Yearly Archives: 2017

For weeks in 2011, state-paid contractors, on leave from their public jobs for Republican lawmakers, worked secretly in a hotel room described as the “bunker” to create political maps aimed at creating safe Republican districts for most of Ohio’s congressional delegation.
The maps, drawn in part with guidance from national Republican Party leaders and the staff of U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner, often disregarded community concerns and instead focused on political gains by creating districts that in some cases weave more than 100 miles across the state. It worked. In three election cycles since, no seat has changed party hands – a 12-4 GOP majority despite a much closer overall vote.

Wisconsin: Elections chairman: State must ready for more Russian attempts to hack election systems | Wisconsin State Journal

Wisconsin’s election IT infrastructure must be better secured before the 2018 election after federal officials said “Russian government cyber actors” targeted it during last year’s campaign, state elections commissioners said. “We now know from (the federal Department of) Homeland Security that the Russian government attempted to gain access to the Wisconsin election structure — and that they’re going to come back again,” commission chairman Mark Thomsen said. How the state should respond will be the topic of a special elections commission meeting next month. But Thomsen, a Democratic appointee to the commission, said Gov. Scott Walker’s decision to cut funding for the commission in the state budget will make the task more difficult.

Kenya: Ethnic tensions threaten to engulf post-election Kenya. This activist sees a way out. | PRI

Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi is calling out his country’s leaders as “tribal kingpins” that he says are taking the country to the brink of disaster. He and thousands of others have taken to the streets to protest corruption and what they say is an electoral system that exacerbates Kenya’s ethnic divisions. “I went to protest against police violence and got shot with a tear gas canister,” notes Mwangi, with more than a touch of irony. Tensions are especially high in Kenya after last week’s presidential election re-run. President Uhuru Kenyatta has now been declared the winner, with 98 percent of the vote. Challenger Raila Odinga boycotted the balloting, arguing it would not be free and fair. He said that about the original vote, too.

Liberia: Togo, Guinea leaders mediate deepening Liberia election dispute | AFP

West African leaders held mediation talks Wednesday with all sides involved in Liberia’s disputed election, following a Supreme Court announcement it would summon the country’s electoral commission to explain alleged fraud and irregularities. Liberia’s top court has reviewed a legal complaint backed by three political parties and found “constitutional issues raised” by the electoral commission’s actions during an October 10 presidential election, it said on Tuesday. A Supreme Court hearing on the issue is set for Thursday at 9am (0900 GMT). The legal complaint was lodged by the opposition Liberty Party but has the backing of the ruling Unity Party and its presidential candidate, incumbent Vice-President Joseph Boakai.

Spain: Puigdemont absent as deposed Catalan leaders appear in court in Madrid | The Guardian

The deposed leaders of Catalonia’s separatist government have begun arriving at court in Madrid to face possible charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds over their roles in last week’s declaration of independence. Notable by his likely absence, however, is the dismissed Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, who is in Brussels and refusing to come, according to his lawyer. “He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium,” Paul Bekaert told Spain’s TV3 television on Wednesday. The hearing at the national court in Madrid, which deals with major criminal cases, began at 9am and will continue on Friday.

Venezuela: How Venezuela Fell Victim to ‘Clear Manipulation’ in Election | Wall Street Journal

Aires Pérez Rodríguez traveled by canoe for three hours to deliver the paper receipts showing a total of 225 votes cast for state governor in this hamlet. Then he passed them to his aunt, who drove them a further 150 miles to the Bolívar state capital. When the official count was released days after the Oct. 15 election, however, there were an extra 471 votes for the government’s candidate. It wasn’t just Mr. Pérez, the opposition party’s election monitor, who noticed. The ruling Socialist Party’s own election supervisor in El Casabe realized it, too. “This is illegal,” said Luciano Mendoza, the election supervisor, who showed The Wall Street Journal the voting-machine receipts that counted just a third as many votes from the hamlet as reported by electoral authorities later. “They say they bring justice, but instead they commit fraud.”

Indiana: Secretary of State Gets Sued Again for Purging Voter Rolls | Stateline

Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, a Republican, is facing another lawsuit over the state’s process for removing voters from registration lists. Voting rights group Common Cause said the state’s policy violates federal voting law by immediately removing voters from rolls if they are suspected of having moved away. Federal election law requires election officials to wait two federal election cycles before removing voters who did not respond to confirmation notices.

Editorials: Why has Kris Kobach’s voter fraud commission disappeared? | The Kansas City Star

What has happened to President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity? The president — convinced he actually won the popular vote in 2016 over Hillary Clinton — established the commission in May. Vice President Mike Pence is the chairman, but Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is widely considered the real leader of the group. The commission has all but disappeared publicly, and there are growing indications it will set a new standard for uselessness. The commission ran into immediate problems last summer when it asked for voter data from all 50 states. Several states denounced the request and refused to comply in whole or in part. Lawsuits followed. By mid-July, the Washington Post reported, at least seven plaintiffs had sued the commission, including the ACLU, the NAACP, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The cases are winding their way through the courts.

National: The political lines that divide us | Public Radio International

American politicians are often compared to children. They finger-point, they’re stubborn and, at times, they can be downright manipulative. According to Justin Levitt, a law professor and associate dean for research at Loyola Law School, this immature behavior comes out in full force when it comes to drawing boundaries for voting districts. Levitt has written extensively about crafting electoral lines on his website All About Redistricting. He says that even though unfair redistricting can make the difference between voices being heard and voices being drowned out, politicians will often create these boundaries to best suit their own needs. But sometimes, when drawing questionable lines, lawmakers can get their hands caught in the cookie jar.

Editorials: A draft US law to secure election computers that isn’t braindead | Iain Thomson/The Register

A law bill was introduced today to the US Senate designed to safeguard American elections from hacking by miscreants or manipulation by Russian or other foreign agents. The Securing America’s Voting Equipment (SAVE) Act [PDF] would designate elections systems as part of the US national critical infrastructure, task the Comptroller General of the United States with checking the integrity of voting machines, and sponsor a “Hack the election” competition to find flaws in voting machines. “Our democracy hinges on protecting Americans’ ability to fairly choose our own leaders. We must do everything we can to protect the security and integrity of our elections,” said cosponsor Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM). “The SAVE Act would ensure states are better equipped to develop solutions and respond to threats posed to election systems. Until we set up stronger protections of our election systems and take the necessary steps to prevent future foreign influence campaigns, our nation’s democratic institutions will remain vulnerable.”

Alabama: Probate judge says there were ‘zero’ crossover votes in Jefferson County | AL.com

Jefferson County Probate Judge Alan King said there were no crossover votes cast in the county during the Sept. 26 Republican runoff in the special election for the U.S. Senate. Last week, King had said he believed most of the 380 voters on a preliminary list of crossover voters did not vote that day. In an email today to Secretary of State John Merrill and other officials, King said an investigation by Board of Registrars Chairman Barry Stephenson determined all 380 were attributed to mistakes by poll workers and others. “As (of ) 5 PM last Friday (October 27, 2017) we had every error corrected and there are no ‘cross-over’ votes in Jefferson County,” King wrote (bold in original email).

Arizona: Maricopa County elections boss Adrian Fontes tells voter to ‘Go F- yourself’ | Arizona Republic

When a Goodyear voter complained on Facebook that his Nov. 7 ballot was confusing, Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes insulted him, attacked the voter’s mother and told him to “go F- yourself.” The social-media tirade comes as Fontes, the only Democrat to run Maricopa County elections in recorded history, is under a microscope. He beat a longtime GOP elections chief in 2016 with promises of better representation and communication with voters and has faced suspicion from Republican officials and voters. Tuesday’s local election is a litmus test for Fontes. Fontes responded angrily to the Goodyear voter, Nathan Schneider, who complained that the election date was hard for him and his mother to find on the mail-in ballot and ballot inserts, and was not printed on the envelope. “The public should not be forced to make assumptions when voting,” Schneider, a Democratic candidate for Arizona Legislature, posted on Facebook. “Adrian Fontes doesn’t listen to me, but if any of you have his ear, maybe you could ask him why they are not labeling the Election Day on the ballot and making it more legible, easier to find, and easier to identify.” Fontes responded by asking if Schneider’s mother ran his campaign and writing “go F- yourself.”

Georgia: Group calls for state to abandon voting system in next week’s election | Atlanta Journal Constitution

The executive director of a national election transparency advocacy group has written an open letter to Georgia lawmakers urging them not to use the state’s current voting system in next week’s election. Marilyn Marks, executive director with the Coalition for Good Governance, said that she believes the state’s voting system is compromised and election workers should instead begin using paper ballots in the Nov. 7 elections. The Charlotte-based group is suing the state to force it to overhaul its election technology. Marks’ letter comes a few days after it became public that a databank maintained by the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University was erased in July. “The disclosures of the last several days expose the fact that the voting system is compromised and cannot be relied on to produce accurate results,” Marks wrote in her letter.

Kansas: Crosscheck program touted by Kobach under fire for inaccuracies | Lawrence Journal World

A computer database system that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach frequently touts as a tool to prevent voter fraud is now the subject of a federal lawsuit and a new academic study that says it is wrong most of the time. The system, known as Crosscheck, was developed in Kansas in 2005, five years before Kobach was elected. But its use by other states has grown rapidly under Kobach’s administration, and by 2016, 30 states were reported to be using it. The participating states share their voter registration information with the Crosscheck system, which uses each person’s first name, last name, date of birth, and last four digits of their Social Security number to look for potential duplicates. The idea is to identify duplicate registrations and prevent people from “double voting” — that is, casting ballots in more than one location. But a new study by researchers from Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Yale Law School and Microsoft Research said Crosscheck’s protocols could result in potentially thousands of legitimate voters being wrongly purged from the voting rolls.

Louisiana: 6 words could determine the right to vote for over 70,000 Louisiana residents | The Times Picayune

The decision on whether more than 70,000 Louisiana residents who are on probation or parole should have voting rights will depend greatly on the interpretation of six words, according to legal briefs filed by both sides in an appeal of the case. Since 1974, the Louisiana constitution has said no one can vote “while under an order of imprisonment for conviction of a felony,” and the right to vote would be restored “upon termination of state and federal supervision.” It is the phrase “while under an order of imprisonment” that both sides argue is key in their case. The Advancement Project, a national civil rights and racial justice organization based in Washington, D.C., is representing the advocacy group Voice of the Ex-Offender, as well as individual plaintiffs, in an ongoing effort to repeal Louisiana’s current voting law, which does not grant felons on parole or probation the right to vote.

New Mexico: State ‘ahead of the game’ on paper ballots | Santa Fe New Mexican

Your bank might want you to give up those paper statements sent in the mail in favor of an app on your smartphone, and your doctor might keep your medical records on a computer instead of in a manila folder. But New Mexico wants to keep your vote on a paper ballot, and a growing number of states are following suit, ditching paperless elections because of concerns about cybersecurity. Russian hackers, according to election officials, targeted voting systems in 21 states last year, but New Mexico was not among them. Government officials credit New Mexico’s reliance on paper ballots at least in part with making it less vulnerable to hackers and vote thieves. The New Mexico Legislature approved a law in 2006 requiring paper ballots for any election held under state law. All 33 counties in the state now use paper ballots. They are counted with electronic scanners, which create a paper trail that must be stored for nearly two years after most elections.

North Carolina: Governor Roy Cooper would have lost in court vs. lawmakers | News & Observer

A panel of three judges would have ruled against Gov. Roy Cooper in one of his power struggles with state lawmakers, this one over control of elections boards. In a ruling released Tuesday, the judges said that if they had jurisdiction of the case they would have decided that lawmakers had not violated the state Constitution when they created an eight-member board – evenly divided between the major political parties – to preside over state election issues and ethics complaints. The case could determine whether Republicans will have leadership on elections boards at the state and county level during presidential election years when North Carolina voters also elect their governor. The findings from the three judges — L. Todd Burke of Forsyth County, Jesse Caldwell of Gaston County and Jeffrey Foster of Pitt County — put the case back before the state Supreme Court.

Editorials: North Carolina Republicans are worried about the man who might redraw our voting map. They should be. | News & Observer

N.C. Republicans don’t like the idea of using an outside expert to draw new legislative districts for our state. Federal judges, who say the current map relies too heavily on race, intend to assign that job to Stanford University law school professor Nathan Persily. An attorney for the GOP objected Monday in a court filing, according to the Associated Press. Republicans don’t necessarily have a problem with Persily’s credentials, which are many, or his map-drawing chops, which are considerable. They worry about what GOP lawyer Phil Strach called “possible bias.” They’re right about that, but maybe not for the reason they think. We looked at more than a dozen op-eds, interviews and projects that Persily has participated in during the last decade. He’s commented on court decisions involving North Carolina cases – as Strach notes in his filing – but Persily’s analysis of those cases wasn’t particularly controversial or partisan. Still, Republicans should be worried about the maps that Persily might draw – not because he’s biased against the GOP, but because he’s biased against voters being disenfrachised.

Ohio: Jon Husted: Replacing voting machines will be costly | Dayton Daily News

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said he’s hoping the federal government comes forward with money to update Ohio’s voting machines but admits, “I don’t hold my breath in thinking that they are going to.” Husted said the Ohio legislature is looking at ways to share costs to update voting machines that date to the mid-2000s. A split of 80 percent cost for the state and 20 percent for the local governments is being considered for replacement of machines that the Ohio Association of Elections Officials has said could cost an estimated $200 million. Ohio and other states replaced their old punch card voting systems with electronic touch screen and optical scan machines in the wake of the “hanging chad” debacle in Florida during the deadlocked 2000 presidential election and additional problems in 2004, including long lines in Ohio. The federal Help America Vote Act in 2002 for the first time provided funding to help states buy voting equipment.

Texas: What Happened When One Texas County Tried To Build A Cheap, Open-Source Election System | Texas Public Radio

Travis County, home to Austin, has been working to build a better voting system – one that satisfies the need to maintain security and accessibility for voters. Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, the chief election official, has been a part of developing the system, called STAR Vote, which would have replaced the current Hart InterCivic eSlate system that has been in use since 2001. That system cost roughly $7 million, and has seen several security augmentations over the years. DeBeauvoir was making considerable progress on STAR Vote until a few weeks ago, when it looked like the plan was starting to lose steam. The Austin Monitor headline read “STAR Vote collapses.” DeBeauvoir had worked with academics to develop the new system, but when it came time to seek bids to build it, DeBeauvoir says she didn’t receive any Requests for Proposal that filled the bill.

Kenya: Opposition Shuns Courts, Vows Protests Demanding New Vote | Bloomberg

Kenya’s main opposition alliance said it won’t challenge the results that gave President Uhuru Kenyatta a landslide victory in last week’s disputed election rerun in court and instead vowed to mobilize its supporters to press for a another vote. “This election must not stand,” opposition leader Raila Odinga told reporters in Nairobi, the capital. “If allowed to stand, it will make a complete mockery of elections and might well be the end of the ballot as a means of instituting government in Kenya.” Musalia Mudavadi, a senior leader of Odinga’s four-party National Super Alliance, said that while private citizens may challenge the election in court, the coalition won’t take legal action against the vote. Kenyatta, 56, secured 98.3 percent of the vote in an Oct. 26 election that the Independent Electoral & Boundaries Commission said was free and fair, but was boycotted by Odinga, who described it as a sham. The electoral agency said the turnout dropped to 38.8 percent from 79 percent in the Aug. 8 contest, which the Supreme Court nullified after the electoral agency failed to disprove opposition claims of rigging.

Liberia: Supreme Court halts presidential run-off over fraud allegations | Reuters

Liberia’s Supreme Court has stayed next week’s presidential run-off election until it considers a challenge to first round results by a losing candidate who has alleged fraud. Third-place finisher Charles Brumskine’s Liberty Party challenged the results of last month’s vote, which set up a Nov. 7 run-off between former soccer star George Weah and Vice President Joseph Boakai. The election is meant to usher in Liberia’s first democratic transition since 1944 after long periods of military rule and a civil war that ended in 2003. In a writ issued late on Tuesday, the court instructed Liberty Party and the National Elections Commission to file briefs by Thursday at the latest. It was unclear if the court would rule before Nov. 7.

Nepal: Petition seeks voting rights for civil servants | The Kathmandu Post

The Election Commission’s decision not to allow civil servants and security forces deployed in the elections to vote have raised serious concerns from various organisations of the civil servants have raised serious over their constitutional rights. In his writ, civil servant Bharat Kumar Mainali has demanded a mandamus order with certiorari from the apex court to ensure the voting rights of the civil servants regardless of their deployment for the proportional representation election system. Mainali has demanded that the SC annul any provision that bars the civil servants from voting and issue a mandamus order to ensure the voting rights by including their names in the temporary voting list of the Election Commission.

Nigeria: ‘INEC waiting for amendment of law on diaspora voting’ | The Nation Nigeria

The dream of Nigerians in the diaspora to participate in the country’s electoral process may soon be realised, going by the words of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu. He said the commission had written the National Assembly on the need to thinker with the enabling law, to allow Nigerians living outside the country to vote. Yakubu spoke yesterday with the Sudanese ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed, who was at INEC’s headquarters to deliver a letter of invitation to him. There are about 10 million Nigerians in Sudan under two categories- Sudanese of Nigeria origin and Nigeria migrants in Sudan.

United Kingdom: Human rights lawyer: prisoner votes plan is ‘cynical’ | BBC News

A lawyer for prisoners seeking the vote has called leaked government plans to enfranchise some inmates a “cynical” attempt to do the minimum required. Sean Humber, a partner at Leigh Day, said the reported proposals were likely to affect just a few hundred people.
According to the Sunday Times, prisoners sentenced to less than a year and with the right to day release could be allowed to return home to vote. The Ministry of Justice declined to comment on “speculation”. Currently, prisoners are not eligible to be included in the register of electors, except for unconvicted prisoners on remand – those in custody pending trial – and those who were sent to prison for contempt of court or for not paying a fine.

California: New California Law Strikes Blow to Election Audits | WhoWhatWhy

As the most populous state in the country by far — and a leader in innovations — California is always worth watching. In no situation is that more true than in its attempts to fix its voting system. Sometimes, however, those efforts prove to be entirely counterproductive. In response to reports from US intelligence that Russia interfered with the 2016 election, election officials across the country are striving to fortify their security procedures. In light of all this, many experts were shaking their heads in disappointment after California recently passed a law that election activists are calling “an open invitation to large-scale election fraud.” Earlier this month, a seemingly innocuous bill reached the desk of Governor Jerry Brown (D) after passing the State Assembly and Senate unopposed. Given its ostensible purpose — to allow mail-in voters to re-submit overlooked signatures via email — the lack of scrutiny might have been understandable. However, when the bill was amended before its final Senate vote, its purpose took an unforeseen shift. The altered bill “dramatically reduc[es] the number of ballots counties must include in the [post-election hand count] performed to verify the accuracy of software vote counts,” said the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation in a letter calling for the bill’s veto.

National: Trump Campaign Got Early Word Russia Had Democrats’ Emails | The New York Times

The guilty plea of a 30-year-old campaign aide — so green that he listed Model United Nations in his qualifications — shifted the narrative on Monday of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia: Court documents revealed that Russian officials alerted the campaign, through an intermediary in April 2016, that they possessed thousands of Democratic emails and other “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. That was two months before the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was publicly revealed and the stolen emails began to appear online. The new court filings provided the first clear evidence that Trump campaign aides had early knowledge that Russia had stolen confidential documents on Mrs. Clinton and the committee, a tempting trove in a close presidential contest. By the time of a crucial meeting in June of last year, when Donald Trump Jr. and other senior Trump campaign officials met with a Russian lawyer offering damaging information on Mrs. Clinton, some may have known for weeks that Russia had material likely obtained by illegal hacking, the new documents suggested. The disclosures added to the evidence pointing to attempts at collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, but they appeared to fall short of proof that they conspired in the hacking or other illegal acts.

National: Trump Fraud Commissioner’s System Purges Voters With A Database That Never Works, Lawsuit Says | Newsweek

Civil rights activists have sued the Indiana Election Division and associated officials over a law the state recently established allowing county officials to purge voter registrations immediately based on a database program that a new study found is 99 percent inaccurate. The American Civil Liberties Union and nonpartisan organization Common Cause Indiana filed a federal lawsuit Friday alleging that a law Indiana implemented in July “permits or requires Indiana counties to ignore the mandatory procedures and protections in the (National Voter Registration Act), resulting in non-uniform, discriminatory, and illegal cancellations of Indiana voter registrations.” Under Indiana’s new law, county officials no longer have to wait through a notice period to get rid of voters flagged through the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which identifies people in different states with the same name and birthdate.

National: Russia-backed Facebook posts ‘reached 126 million Americans’ during US election | The Guardian

Russia-backed content reached as many as 126 million Americans on Facebook during and after the 2016 presidential election, according to the company’s prepared testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of hearings this week. Facebook believes 120 fake Russian-backed pages created 80,000 posts that were received by 29 million Americans directly, but reached a much bigger audience by users sharing, liking and following the posts. The social network plans to disclose these numbers to the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the testimony. The tech giant’s testimony will follow dramatic developments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian inference in the 2016 election, with three indictments, including two top Trump campaign aides.

National: Tech Companies Set to Tell Congress About Russian Election Meddling | Bloomberg