Florida: Voters challenge for recount: A call to address election issues? | CS Monitor

With their call for a recount in Florida, a group of voters may hope to encourage a push for change in voting procedure – even if the recount itself is a long shot. Citing concerns about hacking, malfunctioning voting machines, and voters being turned away, three central Florida voters have brought a lawsuit against President-elect Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, and the Sunshine State’s 29 Republican electors. They are calling for a hand recount of all paper ballots, to be paid for by the defendants. The group’s lawyer, Clint Curtis, acknowledged that Mr. Trump, Governor Scott, and others can ignore the recount request entirely. But the suit, the latest of several to question the 2016 election results, may strengthen calls to address election issues.

Michigan: Michigan Supreme Court denies Jill Stein’s appeal in recount case | MLive

The Michigan Supreme Court has denied Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s appeal to restart the statewide presidential recount, exhausting what’s likely the last legal option for the Stein campaign. In a 3-2 order issued Friday evening, the court ruled a recount petition in Michigan “must allege both that fraud or mistake exists and that the alleged fraud or mistake caused the candidate to be aggrieved.” The majority order concurs with a State Court of Appeals ruling that ordered Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers, which certifies election results and handles other election-related issues, to reject the recount on grounds that Stein was not sufficiently “aggrieved” as required under state statute earlier this week. The Michigan Supreme Court justices split along partisan lines, with all three Republican-nominated judges ordering a denial of Stein’s appeal. The two Democratic-nominated judges, Richard Bernstein and Bridget McCormack, each wrote dissenting opinions.

Nevada: Partial recount of Nevadans’ presidential ballots confirms Nov. 8 results | Las Vegas Review-Journal

A limited recount of presidential ballots cast in Nevada confirmed the results of the Nov. 8 election and eliminated the possibility of a statewide recount, the secretary of state’s office said Thursday. The partial recount in 92 precincts, requested and paid for by independent candidate Roque “Rocky De La Fuente, “yielded no change in the number of votes cast for him,” said Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske. De La Fuente, who came in dead last in the presidential race in Nevada, said he requested the recount because he was concerned about the integrity of the vote. The recounts did result in nine fewer votes for Democrat Hillary Clinton and six fewer for Republican Donald Trump, but no other changes were identified, the Secretary of State’s Office said in a news release. De La Fuente received 2,552 votes, or 0.23 percent, in the election. Clinton won the state with 47.9 percent, beating Republican President-elect Donald Trump by nearly 2.5 percent.

Pennsylvania: Decision coming Monday on Stein’s request for statewide recount | Philadelphia Inquirer

A Philadelphia judge said he will rule Monday on the Green Party-backed petition for a statewide Pennsylvania recount, but signaled that the clock may be running out because the state must certify its election results for the Electoral College vote. U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond announced his plans after a Friday afternoon hearing at which supporters of Green Party nominee Jill Stein continued their bid for the review, citing potential security vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines statewide. Diamond, however, seemed most concerned with the limited time Stein’s lawyers had left him to act, by waiting nearly a month after the election to file their lawsuit. Any court-ordered delay in meeting the Tuesday certification deadline could put Pennsylvania’s electoral votes in jeopardy when the Electoral College convenes Dec. 19.

Wisconsin: Judge rejects bid to stop election recount | Reuters

A U.S. judge in Wisconsin on Friday rejected a request by President-elect Donald Trump supporters to stop a recount of election votes while the Michigan Supreme Court denied an appeal by Green Party candidate Jill Stein to restart the state’s recount. The results of the Nov. 8 election have been challenged in three states by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who finished fourth in the presidential poll. In Pennsylvania, the third state, a judge said he would rule on Monday on whether to allow a recount to go forward. Even if the recounts were carried out, they would be extremely unlikely to change the outcome of Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The Gambia: Soldiers on the streets in Gambia as unrest grows after president rejects election result | The Independent

Gambia’s president-elect said on Saturday that the outgoing leader who now rejects his defeat has no constitutional authority to call for another election, and he called on President Yahya Jammeh to help with a smooth transition in the interest of the tiny West African country. Jammeh’s surprise reversal late Friday was certain to spark outrage among the tens of thousands who took to the streets after Adama Barrow was announced the president-elect in the 1 December vote, shouting “Freedom!” The United States and others quickly rejected Jammeh’s new stance, and the African Union on Saturday called for security forces to remain neutral. Soldiers were in the streets of the capital, Banjul, as Gambians closed down shops in fear of unrest. Barrow said the Independent Electoral Commission is the only competent authority to declare a winner. “It was already done so, and I am the president-elect,” Barrow said. “President Jammeh is the outgoing president. He is to hand over executive powers to me when his term is expires in January.”

Ghana: Elections Marred by Attempt to Hack Website and Calls for the President to Concede | Foreign Policy

Ghana’s presidential elections Wednesday started off surprisingly well, with voters lining up hours early at some polling places — using stones to save their place in line — and congratulations pouring in from the (real) U.S. Embassy in Ghana. Fears of election-day violence and confusion seemed misplaced. Then it all came apart. First, the electoral commission’s website was victim to a hack attempt. Also, an image circulating on Twitter said that the New Patriotic Party’s Nana Akufo-Addo had won the day, forcing the commission to frantically tweet for voters to ignore the fake news. Though votes were still being counted Thursday, the Akufo-Addo camp announced Thursday that, according to its tabulations, Akufo-Addo did in fact have a strong lead. They called for the incumbent, President John Mahama, who’s been in power since 2012, to concede. That didn’t sit well. Mahama’s camp called the calls for concession “treasonable.”

National: Jill Stein: US election recount is vital to reform our broken voting system | The Guardian

The election didn’t end on 8 November, it just morphed into a crisis whose resolution is not in sight. Hillary Clinton’s campaign was impacted by an October surprise delivered by a partisan FBI, but November was not short on surprises, and there may yet be one in December. A little more than a week ago, while people were wondering what it would take to get the Clinton campaign to pursue a recount, Jill Stein’s campaign amazed everyone by taking on the job. Exuberance for the idea immediately inspired small donors to contribute $6.5m in about 48 hours. Stein launched the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania at the behest of election experts John Bonifaz and J Alex Halderman, who said the irregularities they saw merited further investigation. Those errors include discrepancies in Donald Trump’s favor between the usually reliable exit polls and the votes in several swing states, beyond what some experts consider the margin of error and other anomalies. One they noted was that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7% fewer votes in counties with electronic voting machines than in counties that have paper ballots. In Michigan, more than 80,000 ballots were said to be blank where the votes for president would be marked, twice the number left blank in the previous election, and several times the margin between the two candidates.

National: Wait times at polls in 2016 election improved in several key states, new survey results show | phys.org

While many voters reported long lines at polling locations around the country during the 2012 presidential election, this year the overall amount of time people had to wait to vote improved significantly, according to a new survey examining voter experience during the 2016 presidential election. Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT, today presented the preliminary findings of the Survey on the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), during a conference hosted by the Pew Charitable Trusts on the evolution of voting administration since the 2012 election. Stewart found that in a number of states where voters experienced some of the longest waiting times in the 2012 presidential election—including South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland—there was notable improvement in 2016. In Florida, Stewart found “tremendous improvement in terms of how long people reported that they waited to vote.” The findings show that “all the effort over the last four years that was invested in dealing with problems President Obama identified with lines, those efforts appear to have paid off,” Stewart says.

Editorials: A Post-Election Legal Challenge to the Electoral College | Jacob Gershman/Wall Street Journal

President-elect Donald Trump is weeks away from taking the oath of office, but for two Colorado presidential electors, the 2016 contest remains contested. The electors, who are Democrats vehemently opposed to Mr. Trump in the White House, have filed a lawsuit challenging the winner-takes-all system for casting electoral votes.

Reports the Denver Post: Two Democratic electors who pledged to support Democrat Hillary Clinton — the winner of the state’s nine Electoral College votes — now want to “vote their conscience and do their constitutional duty as intended by the framers,” said Jason Wesoky, the attorney who filed the suit. Polly Baca, a former state lawmaker, and Robert Nemanich are among the “Moral Electors” hoping to persuade Republican electors in other states to vote for a third-party candidate to keep Trump from receiving 270 electoral votes — and offering to shift their Democratic votes to a consensus pick.

Georgia: Secretary of State’s office says it has traced an attempted voter hack to the Department of Homeland Security | PCWorld

Georgia’s secretary of state says the state was hit with an attempted hack of its voter registration database from an IP address linked to the federal Department of Homeland Security. The allegation by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp is one of the more bizarre charges to come up in the recent spate of alarms about voting-system hacks. He said in a Facebook post on Thursday that he had been made aware of the failed attempt to breach the firewall protecting Georgia’s voter registration database. The attack was traced to an Internet Protocol address associated with DHS, he said. This morning I sent a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson demanding to know why,” he said in the post. The DHS said it had received the letter. “We are looking into the matter. DHS takes the trust of our public and private sector partners seriously, and we will respond to Secretary Kemp directly,” the department said in a statement.

Michigan: Election Recount Halted, Jill Stein Likely To Appeal Ruling | International Business Times

A federal judge ordered Michigan’s Board of Elections on Wednesday to stop the state’s electoral recount after a state court ruling found Green Party candidate Jill Stein had no legal standing to request recount of votes. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith said “there is no basis” for him to ignore the state court ruling that said the recount should never have started. Stein’s campaign condemned the judgment and promised to challenge the Michigan Court of Appeals decision. Republicans have argued that the three-day recount must end as the state appeals court found that Stein, who finished fourth in Michigan on Nov. 8, did not have a chance of winning even after a recount and therefore is not an “aggrieved” candidate.

Michigan: Clerks still in limbo following halt of recount | Times Herald

Sanilac County Clerk Denise McGuire said she hasn’t yet canceled her recount team. While a federal judge late Wednesday halted the hand recount of 4.8 million ballots cast for president in Michigan after days of conflicting court decisions, McGuire isn’t quite sure the wild ride is over. “We are scheduled for Sunday, I am waiting until tomorrow before I call the recount team members to cancel,” she said in an email. “The Bureau of Elections’ message was they didn’t expect it to resume and I want to make sure further appeals are not filed today.” St. Clair County was scheduled to begin the recount of its nearly 80,000 ballots Thursday morning. Following orders from the state that came after the judge’s decision, County Clerk Jay DeBoyer called off his workers planning to come to the Blue Water Convention Center. “We are not going to turn the ballots back to the local clerks and we are not going to tear down our room any time soon,” he said.

Michigan: State owes Green Party’s Stein a refund since ballot recount stops | Detroit Free Press

Green Party candidate Jill Stein is in line for a big check from the State of Michigan after the recount she requested was stopped by a federal judge and the state Board of Canvassers after only three days of counting ballots. Under state law, Stein had to pay $125 per precinct — or $973,250 — to count Michigan’s 7,786 in-person and absentee voting precincts. That check was delivered to state officials when she requested the recount last week. Now, with only a fraction of the recount completed, Michigan’s Secretary of State is prepared to refund a portion of that amount, said Fred Woodhams, spokesman for Secretary of State Ruth Johnson. Stein will have to pay for the precincts in Michigan that were counted, but she will not be charged for the precincts that couldn’t be counted because of problems with the ballot containers. When the recount was stopped Wednesday after a ruling from U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith, 26 counties had started counting their ballots.

Michigan: Recount supporters criticize court rulings, pin hopes on Michigan Supreme Court | MLive

Supporters of Green Party candidate Jill Stein and the statewide presidential recount she requested in Michigan aren’t thrilled with state and federal court rulings that shut the process down as of Thursday morning. The Green Party is expected to hold an “emergency rally” in front of the state Supreme Court building 2 p.m. Thursday at 925 W. Ottawa St. to protest a decision they consider unfair and potentially harmful to Michigan voters. “The discrepancies we’ve discovered while counting votes so far are precisely the reason we need a recount in the first place,” Green Party member Lou Novak said in a statement. “We will not back down from this fight now. The Michigan Supreme Court must do its job.”

Michigan: Election board cancels meeting after judge ends recount | The Detroit Times

Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers canceled plans Thursday to hold a formality vote on ending a statewide recount of the presidential election after a federal judge effectively shut down the recount Wednesday night. The panel of two Republicans and two Democrats approved an order on Wednesday that instructed state election officials to stop the recount if U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith lifted a restraining order that triggered the recount on Monday. “It was determined that their vote yesterday addressed the order from the Court of Appeals, so there’s no need to vote and the recount is stopped,” said Fred Woodhams, spokesman for Secretary of State Ruth Johnson. As a result, the state’s certified results from Nov. 28 stand, Woodham said Thursday. President-elect Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes over Democrat Hillary Clinton, a 47.5 percent to 47.3 percent victory.

Pennsylvania: State Attorney General fights Green Party recount bid in federal court | Associated Press

Calling it a “fishing expedition,” Pennsylvania election officials on Thursday asked a federal judge to throw out a Green Party-backed lawsuit that seeks a recount of paper ballots cast in the Nov. 8 presidential election and an inspection to determine whether election software was hacked. The state attorney general’s office, representing Secretary of State Pedro Cortes, a Democrat, attacked the recount effort by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein as an effort to undo the presidential election won by Republican Donald Trump. Stein lacks the necessary standing to challenge the election result because any change will not make her the winner, the state’s lawyers wrote. It is “rank speculation” to suggest that Russian hackers somehow flipped the vote, they wrote. And Stein’s challenge is based on unfounded suspicions and acknowledges that it’s possible no evidence of hacking even exists, because sophisticated malware can be designed to disappear after carrying out its task.

Wisconsin: Judge to Hold Hearing on Stopping Wisconsin Recount | Associated Press

Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by more than 22,000 votes in the state. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein requested the recount to determine if election machines were hacked. Two pro-Trump groups, the Great America PAC and the Stop Hillary PAC, filed a federal lawsuit Dec. 1, the day the recount began, seeking to stop the process. Judge James Peterson has scheduled a hearing Friday in Madison.

Editorials: How to save the Wisconsin recount | Chris Sautter and Jake Schlachter/Medium

We’re one week into the historic Wisconsin recount, prompted in no small part by widespread concerns about the reliability of electronic voting machines and their susceptibility to tampering, fraud, and computer hacking. The difference in Wisconsin is currently about 22,000 votes, or 0.75%. Patriotic, democracy-loving Americans share a common value of wanting to see that every vote is counted fairly, accurately, and honestly, especially in such a close and crucial election as this one. Let’s get to know these machines better. The optical scanning computers used in Wisconsin and other states, especially the infamous ES&S DS-200, too often fail to count votes where voter intent could be discerned by hand. These are officially called “undervotes” or “overvotes,” but in many instances could be called “not counted votes.” A lightly marked ballot filled out by an elderly or handicapped person, a checkmark instead of a filled-in oval, or even a ballot cast using the wrong pen color can be missed or “no votes” in a machine count but real, legal votes in a hand count. In Florida, a shocking 1.67% of the people wearing an “I Voted” sticker didn’t actually. In Michigan, where the margin is only 11,000 votes, there are 75,000 not counted votes in Detroit alone. Hand counts will identify and include legal votes missed by the machine; anyone who says otherwise is simply wrong.

Germany: After a Cyberattack, Germany Fears Election Disruption | The New York Times

After hackers infiltrated the German Parliament’s computer network in May 2015, it took nearly a year before the country’s intelligence agency concluded that the attack was most likely the work of their Russian counterparts. Last week, when 900,000 Germans lost access to internet and telephone services, it took a matter of hours before politicians began pointing fingers at Moscow. Berlin is now concerned that Germany will become the next focus of Moscow’s campaign to destabilize Western democracies as national elections approach next year. Those fears intensified after the Obama administration accused the Russian government of attacking Democratic Party emails during the American presidential campaign.

Germany: Spy Chief: Russia Trying To ‘Destabilize’ Germany Ahead Of Elections | RFERL

German intelligence says Russia is trying to destabilize German society with an intensifying campaign of propaganda, disinformation, and cyberattacks ahead of federal elections next year. “We see aggressive and increased cyberspying and cyberoperations that could potentially endanger German government officials, members of parliament, and employees of democratic parties,” Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the domestic BfV intelligence agency, said in a December 8 statement. The warning came two months after U.S. intelligence publicly accused Russia of directing cyberattacks against American political figures and organizations in order to interfere with the U.S. electoral process ahead of the November 8 presidential election.

Romania: Election set to return graft suspects to power | Financial Times

Hundreds of customers rush out of high end stores in one of Romania’s biggest shopping centres, clutching Christmas gift bags and pushing trolleys through the busy car park. If any are troubled by the murky history of this once quiet farming community, 7km north of Bucharest city centre, they do not show it. Just across the street from the gleaming Baneasa shopping complex is a Communist-era collective farm now at the centre of a bribery probe linking minor royalty with senior politicians poised for success in Sunday’s general election. The Baneasa farm case is one of thousands that Romania’s powerful anti-corruption agency has opened this year, in what has become the largest ever anti-graft clampdown in eastern Europe. According to prosecutors from the DNA, the national anti-corruption agency, officials were bribed to sign the valuable land over to Prince Paul-Philippe, who claims ancestral ownership, as part of illegal land restitutions she estimates cost the state €145m. The prince has denied any wrongdoing.

United Kingdom: Hostile states pose ‘fundamental threat’ to Europe, says MI6 chief | The Guardian

The head of the British intelligence agency MI6, Alex Younger, has said cyber-attacks, propaganda and subversion from hostile states pose a “fundamental threat” to European democracies, including the UK. In a rare speech by an MI6 chief while in office, Younger did not specifically name Russia but left no doubt that this was the target of his remarks. Russia has been accused of interfering in the US presidential election and there are concerns it could do the same in French and German elections next year. He did mention Russia in relation to Syria, portraying Russian military support for the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in the takeover of Aleppo and elsewhere as potentially creating a long-term problem that could increase radicalisation. “In Aleppo, Russia and the Syrian regime seek to make a desert and call it peace. The human tragedy is heartbreaking,” Younger said.

Voting Blogs: Election Administration Woes and Not Just “Hoping for the Best” | More Soft Money Hard Law

For all the talk about weaknesses in the electoral systems–about voter fraud or hacking or machine failure, or all of the above–experience with these types of claims or concerns suggests that, as matters of general public debate, they will soon fade. The rhetoric may linger, but little of use, such as practical reforms, is likely to follow. This does not have to be the way the story ends. Six years ago, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration suggested at least two potentially helpful measures, one very concrete and urgent, and the other pressing but more politically complicated and so harder to execute. These reforms won’t satisfy everyone: they offer only so much to those with the darkest suspicions. But they would make a major difference in preventing a calamitous breakdown in the voting process and an even greater collapse of public confidence.

Alaska: Census Bureau adds areas, languages served by translations for elections | KTOO

More people who speak Alaska Native languages but who have limited English proficiency will receive translated sample ballots and other election material. That’s due to changes the U.S. Census Bureau announced on Monday.
The Census Bureau expanded the number of areas and languages eligible for election material translation.
Indra Arriaga, who manages language assistance compliance for the state Division of Elections, said it’s important to ensure that people receive translated sample ballots and election outreach public service announcements in minority languages.

Michigan: Judge’s order suspends Michigan’s recount | The Detroit News

A federal judge Wednesday suspended a recount of the Nov. 8 presidential election that started three days ago and has yet to reveal fraud or significantly alter the results. The manual statewide recount cost as much as $3 million but stopped after U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith lifted a temporary restraining order preventing state officials from stopping a recount prompted by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. A state election board could end the recount at a scheduled Thursday meeting. Stein failed to show she was an aggrieved candidate as defined by state law and entitled to a recount, the judge said. He concluded Stein’s request to test the election system’s vulnerability to fraud lacked evidence. “But invoking a court’s aid to remedy that problem in the manner plaintiffs have chosen — seeking a recount as an audit of the election to test whether the vulnerability led to actual compromise of the voting system — has never been endorsed by any court, and would require, at a minimum, evidence of significant fraud or mistake — and not speculative fear of them. Such evidence has not been presented here.”

Michigan: GOP senators seek probe of Wayne County election issues | The Detroit News

Twenty-three Republican state senators are calling on Attorney General Bill Schuette to investigate voting irregularities in Detroit and Wayne County discovered through the presidential election recount. At Wayne County’s recount Tuesday, election workers opened a Detroit precinct’s ballot box that was suppose to contain 306 ballots but only had 50 ballots, according to an election observer for President-elect Donald Trump. The missing ballots caused State Elections Director Chris Thomas to investigate the matter Wednesday while he was at Cobo Center for Wayne County’s recount. Thomas said Detroit Elections Director Daniel Baxter told him the ballots were left in a container that sits below the voting machine in Detroit’s precinct 152. “At the end of the night, they take those ballots out, put them in these metal ballot boxes and bring them to the city elections office,” Thomas said Wednesday. “For whatever reason, they got left in the tub below the tabulators and it wasn’t discovered until they brought them back in. At that point, they hadn’t been sealed, so they can’t be counted.”

Michigan: Stricter voter identification law passes House | Detroit Free Press

Stricter voter identification laws were described Wednesday night as both a way to ensure the integrity of elections is upheld and a means to erect barriers for vulnerable and minority voters. But in the end, Republicans who sponsored and supported the bills making voter identification laws more stringent, won the day, approving the main bill in the package on mostly party line votes of 57-50. Five Republicans joined all the Democrats in opposing the bill. “This protects the integrity of every legal citizens’ right to vote and to make sure the fraudulent votes aren’t cast,” said state Rep. Gary Glenn, R-Midland. “It seems to be a common sense requirement.”

New Hampshire: Gardner to Serve 21st Term as S.O.S; Hints at Taking Closer Look at N.H.’s Voting Laws | New Hampshire Public Radio

Bill Gardner, best known as the guardian of New Hampshire’s First in the Nation Presidential Primary, was elected to his 21st consecutive term as Secretary of State Wednesday. Gardner was chosen by both legislative chambers with no serious opposition. Having held the position since 1976, Gardner is the longest serving Secretary of State in the country. But during his victory speech, Gardner, whose office oversees state elections, told the packed House Chamber that taking a closer look at the New Hampshire’s voting laws…wouldn’t be a bad idea.

New York: Schneiderman calls for voting overhaul | The Hill

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) will introduce a sweeping package of reforms to the Empire State’s voter registration and election laws when the legislature reconvenes next year. In a report issued Tuesday, Schneiderman said he will push legislators to adopt an opt-out voter registration system, in which any eligible citizen is registered to vote during interactions with state agencies unless they proactively decline. Similar systems have registered millions of new voters in Oregon and California. Schneiderman also said he wants to allow New York voters to obtain an absentee ballot without having to offer an excuse and to allow voters to cast ballots in person for two weeks ahead of Election Day. While early and absentee voting is a critical element of each party’s strategy for winning swing states such as Florida, North Carolina and Nevada, Northeastern states have resisted pushes to ease voting ahead of Election Day. Like New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania all require voters to offer an excuse before obtaining an absentee ballot, and none offer in-person early voting. “The right to vote is the right that protects all other rights. New York must become a national leader by protecting and expanding voting rights throughout the state,” Schneiderman said.