Editorials: Trump rhetoric fosters Iowa voter fraud | Des Moines Register

Iowans can vote early in this year’s general election, but they cannot vote often. Unless they want to spend some time in jail and perhaps lose the right to vote entirely. Terri Lynn Rote of Des Moines was arrested last week on suspicion of casting two ballots for the upcoming election: one at the Polk County Election Office and one at a satellite voting location. The 55-year-old woman was booked Thursday on a first-degree charge of election misconduct and released Friday after posting bond. Iowa Code Chapter 39A rightly contains unforgiving language about offenses with the potential to affect the election process, including voting or attempting to vote more than once in the same election. Such wrongdoing should “be vigorously prosecuted and strong punishment meted out through the imposition of felony sanctions which, as a consequence, remove the voting rights of the offender.” Iowans will be watching to see if Rote, a registered Republican who supports Donald Trump for president, is vigorously prosecuted. Because she certainly should be. Rote is not an elderly person with dementia who forgot she had already voted. It appears she knew exactly what she was doing. She told Iowa Public Radio she feared her first ballot for Trump would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton. So she went and cast another one. “The polls are rigged,” she said.

Missouri: Voters to decide if contentious voter ID legislation becomes law | MissouriNet

Missouri voters will decide the outcome of a contentious voter ID measure in November’s election. Republican state lawmakers passed legislation and overrode Governor Nixon’s veto of such a bill this year. The measure requires voters to present a photo ID, but allows them to forgo the procedure if they sign an affidavit. The affidavit state’s that the voter is aware that they can get a photo ID for free and that they’ll attempt to obtain one. Republican state Senator Dan Hegeman of Cosby supported the bill. “I think that the integrity of our elections is certainly worth stepping up and working with people to ensure that integrity, so that people feel comfortable that the election process is fair and substantive.” The bill becomes law if citizens pass the voter ID ballot measure next month. But the ballot measure actually goes further. It allows the legislature to come back in future sessions and strip the affidavit process and require voters to have a photo ID as a condition to cast a ballot.

North Carolina: NAACP Sues North Carolina Over Alleged Voter Purge Targeting Black Voters | TPM

The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, along with a handful of individual voters, sued the state’s elections board and three county elections boards Monday over an alleged voter purge that it claims disproportionately affected African Americans. Some 4,500 voters’ ability to vote is in limbo, the complaint alleges, due to the efforts by a few individuals to challenge their registrations. The NAACP-NC accused state and local officials of violating the National Voter Registration Act and the federal Voting Rights Act in their handling of the challenged voters. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. “The Tar Heel state is ground zero in the intentional, surgical efforts by Republicans to suppress the voice of voters,” NAACP-NC President Rev. William Barber II said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “The NAACP is defending rights of all North Carolinians to participate in this election. We’re taking this emergency step to make sure not a single voters’ voice is unlawfully taken away. This is our Selma and we will not back down and allow this suppression to continue.”

Canada: ‘Not a fool-proof system,’ Elections Prince Edward Island says of online vote | CBC News

This month Elections P.E.I. sent out more than a hundred thousand voter information packages to Islanders registered to vote in the plebiscite on electoral reform. Each letter contains a unique personal identification number (PIN) which can be used to vote online or over the phone. The only other information needed to cast a ballot using that PIN is the person’s date of birth. Inevitably, some PINs have been delivered to the wrong people. All that might be needed to use that person’s PIN to cast a ballot could be a visit to their Facebook page. “This is not a fool-proof system,” said chief electoral officer Gary McLeod. “And that’s one of the risks that we have right now.” It is illegal under P.E.I.’s Plebiscite Act to vote for someone else, McLeod pointed out. Offenses can lead to fines of up to $2,000 or imprisonment for up to two years. “We can track where the vote is put on from— if somebody notices that somebody’s voted and it wasn’t them – we can actually go in and track where that vote came from” using their IP address, McLeod said.

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Ruling party in Georgia wins constitutional majority after vote run-off | Reuters

Georgia’s ruling party decisively won a second round of voting on Sunday, giving it more than three quarters of seats in parliament, enough to change the constitution if it wants, data from the Central Election Commission showed on Monday. The result cements Georgian Dream’s already firm grip on power in the ex-Soviet nation and is a crushing defeat for the opposition United National Movement (UNM) and its founder, former president Mikheil Saakashvili, a regional governor in Ukraine who has spoken of a possible return to his homeland. Georgian Dream, which came to power in 2012, is pro-Western but also favors closer ties with Russia, while the UNM is strongly pro-Western.

Iceland: Elections leave ruling centre-right party in driving seat | The Guardian

Iceland’s incumbent Independence party was in pole position to try to form a new government after voters chose continuity in Saturday’s elections and support for the anti-establishment Pirate party, while sharply up, fell below early expectations. The Pirates, founded four years ago by a group of activists, anarchists and former hackers, tripled their share of the vote to 14.5%, and together with an alliance of three left-of-centre parties won a total of 27 seats – five short of a majority in the country’s 63-seat parliament. The centre-right Independence party, however, won almost 30% of the vote and a total of 29 seats with its coalition partner of the past three years, the Progressive party, which was badly hit by this year’s Panama papers scandal and lost more than half its MPs. In a campaign whose early stages were dominated by public anger at Iceland’s traditional elites and a strong desire for political change, the Independence party promised to lower taxes and keep Iceland’s economic recovery on track.

Moldova: Presidential election goes to runoff | Associated Press

Moldova’s presidential election will go to a runoff between the pro-Russian front-runner and a pro-European candidate who both tapped into widespread anger about corruption. With almost all ballots counted Monday, Igor Dodon had 48.3 percent, falling short of the majority of votes needed for outright victory in the first round. In the Nov. 13 runoff, he will face Maia Sandu who scored 38.4 percent. Dodon’s strong result in Sunday’s voting reflected widespread dissatisfaction with the pro-European government which has been in office since 2009. Moldovans are angry about the more than $1 billion that went missing from the banking system in 2014 and accuse authorities of covering up the loss. Moldova’s president shapes the country’s foreign policy and appoints judges but major decisions need approval from Parliament, where pro-European politicians have a majority. However, this is the first time Moldovans have elected a president by popular vote in 20 years, giving the post more authority and influence.

National: Web-Based Overseas Ballots May Be Most Vulnerable to Tampering | Wall Street Journal

If there is a weak spot in the voting process, it could be the practice followed in more than half the states of allowing overseas voters, including members of the U.S. military, to return their ballots online, experts say. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia permit some registered voters living outside of the U.S. to cast their pick for president by email, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Another 30 states permit the return of some ballots by fax, while five states allow ballots to be uploaded through a web portal. The changes were implemented to make voting easier, but, with polls showing increasing concerns about rigging and hacking of the system, the one area with the most vulnerability may be this relatively small cache of ballots, the experts said. Most U.S. voting electronic machines aren’t internet-enabled, meaning that they would have to be physically accessed to tamper with the results. The few that do have wireless or other network capabilities generally are paper-ballot scanners that leave a physical trail that can be checked in a recount or audit.

National: As Americans vote, will hackers pounce? | Harvard Gazette

In late April, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) suspected that something was wrong with their network and called in the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to investigate. A few weeks later, after routine testing, the suspicions were confirmed: The committee had been hacked by the Russians. … As DNC documents were leaked throughout the summer and into the fall, the episode put the United States on notice that Vladimir Putin’s government is intent on influencing the 2016 election, Alperovitch said during a panel discussion at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). That could mean a couple of things, he said. Russia might try to hack voting machines or it could mount a disinformation campaign to discredit the eventual results. “The fundamental objective here by the Russians is not necessarily to get one person or another elected as president,” said Alperovitch. “The fundamental objective is actually much more nefarious, which is to undermine the very idea of a free and fair election — the cornerstone of our democracy.” The decentralized nature of the U.S. vote should protect against a widespread intrusion, said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan advocacy group. Each of the 9,000 election jurisdictions across the country has its own systems and procedures, meaning no single point of failure could disrupt the tally nationwide.

National: States Move to Protect Their Voting Systems | Wall Street Journal

The test began at 8 a.m. last Tuesday. Secretary of State Michele Reagan, four staffers and a freelance Spanish-language interpreter cast 138 votes on 40 ballots using seven touch-screen machines. The mood was jovial—until a printout showed the numbers on one machine didn’t line up with the master list of votes. Janine Petty, Arizona’s deputy state election director, scanned the printout and quickly discovered another of Ms. Reagan’s staffers had voted for two of the wrong candidates. The machine had worked perfectly, after all. Ms. Reagan jokingly admonished the sheepish staffer, telling him he should go on their fictional “Wall of Shame.” Across the country, state election officials are carrying out final tests on tens of thousands of voting machines that are part of a multistep process that delivers results in local, state and federal contests. Next week, the last of more than 120 million ballots are expected to be cast in a watershed election to determine who controls the White House, Congress and the direction of the Supreme Court.

National: States unprepared for Election Day cyber attack | Politico

State election officials around the country are woefully unprepared for a cyber disruption around Election Day. While states have spent years thinking about and planning for other types of crisis that can mess with voting — from hurricanes to power blackouts and terrorist attacks — they’ve been slow and ill staffed to develop contingency plans responsive to a hack attack that would adequately protect their systems in time for the 2016 presidential election. “They’re waking up to it, but they largely don’t know what questions to ask,” said Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at the nonprofit research center SRI International and an expert on voting mechanics. A dozen battleground state officials surveyed by POLITICO insist the voting systems themselves are safe, as nearly all parts of the balloting process take place in a secure, offline environment. But they also repeatedly acknowledged there are limits to what they can control, and they recognize they face legitimate challenges from cyber intrusions to the myriad adjacent parts that go into an election, including online registration records and publicizing vote tallies. While any manipulation of a state’s official election results is seen as unlikely, there’s little denying that an Internet disruption or hack could cause significant confusion and chaos on Election Day, a dark conclusion to an ugly election plagued by accusations of Russian cyber espionage and evidence-less allegations of vote tampering and rigging. Just last week, hackers temporarily froze a sizable chunk of the internet, a worst-case scenario that would cause serious problems around the country if duplicated on Nov. 8 — the day more than 100 million Americans are going to the polls.

National: Voting rights group ramping up election protection efforts | USA Today

National and local voting rights activists, worried about threats to casting ballots nationwide, are setting up command centers, staffing hotlines and deploying thousands of monitors to polling sites across the country to ensure voters can get to the polls. “Folks are pretty much on high alert,’’ said Scott Simpson, director of media and campaigns for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of 200 groups. “There is no election like this in modern history and we are taking every precaution that we can, within our means, to prevent intimidation and to make sure that folks know that they will be able to cast their ballots free from intimidation.’’ With talk about “rigged’’ elections in the presidential campaign and the Supreme Court’s rejection of a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, civil rights and voting rights activists say they’re concerned about possible shenanigans and roadblocks at the polls. Voting rights advocates are particularly worried about potential problems in states, mostly in the South, that used to be required to get approval or “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department before making any changes in election procedures because they had a history of discrimination at the polls. A 2013 Supreme Court decision — Shelby County v. Holder — threw out that provision. This will be the first presidential election since pre-clearance was eliminated in those states.

Editorials: Why Trump’s rhetoric about immigrant voters is dangerous | Chris Kromm/Facing South

On Oct. 17, at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Donald Trump made one of his many provocative claims about the integrity of U.S. elections, especially in battleground states crucial to his election chances. “It’s possible that non-citizen voters were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina,” Trump told the crowd in the packed convention center. “It could have provided his margin of victory.” The charge was, in some ways, quintessential Trump, melding two central themes of his candidacy: the supposed danger posed by undocumented immigrants, and alleged “large scale voter fraud” that could tip the election against him. Trump’s claim was quickly dismissed as a “pants on fire” distortion by Will Doran of PolitiFact North Carolina. But while it may have been easy for some to dismiss the allegation as Trump’s latest truth-challenged exaggeration, the reality is that, at the state and federal level, such rhetoric has resulted in discriminatory policy that threatens immigrant citizens’ voting rights. The study Trump was alluding to came from a guest editorial published in the Washington Post shortly before the November 2014 elections by two researchers from Old Dominion University. Drawing on self-reported data, the authors claimed that up to 6 percent of non-citizens in the U.S. voted in 2008, nearly 18,000 in North Carolina alone.

Colorado: Donald Trump Questions Veracity of Ballot Counting in Colorado | The New York Times

Donald J. Trump has found a new reason to question the legitimacy of the 2016 election — ballots — and he wasted little time here on Saturday before taking issue with the voting system in this largely vote-by-mail state. “I have real problems with ballots being sent,” Mr. Trump said, pantomiming a ballot collector sifting envelopes and tossing some over his shoulder while counting others. “If you don’t have a ballot, they give you another one and they void your one at home,” he told the crowd at an afternoon rally, explaining how voters could go fill out their ballot at the back of the venue here. “And then, of course, the other side would send that one in too, but, you know, we don’t do that stuff. We don’t do that stuff.” Mr. Trump’s repetitive accusations of a “rigged” election and a slanted electoral system are grounded in the belief that fraudulent behavior would only help his opponent. Yet it was a Trump supporter in Des Moines who was charged on Thursday with a Class D felony in Iowa, having sent in two absentee ballots, both supporting Mr. Trump. “The polls are rigged,” she added, repeating a line often said by Mr. Trump.

Indiana: Voter group wants documents unsealed in Indiana search | Associated Press

A voter mobilization facing an investigation into possible voter registration fraud asked a court Thursday to unseal documents from an Indiana State Police search of its offices, saying it “has been publicly demonized by the highest state officials in Indiana.” Patriot Majority USA’s attorneys asked a judge to either unseal a search warrant affidavit in the Oct. 4 search of its Indianapolis offices or hold an immediate hearing on its request. State Police announced Sept. 15 that it had begun investigating in August whether some voter registration applications submitted by Patriot Majority contained elements of fraud, including possible forged signatures. Patriot Majority has said some applications it submitted to county clerk’s offices were missing information, but none were fraudulent, and the group had flagged applications it knew were incomplete. In its motion filed in Marion County Superior Court, Patriot Majority cites comments by Gov. Mike Pence, who’s Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate; Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson; Pence-appointed State Police Superintendent Doug Carter, among others. “It would be highly unjust to not release the Affidavit when public officials have refused to provide the facts supporting their reckless conclusory proclamations,” the motion states.

Michigan: Ballot selfies not allowed in Michigan, federal appeals court rules | MLive

Ballot selfies are currently not allowed in Michigan following a 2-1 decision by a federal appeals court. The decision reverses an earlier one this week from a lower court that said ballot selfies would be allowed, when a judge granted a preliminary injunction of Michigan’s law that banned photographs of voter ballots. “Timing is everything,” the Friday, Oct. 28, order authored by Jeffrey S. Sutton and joined by Ralph B. Guy Jr. states. “Crookston’s motion and complaint raise interesting First Amendment issues, and he will have an opportunity to litigate them in full—after this election.” “With just ten days before the November 2016 election, however, we will not accept his invitation to suddenly alter Michigan’s venerable voting protocols, especially when he could have filed this lawsuit long ago,” the order states.

North Carolina: Critics say these efforts constitute ballot box discrimination | The Boston Globe

In the first week of early voting in North Carolina this month, the number of people who showed up to cast in-person ballots in Guilford County fell off a cliff. Voters cast 52,562 fewer ballots, a decrease of 87 percent from the same weeklong period four years earlier, according to an analysis by Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C. The difference? In 2012, the county — where more than a third of the 517,000 residents are African-American and which gave President Obama 58 percent of the vote in 2012 — had 16 locations open for the first stretch of in-person early voting. This year, the Republican-controlled election board opened only one polling site for the first week of early voting — and the site was open two fewer days that first week. Civil rights advocates say what happened in Guilford County, the home of Greensboro, is part of a nationwide proliferation of largely Republican-led efforts, large and small, that discriminate against African-Americans, Latinos, and others at the ballot box. Measures that make voting more difficult — new voter ID laws; rules that make it harder to register; and cuts in the number and hours of polling places — have popped up throughout the country, including in some areas with a history of disenfranchisement.

North Carolina: A Battle Over Voter Suppression In North Carolina | US News

The North Carolina NAACP is preparing to take legal action against the state Board of Elections for suppressing voter registration. Just months after the NAACP won a three-year legal battle against a North Carolina voter identification guide, NAACP President William Barber II said Friday that the state Board of Elections was in violation of the 1993 National Voter Registration act as thousands of black citizens in this battleground state were having their voting registration challenged in court. “Voting fraud is a distraction: statistically and legally nonexistent,” Barber said. “It is in fact voter suppression that is the real threat in this election.” Dozens of delegates at NAACP state convention surrounded Barber as he spoke in front of the North Carolina Governor’s mansion, bearing signs that read, “Vote because black lives are on the ballot” or “vote because education is on the ballot,” and chanting “Yes!” or “amen” as he spoke.

Ohio: Hundreds march to Board of Elections to cast ballots, protest dearth of early-voting locations | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Several hundred voters marched to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections on Sunday to cast ballots and protest the limited number of in-house early voting locations in Ohio. The marchers departed at 2:30 p.m. from the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and traveled a half-mile to the Board of Elections headquarters on Euclid Avenue. Greater Cleveland Congregations and the Amalgamated Transit Union organized the event to encourage Cuyahoga County residents to vote early before the general election on Nov. 8.

Texas: Voting complaints in Texas include confusion over ID requirements | Houston Chronicle

Marked by record turnout, Texas’ first week of early voting has been plagued by widespread confusion about controversial photo ID requirements with cases of people being turned away at the polls, civil rights groups monitoring state activity said Friday. A coalition of civil rights groups manning a hotline says it has received around 325 reports from Texas since early voting started Monday, most of which involved disorder, inaccurate information and intimidation tactics by election officials and poll workers surrounding the state’s voter ID law. Other complaints involved long lines, malfunctioning machines and an armed person in North Texas talking politics to voters in line. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund on Friday filed a lawsuit against Bexar County for having outdated voter ID information, including posters, website materials and a recorded message. The county agreed to a temporary restraining order.

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Many irregularities in second round of Georgia’s election for parliament | Democracy & Freedom Watch

In parts of Georgia, voters went to the polls again on Sunday in the second round of the parliamentary election. There were runoff contests in 50 single-seat districts, accounting for a third of the seats in the assembly. Voting took place against a background of some minor and a few serious irregularities. The outcome of today’s vote will decide if the election winner in the first round, Georgian Dream, will get enough seats to have what’s called a constitutional majority and usher in a ban on same-sex marriage and limit the president’s powers. The number of precincts open for voting was 2,229. Georgian Young Lawyer’s Association (GYLA), said that by 14:00 their observers had noticed different types of violations. The Tbilisi-based organization filed 33 complaints and 25 notices today. There is tension in the village Kizilajo in Marneuli, where the results of the first round were abolished due to a riot-like incident. Georgian Dream and National Movement candidate are competing in this region.

Iceland: Early voting results show Pirate Party’s takeover prospects sinking | The Washington Post

Iceland looked likely to steer away from a Pirate takeover Sunday, as voters favored the incumbent Independence Party over the upstart band of buccaneers advocating direct democracy and Internet freedom. With roughly half of the votes counted from Saturday’s election, the Independence Party had about 30 percent of the ballots and the Pirate Party about 14 percent, putting them in third place behind the Left-Green movement. It’s a worse result for the Pirates than some polls suggested, and a better performance than predicted for the Independents, who have governed in coalition since 2013. Coalition governments are the norm in Iceland’s multiparty system. It was not immediately clear whether the Independents would be able to assemble a coalition with other centrist and right-wing parties — or whether the Pirates and other opposition forces would get the numbers to govern.

Ivory Coast: Violence and low turnout in Ivory Coast’s constitutional referendum | Reuters

Violence erupted at around 100 polling stations in Ivory Coast on Sunday as voters decided whether to approve a new constitution that President Alassane Ouattara argues will ensure peace in the wake of years of political turmoil. Elections worker Nandi Bamba was preparing to open the voting when a group of young men, some of them armed with clubs and machetes, attacked her polling station in Abidjan’s Yopougon neighborhood. “They demanded we stop working because the new constitution wasn’t for the people. Then they smashed the ballot boxes, scattered the ballots. They broke everything,” she said. Under Ouattara, Ivory Coast has made an impressive recovery since a 2011 civil war capped a decade-long crisis. The International Monetary Fund projects it will be Africa’s fastest growing economy this year. However, despite five years of peace, Ivorians remain deeply divided along political and ethnic faultlines. And both they and the investors who are now flooding in crave the stability that will allow the world’s top cocoa grower to cement its status as the continent’s rising star.

Moldova: Pro-Russian candidate to face second round in Moldova presidential vote | Reuters

Moldova’s presidential election will go to a second round, preliminary results showed early on Monday, after a pro-Russian socialist candidate fell short of winning sufficient support to achieve all-out victory. With 99.5 percent of votes counted, preliminary results showed candidate Igor Dodon, who wants to reverse Moldova’s course toward European integration, had won 48.5 percent, and his main pro-European challenger, Maia Sandu, had 38.2 percent. Dodon needed to win 51 percent of votes to avoid a run-off on Nov. 13. “I hope that the results of today’s vote and of the Nov. 13 run-off will bring about both change and stability: change by the election by popular vote of a pro-European president; stability in the functioning of a reform-driven triangle – president, government, Parliament,” Prime Minister Pavel Filip said in a statement. The Central Election Commission will announce the final results of the first round within the next five days.

Montenegro: Election commission declares final results | Associated Press

Montenegro’s state election commission has declared the final results of the Oct. 16 parliamentary election despite a walkout by opposition representatives who have alleged irregularities during the vote. The commission late Saturday confirmed the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists won 36 seats in the 81-member parliament, followed by opposition Democratic Front with 18 seats and the Key Coalition with nine. The remaining seats went to smaller groups.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 24-30 2016

CHICAGO, IL - OCTOBER 18: Residents cast ballots for the November 8 election at an early voting site on October 18, 2016 in Chicago, Illinois. With three weeks to go until election day, polls show Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton with a lead over GOP rival Donald Trump. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Election officials are struggling to reassure voters in an election one side claims is “rigged” as the other was apparently targeted by Russian hackers and Wikileaks. Federal and state law enforcement officials say they are concerned about violence in the final two weeks of the long and bitter Presidential campaign, and well beyond that if Donald Trump loses and refuses to accept the vote as legitimate.  It’s election time, so there are reports of “vote-flipping“, in which voters pressing one candidate’s name on a touch-screen machine, only to have the opponent’s name light up instead. Are the machines rigged? No, says just about every voting technology expert. “If you were actually trying to rig an election, it would be a very stupid thing to do, to let the voter know that you were doing it,” says Larry Norden, with the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. A federal appeals court is deciding whether to force the state of Arizona to count provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. TPM looked into the Indiana State Police investigation that stymied the efforts of an organization’s effort to register African American voters. The New York Times examined claims of voter fraud on Philadelphia. Legal wrangling over Texas’ voter identification law is stirring confusion at the polls, with civil rights groups and some voters questioning how some county election officials are portraying the state’s ID requirement. Elections officials in all mail ballot states say that service changes at the US Postal Service have the potential to disrupt voting-by-mail in the first presidential election since the changes took effect last year. Initial counting after polls closed in Iceland’s election put neither the ruling Independence party’s centre-right coalition nor the Pirate party’s leftist alliance in a position to secure outright victory and voters in Moldova go to the polls to choose their president for the first time in 20 years.

National: Trump Doesn’t Have the Ground Game to Intimidate Voters | WIRED

Donald Trump doesn’t want you to vote. At least, his lack of faith in a US electoral system he calls “rigged” suggests he thinks your vote won’t count. So why bother, right? His allegations of widespread voter fraud are baseless. But that hasn’t stopped him from calling on his supporters to monitor polling places in communities he has deems suspect. That call has led to fears of violence and voter intimidation on Election Day. Trump is none-too-subtle in describing where he thinks election fraud will go down. He told his supporters at a rally in Pennsylvania to go watch voters in “certain places” outside of their own communities, a piercing dog-whistle call to descend on non-white areas that vote heavily Democratic. And some backers have heard the summons. … These promised armies of aggro poll protectors will almost certainly amount to nothing more than a fear-inducing fantasy come Election Day, not least because strict federal and state laws protect voters from intimidation. What is likelier (and scarier) is that a fantasy is all the threat needs to be to hurt voter turnout.

National: ‘We don’t want voters to be terrified’: Officials seek to allay fears of a ‘rigged’ election | The Washington Post

In an election one side claims is “rigged” as the other was apparently targeted by Russian hackers and Wikileaks, voters may be concerned that some entity will alter the results on Nov. 8. It’s possible, according to some experts, although the likelihood of a significant attack on ballot boxes is exceedingly low. “Everything is hackable,” said Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at SRI International, a nonprofit California-based think tank. “Everything could have bugs in it.” … The District, Maryland and many counties in Virginia use paper ballots — a gold standard for election-watchers. These ballots are scanned and counted electronically, leaving behind a hard copy of each voter’s preferences. “It seems old-school, but if you have good security practices and a good ballot chain of custody . . . it’s more indelible than bits and bytes in the ether,” said Pamela Smith, president of the nonpartisan Verified Voting, a nonprofit that works for fair elections.

National: Federal and state law enforcement officials concerned About Risk of Violence as Election Day Nears | NBC

Trump supporters held up Clinton “target practice” posters at a rally in Florida Monday, with a bulls-eye framing her face. Two days earlier in Virginia Beach, one Trump backer hoisted a plastic Hillary Clinton head on a stick, while others waved target signs. And several weeks ago, two armed Trump supporters protested outside the congressional campaign office of a rural Virginia Democrat, in what they said was a gesture of solidarity with closet supporters of Trump. Federal and state law enforcement officials say such incidents have heightened their concerns about violence in the final two weeks of the long and bitter Presidential campaign, and well beyond that if Donald Trump loses and refuses to accept the vote as legitimate. “There is a motivated army of ‘fingers in their ears’ supporters of his who believe he’s giving them license to behave badly, and license not to except the findings of the 9,000 bipartisan polling jurisdictions around the country,” one senior federal law enforcement official told NBC News.

National: Some Voting Machines Are Flipping Votes But That Doesn’t Mean The Election Is ‘Rigged’ | NPR

Vote flipping. The stories and conspiracy theories have begun. In every recent election, there have been reports of voters pressing one candidate’s name on a touch-screen machine, only to have the opponent’s name light up instead. It can be unnerving for voters and often leads to allegations that the machines have been “rigged” to favor one candidate over another. Enter election 2016, when the word “rigged” is more politically charged than ever. In the first few days of early voting, there are already scattered reports of vote-flipping machines in North Carolina, Texas and Nevada. … So what’s going on? Are the machines rigged? No, says just about every voting technology expert. “If you were actually trying to rig an election, it would be a very stupid thing to do, to let the voter know that you were doing it,” says Larry Norden, with the Brennan Center for Justice in New York.