Turkey: Opposition party to challenge referendum on expanding presidential powers at European Court | Los Angeles Times

The question now is whether Europe can and will step in to keep Turkey’s leader from expanding his powers. Turkey’s main opposition party announced Wednesday it will challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s April 16 referendum victory to replace the country’s parliamentary democracy with an all-powerful “presidential system.” The opposition will ask the European Court of Human Rights to render judgment, a day after Turkey’s top administrative court ruled it lacked jurisdiction over the electoral body whose oversight of the voting has sparked daily nationwide protests. “We faced illegal referendum results after seeing an unverified election,” Selin Sayek Boke, a spokeswoman for the Republican People’s Party told journalists in Ankara. “Our priority is standing up for the legal rights of all citizens. Thus, we would like to announce that we will soon apply to the ECHR.”

National: Holder: Trump’s election fraud claims are laying foundation for voter suppression | The Hill

Former Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday tore into President Trump’s claims of rampant voter fraud, saying the allegations have laid a foundation for voter suppression and more restrictive voter identification laws. “The vote fraud mantra is said so often — it’s almost said robotically — that some people have unthinkingly begun to believe that the issue is real,” Holder said at a National Action Network conference in New York City. “And with recent claims by Mr. Trump of ‘rigged elections’ based on fraud, again without any proof, save the bluster of the candidate, this mistaken belief in voter fraud becomes almost hardwired,” he continued.

National: Senator fears Russian election interference could be ‘normalized’ | The Hill

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said Thursday that Russian meddling in U.S. elections could become “normalized” if the government does not further respond to Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential contest. Shaheen doubled down on her push for an independent investigation of Russia’s actions and more sanctions on Moscow in a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Thursday afternoon. “If Russia gets a pass on 2016, it could interfere in future U.S. elections not only at the presidential level but at the House and Senate level,” Shaheen said.

National: Facebook found efforts to sway presidential election, elect Trump | CNBC

Facebook says some groups tried to use its platform to sway the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. In a case study of the 2016 presidential election, the company said it found several instances of “information operations,” its term for governments and organizations who attempt to sway political opinion by spreading fake news and other nefarious tactics. The case study was included in Facebook’s white paper on “information operations.” It also detailed ways it was combating “fake news” and other misinformation spread by adding new technologies and creating more security features.

Editorials: Why won’t Congress really investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia? | Douglas L. Kriner and Eric Schickler/The Washington Post

Politicians, pundits, and scholars alike routinely call Congress the “broken branch.” Most often, they note its abysmally low level of legislative productivity recently, a trend that even the return of unified Republican control of government has failed to reverse. But Congress’s feeble efforts to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election may be an even more startling and serious institutional failure. The House inquiry has been plagued by infighting and missteps. The most notable so far was the clandestine meeting to share intelligence between chief investigator, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and the White House he was charged with investigating. While the Senate investigative committee has pledged a thorough probe, it’s done little so far. It has held no high-profile hearings. Until very recently, it had no full-time staff, and its few part-time staffers have no investigative experience or expertise with Russia.

Editorials: Purging voter rolls doesn’t weed out fraud — it weeds out voters | Frederick News Post

Maryland has found itself in the crosshairs of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, which has thereatened to sue the state if a better effort isn’t made to clean up its voter rolls. Earlier this month, the group sent a letter to the Maryland State Board of Elections to complain that there are more registered voters in Montgomery County than there are voting-age residents. Judicial Watch argues the overage demonstrates that there is “strong circumstantial evidence” that non-citizens may be registered to vote in heavily-Democratic Montgomery County, which is also Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction.

California: Moving to March primary gaining traction: Legislation on presidential races passes key Assembly committee | San Mateo Daily Journal

Legislation to elevate the political influence of one of the nation’s most populous states by bumping up California’s presidential primary received bipartisan support this week as it heads toward the Assembly floor. Assembly-man Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, seeks to move California’s typically June primary to the first Tuesday of March during presidential elections. On Wednesday, Mullin’s bill passed 6-1 through the Assembly’s Committee on Elections and Redistricting, garnering support and dissent from two Republicans. The goal is to provide California, the sixth largest economy in the world and where 1 in 8 U.S. voters resides, with a more influential role in deciding presidential nominations for both the Republican and Democratic parties, Mullin said.

Louisiana: Let 70,000 ex-felons vote? No, says Louisiana House committee | Associated Press

Proposals to restore the voting rights of more than 70,000 Louisiana ex-felons on probation or parole got a chilly reaction from some state lawmakers Wednesday (April 26). The House Governmental Affairs Committee rejected one such proposal and persuaded a lawmaker to delay action on a similar bill until next week. Rep. Patricia Haynes Smith, D-Baton Rouge, pulled her House Bill 229 from a vote after her colleagues expressed concern about giving the vote back to people who have been on parole or probation for five years. The law affects about 71,000 people, roughly 1.5 percent of the state’s population. Similar proposals have died before in the conservative Louisiana Legislature. Smith introduced the bill after supporters of restoring voting rights struck out in court last month, when a judge told them they would have to get the law changed if they want the prohibition lifted.

Michigan: Gerrymandering seriously impacts voting, according to new test | The Michigan Daily

Although President Trump won the state by a narrow margin, GOP candidates in down-ballot races in Michigan won across the board, adding further to their large majority in the State Legislature. According to a new test conducted by Bridge Magazine, GOP candidates succeed in Michigan despite relatively equal support for both parties because of gerrymandered districts. The test, titled the “efficiency gap,” calculates how many votes are “wasted” when a certain party draws district lines in their favor. Wasted votes are those cast for the candidate that didn’t win and those cast for the winning candidate beyond the number they needed to win.

Montana: Voters confused over multiple mail ballot elections | Ravalli Republic

In what may be one of the most confusing election cycles ever, voters who cast their ballots by mail need to pay attention this next week. “We have some voters who are definitely confused right now,” said Ravalli County Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg. “We’ve been getting calls from people telling us that they opened their envelopes and found there weren’t any congressional races on their ballots.” That’s because the absentee ballots for the upcoming special election to select Montana’s sole congressman won’t be mailed out until next week. The mail ballots that voters have already received are for several school and one fire district election.

Nebraska: Ricketts vetoes bill to restore voting rights to felons sooner | Omaha World-Herald

The governor is headed for a showdown with state lawmakers over felon voting rights. Gov. Pete Ricketts vetoed a measure Thursday that restores the voting rights of felons immediately after they complete their sentences. He maintained that the Legislature violated the Nebraska Constitution by assuming the power to pardon that properly belongs to the executive branch of government. “Any effort to restore a civil right revoked in the Nebraska Constitution requires changing the Nebraska Constitution,” the governor said in a message announcing his first veto of the session.

New York: Election reformers make case for early voting, automatic voter registration | CNHI

Advocates for election reform say voter turnout across the New York could be greatly increased by allowing citizens to cast their ballots early and adopting automatic voter registration, as other states have. Without such measures, said Jennifer Wilson, program and policy director for the League of Women Voters of New York State, this state will continue to have one of the lowest voter-participation levels in the nation. “We think early voting would have an immediate impact,” Wilson said Wednesday after the Assembly Election Law Committee advanced legislation that would allow voting in New York up to seven days before an election.

North Carolina: Why This Woman Who Cast An Illegal Vote For Donald Trump Is Getting A Pass For Voter Fraud | The Huffington Post

A North Carolina prosecutor announced Wednesday that he would decline to bring charges in one of the few cases of voter fraud in the state during the 2016 election. The decision is significant because North Carolina is asking the Supreme Court to uphold a law that would require voters to show photo ID at the polls. Of the 4.8 million votes cast, the incident was the single case of in-person voter impersonation at the polls in the 2016 election in North Carolina ― the kind of fraud the voter ID law would prevent. The 67-year-old woman, whose name is not being released, voted for Donald Trump on behalf of her mother, who died on Oct. 26, weeks before Election Day. The woman told the State Board of Elections that her mother had told her “if anything happens you have my power of attorney and you be sure to vote for Donald Trump for me.”

Texas: Ahead of 2018, trial likely looms in Texas political map battle | The Texas Tribune

As the 2018 election cycle nears, it appears Texas and its legal foes are headed for a trial — yet again — over what the state’s House and congressional boundaries will look like, and it will likely come this summer. “I think the trial is certain,” said Jose Garza, an attorney for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, a lead plaintiff in the years-long challenge of the state’s political boundaries. “At the end of the day, we’re going to get new political maps, and the court’s going to draw them.” His comments followed a lengthy and complicated hearing Thursday over the fate of the state’s 2013 House and congressional maps — a high-profile status conference that followed a pair of federal rulings that Texas lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minority voters in initially drawing each map in 2011.

Ecuador: Government Seeks Ban on Exit Polls after Disputed Election | PanAm Post

The president of the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Ecuador, Juan Pablo Pozo, announced that it will prohibit the early dissemination of exit polls. “From now on, no figures can be given, until the institutions have given them first, otherwise it generates unnecessary speculation by the people,” suggested the president of the CNE. Reforms to the Democracy Code will also try to regulate electoral advertising on the internet. The initiative of the electoral body will be discussed for three months, starting next June, Pozo said on Wednesday, April 26.

Estonia: 10 Years After the Landmark Attack on Estonia, Is the World Better Prepared for Cyber Threats? | Foreign Policy

The Estonians just wanted to relocate a statue. Ten years ago today, authorities in Tallinn set out to remove a Soviet World War II memorial from the capital’s downtown. The Russian government had warned that removing the statue would be “disastrous for Estonians,” but since Moscow no longer called the shots in the Baltic state, the statue was duly shipped off to a suburban military cemetery. Soon after, Estonians found that they couldn’t use much of the internet. They couldn’t access newspapers online, or government websites. Bank accounts were suddenly inaccessible. “It was unheard of, and no one understood what was going on in the beginning,” Toomas Hendrik Ilves, then Estonian President, told Foreign Policy. Soon, he was informed that it was not an internal failure — but an attack from the outside. It was a Distributed Denial of Service Attack — an orchestrated swarm of internet traffic that literally swamps servers and shuts down websites for hours or days.

France: Cyber experts ‘99% sure’ Russian hackers are targeting Macron | France 24

The Russian cyber-spying group Pawn Storm (also known as Fancy Bear) has targeted French presidential front-runner Emmanuel Macron, according to Japanese cyber-security experts. Macron campaign officials, however, say the group has so far failed. Barely two weeks before the critical second round of the French presidential election, fears of Russian meddling in the 2017 campaign mounted with the publication of a report accusing Pawn Storm of targeting Macron’s En Marche! (Forward!) movement, employing identical tactics used to attack the Hillary Clinton campaign during the US presidential race. A 41-page report, “Two Years of Pawn Storm,” by the Japanese cyber-security firm Trend Micro detailed a long list of the group’s targets, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party ahead of the September German general elections.

Iran: Is Putin interfering in Iran’s presidential elections? | Iran Pulse

Iranian conservative presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi met with visiting Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov — an encounter that Raisi probably did not expect would end up causing problems ahead of the May 19 presidential elections. The hard-line Tasnim News Agency, which is seen as backing Raisi and reported the meeting, described Minnikhanov as an envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, seemingly to highlight Raisi’s stature. During the meeting, Minnikhanov reportedly told Raisi, “We hope that the relationship between Iran and Tatarstan will be [further] developed.” He added, “Vladimir Putin gives special importance to the spread of religion, including Islam, as he has formed a strategic group, which I head, for developing relations with Islam [the Islamic world].”

Turkey: Merkel urges Turkey to respond to reported referendum irregularities | Reuters

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Turkey on Thursday to answer questions raised by European observers over a referendum that expanded President Tayyip Erdogan’s powers and also said the EU must reflect on what future ties it wants with Ankara. A report by observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe found that up to 2.5 million votes could have been manipulated in Turkey’s April 16 referendum, which ended in a narrow victory for Erdogan’s push for greater powers. “The Turkish government must measure itself based on this report and answer the questions raised in it,” Merkel told the Bundestag lower house of parliament. “We will very carefully follow how Turkey deals with reports of possible irregularities.”

National: Russia’s Interference in the U.S. Election Was Just the Beginning | The Atlantic

Mike Conaway, the Republican who replaced Devin Nunes as head of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, has described his mission simply: “I just want to find out what happened,” he’s said. The more urgent question elsewhere in the world, however, isn’t confined to the past. It concerns what is happening—not just in the United States but in European democracies as well. In the Netherlands, Dutch authorities counted paper ballots in a recent election by hand to prevent foreign governments—and Russia in particular—from manipulating the results through cyberattacks. In Denmark, the defense minister has accused the Russian government of carrying out a two-year campaign to infiltrate email accounts at his ministry. In the United Kingdom, a parliamentary committee reports that it cannot “rule out” the possibility that “foreign interference” caused a voter-registration site to crash ahead of Britain’s referendum on EU membership. And in France, a cybersecurity firm has just discovered that suspected Russian hackers are targeting the leading presidential candidate. “We are increasingly concerned about cyber-enabled interference in democratic political processes,” representatives from the Group of Seven—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S.—declared after meeting in Italy earlier this month. Russia, a member of the group until it was kicked out for annexing Crimea, wasn’t mentioned in the statement. It didn’t need to be. The subtext was clear.

National: Russian hackers heavily targeted news outlet in days before U.S. election, researchers say | Cyberscoop

Hackers working for the Russian government sent a barrage of targeted phishing emails between 2014 and 2016 to employees of major news outlets, and they focused particularly on Al Jazeera in the days before and shortly following the U.S. presidential election, according to new research by cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. It’s unclear exactly why the elite team of hackers — known as APT-28, Fancy Bear or Pawn Storm — focused so heavily on the Qatar-based, state-funded global broadcaster during that short window. Like other news agencies targeted over the longer two-year span, including the New York Times and Buzzfeed, the award-winning outlet covered the election in detail and dedicated a section of its website to election-night coverage.

National: House Russia investigators optimistic under Conaway’s leadership | Politico

Rep. Mike Conaway, the House’s new top Russia investigator, is telling lawmakers on the Intelligence Committee that they should expect to be in Washington more than usual as the beleaguered probe gets a reboot, panel members said after a closed-door meeting Wednesday. Committee Democrats welcomed Conaway’s remarks, describing the Texas Republican as a “straight-shooter” who was committed to a thorough, bipartisan investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election, including the possibility of collusion with the Trump campaign.

Alabama: Bill would eliminate requirement to give reason for voting absentee | AL.com

Alabama voters would not have to give a reason for voting absentee under a bill that passed the state Senate last week. Current law requires voters to sign an affidavit attached to the ballot that affirms their identity and gives one of the following reasons for voting absentee: out of town on election day; physically incapacitated; working all day while the polls are open; attending college in another county; being an armed services member or the spouse or dependent of one. The bill, by Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, would eliminate the requirement to give a reason and the requirement to have two witnesses or a notary public sign the identifying affidavit.

Arizona: Ducey to Decide if Voter Registration Deadline Controversy Repeats | Associated Press

If Gov. Doug Ducey signs legislation headed to his desk, Arizona won’t see a repeat of a controversy that erupted last October after Secretary of State Michele Reagan set the last day for voter registration on a legal holiday. Reagan’s decision cost at least 2,000 citizens their vote in November and led to a federal lawsuit by state and national Democratic parties. A federal judge ruled the Democrats likely would have won but waited too long to file the lawsuit. Reagan refused to extend the Oct. 10 voter registration deadline even though it fell on Columbus Day. The Democrats noted there’s no mail service and state motor vehicle offices were closed that day and sued on Oct. 19.

Colorado: Secretary of State on 2016 Electoral College vote: ‘They’re investigating’ | The Colorado Independent

“They’re investigating.” That’s what Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said this week about the state attorney general’s office and a probe into what happened during Colorado’s Electoral College vote last year— four months after it took place. On Dec. 19, 2016, during a traditional ceremony where the state’s nine national electors cast their official votes for president, one of them, Micheal Baca, did not cast his for Colorado’s popular vote-getter Hillary Clinton, and was stripped of his duties and replaced.

Louisiana: House Lawmakers Not Keen to Restore Vote to Some Ex-Felons | Associated Press

Proposals to restore the voting rights of more than 70,000 Louisiana ex-felons on probation or parole got a chilly reaction from some state lawmakers Wednesday. A House committee rejected one such proposal and convinced a lawmaker to delay action on a similar bill until next week. Rep. Patricia Smith, a Baton Rouge Democrat, pulled her proposal from a vote after her colleagues expressed concern about giving the vote back to people who have been on parole or probation for five years. Similar proposals have died before in the conservative Louisiana Legislature.

Michigan: Civil Rights Commission urges U.S. Supreme Court to review emergency manager law | Michigan Radio

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission wants the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case against Gov. Snyder. That’s what commissioners decided with a 5-0 vote Tuesday. They ordered the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to file an amicus brief urging the high court to review the issues raised in the case Bellant v. Snyder. The case makes the claim that Michigan’s emergency manager law, Public Act 436, violates the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of people in certain communities, particularly African Americans.

Nebraska: Legislature moves bill to let unelected senators serve longer | Associated Press

The Nebraska Legislature gave initial approval Thursday to a measure that could let appointed state senators serve more than two and a half years before they face an election, but several lawmakers say the bill needs more work to ensure voters can choose their representative. Vacancies that occur earlier than 60 days before an election now are filled during the election. A proposal by Sen. John Murante of Gretna would instead require that vacancies occur before Feb. 1 of an election year to be filled in the next election.

Nevada: Same-day voter registration gets OK in Nevada Senate | Las Vegas Review-Journal

The Nevada Senate approved a bill Tuesday extending voter registration before Election Day, in some cases allowing same-day registration, and expanding voting hours in some jurisdictions. Senate Bill 144 was one of several election-related bills voted on as the Nevada Legislature faced a deadline Tuesday to pass bills out of their house of origin.
SB144 was approved on a 12-9 partisan vote, with state Sen. Patricia Farley, I-Las Vegas, voting with Democrats to approve it. Specifically, the bill extends voter registration until the last day of early voting, which is the Friday before a Tuesday election. Under existing law, voter registration closes on the third Tuesday before the election.

North Carolina: In 2016, in-person voter fraud made up 0.00002 percent of all votes in North Carolina | Vox

One in nearly 4.8 million. That’s how many fraudulent votes North Carolina’s voter ID law would have stopped in the 2016 election had it not been halted by the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, based on a recent audit from the State Board of Elections. After all this time, the court battles, and the protests that the law would disproportionately hurt minority voters, it turns out the push for voter ID was all to stop just one potentially fraudulent vote out of 4,769,640 cast last November. North Carolina’s voter ID law imposed strict voter ID standards, as well as restricted the amount of early voting days, to stop in-person voter impersonation. A judge halted most of the law last year after concluding that it “target[ed] African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” The audit’s findings expose the lie behind voter ID laws: Republican lawmakers say (in public) that their voter ID laws are meant to stop voter fraud, but actual voter fraud is vanishingly rare. Instead, these laws are seemingly geared — by some Republicans’ admission, in fact — toward making it harder for minority and Democratic voters to cast a ballot.