National: Justices could take up high-stakes fight over electoral maps | Associated Press

In an era of deep partisan division, the Supreme Court could soon decide whether the drawing of electoral districts can be too political. A dispute over Wisconsin’s Republican-drawn boundaries for the state legislature offers Democrats some hope of cutting into GOP electoral majorities across the United States. Election law experts say the case is the best chance yet for the high court to put limits on what lawmakers may do to gain a partisan advantage in creating political district maps. The justices could say as early as Monday whether they will intervene. The Constitution requires states to redo their political maps to reflect population changes identified in the once-a-decade census. The issue of gerrymandering — creating districts that often are oddly shaped and with the aim of benefiting one party — is centuries old. The term comes from a Massachusetts state Senate district that resembled a salamander and was approved in 1812 by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry.

Editorials: Mr. Trump’s Dangerous Indifference to Russia | The New York Times

A rival foreign power launched an aggressive cyberattack on the United States, interfering with the 2016 presidential election and leaving every indication that it’s coming back for more — but President Trump doesn’t seem to care. The unprecedented nature of Russia’s attack is getting lost in the swirling chaos of recent weeks, but it shouldn’t be. American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia took direct aim at the integrity of American democracy, and yet after almost five months in office, the commander in chief appears unconcerned with that threat to our national security. The only aspect of the Russia story that attracts his attention is the threat it poses to the perceived legitimacy of his electoral win. If not for the continuing investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians — and whether Mr. Trump himself has obstructed that investigation — the president’s indifference would be front-page news. So let’s take a moment to recall the sheer scope and audacity of the Russian efforts.

Editorials: It’s now clear US voting is hackable. Here are 6 things we must do to prevent chaos. | Suzanne Mello-Stark/Vox

There’s never a good time, politically speaking, to raise questions about our voting system’s vulnerability to hackers. But we can no longer avoid the issue. Bloomberg News reported this week that the US government determined that Russian hackers penetrated the voting systems in 39 states in the weeks leading up to the November 2016 election. The hacks did not involve changing votes — typically they were forays into voter registration databases — but in at least one case, in Illinois, the hackers tried to delete voter data, Bloomberg reported. US officials complained to the Russians, who denied involvement, but President Obama decided not to alert the public, because he didn’t want people to lose faith in the system. To this day, President Trump’s aides suggest that Democrats who call for an investigation into Russian hacking are sore losers. But the evidence that Russia attempted to influence our 2016 election has become unignorable. In January 2017, the CIA, FBI, and NSA jointly released an assessment that Russia used cyber tools to influence American public opinion (specifically, to “denigrate Secretary Clinton”).

Voting Blogs: It is Time For Members of Congress to Step Up and Protect Our Election | Lawrence Norden/Brennan Center for Justice

On Monday night, the Intercept published a leaked National Security Agency report that recounts a Russian military intelligence cyberattack against a voter registration software company. According to the report, Russian government hackers appear to have used “data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration–themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.” On one level, this story was not particularly surprising. Even before the Intercept article, we knew—based upon previous news reports, as well as a January report from American intelligence agencies—that hackers working on behalf of the Russian government were targeting state and local voter registration databases. And there is nothing in the NSA report or the Intercept piece that supports the idea that Russian hacks against election offices and registration system prevented anyone from voting or changed vote totals in any way. (It always bears repeating that the voter registration system and vote tallying systems are different. An attack against the registration system will not change vote totals on a voting machine.)

California: Secretary of state expresses ‘serious concern’ with NSA after hacking document leaked | Times Standard

After a leaked National Security Agency document alleged Russian operatives attempted to hack into a Florida voter polling software company used by Humboldt County in the 2016 presidential election, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla sent a letter to the federal agency Thursday questioning why the state was not notified earlier. “As the chief elections officer in the most populous state in the nation, I am seriously concerned about the NSA’s failure to provide timely and critical information to America’s elections officials,” Padilla wrote to NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers. “… We must be prepared and remain vigilant. Proper preparation requires clear and consistent collaboration among federal, state, and local officials. The NSA cannot afford to sit on critical information that could be used to defend against cyber-attacks.”

Florida: Hackers attacked 4 Florida school districts, allegedly hoped to hack voting systems | Network World

We’ve heard a lot about Russians attackers attempting to hack the US election, but another hacking group also allegedly wanted to interfere with the election; they attempted to pivot from compromised school districts to state voting systems. The Miami Herald reported that MoRo, a group of hackers based in Morocco, penetrated “at least four Florida school district networks” and purportedly searched for a way “to slip into other sensitive government systems, including state voting systems.” According to United Data Technologies (UDT), the firm which investigated the breaches “incidents,” the hackers successfully phished people working in the school districts, tricking them into clicking on an image in email which allowed malware into the system. The article does note that the hackers also targeted an unnamed Florida city network with a similar attack.

Georgia: Threats cloud sixth district election security | WXIA

Elections officials say they are taking steps to ensure the security of voting Tuesday in the sixth congressional district race. It’s gotten national attention, and it was the apparent motive behind a dozen threatening letters discovered Thursday. The threats appeared in the mailboxes of residents living near Republican congressional candidate Karen Handel, and the candidate herself. They also appeared in the mailrooms of two media outlets – WXIA and WAGA-TV. They all contained computer-printed rants against Handel and President Donald Trump. And some contained a powder identified in some of the notes as anthrax – but which authorities believe was actually baking soda.

North Carolina: Elections board without members until Governor makes appointments – but he’s suing | News & Observer

The board that oversees elections and government ethics in North Carolina has no members because Gov. Roy Cooper hasn’t appointed anyone as he continues his court challenge against the law merging the two boards. On Friday, the N.C. Court of Appeals rejected Cooper’s latest request to put on hold the law creating the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. That law was passed in a December special session of the legislature and revised in April in response to court rulings. Cooper’s lawsuit argues the change in the elections board violates the constitutional separation of powers.

Texas: Report: State’s voter ID law caused confusion during 2016 presidential election | San Antonio Express-News

Hundreds were delayed from voting and others nearly turned away entirely during the presidential election because of confusion over current state voter ID laws, including in Bexar County, a new report from a voting rights advocacy group shows. It’s just one of numerous problems Texas voters — particularly minority groups — faced during the 2016 election cycle, according to a report by the Texas Civil Rights Project. “Unfortunately, throughout the state, voters faced numerous obstacles that complicated the process,” said Beth Stevens, voting rights director at the Texas Civil Rights Project, which released the report Thursday. “Through our Election Protection Coalition, we heard directly from thousands of voters about the barriers they faced in our electoral system.”

Virginia: Disabled voter describes ‘dehumanizing’ treatment at polls | New Leader

For Lee Ann Kinkade, of Staunton, going to vote on Election Day is magical, she says. She’s filled with “bipartisan patriotism” on these days, excited to participate in the nation’s democratic process. But as Kinkade, who’s disabled, headed into Gypsy Hill Park Gym on Tuesday to vote in the governor primaries, she instead said she felt “dehumanized” by the treatment she received from one of the poll workers. With her disability, her hands shake and she isn’t able to fill in the bubbles on the paper ballots, she said. There’s assistive equipment for this though that makes it possible for disabled voters to make their election selections while keeping their ballots confidential.

Wisconsin: In gerrymandering case, Wisconsin awaits word from high court on map that entrenched GOP’s legislative power | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The U.S. Supreme Court could announce as soon as Monday how it’s handling a landmark legal fight over Wisconsin’s gerrymandered political map, which has helped lock in legislative majorities for the GOP since it took power in 2011. The key legal question: Can a set of political districts be so stacked toward one party that it violates the Constitution? Until the court speaks, that is unsettled law. But while the law is uncertain, the politics are quite clear. Legislative boundaries like Wisconsin’s present a stark civics question: How meaningful are elections when control of the legislature in a competitive state is largely predetermined by the way the districts are drawn?

Canada: Cyberthreat to Canadian elections increasing amid lingering concerns about Russia, spy agency warns | National Post

Canada’s electronic spy agency says the threat of cyberattacks on the country’s electoral process is increasing and steps must be taken to counter it. The warning is contained in a new report released Friday by the Communications Security Establishment amid lingering questions and concerns about the role Russia may have played in the last U.S. presidential election. The agency says so-called “hacktivists” and cybercriminals did launch low-level attacks during Canada’s last election in 2015, but those attacks had no discernible impact. At the same time, there were no indications that foreign countries tried to influence the election through cyberattacks or other online methods.

France: Macron’s Party and Allies Win Majority in French Parliamentary Elections | The New York Times

President Emmanuel Macron of France won a crucial stamp of approval on Sunday as voters gave him and his allies a decisive majority in parliamentary elections, but a record-low turnout cast a shadow over his victory, pointing to the hurdles he will face as he seeks to revive the country’s economy and confidence. When the votes were counted, Mr. Macron’s party, La République en Marche (the Republic on the Move) and its allies had won 350 seats in the 577-member National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament. Mr. Macron, a relative political newcomer who was elected on May 7, had called for a strong mandate to advance his legislative agenda, including plans to loosen France’s restrictive labor laws. Voters swept in many first-time candidates, including some of Arab or African ancestry, and elected more than 200 women, a record in France’s modern history.

Liberia: Voter Roll Alarm: Former Foreign Minister Calls For State of Emergency | FrontPageAfrica

Speaking to FrontPageAfrica Saturday, Mr. Ngafuan, now a supporter of Vice President Joseph Boakai said, NEC handling of the process is giving him jitters. “Quite frankly, I am afraid. From what I’ve heard from Chairman Jerome Korkoya, I think we all, political actors and journalists need to sound the alarm and call a state of emergency around this issue because elections are won or lost based on the credibility of the voter roll.” NEC commenced the Exhibition of the Provisional Voter Roll on June 12, 2017 and ended on June 17 at all 2080 Exhibition Centers (formerly Voter Registration Centers) across the country. The exercise is a cardinal electoral date as per Article 9.2 of the Voter Registration Regulations and in keeping with section 3.6 of the New Elections Law of Liberia.

Nigeria: Electoral Commission Explains Why It Rejects Solar-Powered E-Voting Machine | Information Nigeria

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has rejected the solar-powered electronic voting machine made by the National Agency of Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), after the INEC chairman, Prof. Yakubu Mahmoud. According to sources at the meeting, held behind closed doors, expressed fears that the machine could fail in the middle of the exercise and cause problems, leading to litigation against the commission.The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has rejected the solar-powered electronic voting machine made by the National Agency of Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), after the INEC chairman, Prof. Yakubu Mahmoud, according to sources at the meeting, held behind closed doors, expressed fears that the machine could fail in the middle of the exercise and cause problems, leading to litigation against the commission.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for June 12-18 2017

As new reports revealed that Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system was far more widespread than has been publicly disclosed, Pam Fessler at NPR asked the critical question: “If Voting Machines Were Hacked, Would Anyone Know?” Noting that the phishing campaign that has been described is just the kind of attack someone would launch if they wanted to manipulate votes, University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman explained that “before every election, the voting machines have to be programmed with the design of the ballots — what are the races, who are the candidates.” Access to the election management software that is used to program ballots would allow an attacker to infect it with malicious software that could “spread to the individual machines on the memory cards, and then change votes on Election Day.”

Adding to information a classified National Security Agency document leaked earlier this month, three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation detailed a wave of attacks in the summer and fall of 2016, hit voting systems in as many as 39 states. This week, Maryland’s State Board of Elections revealed that it had detected “suspicious activity” on the computer system it uses for online voter registration before last fall’s election and called in cybersecurity experts to evaluate it, The newest disclosures of potentially deep vulnerabilities in the U.S.’s patchwork of voting technologies comes less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey warned Congress that Moscow isn’t done meddling. “They’re coming after America,” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the election. “They will be back.”

Days before a closely-watched special election run-off in Georgia’s 6th District, a security researcher disclosed a gaping security hole at Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Systems, where the state’s election technology is programmed. The security failure left the state’s 6.7 million voter records and other sensitive files exposed to hackers, and may have been left un-patched for seven months. Georgia still uses the un-auditable Diebold AccuVote touchscreen DREs statewide (yes, the same machines that researchers at Princeton hacked over a decade ago) – and of course there is no paper trail.

In a Washington Post oped, Patrick Marion Bradley described the personal stories of disenfranchisement resulting from restrictive voter id requirements. Such individual stories are all too easily lost in rhetoric and political calculations.

In the latest effort to combat partisan redistricting, voting-rights advocates filed suit in Pennsylvania state court to nullify the state’s congressional-district map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The decision to challenge the maps in state court means that if the plaintiffs prevail, the ruling would set no precedent for challenges in other states. Plaintiffs inMaryland, North Carolina and Wisconsin have current challenges to partisan redistricting pending in federal courts.

After an overwhelming vote in favor of statehood in a boycott-plagued referendum, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló demanded that the U.S. government recognize his commonwealth as the 51st state. There is little chance that his demands will be acknowledged however given the current political environment in Congress.

The Texas Monthly reported on Travis County’s project to create STAR-Vote (Secure, Transparent, Auditable, and Reliable), an end-to-end encrypted electronic voting system. The Travis County Clerk’s office, the Texas elections office, Rice University professors Dan S. Wallach and Michael D. Byrne, and other academics came together to create the system, which encrypts votes cast and stores them in a database. It is the hope of Dana DeBeauvoir, the Travis County this new approach could reinvent electoral technology security.

Expatriate Canadians, who lose their voting rights after five years abroad, are questioning whether the Liberal government is deliberately allowing legislation aimed at restoring their voting rights to expire. Just before a scheduled hearing in February, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to a government request for an adjournment given the introduction of Bill C-33 in late November of 2016. However, as Gill Frank, one of two expats spearheading the constitutional battle, “Nothing has happened since.”

Responding to a series of cyberattacks on government internet systems, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is calling for a law that would allow Germany to “hack back” and wipe out attacking servers. Germany’s education ministry is backing a new cybersecurity school where politicians and IT officials are taught to spot and react to hacking. In April the armed forces set up a cyberdefense unit that will soon employ 12,000 soldiers and 1,500 civilians.

National: If Voting Machines Were Hacked, Would Anyone Know? | NPR

As new reports emerge about Russian-backed attempts to hack state and local election systems, U.S. officials are increasingly worried about how vulnerable American elections really are. While the officials say they see no evidence that any votes were tampered with, no one knows for sure. Voters were assured repeatedly last year that foreign hackers couldn’t manipulate votes because, with few exceptions, voting machines are not connected to the Internet. “So how do you hack something in cyberspace, when it’s not in cyberspace?” Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler said shortly before the 2016 election. But even if most voting machines aren’t connected to the Internet, says cybersecurity expert Jeremy Epstein, “they are connected to something that’s connected to something that’s connected to the Internet.” … While it’s unclear if any of the recipients took the bait in the email attack, University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman says it’s just the kind of phishing campaign someone would launch if they wanted to manipulate votes.

National: Russian Cyber Hacks on U.S. Electoral System Far Wider Than Previously Known | Bloomberg

Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported. In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.

Editorials: The Invisibles: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID | Patrick Marion Bradley/The Washington Post

Patricia Brown couldn’t prove her identity. On a Saturday morning in May last year, she rushed into the basement of Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church, frantic that she would miss its I.D. Ministry hours. She took deep breaths as she reached the bright-yellow room crowded with narrow tables, where people sat poring over papers. Without valid identification, she couldn’t get housing or work, her food stamps or medication. She sat in a metal chair beside me, wiping away sweat from her forehead. The volunteer across from us looked concerned as Brown reviewed an intake checklist: Social Security card? No. Birth certificate? No. ID? Expired. “So, we don’t have anything?” the volunteer asked. No. Nothing. I’d seen situations like Brown’s many times. I volunteered at the I.D. Ministry from January 2015 to March 2016. Two Saturday mornings a month, I would help the ministry’s poor or homeless clients navigate the bureaucracy of acquiring government identification. For most people, replacing a lost driver’s license or other ID is an inconvenience but not an ordeal. For Foundry’s clients, however, the path to an ID is more like a high-stakes test of endurance and resourcefulness.

Georgia: Will the Georgia Special Election Get Hacked? | Politico

Last August, when the FBI reported that hackers were probing voter registration databases in more than a dozen states, prompting concerns about the integrity of the looming presidential election, Logan Lamb decided he wanted to get his hands on a voting machine. A 29-year-old former cybersecurity researcher with the federal government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Lamb, who now works for a private internet security firm in Georgia, wanted to assess the security of the state’s voting systems. When he learned that Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Systems tests and programs voting machines for the entire state of Georgia, he searched the center’s website. “I was just looking for PDFs or documents,” he recalls, hoping to find anything that might give him a little more sense of the center’s work. But his curiosity turned to alarm when he encountered a number of files, arranged by county, that looked like they could be used to hacked an election. Lamb wrote an automated script to scrape the site and see what was there, then went off to lunch while the program did its work. When he returned, he discovered that the script had downloaded 15 gigabytes of data.

Maryland: Elections board says it detected suspicious activity last fall | Baltimore Sun

Maryland’s State Board of Elections detected “suspicious activity” on the computer system it uses for online voter registration before last fall’s election and called in cybersecurity experts to evaluate it, administrator Linda H. Lamone said Wednesday. Lamone’s disclosure came in response to an inquiry by The Baltimore Sun amid reports that Russian cyberattacks had breached election systems in 39 states. Lamone said the system was not penetrated. She said the activity did not compromise vote tabulation.

Pennsylvania: Lawsuit Says House Redistricting Is Partisan Gerrymander | The New York Times

Voting-rights advocates in Pennsylvania filed suit on Thursday to nullify the state’s congressional-district map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, joining other court battles over the role of politics in redistricting already being waged in three other states. It is the latest major legal effort arguing that gerrymanders have become so egregious they are subverting democracy and creating legislative races with predetermined results. In a tactical twist, however, the Pennsylvania lawsuit was filed in a state court, which means that if the plaintiffs prevail, the ruling would set no precedent for challenges in other states. The three other lawsuits, in Maryland, North Carolina and Wisconsin, were filed in federal court and argue that the maps of congressional or state legislative districts violate the federal Constitution.

Puerto Rico: Governor pushes statehood after boycott-plagued vote | Politico

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló on Thursday demanded that the U.S. government recognize his commonwealth as the 51st state, citing the island’s overwhelming vote for statehood four days ago. He faces long odds. “The U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico have taken a stand and have pleaded a choice,” said Rossello, speaking in a small, half-empty room occupied by reporters and his own staff at the National Press Club in Washington. Yet while 97 percent of those who participated backed statehood in the June 11 vote, the nonbinding referendum was boycotted by opposition parties, who either support the current commonwealth status or independence. As a result, less than a quarter of eligible voters cast ballots. Héctor Ferrer, the head of the opposition Popular Democratic Party, called the referendum “a rigged process,” in an interview with POLITICO this month.

Texas: Could Travis County Have The Best Bet Against Election Hacking? | Texas Monthly

Revelations that Russian hackers tried to break into Dallas County’s web servers, likely with the intention of accessing voter registration files, in the lead up to last November’s election renewed concerns about Texas election security. Both Wednesday night’s news out of Dallas and a Bloomberg report on Monday—which said that the Russian hacking attempts affected 39 states—are forcing states to look inward and re-examine the security of their local and state-level electoral technologies. The particular targets of Russian hackers were the accounts of elections officials and voter registration rolls, which are connected to the internet and are unlike the voting systems that actually do the recording and vote tallying. But a possible security breach of one area of electoral technologies has the potential to ripple out and affect the integrity of other ones. “The reason why this whole Russian hacking thing is a wake-up call is because we’ve been caught not paying as much attention as we should have in an area that all of us didn’t think was that vulnerable,” Dana DeBeauvoir, the Travis County clerk since 1987, says. “And yet it has turned out to be extremely vulnerable in ways we did not expect.”

Canada: Expats fret bill allowing them to vote is dying, despite Liberal promises | Canadian Press

Disenfranchised expat Canadians are questioning whether the Liberal government is deliberately allowing legislation aimed at restoring their voting rights to wither on the vine. The concern comes as the country’s top court set a new date for hearing their constitutional battle against provisions that strip Canadians abroad for more than five years from voting in federal elections. The Supreme Court of Canada agreed just ahead of a scheduled hearing in February to a government request for an adjournment given the introduction of Bill C-33 in late November.

Germany: Germany Builds an Election Firewall to Fight Russian Hackers | Bloomberg

In March and April hackers tried to infiltrate computers of think tanks associated with Germany’s top two political parties. A year earlier, scammers set up a fake server in Latvia to flood German lawmakers with phishing emails. And in 2015 criminals breached the network of the German Parliament, stealing 16 gigabytes of data. Although there’s no definitive proof, the attacks have been linked to Pawn Storm, a shadowy group with ties to Russian intelligence agencies—raising the possibility that the Kremlin might disrupt a September vote in which Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strongest critic in Europe, is seeking a fourth term. “There’s increasing evidence of attempts to influence the election” by Russia, says Hans-Georg Maassen, head of BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. “We expect another jump in cyberattacks ahead of the vote.” While polls show Merkel is likely to defeat the left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD), the concern is that the Kremlin will try to strengthen the far-right Alternative for Germany and turn the estimated 2.5 million voters who speak Russian against her. “Cybersecurity is a top priority, and Chancellor Merkel is taking it very seriously,” says Arne Schönbohm, president of the BSI, the country’s top technology security agency.

National: What Congress is doing to stop Russian hackers next time | CSMonitor

In the past week, a series of dramatic congressional hearings have sought to plumb possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia – or possible presidential obstruction of justice over the matter, which special counsel Robert Mueller is now reportedly investigating. But this spotlight, while an important line of questioning into last year’s interference, overshadows other steps that Congress is taking to prevent Russian meddling in future elections. Absent an administration that is staffed up or a president inclined to go hard on Moscow, Congress is looking to define its own strategy. “We don’t really have a Russia strategy” to prevent a repeat of election meddling, says James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Congress is trying to figure out what that should be.” Specifically, it’s looking at several areas: sanctions, what exactly Russia did in the last election and appropriate countermeasures, and US digital defenses.

Editorials: Russian hacking: They’ll be back; will we be prepared? | Baltimore Sun

Let’s put aside for a moment the question of whether anyone connected to President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in its attempts to hack the 2016 election. Let’s not not get into an argument about whether the effort changed any votes, not to speak of the outcome. Let’s not even worry about whether Vladimir Putin himself was involved. The fact is, the hacking was massive, sophisticated and far more widespread than previously thought. According to a new report from Bloomberg, hackers broke into the election systems in 39 states. They may not have succeeded this time in breaching the voting machines themselves or even in substantially disrupting the voter registration rolls. But next time, they could. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how that would sow chaos and undermine trust in our democracy. That’s because our disorganized, underfunded and inconsistent voting systems — not to speak of actual, organized efforts by Republican officials to purge voter rolls and keep minorities, young people and the elderly from the polls — have done more than enough in that regard already.

Arizona: Lawmaker seeks to bar college students from voting at schools they attend | Arizona Daily Star

Calling the practice unethical, a Flagstaff Republican lawmaker wants to bar college students from voting where they may live most of the year. The proposal by state Rep. Bob Thorpe would put a provision that students who want to vote would be able to do so only by signing up to get an early ballot from the voting precinct where they were living before they went to college, presumably the address of their parents. They would not be able to use their college address. And that would apply not only to those who live in a campus dormitory but even those who have off-campus residences. … A similar proposal by Thorpe introduced earlier this year died when state Rep. Doug Coleman, R-Apache Junction, refused to give it a hearing in the House Government Committee which he chairs.

California: Assembly Bill Would Allow Voting System Upgrades | Techwire

The last time voting technology was updated in California was 2002. That’s four presidential elections with the same voting machines each time. In Sacramento County, vote-counting machines have paths worn into the trays that hold ballots to be scanned, often causing ballots to fray as they pass through machines. Counties normally administer most election activities and cover the costs associated with them. States have specific requirements about elections, costing about $30 million a year. However, the state and federal governments do not regularly pay for elections, leaving counties with large modernization bills. Assembly Bill 668, the Voting Modernization Bond Act of 2018, would change all that. The bill would allow the state to sell $450 million in bonds that would be spent upgrading voting technology after a two-thirds vote in both houses and passage as a proposition by direct vote of the people.