basic or below basic levels? Ballot measures that are written in plain language are much more respectful of voters. But there are other issues at play: First, readers have to find the information in advance to inform their opinion on ballot measures. For many voters, the first time they see a ballot question is when they are faced with it in the voting booth.

California: Judge upholds California ban on voters taking selfies of ballot | CNET

The law is the law, no selfies allowed at the polls in California. That’s what a US district judge ruled Wednesday, rejecting the American Civil Liberties Union’s request for an injunction lifting the state’s ban on voters taking selfies of their ballot. The ACLU said the more than century-old law banning cameras at the polls violate voters’ freedom of speech. Nope, California voters still won’t be able to take these kinds of selfies at ballots such as this guy in Wisconsin two years ago. But Judge William Alsup took less than two hours to reach his decision, chastising the ACLU for filing a lawsuit Monday in federal court in San Francisco claiming voters’ First Amendment rights are being denied from expressing their political positions — with Election Day less than a week away.

Colorado: Federal judge considers blocking Colorado law that bans ballot selfies | The Denver Post

A 125-year-old Colorado law aimed at discouraging vote swapping for whiskey and pig feet is now at the center of a high-tech freedom of expression case involving cellphone ballot selfies. An attorney for Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey on Wednesday told U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello that Morrissey will not enforce the law despite the fact his office posted a news release on its official website warning people that it is illegal to post ballot selfies in Colorado. “There is no threat of a possible prosecution. …There is no intent by the DA’s office to chill free speech,” Andrew Ringel, Morrissey’s attorney, said in a hearing in U.S. District Court in Denver. But Arguello asked how Morrissey’s Oct. 20 warning that he issued to the media wouldn’t chill free speech.

Editorials: The world may change; but D.C. voting rights remain the same | Timothy Cooper & John Capozzi/The Hill

The last time D.C. residents went to the polls to cast a vote for or against a D.C. statehood referendum, 52 American diplomats and citizens were being held hostage in Tehran by the Ayatollah Khomeini; the AIDS-causing virus hadn’t yet been discovered, let alone controlled; and Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms had only been launched the previous year. The Cold War between East and West was at full pitch. Now China has become the world’s second largest economy and the Berlin Wall is no more. Even Eastern Europe’s democratic color revolutions have come and gone. South Africa has long since dismantled apartheid. In other words, most everything in the world appears to have changed since 1980; that is, except, of course, the non-voting status of District of Columbia residents. Our sorry political status remains conspicuously the same. We enjoy no right to equal congressional representation; nor, for that matter, are we permitted by Congress full local autonomy to run our daily affairs as only we see fit.

Florida: Voting groups say Florida leads in calls to elections hotline | Tampa Bay Times

Elections officials told a woman in Miami who moved from a different county that she could not vote. A volunteer with voting rights groups saw a poll watcher at the North Miami Public Library confront people who asked for language assistance. In Hialeah, voters struggled to get translators. Voters elsewhere complain they haven’t received mail-in ballots they requested weeks ago. These were among the 1,700 calls by Florida residents through a national elections hotline — the highest number for any state. As the 2016 presidential race hurtles toward Tuesday’s finish line, complaints handled by the National Election Protection Hotline about early voting and mail ballots provide a possible glimpse of any confusion to come.

North Carolina: Emails show how Republicans lobbied to limit voting hours in North Carolina | Reuters

When Bill McAnulty, an elections board chairman in a mostly white North Carolina county, agreed in July to open a Sunday voting site where black church members could cast ballots after services, the reaction was swift: he was labeled a traitor by his fellow Republicans. “I became a villain, quite frankly,” recalled McAnulty at a state board of elections meeting in September that had been called to resolve disputes over early voting plans. “I got accused of being a traitor and everything else by the Republican Party,” McAnulty said. Following the blowback from Republicans, McAnulty later withdrew his support for the Sunday site.

Ohio: Spelling Error Could Nullify Your Vote in Ohio | VoA News

Voting is no easy task for Roland Gilbert. The retired Ohio lawyer, 86, who is legally blind, completes his absentee ballot with help from a machine that magnifies the print. So the registered Democrat was not completely surprised to learn he had made an error in filling out his 2014 ballot, entering that day’s date in the birthdate field. What surprised him was that it cost him his vote. Local election officials rejected it because it did not perfectly match his registration information on file. “It didn’t seem right,” Gilbert said. “I felt foolish for making a silly mistake.” Laws passed by the Republican-led Ohio state legislature in 2014 require voters to accurately fill out their personal information on absentee or provisional ballots or they will be rejected — even if the votes are otherwise valid. The laws are being applied in a presidential election for the first time this year.

Pennsylvania: Montgomery County judge extends deadline for absentee ballots | Philadelphia Inquirer

With thousands of ballots outstanding and complaints pouring in, a Montgomery County judge on Thursday granted a petition to extend by four days the deadline for returning absentee ballots. “I guess we run the risk that 17,000 people could be disenfranchised unless there’s some extension,” Senior Judge Bernard A. Moore said at a hearing in Norristown. County officials acknowledged receiving “unprecedented demand” this year for absentee ballots and said they had mailed 29,541 absentee ballots. But with the 5 p.m. Friday deadline looming, voters continued to complain they had not yet received their ballots. By Thursday afternoon, only half the ballots had been returned, while other counties were seeing return rates closer to 80 percent, officials said. “It is totally unacceptable,” said Cheryl L. Austin, a county judge and election board member who said her daughter in California was among those still waiting for her absentee ballot.

Texas: Someone in Texas lined a Trump sign with razor blades, then left it at a polling place | The Washington Post

Let’s just come out and say it: 2016 has been a slow-burning dumpster fire, and the presidential election is largely responsible. But in the weeks leading up to Nov. 8, the doomsday aura surrounding American politics seems to have most overwhelmed one state in particular — Texas. Some counties there are using paper ballots; voters have blamed electronic glitches on nefarious, and unfounded, ballot-swapping schemes; and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made unsubstantiated conspiracy theories of voter fraud in Texas a talking point during some of his recent stump speeches. Now, there’s this: Somebody in the Dallas metropolitan area glued razor blades to the bottom of a Trump campaign sign this week and plunged it into the ground outside an early-voting polling place. It was left in front of the official polling site sign, according to a statement obtained by ABC affiliate WFAA-TV, blocking “vote here” directions, so a do-gooder decided to relocate it at about 6:15 a.m. Tuesday.

Australia: Electoral Commission wants money to fix aging IT systems | ZDNet

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has warmed its existing IT systems are nearing the end of their life and that it needs money to have them updated. In a parliamentary submission, Inquiry into the conduct of the 2016 federal election and matters related thereto, Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers raised concerns about the AEC’s current staffing model, noting that the number of staff has gone unchanged since 1984, despite the growing pool of voters. “I believe the temporary staffing model and the AEC’s election and roll management IT systems are at the end of their useful life,” Rogers wrote in his submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. “As a result, much of the delivery of elections and the data for monitoring and reporting on that delivery is reliant on human intervention and manual processes.”

Ghana: Journalists Reject Fee to Cover Elections | VoA News

In Ghana, the electoral commission is now requiring journalists to pay a fee to be accredited to cover the presidential and parliamentary elections next month. Journalists are rejecting the requirement, which they say will reduce election transparency. The electoral commission has not said how much the accreditation fee will be, but according to the statement released Monday, the fee will cover the printing and lamination of accreditation badges. Journalists have until next Monday to apply and make payment. Kojo Yankson is a journalist at Joy FM radio. “Let the media houses provide identification for their journalists and let the journalists go to work.”

Kenya: Crowdsourcing tool will work to track reports of voter fraud, suppression on Election Day | McClatchy DC

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has refused to say he’d accept the outcome of next week’s election if he loses. He has claimed, despite lack of evidence, that the ballots will be “rigged” against him. If that does happen, a crowdsourcing tool invented in Kenya is prepared to document it. Kenya knows a thing or two about contested elections, which some speculate may be a situation the U.S. finds itself in next week. In response to violence following the country’s 2007 presidential contest when Raila Odinga refused to acknowledge the victory of opponent Mwai Kibaki, a group of coders developed a platform to document where protests were occurring. They named the crisis map Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili. The organization thinks the technology will be useful in the American election.

Palau: Slim lead for incumbent in Palau election – Absentee votes to decide result | Radio New Zealand

The Electoral Commission said absentee votes, which will be counted after the 8th of November, will decide the outcome of the national election. But the Election Service Administrator Elenita Bennie Brel said the final result will not be announced until later this month. Elenita Bennie Brel said this is partly due to electoral provisions but is also because the absentee ballots will be sorted and counted manually in-front of representatives of the candidates.

Russia: U.S. officials warn of Russian mischief in election and beyond | The Washington Post

U.S. intelligence agencies do not see Russia as capable of using cyberespionage to alter the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election, but they have warned that Moscow may continue meddling after the voting has ended to sow doubts about the legitimacy of the result, U.S. officials said. The assessment reflects widespread concern among U.S. spy agencies that a months-long campaign by Russia to rattle the mechanisms of American democracy will probably continue after polls close on one of the most polarizing races in recent history, extending and amplifying the political turbulence. U.S. security officials have not ruled out Russian-sponsored disruption on Election Day. In recent weeks, officials at the Department of Homeland Security have collected evidence of apparent Russian “scanning” of state-run databases and computer voting systems. “Whether they were really trying hard to get in, it’s not clear,” a U.S. official said.

National: Five Possible Hacks to Worry About Before Election Day | The New York Times

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia dismisses the idea that he has the power to interfere with Tuesday’s election. “Does anyone seriously think that Russia can affect the choice of the American people?” he asked during a foreign policy conference last week in the resort city of Sochi. “What, is America a banana republic? America’s a great power. Correct me if I’m wrong.” America’s top intelligence officials say he is highly unlikely to be able to alter the results. But they expect Russian hackers, or others, to try to disrupt the process — perhaps to help Donald J. Trump, but more likely to simply undercut what Mr. Putin views as America’s holier-than-thou attitudes about its democratic procedures. The Obama administration has concluded that much of the email hacking that has roiled the campaign was almost certainly approved by the Russian leadership. More recent activity — including the probing of registration rolls in several states — might be the work of independent Russian hackers, it says. While no one knows what to expect before the polls close, a tight race is more susceptible to mischief. So government agencies and commercial enterprises, including some hired by state election boards facing a determined cyberthreat for the first time, are on high alert. But they are not exactly sure what to look for. Russian hackers? Other attackers? Malware that harnesses devices to strike election infrastructure? More email revelations?

National: Forget rigged polls: Internet voting is the real election threat | Reveal

The hackers settled in, arranged their laptops on a small table and got right to work. The clock was ticking. They began by carefully combing through the online voting system’s code, rapping at their keyboards and exchanging a pitter-patter of techie jargon. They toggled between screens. One displayed the unblemished interface that prospective voters would see. The other was black, threaded with lines of code: a sketch of their half-drafted attack. The first few hours were full of dead ends: a rejected ballot; an unexpected security fix, made in real time by election officials to thwart their efforts. Had they been found out? Suddenly, one of the four hackers paused midscroll. He’d found a seemingly trivial mistake, the code equivalent of an unlocked window. “Let’s steal things! Yes, let’s steal,” one of them said, tugging at his mop of dark hair. “Let’s get their ballot public key – GPG export or Base64 out to a file.” University of Michigan computer science professor Alex Halderman and his team of graduate students demonstrated in 2010 that it’s possible for a few hackers to quickly manipulate online voting systems. This was not a war room in Russia, where hackers allegedly have worked to infiltrate email servers to disrupt this year’s election. It was the office of Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan. The hackers were graduate students, proving a point about Washington, D.C.’s fledgling voting system: that internet voting is vulnerable, a hunk of cybersecurity Swiss cheese. It was Sept. 29, 2010, just a few weeks before the city’s system was to be launched.

National: The Security Challenges of Online Voting Have Not Gone Away | IEEE Spectrum

Online voting is sometimes heralded as a solution to all our election headaches. Proponents claim it eliminates hassle, provides better verification for voters and auditors, and may even increase voter turnout. In reality, it’s not a panacea, and certainly not ready for use in U.S. elections. Recent events have illustrated the complex problem of voting in the presence of a state-level attacker, and online voting will make U.S. elections more vulnerable to foreign interference. In just the past year, we have seen Russian hackers exfiltrate information from the Democratic National Committee and probe voter databases for vulnerabilities, prompting the U.S. government to formally accuse Russia of hacking. In light of those events, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security may soon classify voting systems as critical infrastructure, underscoring the significant cybersecurity risks facing American elections. Internet voting would paint an even more attractive target on the ballot box for Russian adversaries with a record of attempting to disrupt elections through online attacks.

National: White nationalists plot Election Day show of force | Politico

Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin plans to muster thousands of poll watchers across all 50 states. His partners at the alt-right website “the Right Stuff” are touting plans to set up hidden cameras at polling places in Philadelphia and hand out liquor and marijuana in the city’s “ghetto” on Election Day to induce residents to stay home. The National Socialist Movement, various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the white nationalist American Freedom Party all are deploying members to watch polls, either “informally” or, they say, through the Trump campaign. The Oath Keepers, a group of former law enforcement and military members that often shows up in public heavily armed, is advising members to go undercover and conduct “intelligence-gathering” at polling places, and Donald Trump ally Roger Stone is organizing his own exit polling, aiming to monitor thousands of precincts across the country.

National: Judge wants GOP to hand over info on poll watchers | CNN

For Donald Trump, questioning whether the campaign will be “rigged” has become a campaign stump mantra. For Republican National Committee lawyers, it’s become a different kind of worry. Trump has repeatedly invited his followers to watch polling areas. “Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania this summer. Now, a federal judge wants to hear more. A hearing is scheduled for Friday in New Jersey, and the RNC has been directed to provide information detailing “any efforts regarding poll watching or poll observation.” The RNC is forbidden from engaging in any ballot security activities that might deter qualified voters from voting because of a decades old consent decree that has been modified over the years and is set to expire at the end of 2017.

Editorials: Without a modernized Voting Rights Act, there’s no such thing as an honest election | Jim Sensenbrenner/The Washington Post

On Tuesday, Americans will elect a president without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. The last time that happened they were deciding between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater — more than a half-century ago. In 2013, the Supreme Court declared that voter discrimination was no longer a problem and effectively struck down the only portion of the act designed to stop discrimination before it affects an election. The court let stand the provisions of the act that allow lawsuits after a discriminatory law takes effect, but unfortunately, the United States has learned the hard way that there is no satisfactory cure for discrimination after an election occurs.

Arizona: Secretary of State Reagan Warns Against Voter Intimidation Efforts | Arizona Politics

As the political parties fight in court about possible plans by Trump supporters – as well as White nationalists – to station people outside many polling places on Election Day next Tuesday, Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan this afternoon issued a comprehensive “Guidance” about what constitutes punishable “voter intimidation.” The 2 1/2 page document addresses the use of uniforms, the display of weapons, taking photos or video, and many other possible intimidation methods. When asked about what prompted the Guidance, Secretary of State Communications Director Matt Roberts tells Arizona’s Politics that “The Secretary and our office has been getting a number of emails/calls social media conversations from people concerned with the General Election. She felt it appropriate that she remind people of the rules, laws on the books.”

District of Columbia: DC Council bill makes voter registration automatic | WJLA

Most of us dread going to the DMV, but the D.C. Council hopes your next trip to renew or update your license might help increase voter turnout. On Tuesday, Council members unanimously approved legislation making voter registration automatic. The veto-proof D.C. Council bill is now waiting for Mayor Muriel Bowser’s signature. The pending law would automatically send District Department of Motor Vehicles data to the D.C. Board of Elections. “At a time in our country, when we see states time and time again try to block people from the poll, from the ballot box, I’m really proud that in D.C. we actually are trying to make it easy as possible and get as many people registered to vote as we can,” said Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen who introduced the bill.

Florida: West Palm Beach Trump Supporters Use Bullhorns, Scream at Clinton Supporters Outside Poll | Electionland

Supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continue to gather in front of the West Palm Beach, Florida, supervisor of elections’ office and shout at Hillary Clinton supporters and voters through bullhorns as they use the early voting location, videos show. “How many Syrian refugees, Muslim refugees, are you taking into your home?” yelled one Trump supporter in a video filmed Sunday afternoon at Clinton supporters across a parking lot. Later she said, “You hypocrites! Separate the people! Over here we have the LGBT, over here we have the blacks, and then over here we have the Hispanics. But I’m going to tell you something, the hard working American people that served in the armed forces support Donald Trump!” Therese Barbera, spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office, said by email that the sheriff’s office “was not aware” of the incidents in the videos until Electionland called for a statement but that “from what we reviewed we do not believe there are any violations occurring. As far as voter intimidation, we did not observe any infractions in the video,” she added. “Please remember that there are First Amendment privileges being afforded here as long as they don’t violate the law.”

Illinois: Judge rejects bid to expand voting rights | Chicago Daily Law Bulletin

A federal judge has dealt a setback to former Illinois residents who are blocked from voting by absentee ballot in next week’s presidential election because they now live in certain U.S. territories. In a written opinion last week, U.S. District Judge Joan B. Gottschall rejected the argument that the Illinois Military Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act violates the equal protection clause by treating former Illinois voters differently depending on their current residence. Illinois’ MOVE Act bars former state residents living in Puerto Rico, Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands from voting by Illinois absentee ballot in federal elections, but allows their counterparts in American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands to do so. The disparate treatment, Gottschall held, “is rationally related to legitimate state interests.”

Minnesota: Failing to block ineligible voters, group says in suit | Star Tribune

A group that has repeatedly challenged Minnesota’s elections process says several election judges — including three it is joining in a new lawsuit — are refusing to follow their duties at polling places because they disagree with how the state checks voters’ eligibility. The Minnesota Voters Alliance filed lawsuits last week in Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis counties with election officials from each area, contending that the secretary of state’s office is not doing enough to block ineligible voters, including felons, noncitizens and people considered wards of the state because of their developmental disabilities or other issues. The cases, which have been combined and will be heard by a Ramsey County judge on Friday, largely mirror a lawsuit the group filed earlier this year with the Minnesota Supreme Court. In that matter, the state’s highest court determined that it was not the proper jurisdiction to hear the case and sent it back to district court, where it has not yet been settled. In the meantime, with Election Day approaching, leaders of the Minnesota Voters Alliance decided to move forward with another lawsuit. Erick Kaardal, the attorney representing the group, said he received calls from election judges concerned about the potential for allowing felons to vote.

Nevada: Democrats Offer More Evidence of Sketchy GOP Poll Watcher Activity In Nevada | TPM

Democrats put forward more evidence on Wednesday that they said showed that the Republican National Committee was illegally engaging in poll watching activities. The additional filing comes after an initial round of affidavits from Dem poll observers in Nevada who said they met other observers claiming to be working for the RNC earlier this week. The new filing includes the affidavits of three more Democratic poll observers who have been monitoring early voting sites in Las Vegas. They said that not only did they meet poll observers who suggested RNC involvement in elections monitoring, but that one of the GOP observers gave inaccurate information to voters, according to the court documents. The affidavits were filed in an ongoing case concerning allegations by the Democratic National Committee that the RNC had violated a decades-old consent decree limiting its ability to participate in so-called “ballot security” activities. The RNC has maintained that it has followed the decree, and filed its own court documents Wednesday that said it could find no evidence of any RNC agreements with the Donald Trump campaign to assist in Trump’s poll watcher crusade.

North Carolina: Voter challenge process seems “insane,” judge says | CBS

North Carolina’s process for challenging voters’ registration seems to harken to a bygone era when fewer safeguards were in place, a federal judge said Wednesday as she presided over a lawsuit that alleges voters are being purged unfairly. Lawyers for North Carolina countered that state data shows only a sliver of names have been removed from county rolls in the past two years – fewer than 7,000 statewide out of 6.8 million registered voters. The comments came during an emergency hearing over NAACP allegations that at least three counties purged voter rolls through a process disproportionately targeting blacks. Early voting is already underway in the critical swing state that the NAACP has previously sued over other voter access issues. So far, North Carolina’s black voter turnout has lagged the 2012 presidential election.

Ohio: Trump campaign, Ohio GOP ask federal judge not to limit poll watchers | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign wrote in a brief filed Wednesday that the Republican candidate’s statements encouraging supporters to watch the polls for Democratic voter fraud are protected speech and that preventing supporters from espousing those same views near polling places on Election Day would trample on their free-speech rights. Chad Readler, an attorney for the Jones Day law firm, wrote that a lawsuit filed in federal court in Cleveland Sunday by the Ohio Democratic Party is based on “miscellaneous long-ago statements, vague innuendo, rank speculation, and a heavy dose of rhetoric.” The suit says Republicans are engaging in voter intimidation. He wrote that Trump and other candidates “are perfectly within their rights to encourage their supporters to serve as poll watchers” and that an order preventing supporters from harassing or intimidating voters outside of polling places would violate the First Amendment.

Ohio: Husted blames postal service for absentee ballot problem | 13ABC

Hundreds of voters in northwest Ohio say they have not received their absentee ballots in the mail. The problem starts seems to start at the mail sorting center in Pontiac, Michigan. The ballots were sent from Lucas, Wood and five other counties October 12. But twenty days later, many still have not been delivered. Tuesday, Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, visited the board of elections office in Wood County. He says voting has gone smoothly in Ohio except for this absentee ballot problem. Husted puts the blame squarely on the postal system, saying, “It’s completely unacceptable. The post office needs to do a better job.” Husted has been in touch with the post office but, so far, no explanation for what happened.

Pennsylvania: GOP loses lawsuit to lift poll watcher restrictions | The Morning Call

A federal judge has denied the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s request to lift restrictions on poll watchers crossing county lines in the upcoming presidential election. Citing an unreasonable delay and a failure to persuade the court to bar enforcement of the state’s residency requirements for election monitors, U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert said he would not issue the temporary restraining order or injunction the GOP had requested. “There is good reason to avoid last-minute intervention in a state’s election process. Any intervention at this point risks practical concerns including disruption, confusion or other unforeseen deleterious effects,” Pappert wrote. The GOP and several former Republican candidates filed the suit as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continued months of rhetoric suggesting that if he loses the election it is because it was rigged and urging supporters to go to polling places in “certain areas” to make sure “other people don’t come in and vote five times.”