Pennsylvania: Federal judge nixes Pennsylvania ballot recount. Why? | CS Monitor

There will be no recount of paper ballots in Pennsylvania, a federal judge ruled Monday. US District Judge Paul Diamond rejected a request backed by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to recount paper ballots and scan some counties’ election systems for signs that the 2016 presidential election in Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump won by a narrow margin, was hacked. In his 31-page decision, Judge Diamond wrote there existed at least six grounds that required him to reject the Green Party’s lawsuit, writing that the suspicion that the election was hacked “borders on the irrational.” The recount bid, he said, could “ensure that no Pennsylvania vote counts,” as Tuesday is the federal deadline to certify the vote for the Electoral College.

Utah: After long election lines, lawmaker looking to back off universal mail-in voting | The Salt Lake Tribune

After long lines at polling places and complaints from voters, state Rep. Craig Hall says he will sponsor legislation to get rid of the universal vote-by-mail system in most of Utah’s counties. The vote-by-mail program was in place in 21 of the state’s 29 counties this year — the other eight did traditional voting at polling places — but tens of thousands of voters didn’t take advantage of the mail-in voting and instead flooded the few polling places that were open on Election Day. The result: People waited in two- to three-hour lines to cast their ballots, delaying results and leading to widespread frustration. Now, Hall, a Republican from West Valley City, which saw some of the longest Election Day lines, said he will sponsor legislation to go back to the way elections used to be — when voters could request a mail-in or absentee ballot, but the default was for voters to participate in early voting or go to their polling places on Election Day.

Wisconsin: Completed Wisconsin recount widens Donald Trump’s lead by 131 votes | Wisconsin State Journal

Wisconsin’s historic presidential recount ended Monday resulting in a net gain of 131 votes for President-elect Donald Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said. Trump added 844 votes to his total for the Nov. 8 election, while Clinton added 713. Overall, the commission said, voters cast 2.976 million ballots. The recount resulted in a net increase of 837 ballots. “Completing this recount was a challenge, but the real winners are the voters,” Elections Commission Chairman Mark Thomsen said in a statement after signing off on the statewide results. “Based on the recount, they can have confidence that Wisconsin’s election results accurately reflect the will of the people, regardless of whether they are counted by hand or by machine.” The last statewide recount, in a 2011 Supreme Court race, resulted in a net change of 312 votes for the top two candidates out of 1.5 million ballots cast.

Wisconsin: Odd traffic on local websites puzzles officials | Ashland Daily Press

According to City of Ashland Cyber Security Consultant Eric Ellason and Bayfield County Director of Information Technology Paul Houck, both municipalities have seen an unusual amount of traffic coming to their sites from Russia. Ellason, who owns and operates SlickRockWeb, Inc., an Internet services firm in Ashland, has contracted with the City of Ashland to operate the city’s website. Ellason provides cyber security services to firms across the country, as well as remediation work for hacked websites. “With all of the talk about Russian involvement in the elections, it prompted me to go and look at the traffic recorded at the city’s website,” he said, That curiosity about what kind of traffic the city’s website was getting from Russia and other eastern European countries led to an unexpected result. “On most websites you are always going to get a little bit of traffic there, and every day there is always somebody looking for a security issue, so you are always going to see a baseline of traffic that is always a little suspect. Most of the time they don’t find anything, they are just trolling for security flaws,” Ellason said. “When I separated out just Russian traffic, there was a huge spike from about March 15 of this year.”

The Gambia: President urged to accept defeat by new government | The Guardian

The president-elect of the Gambia has demanded that Yahya Jammeh step down immediately, as African leaders prepared to fly in and persuade the country’s autocratic leader to reconsider his refusal to accept defeat and resign. After 22 years in power in the west African nation, it came as a surprise to many when Jammeh, an autocratic leader who had said he would rule for “a billion years if Allah willed it”, accepted defeat in a televised call to Adama Barrow, the leader of the opposition coalition. However, a week later he declared that the vote was “fraudulent and unacceptable” and vowed to take the matter to the country’s supreme court. Barrow and his coalition said Jammeh’s plans were “illegal” and he should resign. Barrow said he was relying on four senior African presidents due to arrive in the country on Tuesday to persuade Jammeh to reverse his pledge to nullify the election and retain power.

Germany: Russia’s next election operation: Germany | The Washington Post

In the murky world of intelligence, it isn’t that often that anyone has crystal clear, absolutely certain, 100 percent guaranteed advance knowledge of a forthcoming operation. But in Europe right now, there is one prediction that everyone is happy to make: In 2017, the Russian government will mount an open campaign to sway the German elections. We know that the Russians can do it. The CIA has confirmed that Russian cyberhackers procured material from the Hillary Clinton campaign that appeared, via WikiLeaks, at key moments in the election. Hacked emails became part of a successful trolling campaign to discredit Clinton (and continue to inspire hysteria in the form of Pizzagate, the bizarre conspiracy theory that just won’t die); during the campaign, Trump frequently repeated lines lifted directly from Russian propaganda, including threats that Obama “founded ISIS” and Clinton would “cause World War III.” Similar campaigns involving hacks, violent rallies and dark conspiracy theories have worked in other countries, including Georgia, Poland and Ukraine. Risky on the face of it, the U.S. operation did no harm to Russia’s interests. On the contrary, the pro-Russian candidate won; business looks set to continue as usual.

Macedonia: Nationalists win election: official results | Reuters

Veteran leader Nikola Gruevski’s nationalist VMRO-DPMNE won 51 out of 120 seats in Macedonia’s parliament in a snap poll on Sunday that is expected to end a two-year long crisis that brought his government down. The nationalists are now in a good position to form a government with their old partner, the Albanian DUI despite their losses. Overall, Albanian ethnic minority parties lost out to the social democrats, suggesting an easing of ethnic strains. Preliminary results issued by the State Election Commission showed opposition Social Democrats had won 49 seats in the election, brought about by Gruevski’s resignation over a wiretapping scandal.

National: CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election, say reports | The Guardian

US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in last month’s presidential election to boost Donald Trump’s bid for the White House, according to reports. A secret CIA assessment found that Russian operatives covertly interfered in the election campaign in an attempt to ensure the Republican candidate’s victory, the Washington Post reported, citing officials briefed on the matter. A separate report in the New York Times said intelligence officials had a “high confidence” that Russia was involved in hacking related to the election. The claims immediately drew a stinging rebuke from the president-elect’s transition team, which said in a statement: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” According to the Post’s report, officials briefed on the matter were told that intelligence agencies had found that individuals linked to the Russian government had provided WikiLeaks with thousands of confidential emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and others.

National: Key GOP senators join call for bipartisan Russia election probe, even as their leaders remain mum | The Washington Post

Two Senate Republicans joined demands for a bipartisan probe into Russia’s suspected election interference allegedly designed to bolster Donald Trump as questions continue to mount about the president-elect’s expected decision to nominate a secretary of state candidate with close ties to Russia. Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) — the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee — joined calls by incoming Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Armed Services ranking Democrat Jack Reed (R.I.) for a thorough, bipartisan investigation of Russian influence in the U.S. elections. Their statement came two days after The Washington Post reported the CIA’s private conclusion that Russia’s activities were intended to tip the scales to help Trump. “Recent reports of Russian interference in our election should alarm every American,” the four senators said in a statement on Sunday morning. “Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to examine these recent incidents thoroughly and devise comprehensive solutions to deter and defend against further cyberattacks.”

National: Barack Obama orders ‘full review’ of possible Russian hacking in US election | The Guardian

Barack Obama has ordered US intelligence to review evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after coming under sustained pressure from congressional Democrats. The review will be one of Obama’s final instructions to the intelligence agencies, which will soon report to Donald Trump, whom congressional Democrats consider the beneficiary of a hack targeting the Democratic National Committee. Lisa Monaco, the White House counterterrorism director, announced what she called a “full review” at a breakfast briefing sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor on Friday. At the White House press briefing later on Friday, Eric Schultz, the deputy White House press secretary, denied the review was “an effort to challenge the outcome of the election”. “We have acknowledged who won the election,” he said. “It wasn’t the candidate the president campaigned for. He has gone out of his way to ensure a smooth transition of power.”

Editorials: 3 Reforms for America’s Vulnerable Democracy in Light of the 2016 Election | Robert Schlesinger/US News

The end is near. All remaining political disputes – recounts, in this case – must be wrapped up by Tuesday, six days before Dec. 19 when the members of the Electoral College meet in their respective states and ratify Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. The last procedural twitches of controversy from the 2016 election, in other words, are drawing to their inevitable close. But the book closing on the 2016 elections is a good time to take stock and consider reforms that this year has made painfully clear the system needs. After all, this election has inarguably highlighted serious vulnerabilities in the political system that need to be remedied because they are not unique to this year. I’ve got three common-sense ideas on that score. The first two reforms we ought to undertake are interrelated and have to do with ensuring the security, and thus the legitimacy, of the vote, whether from error – manmade or mechanical – or malicious attacks.

Editorials: Russia’s Hand in America’s Election | The New York Times

It’s not hard to see why Russia would have been tempted to tip the scales in America’s presidential election. American defense officials have been warning about Russia’s capabilities and dangerous intentions, calling Moscow the gravest threat to the United States. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, made it clear her administration would redouble efforts to punish and isolate Moscow for war crimes in Syria’s civil war and its aggression toward Ukraine and other neighbors. “I’ve stood up to Russia,” Ms. Clinton said during a debate in the fall. “I’ve taken Putin on and I would do that as president.” In Mr. Trump, the Russians had reason to see a malleable political novice, one who had surrounded himself with Kremlin lackeys. Mr. Trump bragged that the Russian president had once called him “brilliant.” In July, Mr. Trump said he hoped Russia would hack and divulge more of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, an astonishing invitation to a foreign power that appeared already to be meddling in an American election.

Florida: Jill Stein promotes Orlando law firm-backed protests for Florida recount | Orlando Sentinel

An Orlando law firm is calling for protests across the state Sunday backing a full hand recount of the presidential election in Florida – and they just got a boost. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate behind recount efforts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, promoted the protests on Twitter Friday. “Here’s a list of places Florida voters will rally on Sunday to demand a recount,” she said, linking to a list of protest locations including the Orange and Osceola clerks of court offices in Orlando and Kissimmee.

Georgia: Homeland Security Says Georgia Computer Breach Incident Was Likely Inadvertent | Wall Street Journal

The Department of Homeland Security has reached a preliminary conclusion that what appeared to be an attempted breach of Georgia’s computer systems was due to an inadvertent configuration of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection computer, an official familiar with the matter said. The DHS official said a preliminary investigation had traced the incident to the computer of an employee at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection whose job responsibilities included verifying professional licensing information that are often maintained by state secretaries of state.

Michigan: Stein concedes end of Michigan recount, suggests reform | Associated Press

Officially, history will record President-elect Donald Trump as having won the 2016 presidential race in Michigan by some 10,704 votes. But Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate in the 2016 election, believes that the numbers would be different if all 4.8 million votes cast in the Wolverine State were recounted. That won’t happen, Stein conceded in a rally in downtown Detroit on Saturday, a day after the non-recused members of the Michigan Supreme Court ruled, by a 3-2 margin, against Stein’s appeal, leaving the candidate with no recourse. “We may be moving out of the court of law, but we’re moving into the court of public opinion,” Stein said. … “In the three states where filed recounts, we had Donald Trump, his superPACs and the Republican Party pulling out all the stops,” Stein said. “And you have to wonder, why are they doing this? What is Donald Trump afraid of? Either he does not have faith in democracy or he does not believe he won this election.”

Michigan: Recount mess: What if Michigan had held the key to election? | Detroit Free Press

Imagine for a moment: What if Michigan’s 2016 presidential election had been a repeat of Florida’s in 2000? Imagine that Donald Trump’s lead over Hillary Clinton had been just 200 votes instead of 10,000 and that the whole country was waiting on one last state to pick its winner. Instead of examining hanging chads in Palm Beach County, the eyes of the world would instead be riveted on Wayne County, where one ballot box was sealed with duct tape and hundreds of precincts couldn’t be recounted because of other errors. A recount in Michigan in 2016 almost certainly wouldn’t have mattered. But what if it would have? “If this had been a scenario where Michigan would have been the deciding factor in a presidential election, we would have been embarrassed as a state,” said Jocelyn Benson, a law professor at Wayne State University who founded the nonpartisan Michigan Center for Election Law. “It would have brought national attention to the inadequacies of an election system that is in desperate need of reform.”

Voting Blogs: Decision Suspending Michigan ‘Recount’ Threatens What’s Left of American Democracy | Brad Blog

If allowed to stand, the reasoning behind U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Goldsmith’s December 7, 2016 decision [PDF] in Stein v. Thomas to halt the Michigan presidential “recount” is flawed, at best. Issued, ironically enough, on the day we commemorate what President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as “a date which will live in infamy”, it is by no means an exaggeration to suggest that Judge Goldsmith’s reasoning could inflict greater harm on the very foundations of our constitutional form of democracy than that inflicted by the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The halt to the “recount” came just two days after Judge Goldsmith issued a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) directing the MI Canvassing Board to immediately commence the “recount” and one day after a U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal decision, upholding that TRO. Under that 6th Circuit appeals ruling, Judge Goldsmith was obligated to revisit the issue if “the Michigan courts determine that Plaintiffs’ recount is improper for any reason.” Separately, on Dec. 6, the Michigan state appellate court ruled that, under MI law, only a candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning has a right to initiate a post-election count. But that state court ruling, by three Republican judges, did not justify Judge Goldsmith’s decision to halt a “recount” that had been predicated on Dr. Jill Stein’s rights under the U.S. Constitution.

North Carolina: Concession in auditor race wraps up North Carolina elections | Associated Press

North Carolina’s fall election essentially wrapped up Friday as the trailing candidate in the state auditor’s race conceded near the end of a statewide recount and officials certified results for president, U.S. Senate, governor and scores of other contests. Democratic State Auditor Beth Wood won another four-year term after Republican challenger Chuck Stuber said it appears his campaign would come up short on the vote count. With nearly all 100 counties completing the recount Stuber requested earlier this week, Wood was leading by a little over 6,000 votes from more than 4.5 million votes cast. “Now that we have won I am ready to move forward with my third term to continue the mission in helping our state become a model for the nation in efficiency and budgetary effectiveness,” Wood said in a release.

Wisconsin: Judge Rules Against Attempt To Halt Wisconsin Presidential Recount | Wisconsin Public Radio

A federal judge has ruled against an attempt to halt Wisconsin’s presidential recount. Judge James Peterson denied the request from two super PACs that supported President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign Friday morning. “It’s crystal clear to me that I don’t have the basis to stop the recount,” Peterson said. “The recount looks like it’s going as the state said: smoothly.” The lawsuit claimed Wisconsin’s recount violates equal protection requirements, puts the state at risk of missing a federal elections reporting deadline and may cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump’s victory.

Europe: Russian involvement in US vote raises fears for European elections | The Guardian

The CIA’s conclusion that Russia covertly intervened to swing last month’s presidential election in favour of Donald Trump but its actions did not place the overall credibility of the result in doubt will be hard to swallow for some. The classified CIA investigation, which has not been published, may also have implications for the integrity of Britain’s Brexit referendum last June, and how upcoming elections in France and Germany could be vulnerable to Russian manipulation. The latest revelations are not entirely new. What is fresh is the bald assertion that Moscow was working for Trump. Democrats have been agitating for months for more decisive action by the White House following earlier reports of Russian-inspired hacking designed to undermine their candidate, Hillary Clinton. Some of the thousands of emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and members of Clinton’s campaign staff that were leaked, reportedly by Russian proxies, were used to reinforce a key Trump campaign narrative, that of “Lying Hillary”.

China: Pro-democracy camp wins more than a quarter of seats on Hong Kong Election Committee | Hong Kong Free Press

The pro-democracy camp has seen a landslide in at least six sectors of Sunday’s Chief Executive Election Committee poll, and expects to win at least 325 seats in the 1,200-seat committee. The camp has won all seats in six professional sectors: social welfare, IT, health services, legal, education and higher education. The camp also gained almost all seats in the accountancy sector and the architectural sectors. In the medical sector, 85 people were running for 30 seats. The pro-democracy camp sent 19 candidates and all of them won. The camp also made some breakthroughs in sectors such as Chinese medicine, with three wins out of the 30 seats.

Colombia: How governments pitch a referendum is a big deal. Here’s what we learned in Colombia. | The Washington Post

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today, in recognition of his four-year effort to guide peace negotiations with Colombia’s largest rebel group, the FARC. The October announcement about the prize came just days after Colombians rejected a referendum on the historic peace agreement to end the armed conflict that has plagued the country for half a century. In late November, the two sides pushed through a revised peace deal addressing some of the concerns of those who voted against the referendum. Santos avoided another referendum by getting the senate and the lower house to approve the new pact. The outcomes of referendums — whether in Colombia, or the June Brexit vote or December’s Italian referendum — make it clear that getting people to vote for government initiatives is harder than one would expect.

The Gambia: President Rejects Election Outcome | VoA News

Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh says he rejects the outcome of last week’s elections, after previously conceding defeat and vowing to step down. The president, who has ruled Gambia for more than 22 years, said on state television Friday night that he wants to see new elections. The announcement throws the political future of the West African country into question, and is a dramatic turnaround from last week when Jammeh called opposition candidate Adama Barrow to concede defeat after the president’s unexpected loss. Gambia’s state media broadcast a phone call last Friday in which President Jammeh told Barrow that he wanted to hand over power graciously and vowed not to contest the results of the December 1 election.

Kyrgyzstan: Voters amend constitution in referendum, boosting government powers | Reuters

Kyrgyzstan has voted in favor of constitutional changes boosting the power of its government, the Central Election Commission said on Sunday, citing preliminary results of a national referendum. The commission said that with most ballots counted in the Central Asian nation of six million, about 80 percent of voters had supported the package of constitutional amendments proposed by allies of President Almazbek Atambayev. Voter turnout was about 42 percent. The amendments include provisions granting more powers to the prime minister and the government, which is dominated by members of Atambayev’s Social Democratic party.

Macedonia: Both Main Parties Claim Election Victory in Macedonia | Balkan Insight

Both main parties claimed victory in Macedonia’s general election on Sunday night. While the main ruling VMRO DPMNE claimed a slight lead of some 20,000 votes across the country, the opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, came out celebrating in front of the government HQ in Skopje, insisting it won one or possibly two more seats than their rivals. The incomplete results from the State Electoral Commission show a tight race. Of 88.76 per cent of counted votes, VMRO DPMNE won 388,761 votes, or 38.36 per cent, while the Social Democrats won 368,144 votes, or 36.33 per cent. However, some projections show that this may translate into an equal number of seats for both parties with both VMRO DPMNE and for the SDSM having 51 seats in the 123-seat parliament.

Romania: Social Democrats easily win parliamentary elections | The Guardian

Romania’s left-leaning Social Democrats have easily won parliamentary elections a year after a major anti-corruption drive forced the last socialist prime minister from power. Election authorities said on Monday that with 99% of the votes from Sunday’s balloting counted, the Social Democratic party had about 46% and the center-right Liberals were second with over 20%. The chairman of the Social Democrats, Liviu Dragnea, spoke on Sunday after exit polls were published showing similar results, saying: “There should be no doubt who won the elections. Romanians want to feel at home in their own country and I want Romania to be a good home for all Romanians.”

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for December 5-11 2016

In an interview, Green Presidential candidate Stein bemoaned the now court-aborted Michigan recount process as a “political horror show,” saying, “the recount itself is not accurate, secure, and just, and it reflects that we have a voting system that is seriously flawed.”  The Detroit Free News observed that stopping the recount prematurely leaves Michiganders in limbo, noting that “in three days, the recount revealed imperfections in the voting system beyond the concerns that saw it launched.”

Meanwhile, a group of voters requested a recount in Florida and Nevada completed a partial recount. In Wisconsin, a federal judge rejected a request by President-elect Donald Trump supporters to stop a recount of election votes and a Philadelphia judge said he will rule Monday on the Green Party-backed petition for a statewide Pennsylvania recount.

After initially accepting defeat incumbent Gambian President Yahya Jammeh is now rejecting the results and calling for a new election and in Ghana an otherwise smooth election was marred by a hack of the Election Commission website raising questions about the accuracy of the results.

National: A ‘Political Horror Show’ of Recounts, 16 Years After Hanging Chads | The New York Times

The recount of the presidential election ended on Wednesday night as abruptly as it had begun. By Thursday, workers were packing away canvas bags of ballots, board records and tables and chairs. A legal battle halted proceedings before all of Michigan’s votes were counted again, but not before a flood of perplexing peculiarities emerged. An effort to recount the votes here and in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin led by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, was never viewed as very likely to change Donald J. Trump’s election to the presidency, but it revealed something else in stark terms: 16 years after a different presidential recount in Florida dragged on for five agonizing weeks, bringing the nation close to a constitutional crisis, recounts remain a tangle of dueling lawyers, hyperpartisanship and claims of flawed technology. States still have vastly different systems for calling recounts and for carrying them out. Counting standards are inconsistent from state to state, and obscure provisions, like one in Michigan that deems some precincts not “recountable,” threaten to raise more public doubt about elections than confidence. Some of the most basic questions — is it better to count by hand, or with a machine? — have not been settled.

National: Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House | The Washington Post

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances. “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

Editorials: Recount: what democracy looks like | Detroit Free Press

What does democracy look like? On Wednesday, a rubber thumb. As a controversial recount of Michigan’s presidential election entered its third day, the rubber thumb — kind of like the finger part of a rubber glove, but with nubs — was in high demand at Detroit’s Cobo Center. Recount workers lucky enough to claim one of those humble accessories could page quickly through stacks of ballots, hastening the painstaking rounds of counting and sorting needed to recount an election. First challenge: Determine whether any given bundle of ballots is recountable. That means counting some ballot boxes, each containing hundreds of the paper slips, two and three times before even beginning to determine for whom each ballot was cast, all under the patient eyes of volunteer observers from three presidential campaigns. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein lost by an insurmountable 2 million votes, but asked for the recount because, she says, she’s concerned about the integrity of Michigan elections. She’s not the only one — University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman has identified vulnerabilities in the system that it’s not currently designed to ward off, and President-elect Donald Trump himself has claimed that millions of illegal votes were cast in the election he won. A federal judge halted Michigan’s presidential recount late Wednesday night, but an appeal is expected.