Zambia: Opposition Groups Unhappy With Ballot Printer Choice | VoA News

Zambian opposition parties denounced the choice of a Dubai-based company to print election ballots, and suggested that corruption and plans for vote-rigging played a role. The parties reacted after Zambia’s electoral commission announced Al Ghurair Printing and Publishing had won the contract to print the ballots that will be used in the August 11 general election. Jack Mwiimbu, head of legal affairs for the United Party for National Development (UPND), accused the electoral commission of trying to rig the polls for the governing Patriotic Front. He says the party has proof of some Zambians celebrating after the electoral commission announced the contract. He also questioned the cost of the contract — $3.5 million, a figure he says is $2 million higher than what the government paid previously.

National: Presidential candidates may be vulnerable to foreign hackers, US says | Associated Press

The United States sees evidence that hackers, possibly working for foreign governments, are snooping on the presidential candidates, the nation’s intelligence chief said on Wednesday. Government officials are working with the campaigns to tighten security as the race for the White House intensifies. The activity follows a pattern set in the last two presidential elections. Hacking was rampant in 2008, according to US intelligence officials, and both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were targets of Chinese cyber-attacks four years later. Despite that history, cyber experts say neither Donald Trump’s nor Hillary Clinton’s campaign networks are secure enough to eliminate the risk. “We’ve already had some indications” of hacking, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said Wednesday at a cybersecurity event at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He said the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were helping educate the campaigns. Of the attacks, Clapper predicted, “we’ll probably have more”.

National: Restrictive voting laws threaten to block millions of Latino voters, including many newly-naturalized | Government Security News

Naturalization and voter registration rates have surged in recent months, but strict new voter laws in many states are threatening to reduce the number of Latinos voters (including many newly naturalized) who will be allowed to cast ballots. More than 185,000 citizenship applications were submitted in the final three months of 2015, which is a 14 percent increase from 2014 and up 8 percent compared with the same period ahead of the 2012 elections. According to the Houston Chronicle, in Texas, naturalization ceremonies in Houston have swelled to about 2,200 per month, compared with 1,200 before, and more than 80 percent of those naturalized then register to vote, compared with 60 percent previously.

Colorado: Election officials knew of possible forged signatures on Keyser petition for a month | The Denver Post

The Colorado secretary of state’s office first learned about the possibility of fraudulent signatures — including a dead voter — on U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser’s petitions in April but did not refer the matter to investigators. The revelation adds a new layer of culpability to the controversy surrounding the Republican primary and raises additional questions about how Keyser qualified for the ballot. The missed opportunity was revealed by Secretary of State Wayne Williams, who said in a statement that he didn’t know his staff was warned about the questionable signatures until Tuesday.

Connecticut: This State Says It Can Automatically Register Voters Without Legislative Approval | Huffington Post

Connecticut announced this week that it will become the fifth state in the U.S. to automatically register its citizens to vote. And it’s going to do so in an innovative way. While Oregon, California, West Virginia and Vermont have each passed laws through their state legislatures enacting automatic voter registration, the process in Connecticut was initiated by state agencies. The office of Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (D) signed an administrative agreement with the state Department of Motor Vehicles to automatically register eligible voters by August 2018. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to give eligible voters the opportunity to register to vote when they renew their driver’s license or state identification card, or when they acquire a new one, at the DMV. Connecticut says it will transition to a system where eligible voters are registered automatically when they interact with the DMV. The state says up to 400,000 new voters could be registered through this process once the two agencies hammer out the details.

Kansas: Judge slams Kansas voter ID law’s “magnitude of harm” | Associated Press

A judge said Tuesday that Kansas can’t require people to show proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote for federal elections at motor vehicle offices. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson ruled that the state’s proof-of-citizenship requirements likely violate a provision in the National Voter Registration Act that requires only “minimal information” to determine a voter’s eligibility. She ordered Kansas to register thousands of voters whose paperwork is on hold because they did not comply with the requirement. But she put her preliminary injunction on hold until May 31 to give the state a chance to appeal. The state immediately said it would appeal. Unless a higher court halts Robinson’s order before the end of the month, it would take effect then, clearing the way for those residents to cast a ballot in the upcoming federal elections.

Montana: Officials Seek To Delay Implementation Of Campaign Finance Ruling | MTPR

Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices is asking a federal court to put on hold a ruling that would allow political parties to donate unlimited amounts of money to campaigns. On Tuesday, a Montana District Court judge struck down limits on contributions to candidates. The judge said the limits were unconstitutional. When that happened, Montana’s old contribution limit laws went into effect, except for the laws capping how much a political party can give. Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl says he spoke with the Attorney General’s office and they will ask the judge for a stay. That would restore the current limits on political party contributions for 2016.

Utah: State trying to decide how to run future elections – by mail, paper ballot or electronically | The Salt Lake Tribune

Officials are asking legislators how they want to hold future elections — by mail, by paper ballot or electronically — because that may make a difference of millions of dollars in replacing old voting machines. Mark Thomas, state elections director for Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, said a committee is now studying options for replacing machines statewide that are nearing the end of their lifespans. A recommendation is expected early next year. But Thomas asked the Government Operations Interim Committee for some guidance on Wednesday. If the state helps to buy new electronic machines to conduct traditional, in-person elections with new machines at hundreds of polling places statewide, it would cost an estimated $10 million to $15 million, he said. But if the state moves to vote mostly by mail, the cost would be much less — $2.2 million to $3.2 million — for fewer high-speed optical scanners to count paper ballots.

Wisconsin: Witnesses detail difficulties obtaining IDs in Wisconsin voter ID case | The Capital Times

A federal judge heard testimony Tuesday from Wisconsin residents who have faced difficulties obtaining photo IDs for themselves or family members on the second day of a trial challenging several of the state’s voting laws. Witnesses for the plaintiffs included a son who faced difficulties getting an ID for his mother in 2011, a homeless man who couldn’t afford a driver’s license but didn’t want to relinquish his driving privileges for a free ID and a mother who spent days navigating the process to get an ID for her adopted daughter. “I’m trying to teach them that this is what you do to preserve this beautiful right,” said Laura Patten of Whitefish Bay, discussing the importance of voting to her children, adopted from Romania.

Australia: Electoral Commission sends electoral roll data of Victorian voters to the wrong people | ABC

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has mailed private information of Victorian residents to the wrong postal addresses, in a series of privacy breaches that raises questions about the security of voter details on the electoral roll. The privacy breaches exposed the date of birth, email address, driver’s licence number, gender, previous home addresses, country of birth and mobile numbers for electorates, including those held by Environment Minister Greg Hunt and Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester. ABC’s 7.30 understands the privacy of at least seven residents has been breached by the AEC.

Philippines: ‘VP votes may have been manipulated’ | The Manila Times

The cascade of votes for Rep. Leni Robredo that allowed her to obliterate the almost one million lead of Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on May 10 looked strange and the “movement of the votes” appeared to have been manipulated, a statistics and political science analyst said on Tuesday. Antonio Contreras, Political Science professor at De La Salle University who also previously taught quantitative analysis at another university, said it was statistically impossible for Robredo to overtake Marcos in the race with 80 percent of the returns already counted.
Marcos was leading the count on the night of May 9 but his numbers and those for his closest rival Robredo were reversed in the early hours of May 10.

United Kingdom: Can the Queen vote in the EU referendum? | BBC

The Sun newspaper’s been told off for misleadingly reporting that the Queen’s in favour of the UK leaving the European Union. But is she allowed to vote in next month’s referendum, asks Justin Parkinson. The Queen doesn’t vote. She “has to remain strictly neutral with respect to political matters” and is “unable to vote or stand for election”, according to the Buckingham Palace website. But this isn’t the whole story. The monarch is actually entitled in law to cast a ballot in general elections. “By convention the Queen doesn’t vote, rather than because of a legal impediment,” says an Electoral Commission spokesman.

Maryland: Investigation into Baltimore elections irregularities nearing an end, state says | Baltimore Sun

State officials said Wednesday their review of Baltimore’s primary election was nearing an end, as they continued to investigate why votes outnumbered check-ins at the polls. Nikki Baines Charlson, deputy administrator at the State Board of Elections, said she expected workers to finish the review Thursday. Officials have focused on 60 precincts — about a fifth of the city’s 296 — where irregularities were “significantly” greater than in other Maryland jurisdictions. “There are probably only 20 precincts left that haven’t been reviewed at all,” Charlson said Wednesday. “We will have looked at 100 percent of the precincts by tomorrow.” Charlson said officials planned to present their preliminary findings at a meeting Thursday of the State Board of Elections.

National: Online Voting and Democracy in the Digital Age | Consumer Reports

Considering the importance of elections in the U.S., the country sure does make voting a challenge. National elections are held on a Tuesday in November, a workday for most people. In 11 states and Washington, D.C., you can register to vote on Election Day. (Maryland allows same-day voter registration only for early voting.) Other states have registration deadlines of eight to 30 days before an election. Some states have expanded voting by mail, online registration, absentee voting, and similar practices. But others have become more restrictive: 33 states request or require voters to show identification at the polls, and 17 of those states request or require a photo ID. And voters in places like Maricopa County in Arizona, where budget cutbacks have significantly reduced the number of polling spots, can find crowded conditions more reminiscent of a Depression-era breadline than a polling site in the Internet Age. Why, then, when everything from buying airline tickets to filing federal income taxes is routinely done online, is voting for most Americans still such a manual, show-up-in-person, paper-ballot-based process? … Whatever the political system, efforts to introduce Internet voting face the same overriding issue: how to make sure ballots aren’t subject to manipulation or fraud by hackers or compromised by a system failure.

Arizona: Threat of hackers keeps Arizona’s online voting program small | KPHO

Thousands of Arizona service members were offered the chance to cast a ballot over the internet in Tuesday’s special election, but state and county officials say the threat of hackers makes widespread online voting unlikely anytime soon. Election officials sent ballots to more than 4,000 Arizonans stationed out-of-state or overseas ahead of the election, either by mail or through the state’s relatively new online process. The number of ballots cast online wasn’t immediately available, but five counties distributed at least 2,172 electronic ballots, according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office. “I mean these people are overseas serving our country, serving us, so we want to make sure they’re able to vote,” said Maricopa County Recorder’s Office spokesperson Elizabeth Bartholomew. Maricopa County sent 1,205 electronic ballots to Arizonans in several countries, according to state data.

Editorials: Californians from both parties are working to expand voting rights | Alex Padilla/Los Angeles Times

If there’s one thing that every American should agree with, it’s this: Voting is the fundamental right in our democracy, the one that makes all others possible. The right to choose our representatives is why patriots dumped tea into Boston Harbor, why women marched for the 19th Amendment and why, 51 years ago, people of all races joined together to win the passage of the Voting Rights Act. But one of the most insidious ideas in the 2016 election is that voting rights are negotiable. More than 20 states have enacted voting restrictions that could prevent many Americans from exercising their fundamental right to vote this November. We saw the logical outcome of these laws last month in Arizona, when local election officials closed 70% of polling locations in Maricopa County. We will never know how many people didn’t vote that day, frustrated by five-hour lines and overwhelmed poll workers.

Idaho: Ada County absentee ballots duplicated after programming error | KBOI

Ada County elections officials have stopped short of calling it the first “glitch” in the county’s new $1.6 million voting tabulation system, but it’s definitely on the books as a programming error. Routine testing leading up to the Tuesday’s primary election identified that the first mailing of absentee ballots did not have the correct identifying marks needed to be read by the tabulation software. This first mailing took place on March 30th and included 2,660 mailed ballots. All subsequent ballots mailed have the correct markings and they will tabulate accurately, said Chief Deputy Phil McGrane with the Ada County Clerk’s Office.

Illinois: Group submits signatures for Illinois redistricting amendment | The Daily Northwestern

A nonpartisan Illinois citizens group submitted 65,000 pages of signatures to the Illinois State Board of Elections earlier this month for a petition calling for a constitutional amendment to change redistricting procedures in light of the coming November elections. Independent Maps — a statewide coalition composed of volunteers and state business, philanthropic, religious and political groups — collected and delivered more than 570,000 signatures to the election board’s Springfield office on May 6. The petitions call for an amendment to be placed on state ballots for a vote this November. The amendment would take the power of redrawing state legislative districts away from legislators and give it to an independent commission.

Editorials: Baltimore elections: ‘stuff happens’ isn’t good enough | E.R. Shipp/Baltimore Sun

Back in 2000, the state of Florida became an international laughingstock over its difficulties tallying ballots. Baltimore has escaped that ignominy so far this year only because the fate of a presidential election is not in the balance. But the difficulty of its elections specialists in tallying ballots from April 26 is just as unforgiveable as was Florida’s. Baltimore, we’ve got a problem here — and it did not begin with this election cycle. As The Sun recently reported, what we have experienced is in many ways déjà vu all over again. Still, a history of persistent problems does not mean the future has to be fraught with them, too — especially the predictable ones like too few and poorly trained election judges who are ultimately responsible for the smooth operation of more than 200 polling places and the delivery of voting results after the polls close.

New Mexico: Auditor: Elections are chronically under-budgeted by secretary of state | Albuquerque Journal

State Auditor Tim Keller, in a report released today, says the Secretary of State’s office has been chronically under-budgeting for elections over the past decade. Keller says that has led to the need for $25 million in emergency loans, grants and special appropriations from the state to pay for elections. “Repeatedly using emergency funding mechanisms for routine, regularly scheduled elections runs against commonsense budgeting principles,” Keller said in a statement. Secretary of State Brad Winter, however, told the Journal the problem is not that the office has underestimated how much elections will cost, but that it has been under-funded.

Oregon: Portland tech firm Galois spins out new company to make elections more secure | Portland Business Journal

Portland computer science research and development firm Galois is taking aim at election security with its latest spin-off, Free & Fair. The new wholly-owned subsidiary is run by elections security researcher Joseph Kiniry, who two years ago illustrated how easy it is to hack vote-by-email systems, and is based on technology developed by Galois. To start, Free & Fair has three products:

A tabulator, which is a secure and verifiable ballot scanning system.
The ePollbook, which is a scalable and secure electronic poll book for precincts and county voting centers.
A supervised voting system, which is a complete polling place system based on the STAR-Vote project. That project is a collaboration between academia and Travis County (Austin), Texas to create a secure, reliable and auditable voting system.

West Virginia: ACLU requests information from county clerks on online voter registration | Charleston Gazette-Mail

The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia filed requests this week with the clerks of Cabell and Kanawha counties for information about their handling of the online voter registration system. On May 3, the same day it was filed, the state Supreme Court rejected an emergency petition from the ACLU, which was filed over the refusal by Kanawha Clerk Vera McCormick and Cabell Clerk Karen Cole to accept online voter registration in advance of the May 10 primary election. Attorneys with the ACLU argue that the clerks can’t reject the online voter registrations without violating the equal protection clause in the state and U.S. constitutions, and that denying online registration threatens the integrity of a statewide election. “Right now, we’re evaluating our options and deciding how best to go forward,” said Jamie Lynn Crofts, lead attorney for the ACLU. “We don’t currently have any lawsuit pending but we want to keep track of what’s going on and perhaps file another lawsuit in the future.”

Dominican Republic: People Openly Sell Votes for $20 in the Dominican Republic | Bloomberg

Jayson was a first-time voter in the Dominican Republic, or would have been, if he’d had any intention of voting. Instead he was figuring out how to turn his ballot card into cash. In the end, the 19-year-old said he got 1,000 pesos ($22) in return for surrendering the ID during Sunday’s presidential election. Jayson had a Plan B to solicit bids — “I’ll go around with my card on my forehead” — but didn’t need to use it. His friend, Luis, 21, did even better. He said he was paid about $28 to vote for the ruling Dominican Liberation Party: “I took the money but then I just voted for who I wanted anyway.’’ As President Danilo Medina cruised toward re-election, with 62 percent of the vote according to early counts, opposition parties were crying fraud — in fact, almost everyone was. Across the country and the political spectrum, candidates said buying of ID cards and votes was rife. Local TV stations showed transactions under way right in front of polling stations.

Kenya: Police launch inquiry over attack on man during election protest | The Guardian

Kenyan police have launched an internal investigation after graphic video footage of riot police beating and kicking an apparently unconscious man on the sidelines of an election protest caused outrage. In the latest of several protests by opposition activists who say their leader will be denied a fair chance at next year’s election, police fired teargas and beat demonstrators with truncheons on Monday to stop them storming the offices of the electoral commission in Nairobi. The footage appeared to show officers chasing a man in a green T-shirt as he fled a building near the commission’s headquarters. After he stumbled to the ground, they laid into him with truncheons and boots. One officer, apparently oblivious to journalists recording the violence, attacked with such force that part of his body armour fell off. After a few seconds, the police were shown sprinting away, leaving the young man limp and motionless on the ground.

Macedonia: Court to Mull Election Postponement | Balkan Insight

The Constitutional Court on Tuesday scheduled a session for the following morning to discuss whether the dissolution of parliament ahead of the June 5 polls was unconstitutional because it was carried out incorrectly. The junior party in the ruling coalition, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, which like Macedonia’s opposition parties wants the polls to be postponed, submitted the issue to the court last Friday. The DUI insists that the dissolution should be annulled because the MPs voted for a carte-blanche motion allowing parliament to be dissolved two months before the election, without setting the actual date. The party argues that a new dissolution vote should have been taken once the June 5 date was set.

Philippines: Comelec, PPCRV, Smartmatic officials face election sabotage charges | Manila Bulletin

Top officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) and the Comelec service provider Smartmatic are facing election sabotage charges before the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) for allegedly changing the computer script (hash code) or program which may have altered the counting of the votes. Most of the respondents were not named in the 27-page complaint except for Henrieta de Villa of PPCRV and Marlon Garcia Smartmatic, the Venezuelan IT expert who allegedly changed the script together with unnamed Comelec technicians to accommodate the letter “ñ.” The complaint was filed jointly by the Mata sa Balota Movement (MBM)) and the Coalition of Clean Air Act of the Philippines which asked Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales to look into the hash code switch which they claimed seriously affected the integrity of the counting of the votes in the May 9 national and local elections.

National: Missouri, and why voter ID laws might be here to stay | The Washington Post

The story of voter ID laws and how quickly they’ve spread across the United States can be told through one state’s journey. A decade ago, Missouri was one of the first states to require voters to present an ID to vote. But things quickly backfired for voter ID proponents: The state Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional, and it was wiped from the books. A decade later, Missouri Republicans now have a chance to reinstate a voter ID law. The Republican-controlled legislature voted to put the question in the form of a constitutional amendment to voters this November, where proponents expect it to pass and a new law to go on the books as a result. If it plays out as expected, Missouri will join a totally different voter ID landscape than when it first waded into the issue a decade ago. Voter ID laws have progressed so much over the last decade that if Missouri was once a leader in the voter ID debate, today its reentry will be barely a footnote.

National: Stevens says Supreme Court decision on voter ID was correct, but maybe not right | The Washington Post

In the rapid expansion of states with voter-identification laws and the backlash of litigation that always follows, there is one constant from proponents: that the Supreme Court already has declared them constitutional. The court ruled in 2008 that Indiana’s requirement for a photo ID was legal, with none other than liberal justice John Paul Stevens writing what was described as the “lead opinion” in a fractured 6-to-3 ruling. But in the years since, Stevens — who retired from the court in 2010 — has never seemed comfortable with his role in the case. And he recently expressed doubts again about whether he had all the information he needed in reaching what he called a “fairly unfortunate decision.”

Arizona: Fact Check: Michele Reagan’s duties don’t include collecting ballots | The Arizona Republic

On the day of the presidential preference election, March 22, Reagan asked a member of her staff to collect ballots from workers in the Capitol’s Executive Tower, including the Governor’s Office. Reagan admitted collecting ballots in an interview with Capitol Media Services. This admission elicited cries of hypocrisy from critics who said she had violated House Bill 2023, which outlaws most early ballot collection. Reagan had supported the legislation, which Gov. Doug Ducey signed on March 9. The legislation, which takes effect this summer, makes unauthorized ballot collection a Class 6 felony. The law, intended to prevent voter fraud, exempts election officials and postal workers engaged in their “official duties,” as well as a voter’s family members, caregiver, or member of their household. Reagan told Capitol Media Services her actions would not have violated the law had it been in effect because she and her staff would be considered “election officials” performing “official duties.”