Illinois: Automatic voter registration veto could be overturned | Gazette Chicago

Overturning Governor Bruce Rauner’s August veto of an automatic voter registration (AVR) bill passed by both houses of the Illinois General Assembly is not a sure outcome, despite bipartisan support of the bill (SB250) by both Republican and Democratic legislators. “Governor Rauner makes it clear he will attack those not in agreement; some Republicans will ‘peel off’ over a veto” and not vote to override it, said Cook County Clerk David Orr, an AVR bill proponent. “This is good legislation,” Orr noted. “It cleans the rolls and protects people. But it’s tough to fight a veto.” Senate Bill 250, sponsored in the state Senate by Sen. Andy Manar (D-Decatur) and in the House by State Rep. Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston), passed the legislature in May with broad bipartisan support: 86-30 in the House, 50-7 in the Senate. Rauner vetoed the bill Aug. 12. Legislators are scheduled to reconvene and consider an override in mid-November.

Minnesota: Secretary of State wants Minnsota to reclaim top spot in voter turnout | Minneapolis Star Tribune

Secretary of State Steve Simon wants to make Minnesota No. 1 again — in voter turnout, that is. Simon, the state’s top elections official, has been barnstorming the state in recent months, promoting his voting effort so that Minnesota can reclaim its top spot nationally for civic engagement. For nearly 10 elections in a row, Minnesota had bragging rights, ranking first among all states for its voter turnout rate. That was until 2014. About half of eligible voters cast ballots that year, making Minnesota No. 6, falling behind states like Wisconsin, Maine and Oregon. In 2012 — during President Obama’s re-election — more than 75 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

Nevada: US judge sides with Nevada tribes in voting rights case | Associated Press

Two Native American tribes in Nevada have won an emergency court order in a federal lawsuit accusing the Republican secretary of state and two counties of discriminating against them under the Voting Rights Act. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du issued a temporary injunction in Reno late Friday requiring the establishment of satellite polling places on two northern Nevada reservations ahead of next month’s election in the Western battleground state. The Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute (PY’-ewt) tribes say their members are being denied equal access to the polls as a result of the long distances some must travel to vote early or cast ballots on Election Day.

Texas: Election security: Officials say Texas voter databases haven’t been hacked | The Star-Telegram

Texas election systems are safe from hackers — so far. As more than 20 other states grapple with hackers targeting their voter registration systems, Texas election officials say this state’s electoral system has not been breached. “We haven’t found anything,” Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos told the Star-Telegram. “We don’t have any information … that we have been threatened or that there has been an attempted threat to hack into our systems. “We’ve got protocols in place, safety valves in place, to alert us to something like that.” Federal officials are offering few details or specifics about why voting systems across the country are being hacked. They do, however, say that the target has been voter databases, not actual voting systems. FBI Director James Comey said, “There’s no doubt that some bad actors have been poking around.” And he stressed that the FBI is trying to determine “what mischief is Russia up to in connection with our election.”

Wisconsin: Troopers perform voter ID checks | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In response to reports of the Division of Motor Vehicles giving wrong voter ID information, the state retrained its workers and overhauled how it handles cases when people don’t have birth certificates, state lawyers told a judge Friday. The attorneys acknowledged workers sometimes gave inaccurate information but downplayed the significance of those incidents. They wrote that undercover…

Czech Republic: Ruling coalition wins big in regional ballot | Associated Press

The three parties in the Czech Republic’s ruling center-left coalition dominated the election for the country’s regions and are ahead in the first round of voting for Parliament’s upper house, according to results released Saturday by the Czech Statistics Office. With votes from almost 100 percent of ballot stations counted, the ANO (YES) movement led by Finance Minister Andrej Babis was a clear winner, claiming nine of the 13 regions contested in the two-day vote Friday and Saturday. Of the other two members of the ruling coalition, the leftist Social Democrats of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, who used to dominate the regions, won only two, while the Christian Democrats took one. The final region saw a victory by a group of local mayors.

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Ruling party in Georgia decisively wins parliament vote | Reuters

The ruling party in Georgia decisively won parliamentary elections, firming its grip on power in the former Soviet nation, near-complete results showed on Sunday. With 99.41 percent of the votes in, data from the Central Election Commission gave the ruling Georgian Dream party 48.61 percent of the vote and the opposition United National Movement (UNM) 27.04 percent. A U.S. ally traditionally buffeted between Russia and the West, Georgia hopes to join the European Union and NATO one day even though that is something that Russia, its former colonial master, strongly opposes. With political stability still fragile — the first peaceful transfer of power since the 1991 Soviet collapse only took place four years ago – the authorities were keen the election be widely seen as free and fair to avoid a return to the days when politicians tried to seize power by force.

Lithuania: Agrarian party wins 1st round of Lithuania election | Associated Press

An agrarian party won the first round of Lithuania’s parliamentary election Sunday, setting the stage for a possible change of government in the Baltic country. The Peasants and Green Party won 20 of the 70 seats up for grabs in a party-list vote, according to preliminary results after most ballots were counted. The conservative Homeland Union-Christian Democrats had 15 seats, followed by the governing Social Democrats with 13 seats. However, the final outcome was unclear as the other 71 seats are decided in single-seat constituencies, most of which will require a runoff vote on Oct. 23.

Morocco: Moderate Islamists win election, coalition talks seen tough | Reuters

Morocco’s moderate Islamists have won parliamentary elections, beating a rival party critics say is too close to the royal palace in a tight race that will complicate negotiations to form a coalition government. The government has only limited powers, but Friday’s ballot for the House of Representatives was a test for the constitutional monarchy five years after Mohammed VI devolved some authority to ease protests for democratic change. After five years in government, the Justice and Development Party (PJD) won 125 seats while the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) party took 102, according to final results announced by the interior minister on Saturday. The conservative Istiqlal party took 46 seats.

Voting Blogs: Narcissism vs. Charisma: Somaliland’s Presidential Election | Democracy Chronicles

In interview an HCTV, the question was, “Did you bombard Ethiopia during ’77 war?” The answer: “Yes, I brutally bombed Ethiopia”. This statement seems uttered by three old child, but it’s not. The ruling Kulmiye Party candidate Mr. Muse Bihi Abdi of Somaliland uttered this without exercising the minimum diplomatic code of ethics when he asked his greatest achievement in a life. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently said in regard to Donald Trump, that his “intellectual laziness and towering policy ignorance are in a league of its own”. Likewise, Somaliland intellectuals, if there are any, should make sure Muse Bihi, far more mediocre than anyone can imagine, fails to win. The damage to the country in the case of his election will make Somaliland look like “tribes with flags”. Tired of recycled mottos of improving their lives, voters want real change and have begun to increasingly look to the Wadani Party leadership.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 3-9 2016

absentee_260The US government has formally accused Russia of hacking the Democratic party’s computer networks and said that Moscow was attempting to “interfere” with the US presidential election. PCWorld asked several computer security experts and voting advocates to propose steps that could improve the security of American elections. Stanford computer science professor David Dill discussed security concerns presented by internet voting with KQED Radio. Democrats filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Florida Secretary of State to stop the practice of election officials tossing vote by mail ballots if the signature on the ballot envelope does not match the one on file. Indiana State Police said on Thursday that they have expanded an investigation of possible voter registration fraud to 57 of the state’s 92 counties. A new online ballot system and marking tool could weaken Maryland’s voting security and make it the most vulnerable state in the nation, according to some cybersecurity experts. A federal judge on Friday found partially in favor of two Native American tribes in their lawsuit against the Secretary of State’s Office and two Nevada counties in a voter disenfranchisement case. Voting rights advocates are concerned about the impact the elimination of straight party voting will have on November’s election. Thousands of mailed absentee ballots in Wisconsin could be thrown out because witnesses for the voters did not provide their full addresses. Colombians narrowly rejected a peace deal with Marxist guerrillas in a referendum on Sunday, plunging the nation into uncertainty and dashing President Juan Manuel Santos’ painstakingly negotiated plan to end the 52-year war. Suffering from the impact of Hurricane Matthew, Haiti has postponed Presidential elections for the fourth time and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s referendum against EU refugee quotas suffered a stinging domestic rebuke drawing just 40 percent of eligible voters, rendering the plebiscite invalid.

National: US officially accuses Russia of hacking DNC and interfering with election | The Guardian

The US government has formally accused Russia of hacking the Democratic party’s computer networks and said that Moscow was attempting to “interfere” with the US presidential election. Hillary Clinton and US officials have blamed Russian hackers for stealing more than 19,000 emails from Democratic party officials, but Friday’s announcement marked the first time that the Obama administration has pointed the finger at Moscow. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” said the office of the director of national intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)in a joint statement. The accusation marked a new escalation of tensions with Russia and came shortly after the US secretary of state, John Kerry, called for Russia to be investigated for war crimes in Syria.

National: 5 ways to improve voting security in the US | PCWorld

With the U.S. presidential election just weeks away, questions about election security continue to dog the nation’s voting system. It’s too late for election officials to make major improvements, “and there are no resources,” said Joe Kiniry, a long-time election security researcher. However, officials can take several steps for upcoming elections, security experts say. “Nobody should ever imagine changing the voting technology used this close to a general election,” said Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa. “The best time to buy new equipment would be in January after a general election, so you’ve got almost two years to learn how to use it.” … Some states conduct extensive pre-election tests of their voting equipment, but other tests are less comprehensive, said Pamela Smith, president of elections security advocacy group Verified Voting. Most jurisdictions conduct pre-election voting tests, but many “randomly select some machines” after ballot information, such as candidates’ names, is programmed in, Smith said. Testing all voting machines before an election would be more secure, she said.

Verified Voting Blog: David Dill: Why Can’t We Vote Online? | KQED

This interview was posted at KQED on October 4, 2016, where audio of the interview can be heard.

david_dillWe can bank online and we can shop online so why can’t we vote online? To answer that question, we first need to agree on what it means, said David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford and the founder of the Verified Voting Foundation. In other words, what do people mean when they ask: “Why can’t we vote online?”

“The reason people want internet voting is because they want the convenience to vote at home or vote on their smartphone,” Dill said. I have to agree. I want to vote online like I do everything else online. I want to vote anywhere, anytime and on any device. If that’s the case, Dill said the answer is simple: We can’t vote online because our personal devices are too easy to hack. “If we had online elections, we would never be able to trust the results of those elections,” Dill said. “These systems are just notoriously insecure.”

If you follow the news, you know that our smartphones and personal computers are constantly getting hacked. While antivirus companies try, no software can stop all viruses. In fact, you might have a virus on your computer right now and not realize it, Dill said. “Now you can imagine the impact on trying to cast a ballot on such a machine,” Dill said. “The technology does not exist for secure online voting.”

But aren’t there places that have voted online? Yes, but Dill says they’ve all been hacked.

Florida: Democrats sue Florida over vote-by-mail verification | Politico

Democrats are suing Florida’s top election official in federal court to stop the practice of election officials tossing vote by mail ballots if the signature on the ballot envelope does not match the one on file. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida by the Florida Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee. The listed defendant is Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who oversee state elections. “This is a case about the denial of the fundamental right to vote of thousands of Florida voters who vote-by-mail,” read the lawsuit. The case is being brought by attorney Mark Herron, one of Florida’s most prominent Democratic attorneys, and attorneys from Perkins Coie, which is the go-to law firm for Democrats nationally.

Indiana: Voter registration agency office raided in growing voter fraud case | Indianapolis Star

Indiana State Police investigators on Tuesday searched a voter registration agency on Indianapolis’ north side as they look into a voter fraud case that spans nine counties. The investigation began in late August when police learned of the filing of fraudulent voter registration forms in Marion and Hendricks counties. The investigation has expanded from Marion and Hendricks counties to include Allen, Delaware, Hamilton, Hancock, Johnson, Lake and Madison counties, according to a statement from State Police. Police said the growing number of involved counties leads investigators to believe that the number of fraudulent records might be in the hundreds. The possible fraudulent information is a combination of fake names, addresses and dates of birth with real information.

Indiana: State Police expand vote fraud probe to 57 counties | Associated Press

Indiana State Police said on Thursday that they have expanded an investigation of possible voter registration fraud to 57 of the state’s 92 counties. The investigation expanded from nine counties state police said they were investigating on Tuesday. Capt. Dave Bursten, state police spokesman, provided no details on the reason for the expansion. The announcement came about an hour after Patriot Majority USA, a group that runs the Indiana Voter Registration Project that is under investigation in the nine counties named Tuesday, said it asked the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to look into whether the investigation is an attempt to suppress black votes.

Maryland: Security Experts Question Maryland’s Online Ballot System | Associated Press

A new online ballot system and marking tool could weaken Maryland’s voting security and make it the most vulnerable state in the nation, according to some cybersecurity experts. On Sept. 14, the Maryland State Board of Elections voted 4-1 to certify a new voting system and marking tool for online ballots. The new system will allow all Maryland voters the ability to both make selections on a computer and print absentee ballots from home, and send them into the State Board of Elections. Nikki Charlson, the deputy state administrator of the Board of Elections, said the system and tool are as secure as possible. “We are following all of the best practices for IT systems,” she said. Experts in cybersecurity and computer science have publicly stated they believe the potential risks with the new method of voting outweigh the benefits.

Nevada: Judge rules partially in favor of tribes in federal suit | Reno Gazette Journal

A federal judge on Friday found partially in favor of two Native American tribes in their lawsuit against the Secretary of State’s Office and two Nevada counties in a voter disenfranchisement case. Federal Judge Miranda Du released her ruling late Friday afternoon which found in favor of the Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute tribes’ request for early in-person polling in Nixon and Schurz and Election Day in-person polling at Nixon. She denied the request for satellite voter registration sites in both places. “In this case, while injunctive relief would impose costs upon defendants, there is no indication it would interfere with the state’s ability to move forward with the November election as scheduled,” Du said in the ruling. “The public interest is served by the enforcement of the (Voting Rights Act of 1965) and the inclusion of protected classes in the political process.”

North Carolina: A federal court struck down much of North Carolina’s voter ID law – but what’s left could still shrink the black vote | The Washington Post

Many voting rights activists breathed a sigh of relief this year when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit overturned numerous provisions of North Carolina’s 2013 election law. The law had instituted a strict voter ID requirement, curtailed the early voting period and eliminated one-stop voting and registration, among other provisions. Critics argued that if the law were fully implemented it would lead to a sharp reduction in voting by racial minorities and younger citizens. The 4th Circuit agreed, saying that the “new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” On emergency appeal, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4 to 4 on granting a stay, which meant that the 4th Circuit’s decision will stand for the 2016 election. But there is an overlooked yet consequential provision of the law that the court did not strike down: the removal of the straight-ticket option from North Carolina ballots. As in 2014, there will be no such option on the ballot in 2016.

Wisconsin: Absentee ballots at risk of being tossed | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Thousands of mailed absentee ballots could be thrown out because witnesses for the voters did not provide their full addresses. With only a fraction of absentee ballots mailed in, the number of ballots at risk of being tossed is now in the hundreds and could easily grow to thousands in the state’s largest city alone, said Neil Albrecht, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. In most cases where ballots are at risk, the error is a minor one — the witness provided a street address but not the name of a municipality. Often, the voter and witness live at the same address, but clerks aren’t allowed to fill in the missing information unless they track down the voter and get his or her permission. “What distresses me the most about this is it’s mostly seniors,” Albrecht said. “I think it’s absurd that your ballot might not be counted because someone in your household didn’t record their municipality.”

Colombia: Voters reject deal to end 52-year FARC rebel war | Reuters

Colombians narrowly rejected a peace deal with Marxist guerrillas in a referendum on Sunday, plunging the nation into uncertainty and dashing President Juan Manuel Santos’ painstakingly negotiated plan to end the 52-year war. The surprise victory for the “no” camp poured cold water on international joy, from the White House to the Vatican, at what had seemed to be the end of the longest-running conflict in the Americas. The “no” camp won by 50.21 percent to 49.78 percent. Voter turnout was only 37 percent, perhaps partly owing to torrential rain through the country. Both sides in the war immediately sought to reassure the world they would try to revive their peace plan. Santos, 65, said a ceasefire already negotiated would remain in place. He vowed to sit down on Monday with the victorious “no” camp to discuss the way forward, and send his chief negotiator back to Cuba to meet with FARC rebel leaders. “I will not give up, I will keep seeking peace until the last day of my term because that is the way to leave a better nation for our children,” said Santos, who cannot seek re-election when his second term ends in August 2018.

Haiti: Election postponed in Haiti after Hurricane Matthew batters the island | Miami Herald

In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew’s destructive pass through Haiti, which left at least 10 people dead, hundreds of thousands displaced and a death toll certain to climb, elections officials on Wednesday postponed Sunday’s rerun presidential and legislative elections for the second time this year. The delay was expected by many Haitians after Tuesday’s battering from Matthew, a monster Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 145 mph that made landfall along the country’s southern coast bringing 15 to 20 inches of rain and triggering fears of a cholera outbreak. But elections observers, and some candidates, criticized the Haitian government for failing to set a new date for the election. The country’s Provisional Electoral Council, or CEP, announced the postponement on the day that Haitian National Police and a United Nations logistics team were scheduled to begin moving ballots and other sensitive materials to voting centers.

Hungary: Orban embarrassed by refugee vote turnout | Deutsche Welle

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s failed referendum against EU refugee quotas brought him harsh attacks at home and dismissal abroad. Orban suffered a stinging domestic rebuke to his anti-refugee campaign on Sunday, when his pet referendum drew just 40 percent of eligible voters, rendering the plebiscite invalid. At least 50 percent turnout was needed. Still, more than 98 percent of those who cast a ballot supported Orban’s anti-refugee stance. Toth Csaba, an analyst at the Republikon Institute in Budapest, called the results a failure for a prime minister who put considerable resources into swaying public opinion ahead of the plebiscite. “It’s more of loss for the government,” Csaba said. “Expectations were very high, and the government put forth a massive spending campaign to support it.” Orban had called the referendum to boost his political standing at home – and to taunt Brussels and Berlin over a program that has been essentially discarded. Last year the European Union announced plans to introduce a system to distribute more than 1 million migrants among member states.

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Georgian Dream Wins Parliamentary Election, Exit Poll Shows | Bloomberg

Georgian Dream won parliamentary elections, retaining power by edging the party of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, an exit poll showed. Georgian Dream received 39.9 percent of the vote in the former Soviet republic, compared with 32.7 percent for United National Movement, according to a survey by the polling company GfK. A second poll by TNS gave Georgian Dream almost 54 percent to UNM’s 19.5 percent. Preliminary results of Saturday’s ballot will be released through the night. For single-member districts where no candidate captures a majority, a runoff will be held in two weeks. Georgian Dream swept to power in 2012 elections, six months after being formed by reclusive billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, ending the UNM rule that had started in the 2003 Rose Revolution. Over the past year, the government struggled to contain a currency crisis, which kept voters focused on the economy as it reeled from the impact of the Ukrainian conflict and Russia’s slide into recession. Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who ascended to the post less than 10 months ago, is promising to rev up growth in the next decade.

National: States Keep Weaseling Around Court Orders Blocking GOP Voting Restrictions | TPM

After a spree of favorable court rulings that softened or blocked Republican-passed voting restrictions, voting rights advocates are engaged in a new phase of trench warfare with a mere month left before November’s election and early voting in some places already underway. There was no time for civil rights groups to rest on their laurels after winning the high-profile legal challenges. In many states, such rulings were met with attempts to undermine or circumvent court orders meant to make it easier to vote. “You take a step back and it’s really appalling,” said Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project who has been involved in many of the legal challenges to state voting restrictions. “I mean the Department of Justice and other groups, we have all won the cases … you would have thought we would have been finished with this whole thing, when, up until Election Day, we have to stay on these people,” Ho told TPM. At times, it’s hard to pin down whether issues red states have faced in implementing court orders have been motivated by bureaucratic incompetence or something worse. But the pattern is undeniable. In almost every state where voting rights advocates have scored a major legal victory in recent months, they have had to threaten to drag state officials back into court over the shoddy job election administrators have done following the rulings.

National: Voter ID laws threaten lifelong voters | BBC

67-year-old Leroy Switlick is angry. He’s angry because he’s made three separate trips to the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office in Milwaukee to get a photo ID so he can vote in next month’s general election. Each time he’s come away empty-handed. Leroy has voted in every presidential election for more than 40 years, but Wisconsin’s new voter ID law means that even though he’s registered, he will not be able to cast his ballot without showing photo ID such as a driving licence or passport. “It’s silly,” he says. Switlick, who has been partially sighted for most of his life, never learned to drive – and so never had a driver’s license. He was not previously required to have a state-issued ID for any other purpose. “The first question the man behind the counter asked me was ‘Can I see your photo ID?’ Now if I’m coming to get a photo ID, how can I already have a photo ID?” Each time he visited the DMV, he took a satchel full of documents including his birth certificate. But the DMV never actually examined his papers.

National: Why 10% of Florida Adults Can’t Vote: How Felony Convictions Affect Access to the Ballot | The New York Times

One of every 40 American adults cannot vote in November’s election because of state laws that bar people with past felony convictions from casting ballots. Experts say racial disparities in sentencing have had a disproportionate effect on the voting rights of blacks and Hispanics. A report by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization focused on criminal justice reform, estimates that 6.1 million Americans will not be allowed to vote next month because of these laws. State laws that bar voting vary widely. Three swing states — Florida, Iowa and Virginia — have some of the harshest laws; they impose a lifetime voting ban on felons, although their voting rights can be restored on a case-by-case basis by a governor or a court. On the other end of the spectrum, Maine and Vermont place no restrictions on people with felony convictions, allowing them to vote while incarcerated.

National: Foreign election observers to cast their eyes on the U.S. presidential vote | The Washington Post

The world will be watching from close-up when the United States chooses a president next month, as foreign election observers fan out to polling places across the country. For the first time, the Organization of American States (OAS) will dispatch 30 to 40 observers and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has been sending small groups of observers to U.S. elections since 2002, hopes to boost its contingent dramatically, fielding hundreds of poll watchers. Even Russia, where 63 U.S. observers traveled for parliamen­tary elections last month, is considering sending people to watch Americans vote, according to Yury Melnik, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington. The plethora of poll watchers — some of whom are veteran monitors of elections in countries where voter fraud is rampant — is another sign that the 2016 contest is unlike any other.

National: Computer Science Professor: Many hurdles preventing emergence of online voting | Purdue Exponent

The search for solutions to increase voter numbers on Election Day continues as states have underwhelming turnouts in both presidential and non-presidential election years. But Eugene Spafford, computer science professor at Purdue, says online voting is not one of those solutions. The most important aspects of an election are privacy and accuracy for citizens and, from the standpoint of candidates, the vote total accountability. However, current online technology available to the average citizen dictates that you can’t have it all, says Spafford, the executive director of Purdue’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security. “Voting by Internet sounds attractive, but either we have to give up the anonymity of the ballot, which is not a good practice, or we have to give up the ability to confirm that the count is correct,” he said in a press release.