Texas: House approves one crackdown on mail-in ballot fraud, but pushes repeal of another | The Texas Tribune

Two months ago, Texas lawmakers quietly did something rare in this statehouse: They sent Gov. Greg Abbott a bill designed to make voting easier for thousands of Texans. Abbott praised that effort and ultimately signed the legislation that, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, both Democrats and Republicans supported. Scheduled to take effect on Sept. 1, the law would overhaul balloting at nursing homes — an attempt to simultaneously remove opportunities to commit ballot fraud while expanding ballot access to nursing home residents. But on Wednesday, the Texas House voted to repeal the new law, which some Republicans dubbed a well-intentioned mistake. “It was an oversight that people missed,” said Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, who led the repeal effort.

Wisconsin: In Gerrymandering Case, 16 States Lend Support to Wisconsin | The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is backing Wisconsin in a high-profile case asking the U.S. Supreme Court whether lawmakers can go too far when drawing political maps to advantage one party. Paxton, a Republican, filed an amicus brief seeking to protect the status quo in political gerrymandering — redistricting maneuvers that allow controlling parties to bolster their majorities in state Legislatures and Congress even when statewide demographics shift against them. Fifteen other states signed onto the brief. “Never has the U.S. Supreme Court disallowed a legislative map because of partisan gerrymandering, and it surely can’t find fault with Wisconsin’s, which is lawful, constitutional and follows traditional redistricting principles,” Paxton said in a statement Tuesday.

Kenya: The Drama of Kenya’s Presidential Election | The Atlantic

An electoral system with a spotty record, claims of hacking, the mysterious killing of an election official, and the threat of post-election violence makes this week’s presidential election in Kenya one of the most closely watched in Africa. Adding to the intrigue: The head of the country’s election commission acknowledged Thursday there had been an unsuccessful attempt to hack its database. That acknowledgment came a day after Raila Odinga, a leading presidential candidate, claimed the elections were fixed in favor of the incumbent, President Uhuru Kenyatta. “Hacking was attempted but did not succeed,” said Wafula Chebukati, chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). His remarks have the potential to raise tensions in a country that already has seen five people killed in post-election violence. Although the results are not final, Kenyatta holds a strong lead over Odinga with most of the votes counted at polling stations.

New Zealand: 60,000 voters could miss out on voting in General Election | New Zealand Herald

Around 60,000 voters could miss out on voting in the September General Election after their enrolment update packs were returned marked “gone no address”. Enrolment update packs were sent to 3.15 million enrolled voters at the end of June to check their details were correctly listed on the electoral roll for the September General Election. Voters whose packs are returned to sender are taken off the electoral roll. “Those voters need to get back on the roll now so their vote will count this election,” chief electoral officer, Alicia Wright said.

Editorials: The Trump Justice Department joins the GOP crusade to shrink the vote | The Washington Post

The idea that voting should be encouraged, and voter registration simple, has been a touchstone of federal law for decades. That idea is now under assault by Republicans in statehouses across the country and, more recently, in the Trump Justice Department. On Monday, political appointees in Justice engineered an about-face in the government’s position on a key voting rights case before the Supreme Court, backing Ohio’s efforts to purge hundreds of thousands of infrequent voters from the state’s voter rolls. You read that right. According to Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Jon Husted, who is now running for governor, it’s okay for a state to disqualify people from voting in the future if they haven’t voted in the recent past — specifically, in the past six years.

Editorials: Can Youth Suffrage Finally Become a Mainstream Issue in 2020? | Elizabeth King/Pacific Standard

Turning 18 is an exciting time for a lot of American teenagers: Once turned the age of majority, one is suddenly allowed to buy tobacco, enlist in the armed services, gamble, and, come election time, head to the polls and vote. And yet, maybe 18 shouldn’t be the franchise gatekeeper that it is: Teenagers under 18 are stakeholders in a variety of local and national issues (education, transportation, and labor rights, to name a few), as the past two years have shown. After the election of Donald Trump, teenagers in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area walked out of school in November, and took to the streets to march. California high schoolers in Santa Barbara, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego staged similar walkouts, among other forms of peaceful protest. Those under 18 were unable to participate in politics at the ballot box because of their age, but advocates for youth suffrage hope this won’t always be the case, and are working to lower the voting age to 16. In a country where the president waxes political to a crowd of teenage Boy Scouts, politics are visibly changing the lives of American teens—and youth-suffrage activists are looking to maximize the opportunity to revive their cause.

Editorials: It’s Time to Restore and Strengthen the Voting Rights Act by Tamara Power-Drutis | Tamara Power-Drutis/Yes Magazine

If judging only by the 99 new laws proposed in 2017 to restrict registration and voting access, one might assume that voter fraud is a widespread issue. Yet according to a study in May by the Brennan Center for Justice, of the 23.5 million votes cast in the 2016 general election, only an estimated 30 incidents across 42 jurisdictions were referred to by election officials as suspected noncitizen voting. In a one-year period, America has had more proposed laws prohibiting voting than cases of actual voter fraud incidents. So what makes a statistically nonexistent issue warrant the current level of scrutiny or legislative action? If the proposed cures appear worse than the problem they’re designed to solve, that’s because the problem isn’t voter fraud, but the growing number of women, people of color, young, and low-income voters filling out ballots.

Voting Blogs: FVAP submits 2016 post-election report to Congress | electionlineWeekly

The Federal Voting Assistance Program’s 2016 Post-Election Report to Congress shows that its voting assistance efforts work: FVAP continues to make progress in reducing obstacles to absentee voting for active duty military and has expanded outreach initiatives for voters covered under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). “I am proud of the work accomplished by FVAP to support military members, their families, and Americans living abroad throughout the 2016 cycle,” FVAP Director David Beirne said.

California: More voters than eligible adults? Group makes dubious claim about California | McClatchy

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla has twice rebuffed demands for voter data from a commission created by President Donald Trump to investigate unproven claims of voter fraud last fall. Now a conservative Washington, D.C.-based legal group has threatened to sue the state over what it contends are California counties’ failure to properly maintain lists of inactive voters. The Aug. 1 letter from Judicial Watch to Padilla alleges that 11 California counties have more registered voters than their estimated populations of citizens eligible to vote. The claim was picked up Breitbart and other news sites and prompted Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, to post on Twitter, “11 counties in California have more total registered voters than citizens over the age of 18. How is this possible?” Short answer: It’s not. California voter registration stood at 19.4 million as of February. No California county is anywhere close to having more voters than its estimated number of citizens deemed eligible to vote.

Delaware: State urged to speed up hunt for new voting machines | The News Journal

Delaware voters soon will cast their ballots on new voting machines. But exactly when – and what those machines will look like – remains to be seen. A state task force created last year to study the issue is still debating what bells and whistles the new voting machines should feature – four months after it was supposed to make a final recommendation to the Delaware General Assembly. … First deployed in 1996, Delaware’s 1,600 voting machines are among the oldest in the nation and have outlived their expected lifespan, creating a growing list of potential problems. The computer operating system used to create electronic ballots, for instance, is no longer supported by Microsoft, meaning security updates are no longer available. The outdated equipment also precludes the General Assembly from adopting the kind of no-excuse early voting currently used by 34 other states. And Delaware is now one of five states using voting machines that never let voters see a paper copy of their ballot to ensure its accuracy.

North Carolina: Redistricting criteria call for partisan maps, no consideration of race | WRAL

The last time Republicans had to redraw districts – in 2016, when courts found North Carolina’s congressional map unconstitutional – they included a required 10-3 Republican advantage in the map-making criteria. At the time, Lewis said he didn’t think an 11-2 map was possible. On Thursday, Lewis said he probably wouldn’t say it that way if he could go back, but he was trying to show the courts that race wasn’t the deciding factor in new maps – partisan politics was. Political gerrymanders are legal, although a Wisconsin case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court could change that. What the courts have forbidden is an over-emphasis on race when it comes to drawing lines.

Editorials: Will Move to Purge Ohio Voting Rolls Kickstart Congressional Action? | Mary C. Curtis/Roll Call

Fifty-two years ago this week, John Lewis of Georgia was a young activist, not the Democratic congressman he is today. Yet he got a warmer welcome from the then-president of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, than from today’s occupant of the White House. On the Twitter feed of the longtime member of the U.S. House of Representatives, you can see a picture celebrating that time a few decades ago, when, with Democratic and Republican support, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed and then signed. Lewis was one of those who suffered arrests and shed blood to make it so. You might think that at 77 years of age, he has earned the right to relax just a little. But instead of celebrating progress made, he has to ignore occasional insults from President Donald Trump and some of his congressional colleagues, while refighting a version of that same fight for voting rights.

Australia: Challenge filed in court to Australian gay marriage ballot | Associated Press

Gay-rights advocates filed a court challenge Thursday to the government’s unusual plan to canvass Australians’ opinion on gay marriage next month, while a retired judge said he would boycott the survey as unacceptable. The mail ballot is not binding, but the conservative government won’t legislate the issue without it. If most Australians say “no,” the government won’t allow Parliament to consider lifting the nation’s ban on same-sex marriage. Lawyers for independent lawmaker Andrew Wilkie and marriage equality advocates Shelley Argent and Felicity Marlowe, applied to the High Court for an injunction that would prevent the so-called postal plebiscite from going ahead. “We will be arguing that by going ahead without the authorization of Parliament, the government is acting beyond its power,” lawyer Jonathon Hunyor said.

Germany: Russia Has Launched a Fake News War on Europe. Now Germany Is Fighting Back | Time

One morning in November, Simon Hegelich, a professor of political science at the Technical University of Munich, was surprised to get an urgent invitation from the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who wanted to hear more about his research on the manipulation of voter sentiment. Less than two weeks earlier, the U.S. elections had ended in victory for Donald Trump, and the post-mortems were full of buzzwords the Chancellor urgently needed to understand: filter bubbles, bots, fake news, disinformation, much of it related to the claims that Russia had somehow hijacked the elections. “Basically she wanted to know what the hell is going on,” Hegelich recalls. What was past, Merkel thought, may be prologue. With German elections scheduled for Sept. 24, the Chancellor knows that her bid for a fourth term in office may be subject to the same dirty tricks employed in the U.S. presidential race. As Europe’s most powerful leader and its most determined critic of the Kremlin, Merkel has long been a target of Russian influence campaigns. Troves of emails were stolen from her political allies in 2015 by the same Russian hackers who later targeted the U.S. presidential race.  During her 12 years in power, Merkel has also watched the Kremlin’s media apparatus air broadsides against her policies in a variety of languages, including German, English, Spanish and French.

Kenya: Election monitors urge losing candidates to accept poll results | The Guardian

International election observers have called on politicians defeated in Kenya’s fiercely contested polls to concede gracefully without taking their struggle to the streets. The statements by delegations from the EU, the African Union and the US came as opposition groups accused electoral officials of hiding the true results of Tuesday’s elections, which they said showed their leader, Raila Odinga, had won by 300,000 votes. Provisional results released by Kenya’s election commission have put the incumbent president, Uhuru Kenyatta, ahead by 54.2% of votes counted, to 44% for Odinga. A final verified declaration of results based on returns signed by agents from all parties at polling stations and constituencies is expected on Friday.

Kenya: Police arrest IEBC staff over illegal possession of ballot boxes | Daily Nation

The announcement of results for various elective seats in Kilgoris constituency, Narok County, was marred by delays and arrests, which almost crippled the process. Tallying was temporarily halted after a presiding officer, his deputy and a police officer were arrested with ballot papers in a house. Mr George Akumu, the presiding officer for Endoinyo Nkopit polling station and his deputy, Ms Sarah Yiamat Leperon, were seized in Milimani estate in Kilgoris town. Trans Mara West director of criminal investigations David Njogu said the two were in the company of Mr Pius Otieno, an Administration police officer. Mr Njogu said they suspected that the materials were intended to be used to stuff ballot boxes before sending them for tallying.

Editorials: Democracy under siege in Maduro’s Venezuela | Syed Badiuzzaman/Toronto Sun

The headlines around the world said it all in describing the bogus July 30 election in Venezuela. “Venezuela heading for dictatorship after ‘sham’ election,” wrote the Guardian, quoting Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “Venezuela faces more isolation after controversial vote,” read an article published in the Latin American section of Aljazeera’s English online news service. Boycotted by the opposition, the vote further distanced Venezuela from the free and democratic world. International condemnations were sharp and swift. The U.S. slapped immediate sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — in addition to previously imposed sanctions on 13 other Venezuelan officials. In the face of the new sanctions, Venezuela’s dictator reportedly asked a strange, almost childlike question, in response, wondering out loud: “Why are they sanctioning me?”

Kenya: Police and protesters clash after opposition leader’s fraud claims | The Guardian

Protesters and police in Kenya have clashed after the leader of the opposition claimed he was cheated of victory by a hacking attack that he said manipulated the results in the country’s presidential election. Raila Odinga, the leader of the National Super Alliance, said election commission computer systems and databases were tampered with overnight to “create errors” in favour of rival candidate Uhuru Kenyatta, who has been in power since 2013. Odinga urged his supporters to remain calm, but added: “I don’t control the people.” “You can only cheat the people for so long,” he said. “The 2017 general election was a fraud.” With ballots from 96% of polling stations counted, results released by Kenya’s electoral commission show Kenyatta leading with 54.4% of the vote, against Odinga’s 44.8%, a difference of 1.4 million votes. The election is seen as a key test of the stability of one of Africa’s most important countries.

National: A Summer School for Mathematicians Fed Up with Gerrymandering | The New Yorker

On a late-spring evening in Boston, just as the sun was beginning to set, a group of mathematicians lingered over the remains of the dinner they had just shared. While some cleared plates from the table, others started transforming skewers and hunks of raw potato into wobbly geodesic forms. Justin Solomon, an assistant professor at M.I.T., lunged forward to keep his structure from collapsing. “That’s five years of Pixar right there,” he joked. (Solomon worked at the animation studio before moving to academia.) He and his collaborators were unwinding after a long day making preparations for a new program at Tufts University—a summer school at which mathematicians, along with data analysts, legal scholars, schoolteachers, and political scientists, will learn to use their expertise to combat gerrymandering.

National: Is the Path to Secure Elections Paved With Open Source Code? | LinuxInsider

Increased use of open source software could fortify U.S. election system security, according to an op-ed published last week in The New York Times.Former CIA head R. James Woolsey and Bash creator Brian J. Fox made their case for open source elections software after security researchers demonstrated how easy it was to crack some election machines in the Voting Machine Hacking Village staged at the recent DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas. … “They confirmed what we already knew,” said James Scott, a senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. “These are extremely vulnerable machines.” “Think of what a voting machine is,” he told LinuxInsider. “It’s a 1980s PC with zero endpoint security in a black box where the code is proprietary and can’t be analyzed.” Although the researchers at DefCon impressed the press when they physically hacked the voting machines in the village, there are more effective ways to crack an election system. “The easiest way to hack an election machine is to poison the update on the update server at the manufacturer level before the election,” Scott explained. “Then the manufacturer distributes your payload to all its machines for you.”

Editorials: Trump’s Attack on Voter Privacy | The American Conservative

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions who voted illegally,” tweeted Donald Trump on November 27, following his win. Perhaps in an effort to prove social media blather correct, Trump has issued an executive order creating the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity. The goals of the committee include “studying vulnerabilities in the voting systems that could lead to voter fraud,” which requires collecting a large amount of personal voter information from the states. After facing serious legal pushback, even his supporters are wondering about its legitimacy. While the purity of the democratic process should be every citizen’s concern, the committee’s latest crusade, in violating privacy, has gone too far.

Editorials: Time is now to prepare for more cyberattacks on U.S. electoral system | Chase Johnson/Idaho Statesman

Many Americans today question what is to be done about preventing future Russian interventions in our electoral system. Russian “micro-targeting” used to spread misinformation during the 2016 presidential election was so sophisticated that influence packages were custom tailored by interest group, locality and even individual voter. An ongoing question remains about whether or not Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm with connections to White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, was the American port of entry for Russian influence operations. Other questions revolve around the role of the Trump presidential campaign. While these are important questions, the answers await Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Voting Blogs: Redistricting Goes to Court | NCSL Blog

“Redistricting is a game of margins,” attorney Kate McKnight told lawmakers at the Legislative Summit in Boston. Legislatures always start with existing district maps and work from there, she said. No one starts completely from scratch. McKnight was joined by fellow attorney Abha Khanna for a discussion of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in recent redistricting cases. Moderating the session, “Redistricting Goes to Court,” was Jessica Karls-Ruplinger, with the Wisconsin Legislative Council. As state legislators prepare to adjust the margins of districts in the next redistricting cycle based on the 2020 census, they’ll be looking to the court for guidance. It can be difficult to predict how a decision in one case might apply to others, but the attorneys told the group the court has asserted some general principles in recent decisions.

California: They sued for Clinton’s emails. Now they want information on California voters | Los Angeles Times

California’s top elections officer and 11 county registrars have been asked to hand over detailed voter registration records or face a federal lawsuit, a request that centers on new accusations that the records are inaccurate. The effort by the conservative-leaning organization Judicial Watch seeks an explanation for what its attorneys contend are official records that don’t match the group’s estimates of the legally eligible voting population in the counties, including Los Angeles County. “We want the actual data,” said Robert Popper, an attorney for the Washington, D.C.-based organization. The effort was sharply criticized Tuesday by California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who said he has yet to make a final decision on how to respond. “It’s bad math and dubious methodology,” Padilla said of the accusations.

Colorado: New vote checks could help discover a vote hack | Archer Security Group

You did your civic duty. You voted. You may even get a red, white and blue sticker to wear proudly on your T-shirt. But are you sure your vote will be counted — and counted properly? If your state uses computers for voting or counting results, there’s a chance it may not, experts say. “We know that computers can have some bugs or even cleverly-hidden malicious code called malware,” said Barbara Simons, president of Verified Voting, a non-profit, nonpartisan group encouraging secure and accurate elections. “As we learned in 2016, we also have to worry about the possibility of computers and voting systems being hacked,” she added. But if you live in Colorado, you’ll now have a better chance of finding out if your vote fell victim to a glitch or a hack.

Idaho: Voters Could Opt Out Of Releasing Data Under New Bill | KBSX

In the wake of the Trump Administration requesting partial social security numbers, dates of birth and other information about registered voters across the U.S., one Idaho state lawmaker is trying to keep that information private – at least partially. Right now, anyone can ask for a copy of Idaho’s voter roll, which gives out a person’s name, address, age and voter history and more. The measure from state Rep. John Gannon (D-Boise) would allow anyone to opt out of revealing most of that data – making only their name and voting precinct visible to the public.

Indiana: Lawsuit: Law forcing precinct consolidation violates voters’ rights | Post-Tribune

A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday claims a new Indiana law forcing small precinct consolidation in Lake County is a violation of voters’ rights. The Indiana State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a group of Lake County residents said, in the lawsuit, the forced consolidation of voting precincts with fewer than 600 voters “places severe, undue burdens on one of the most fundamental rights guaranteed to citizens in our representative democracy: the right to vote.” “Plaintiffs bring the instant lawsuit to protect the right to vote and to prevent the disenfranchisement of and unjustified burdens on voters in Lake County, Indiana – including in particular, the disparate burdens placed on Lake County’s African American, Hispanic, poor and disabled voters,” the lawsuit read.

Maryland: College Park May Let Non-citizens Vote, a Proposal With Precedent | The New York Times

As a federal commission searches for evidence of voter fraud and many states try to impose new voting restrictions, a city in Maryland may move in the opposite direction: allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections. In College Park, home to the University of Maryland’s flagship campus, the City Council is debating a measure introduced by Councilwoman Christine Nagle that would give noncitizens — a broad category that includes green card holders, students with visas and undocumented immigrants — the right to cast ballots for the city’s mayor, council members and other local officials. Startling though it may seem, the proposal has extensive precedent both in the United States and worldwide: Forty states used to allow noncitizen voting, and dozens of countries currently do.

New Jersey: Election officials mum on cooperation with Trump fraud commission | North Jersey

New Jersey appears not to have shared any of the information that President Trump’s voter fraud commission first requested in June, and state election officials won’t clarify their stance on the commission’s work or say if they will cooperate. Robert Giles, director of the New Jersey Division of Elections, said last month that the request for voter data was “under review” and that the state would not release information to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity “that is not publicly available or does not follow the appropriate legal process for information requests.” On Friday, the division said that it had no documents responsive to an Open Public Records Act request for correspondence the division has had with the commission since the beginning of June, including any voter information it may have shared. Since then, election officials have not returned several messages seeking to clarify whether the commission has filed a formal request for information and whether New Jersey would share the data if such a request is made.

North Carolina: Redistricting picks up pace under new court mandated deadline | The North State Journal

The joint redistricting committee convened for the second time Friday, after having received further instruction from courts in the form of a Sept. 1 deadline for new legislative maps. With the hastened schedule, committee members offered suggestions for the use of specific criteria and also heard input from nearly 50 members of the voting public on what they think should guide the process. Key Democrats offered their criteria and commentary during a press conference preceding the meeting, arguing that while leaps in technology have made gerrymandering more effective, technology should also be used to ensure fair maps are drawn. “Attorneys defending the current maps said they’re serious about remedying this and creating a constitutional map, and we’re here today to help them create a constitutional map,” said Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue (Wake). “Up to this point the actions taken by the [Republican] majority don’t instill a lot of faith in their sincerity in bringing these legislative maps in compliance with the law.”