National: The mathematicians who want to save democracy | Nature

Leaning back in his chair, Jonathan Mattingly swings his legs up onto his desk, presses a key on his laptop and changes the results of the 2012 elections in North Carolina. On the screen, flickering lines and dots outline a map of the state’s 13 congressional districts, each of which chooses one person to send to the US House of Representatives. By tweaking the borders of those election districts, but not changing a single vote, Mattingly’s maps show candidates from the Democratic Party winning six, seven or even eight seats in the race. In reality, they won only four — despite earning a majority of votes overall. Mattingly’s election simulations can’t rewrite history, but he hopes they will help to support democracy in the future — in his state and the nation as a whole. The mathematician, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has designed an algorithm that pumps out random alternative versions of the state’s election maps — he’s created more than 24,000 so far — as part of an attempt to quantify the extent and impact of gerrymandering: when voting districts are drawn to favour or disfavour certain candidates or political parties.

National: Some states review election systems for signs of intrusion | Associated Press

Officials in some states are trying to figure out whether local election offices were targeted in an apparent effort by Russian military intelligence to hack into election software last fall. The efforts were detailed in a recently leaked report attributed to the U.S. National Security Agency. North Carolina is checking on whether any local systems were breached, while the revelation prompted an election security review in Virginia. Both are considered presidential battleground states. In Illinois, officials are trying to determine which election offices used software from the contractor that the report said was compromised.

Georgia: Expert witnesses weigh in on alleged ‘unsafe’ voting machines at hearing | WXIA

A non-profit group is demanding that Fulton County use paper ballots during the sixth district runoff race. In a motion brought by Rocky Mountain Foundation and members of Georgians for Verified Voting, the organizations presented a case that the state’s touch screen-based voting system is “uncertified, unsafe and inaccurate” and that the county officials must instead use paper ballots in the election to have a verifiable transparent election. The group noted a FBI investigation of a cyber-attack on the Center for Election Systems (CES) at Kennesaw State University, the entity responsible for testing and programming voting machines across Georgia.

New York: Onondaga among 4 New York counties to use voting software targeted by Russian hackers | syracuse.com

Onondaga County is among four New York counties that used voting software provided by a U.S. company targeted in a cyber-attack by Russia before the 2016 presidential election, election officials said Wednesday. Onondaga, Cayuga, Cortland and Orange counties used the EVid software from a vendor that partnered with U.S. supplier VR Systems of Florida, said Thomas Connolly, speaking for the New York State Board of Elections. The company’s devices were used by the New York counties as electronic poll books to check voter registration, supplementing existing paper books at selected voting precincts in November as part of a state pilot program, Connolly said. The devices were never linked to live voter registration databases, and state elections officials have found no indication hackers compromised the state’s voting system, Connolly said.

North Carolina: Change could lead to compromise in push to move up primaries | Associated Press

Both chambers of the General Assembly have agreed that they want to move up North Carolina’s future primary elections for president and statewide offices, but they may have to come up with a compromise about when that change would start. The House on Tuesday voted nearly along party lines to approve a bill that would permanently move the primaries from May to March. But the 71-46 vote came after members agreed to delay the bill’s start date until 2020. Two months ago, the Senate unanimously approved the permanent change, starting in 2018. The measure now returns to the Senate, where lawmakers must decide whether they want to accept the House amendment or force negotiations on a compromise.

Oregon: New Report Analyzes Impact of Oregon’s Automatic Voter Registration | The Skanner

A new report released today by the Center for American Progress’ Liz Kennedy and Rob Griffin, along with voting experts Tova Wang and Professor Paul Gronke, provides a demographic and geographic portrait of how Oregon’s automatic voter registration system (AVR) — the first in the nation — has expanded the state’s electorate and registered hundreds of thousands of eligible citizens to vote. The findings of this exclusive new analysis provide strong evidence in favor of AVR, not only given the increase in people registered to vote and voters, but also how the program has succeeded in making Oregon’s voter rolls more representative of the state’s population by registering younger, less urban, lower-income, and more ethnically diverse individuals. The report is accompanied by a robust set of graphics and charts as well as a video and an interactive map that brings the story to life by showcasing the regions and communities that benefited the most from AVR, displaying both the percentage of AVR registrants in an area as well as their participation rates on election day.

Puerto Rico: Voters go to the polls for statehood | The Hill

Puerto Rico’s government is banking on a push for statehood to solve the structural issues that led to its financial crisis. Puerto Ricans will vote Sunday to decide the territory’s status. If statehood wins, as expected, the island will enact what’s known as the Tennessee Plan, an avenue to accession by which U.S. territories send a congressional delegation to demand to be seated in Washington. Puerto Rico will send two senators and five representatives, chosen by Gov. Ricardo Rosselló (D), later this year, once the plan is put into action. Statehood remains a long shot as many Republicans are wary of adding a 51st state that could add two Democratic senators and seven Democratic electors to the Electoral College.

Texas: U.S. judge asked to void Texas voter ID law | Austin American-Statesman

Lawyers for minority voters and politicians asked a federal judge Wednesday to void the Texas voter ID law, saying it is the next logical step for a statute found to be discriminatory. The lawyers also said they will ask U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos to require Texas officials to get U.S. Justice Department approval for any future changes to election law or voting procedures to guard against additional attempts to discriminate against minority voters. Wednesday’s hearing was called to chart the next steps in the case after Ramos ruled in April that the state’s 2011 voter ID law was written by Republicans to intentionally discriminate against minority voters, who tend to favor Democrats.

Texas: Appeals court to weigh Texas voting law limiting language interpreters | The Texas Tribune

Amid last-minute efforts to overhaul the state’s voter identification law in light of an ongoing legal fight, the Texas Legislature gaveled out without addressing another embattled election law that’s now moving forward in federal court. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday will take up a legal challenge to an obscure provision in the Texas Election Code that requires interpreters helping someone cast a ballot to also be registered to vote in the same county in which they are providing help. That state law has been on hold since last year after a federal district judge ruled it violated the federal Voting Rights Act under which any voter who needs assistance because of visual impairments, disabilities or literacy skills can be helped in casting a ballot by the person of their choice, as long as it’s not their employer or a union leader.

Texas: Pasadena to select new mayor amid voting rights fight | Houston Chronicle

Julio Jimenez does not have much to get excited about in Pasadena politics. The 24-year-old said young voters like him feel ignored and disconnected. As he has grown up in the working class Houston suburb, he has seen investment in infrastructure pour into the city’s wealthier, whiter south side, miles from his home on the industrial north side. Now, faced with a runoff election between two Anglo mayoral candidates – John Moon Jr. and Jeff Wagner – who do not reflect his background, nor that of the city’s burgeoning Hispanic population, Jimenez said he is just “pissed off.” “I wanted to vote for a Hispanic,” Jimenez said outside Pasadena City Hall, after casting a vote for Moon.

Europe: Russia Attempted to Influence French and Dutch Elections With Suspect Polls | bellingcat

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin denied alleged Russian interference in the French presidential election. But evidence shows Russian state media used dubious opinion poll data in the run up to the French election to promote Francois Fillon, at a time when mainstream polls showed him trailing in third place. Shortly before the French election, France’s Polling Commission warned that a poll published by Sputnik, showing Francois Fillon in front, did not reflect public opinion and did not qualify as a “poll” under French law. The research was conducted for Sputnik by Brand Analytics, which previously had a joint project with the Russian state-owned WCIOM polling centre. WCIOM’s main client is Kremlin, which has veto of what they publish. Brand Analytics is a product owned by the Russian company PalitrumLab, which is in turn majority-owned by the IT infrastructure company I-Teco. This company’s clients include the FSB, Russia’s Ministry of Interior, and its Ministry of Defence.

Europe: Facebook’s Role in European Elections Under Scrutiny | The New York Times

Lawrence Dodd lives in one of Britain’s most fiercely fought voting districts, and he has been peppered almost daily with ads from the country’s major political parties on Facebook. About a month ago, he tried to find out why. Mr. Dodd, a maker of musical instruments in northern England, joined an experiment. He and around 10,000 others volunteered their data, allowing researchers to monitor in real time which political ads were showing up in their Facebook news feeds as Britain’s election approached. Their goal: to shed more light on how political campaigns are using Facebook and other digital services — technologies that are quickly reshaping the democratic process, but which often offer few details about their outsize roles in elections worldwide.

Canada: Kevin O’Leary calls for Conservative Party to recount digital ballots | The Globe and Mail

Former Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary is calling on the federal party to recount the digital imprints of its ballots so that newly elected Leader Andrew Scheer doesn’t start his job with a “cloud” hanging over his head. Mr. O’Leary, who dropped out of the leadership race in April and endorsed then-front-runner Maxime Bernier, told The Globe and Mail that he sees “no reason why a recount shouldn’t occur.” “As a member and a former candidate, I would prefer that a recount be done because I think it clears a cloud that is obviously brewing at this point,” Mr. O’Leary said in an interview. … Conservative Party spokesman Cory Hann, however, said there will be no review. “The rules clearly state that once the vote is verified by the Chief Returning Officer and by the independent auditor, they are final and binding,” he said in an e-mail.

Iraq: Iraqi Kurds plan independence referendum on Sept. 25 | Reuters

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday announced it would hold a referendum on independence, in a move the central government in Baghdad is likely to oppose strongly. “I am pleased to announce that the date for the independence referendum has been set for Monday, Sept. 25, 2017,” Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said on Twitter. Barzani’s assistant Hemin Hawrami tweeted that voting would take place in the disputed region of Kirkuk and three other areas also claimed by the central government; Makhmour in the north, Sinjar in the northwest and Khanaqin in the east. The president of Iraq’s ruling Shi’ite coalition told Reuters in April it would oppose a Kurdish referendum. Ammar al-Hakim especially warned the Kurds against any move to annex oil-rich Kirkuk. The referendum date was set after a meeting of Kurdish political parties chaired by Barzani, who heads the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

United Kingdom: Why we still can’t vote online | The Telegraph

We do our banking, our shopping and manage our relationships online. But our democracy remains decidedly analogue: in 2017, the simple act of casting a vote requires citizens to trudge down to a polling booth, queue up, and tick a box on a voting slip. … The most clear threat to online voting is the prospect of a cyber attack. If malicious actors were able to hack into the voting system, they might be able to manipulate the result. The threat of this has grown in recent years. Russian hackers are said to have interfered in last year’s US election by stealing information from US Democrats. Being able to target the voting system itself would be a much bigger prize. Hackers might not even have to gain access to the voting system. Launching a distributed denial of service (DDos) attack, in which a system is flooded with internet traffic to the extent that legitimate attempts to access it cannot get through, could hamper the online voting process.

United Kingdom: On the Campaign Trail with Cornelia Parker, the U.K.’s Official Election Artist | The New Yorker

Like many things in British politics, the job of the official U.K. election artist is a bit make-it-up-as-you-go. Dreamed up by the maverick former sports minister Tony Banks, in the early two-thousands, the post was one of the feel-good innovations of Tony Blair’s first term in office. “It just occurred to me that we have war artists, so why not have an election artist?” Banks said at the time. Each election cycle, an artist joins politicians, pundits, and news photographers on the campaign trail and produces his or her own interpretation of events. The only requirement is that the artists betray no political bias and that, upon completion, the works they create go on display in the Houses of Parliament. The painter Jonathan Yeo, the first artist appointed, in 2001, produced respectful oil portraits of Blair and his rival party leaders. Most recently, in 2015, the illustrator Adam Dant made a fantastical pen-and-ink drawing, “The Government Stable,” which crowded many of the events that he’d witnessed in the course of the campaign onto a single “Where’s Waldo?”-ish canvas more than six feet wide.

National: Matt Blaze: How to Hack an Election Without Really Trying | Exhaustive Search

This Monday, The Intercept broke the story of a leaked classified NSA report [pdf link] on an email-based attack on a various US election systems just before the 2016 US general election. The NSA report, dated May 5, 2017, details what I would assume is only a small part of a more comprehensive investigation into Russian intelligence services’ “cyber operations” to influence the US presidential race. The report analyzes several relatively small-scale targeted email operations that occurred in August and October of last year. One campaign used “spearphishing” techniques against employees of third-party election support vendors (which manage voter registration databases for county election offices). Another — our focus here — targeted 112 unidentified county election officials with “trojan horse” malware disguised inside plausibly innocuous-looking Microsoft Word attachments. The NSA report does not say whether these attacks were successful in compromising any county voting offices or what even what the malware actually tried to do.

National: Leaked NSA doc highlights deep flaws in US election system | Associated Press

A leaked intelligence document outlining alleged attempts by Russian military intelligence to hack into U.S. election systems is the latest evidence suggesting a broad and sophisticated foreign attack on the integrity of the nation’s elections. And it underscores the contention of security experts and computer scientists that the highly decentralized, often ramshackle U.S. election system remains profoundly vulnerable to trickery or sabotage. The document, purportedly produced by the U.S. National Security Agency, does not indicate whether actual vote-tampering occurred. But it adds significant new detail to previous U.S. intelligence assessments that alleged Russia-backed hackers had compromised elements of America’s electoral machinery. It also suggests that attackers may also have been laying groundwork for future subversive activity. The operation described in the document could have given attackers “a foothold into the IT systems of elections offices around the country that they could use to infect machines and launch a vote-stealing attack,” said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist. “We don’t have evidence that that happened,” he said, “but that’s a very real possibility.”

National: Latest NSA Leak Reveals Exactly the Kind of Cyberattack Experts Had Warned About | MIT Technology Review

The details of an apparent Russian state-sponsored cyberattack on local election officials and a vendor of U.S. voting software are shocking—but they shouldn’t be surprising. In fact, experts had been warning for months before the 2016 election about exactly the type of attack that was revealed Monday in leaked NSA documents. According to the documents, the purpose of the attack, which occurred last August, was “to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions.” The attackers “likely used data obtained from that operation to create a new email account and launch a voter-registration themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.” The NSA’s analysis does not draw any conclusions about whether the attack affected voting outcomes in the presidential election in November, or any other national or local races. But targeting voter registration systems is widely seen as one of the most effective ways to use a cyberattack to disrupt the electoral process. An adversary with access to voter registration information could, for example, delete names from the voter roll or make other modifications to the data that could cause chaos on Election Day. (See “How Hackers Could Send Your Polling Station Into Chaos.”)

National: DHS chief doubles down on critical infrastructure designation for voting systems | FCW

In the wake of a leaked intelligence document describing Russian attempts to hack voting systems, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly doubled down on maintaining the designation of voting systems as critical infrastructure. Kelly told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on June 6 that despite pushback he’s received from state and local election officials — as well as “many members of Congress” — he would support the designation put in place by his predecessor Jeh Johnson. “I don’t believe we should” back off on the critical infrastructure designation, he testified, adding that he plans to meet with state officials next week to further discuss how DHS can make sure states’ election systems are protected. “We’re here to help,” he said. “There is nothing more fundamental to our democracy than voting.”

National: Russian hackers’ election goal may have been swing state voter rolls | USA Today

Russian military hackers said to have infiltrated the U.S. election system would have had several potential avenues to influence U.S. elections — including by tampering with voting rolls, interference that could have had an important impact in swing states. Whether or not this happened isn’t outlined in a leaked National Security Agency report that led to the arrest Monday of a federal contractor with top-secret security clearance. There has been no evidence votes were changed in the 2016 presidential election, though officials in North Carolina are actively investigating attempts to compromise the state’s electronic poll book software. Online news site The Intercept said the report it obtained said Russian military intelligence executed a cyber attack on VR Systems, a Florida-based U.S. supplier of voting software. Hackers used the VR Systems account to send deceptive emails to more than 100 local election officials in the days leading up to the November presidential election, according to The Intercept.

National: Mark Warner: More state election systems were targeted by Russians | USA Today

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee told USA TODAY on Tuesday that Russian attacks on election systems were broader and targeted more states than those detailed in an explosive intelligence report leaked to the website The Intercept. “I don’t believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview. “But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far.” He said he was pushing intelligence agencies to declassify the names and number of states hit to help put electoral systems on notice before midterm voting in 2018. “None of these actions from the Russians stopped on Election Day,” he warned.

National: Democrats warned of potential hacking of voter registration systems before 2016 election | McClatchy

It wasn’t just the National Security Agency that knew about Russian attempts to infiltrate U.S. voting systems. In the weeks leading to the 2016 presidential election, the then-leader of the Democratic National Committee warned the Department of Homeland Security that voter registration and absentee voting lists might have been sabotaged. Donna Brazile, who was serving as the party’s acting chairwoman, said she also urged Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus to learn more about the possible problems and to sign a joint statement with her, raising these concerns to DHS. Priebus declined, Brazile told McClatchy on Tuesday. “There is fear that the goal of a hacker attack on the voter list is to delete or alter names or other information and cause incidents at the polling stations,” Brazile wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to Priebus, now President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.

National: Republicans are so much better than Democrats at gerrymandering | The Washington Post

Democrats would need to flip 24 seats to retake the U.S. House in 2018. But at least two-thirds of that tally may be permanently out of reach, thanks to a dirty geographical trick played by Republican lawmakers in 2010. That’s according to a new Brennan Center analysis of gerrymandering — the process lawmakers use to draw legislative districts for their own partisan advantage. A bit of background before we delve into the nitty-gritty. Every 10 years, congressional districts are redrawn following the Census. On paper, this is done to ensure the people’s House is representative of the country’s people — states gain or lose districts based on population changes, and district boundaries shift to reflect our ever-changing demographics.

Editorials: Comey testimony key to protecting U.S. elections | Raja Krishnamoorthi/Chicago Tribune

The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hear public testimony Thursday from former FBI Director James Comey, among others. Many people may be wondering why this is necessary or important, since the Justice Department has appointed a special counsel to investigate Russian interference in last November’s elections and the possible involvement of members of the Trump campaign. The short answer is that the Senate hearing will help Congress fulfill its constitutional responsibilities by exploring issues separate and apart from the special counsel’s investigation. The special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, and his staff are primarily interested in determining whether any laws were broken during the presidential campaign or in the early months of the Trump administration — including the recent firing of Comey. Mueller will be looking at potential conflicts of interest, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s reported payments by foreign sources, and whether the firing of Comey during an ongoing FBI investigation constitutes obstruction of justice.

Editorials: Answers, and new questions, on partisan gerrymandering | Lyle Denniston/Law News

Both sides in a new Supreme Court test case on partisan gerrymandering – drawing new election districts to favor one party – on Tuesday answered the Justices’ questions about whether the case should stay alive, disagreeing sharply on that. But they also may have raised a broad new question about what voters challenging such partisan-driven maps must do to make a case. If the Justices feel they have to rule on that issue, it could make a major difference to the future of such disputes. Besides that added issue, the two sides’ new briefs may have stirred up a new controversy over who speaks for North Carolina in election cases. That is a complication that led the Justices to refuse last month to decide a major voting rights case from the same state.

Florida: Phishing expedition: At least 5 Florida counties targeted by Russian election hack | Tampa Bay Times

Russian hackers tried to break into the computer systems of at least five Florida county elections offices days before the 2016 presidential election, according to five county officials who say they received malicious emails described in a leaked intelligence report. Election supervisors in Hillsborough, Pasco, Citrus and Clay counties separately told the Times/Herald their offices got the emails, which contained attachments that could have taken over their computers. But all four said their staffers did not open them. Volusia County said it opened one of the infected emails, but not the attachment that could have compromised its systems. There’s been no evidence disclosed publicly that any counties were breached. It’s not clear how many counties were targeted, in Florida or across the country. The Times/Herald sent requests for the emails to all 67 elections offices in the state. Nineteen replied back that they searched for them and couldn’t find any.

Illinois: New Automatic Voter Registration Bill Could Expand Voter Participation | CBS

Backers of the new Automatic Voter Registration bill approved by the General Assembly said they cannot wait to see Governor Rauner sign the legislation, and put it into action. Backers believe it will expand voter participation in Illinois. WBBM’s Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports. A spokeswoman for Governor Rauner said he thanks the sponsors and stakeholders who work with his office to craft the final version of this law. Anyone who applies for or updates a driver’s license will automatically be registered to vote unless they say otherwise.

Indiana: 6 counties used voter registration company targeted by Russian cyberattacks | Indianapolis Star

For the 2016 election, six Indiana counties used a voter registration software company that news reports say was the focus of cyberattacks by a Russian intelligence unit. State and local election officials say there is no indication that election or voter data was compromised. VR Systems was hacked by Russian intelligence, according to reports in The New York Times and other media. Jurisdictions in eight states, including six counties in Indiana, used VR Systems in the 2016 election.

North Carolina: Elections officials investigating report of Russian hacking attempts | News & Observer

A news report relying on a newly leaked National Security Agency document says Russian spies electronically infiltrated a company whose voting machine software is used in North Carolina and seven other states. The Russian government then sent “phishing” emails to more than 100 elections officials around the United States just before the election, in an attempt to gain their login credentials, according to the news report Monday by The Intercept investigative reporting website. VR Systems provides voting software used in 21 North Carolina counties, according to the N.C. State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, whose executive director said the agency is “actively investigating reported attempts to compromise” the software.