Voting Blogs: What Will It Take for Americans to Understand the Basics of Election Integrity? | BradBlog

There are several basic election integrity truths that have escaped the attention of most Americans, even as they confront the scope of alleged Russian cyber intrusions into America’s disparately run, local elections systems. [Despite repeated assurances from U.S. officials that hackers didn’t go so far as to alter vote counts, Department of Homeland Security officials concede that they failed to run an audit in order to determine whether the 2016 vote count had been manipulated by anyone, be they hackers, foreign or domestic, from Russia or anywhere else, or by election insiders whose direct access could facilitate a malicious, or even accidental, manipulation of vote totals. The mainstream U.S. media has also raised concerns that the United States, under the Donald Trump administration, is not doing enough to prevent hacking or manipulation of the 2018 and 2020 elections.] The first basic election integrity truth is that, as The BRAD BLOG reported in 2009, following a stark presentation by a U.S. intelligence officer to the nation’s only federal agency devoted to overseeing the use of electronic voting and tabulation systems, all electronically stored and/or processed data — registration records, poll books, ballot definition scripts and, most importantly, computerized vote tabulators — are vulnerable to malicious cyber intrusions.

Florida: Push to restore Florida felon voting rights gains steam, but obstacles remain | Orlando Sentinel

Desmond Meade of Orlando has traveled from the Panhandle to Miami, all for the cause of restoring voting rights to 1.6 million non-violent ex-felons such as himself. But there is so much more to do. “I’ve put over 150,000 miles on my car,” said Meade, the head of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. “Whether it’s the rural parts of the state or the urban centers, the message is the same. … Second chances. That’s what it’s all about.” Meade, a former addict convicted on drug and firearm charges in 2001 who later earned a law degree, successfully gathered more than 70,000 verified signatures for his petition to place an amendment to the Florida constitution, which then triggered a review by the state Supreme Court. But despite the successful hearing, in which the court allowed the process to proceed, Meade and his group still have a momentous challenge ahead.

Georgia: Many Troubling, Unanswered Questions about Voting Machinery in Georgia House Runoff | Alternet

The results from Georgia’s sixth district congressional race are odd. Jon Ossoff, the Democratic newcomer who ran against Republican former Secretary of State Karen Handel, won the absentee vote 64% to 36%. That vote was conducted on paper ballots that were mailed in and scanned on optical scanners. Ossoff also won the early voting 51% to 49%. Those results closely mirror recent polls that had him ahead by 1-3 points. In the highest of those polls, he was ahead by 7% with 5% undecided and a 4% margin of error. On Election Day, Handel pulled out a whopping 16 percent lead, for a crushing 58% to 42% division of the day’s votes. That means that all 5% of the undecided voters broke for Handel, the poll was off by its farthest estimate and another 3.5% of Ossoff’s voters switched sides into her camp. All this despite Ossoff’s intensive door-to-door ground offensive that Garland Favorito, who lives in the heart of the sixth district called the “most massive operation” he’s ever seen. Favorito is the founder of VoterGA, a nonpartisan election reform group. He said Handel had signs up, but her canvassing operation didn’t approach Ossoff’s.

Kansas: Kobach: Kansas won’t give Social Security info to Kobach-led voter commission at this time | The Kansas City Star

Multiple states plan to buck Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s request for personal information on voters on behalf of a presidential commission. Kobach said Friday that Kansas, at least for now, also won’t be sharing Social Security information with the commission, on which he serves as vice chairman. The state will share other information about the state’s registered voters, including names and addresses, which are subject to the state’s open records laws. Kobach sent letters on behalf of the commission to every state requesting names, addresses, voting history and other personal information, such as the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, earlier this week.

Ohio: Local governments focus on cybersecurity after attacks | Columbus Dispatch

Terri Bettinger paid close attention to the recent cyberattacks on the websites of Ohio government agencies, banks and other businesses. She hoped to learn lessons to better defend the information she oversees. Bettinger is the chief information officer for Franklin County and head of its Data Center, which collects, stores and protects government data from property tax bills to court and medical records. She knows the system will be hacked. “It’s when, not if. It’s going to happen,” Bettinger said. She saw Licking and Henry counties become recent victims of ransomware attacks, in which hackers stole information or locked their systems and demanded to be paid. Neither county paid the high-tech extortion, but both had some services hampered because their computer systems had to be restored.

Germany: Government report says Germany big target of cyber espionage and attacks | Reuters

Germany is a big target of spying and cyber attacks by foreign governments such as Turkey, Russia and China, a government report said on Tuesday, warning of “ticking time bombs” that could sabotage critical infrastructure. Industrial espionage costs German industry billions of euros each year, with small- and medium-sized businesses often the biggest losers, the BfV domestic intelligence agency said in its 339-page annual report. The report mapped out a range of security threats, including Islamist militancy and increased far-right violence, but highlighted the growing incidence of cyber espionage. It cited a “noticeable increase” in spying by Turkey’s MIT foreign intelligence agency in Germany in 2016, following the failed July 15 coup in Turkey, and said Russia was seeking to influence a parliamentary election on Sept. 24. “The consequences for our country range from weakened negotiating positions to high material costs and economic damage all the way to impairment of national sovereignty,” it said.

Japan: Tokyo Voters’ Rebuke Signals Doubt About Shinzo Abe’s Future | The New York Times

As recently as this spring, Shinzo Abe looked as if he was on track to become Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, no small feat in a country where the leadership sometimes seems to be equipped with a revolving door. But a local election in Tokyo has put Mr. Abe’s longevity in doubt. Voters for the capital’s metropolitan assembly on Sunday resoundingly rejected candidates from Mr. Abe’s party, the Liberal Democrats, while electing all but one of 50 fielded by an upstart party founded by Tokyo’s popular governor, Yuriko Koike. The victory for Tomin First, the party Ms. Koike established in January, was widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Abe as much as a vote of confidence in Ms. Koike.

Papua New Guinea: Voting in Papua New Guinea marred by problems with electoral rolls, disruptions | Reuters

Polling in Papua New Guinea has been hampered by reports of disruptions and voters being left off the electoral roll, but the head of an international election observer group said on Sunday there was no evidence they were deliberate. The two-week long election to decide who will lead the resource-rich South Pacific nation began on June 24, pitting 3,332 candidates from 44 political parties against each other for a place in the 111-seat parliament. But reports of problems at voting booths and allegations of ballot fraud have soured the mood among some in a country which has a history of electoral violence and corruption.

Ukraine: Russian security services were behind cyberattack | Associated Press

Ukraine accused the Russian security services Saturday of planning and launching a cyberattack that locked up computers around the world earlier this week. The Ukrainian security agency, known as the SBU, alleged in a statement that similarities between the malicious software and previous attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure revealed the work of Russian intelligence services. The SBU added that the attackers appeared uninterested in making a profit from the ransomware program and were more focused on sowing chaos in Ukraine. There was no immediate official response from Russia’s government, but Russian lawmaker Igor Morozov told the RIA Novosti news agency that the Ukrainian charges were “fiction” and that the attacks were likely the work of the United States.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for June 26 – July 2 2017

Though they have raised concerns about election cybersecurity and drawn the criticism of state election officials with the decision to designate the nation’s voting systems as “critical infrastructure, the Department of Homeland Security has steadfastly maintained that there has been no indication that “adversaries were planning cyber activity that would change the outcome of the coming US election.” Computer scientists have been critical of that decision. “They have performed computer forensics on no election equipment whatsoever,” said J. Alex Halderman, who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week about the vulnerability of election systems. “That would be one of the most direct ways of establishing in the equipment whether it’s been penetrated by attackers. We have not taken every step we could.”

The DHS inspector general’s Digital Forensics and Analysis Unit was involved in reviewing computer data from the federal agency, and from Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office, in an investigation stemming from Kemps’ claim that the federal government tried to hack his state’s election systems last Fall. In a letter delivered this week, the agency’s inspector general John Roth dismissed allegations that DHS attempted to scan or infiltrate the Georgia computer networks,” and that “the evidence demonstrated normal and appropriate use of Georgia’s public website.”

Citing reports compiled by US intelligence agencies investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the Wall Street Journal reported that hackers believed to be Russian discussed how to steal Hillary Clinton’s emails from her private server and transfer them to Michael Flynn via an intermediary, named as Peter Smith, a veteran Republican operative. One of the people Smith appears to have tried to recruit, a former British government intelligence official named Matt Tait, related in a first person blog post that he was approached last summer by Smith to help verify hacked Hillary Clinton emails offered by a mysterious and most likely Russian source. According to Tait, Smith claimed to be working with Trump’s then foreign policy adviser, Michael Flynn, and showed documentation suggesting he was also associated with close Trump aides including Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.

Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State and the vice chairman of the newly-formed Election Integrity Commission wrote a letter to all 50 states requesting their full voter-roll data, including the name, address, date of birth, party affiliation, last four Social Security number digits and voting history back to 2006 of potentially every voter in the state. The backlash from state election officials and voting rights advocates alike was immediate and more than half the states, including many with Republican Secretaries of State, have refuse to comply with the request. In a statement released Friday, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hoseman, a Republican, suggested that the commission “can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.”

In a Slate oped, election law specialist Richard Hasen suggests that the commission’s “focus on noncitizen voting makes sense, and the endgame is about passing federal legislation to make it harder for people to register and vote. The noncitizen focus fits in with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric as well as the rhetoric of Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who has been advising Trump on voter fraud issues.” The ultimate goal of the commission could be dismantling the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which has long been in Republican crosshairs.

Following two unsuccessful repeal efforts in the Maine legislature, a voter-approved measure calling for ranked choice voting in the state’s election will remain in force. Needing a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature, lawmakers are likely to wait until the second half of the current session, which starts in January 2018. As the first statewide election scheduled that would use ranked-choice voting would be the party primary races set for June 2018, it is still uncertain if the new voting procedure will ever be implemented.

Republican legislative efforts to redraw judicial districts in North Carolina will not advance this session. Democrats and some court officials had argued that the bill was too significant to be rushed through at the end of session. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian law firm has challenged Seattle’s “democracy voucher” program. In 2015 voters agreed to a new $3 million tax in exchange for four $25 vouchers that they could sign over to candidates to foster engagement in politics and to benefit lesser-known candidates.

According to Udo Schneider, a security expert for cyber security consultants Trend Micro, the cost of influencing a national election in Germany would be around $400,000. That’s the sum it takes to buy followers on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, hire companies to write and disseminate fake news postings over a period of 12 months, and run sophisticated web sites to influence public opinion.

Voters in Mongolia will return to the polls next week for a presidential run-off election. Former martial arts star Khaltmaa Battulga of the opposition Democratic Party, who won the most votes but failed to secure the majority required, will face ruling Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) candidate Miyeegombo Enkhbold, who came second. The third-place finisher,Sainkhuu Ganbaatar of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), has challenged the first round results and demanded a recount.

National: The House wants to put America’s independent election watchdog out of business | Mic

At the same moment watchdogs are calling out a new White House panel’s massive request for voters’ personal data, Congress is trying to slash funding for a small bipartisan agency that’s supposed to improve the way elections run. The notation, buried at the bottom of page 69 of the House Financial Services Appropriation Bill for spending in Fiscal Year 2018, would yank the entire $4 million budget of the Election Assistance Commission. The EAC was created in 2002 thanks to the Help America Vote Act, which Congress passed “to make sweeping reforms to the nation’s voting process.” The commission’s job includes certifying the hardware and software used to conduct elections.